by Agnete Friis
“What would you like to know?”
“I thought perhaps you could tell me what she was like as a child.”
My aunt shook her head. “She liked to attract attention to herself. Always wore pretty dresses and pearls, that kind of thing.”
The last comment was delivered with a tight smile, and I guessed that Birgit Højer had never attracted attention to herself. Not even at an age that usually calls for princess dresses and diamond tiaras. The two sisters didn’t have any physical likeness either, as far as I could tell. In the photographs I had seen of my mother she seemed like a shy, gentle woman. Her body was frail, slightly bow-necked, as if constantly warding off the world. Birgit, on the other hand, carried herself tall and rigid as a pillar.
“You and your family are Jehovah’s Witnesses . . . ”
The woman standing in front of me didn’t reply, casting an impatient look over my shoulder instead. “Is that your . . . friend . . . over there?”
Magnus had gotten out of the van and was pacing back and forth on the sidewalk. He towered up over the hedge, lost in his own world and the music on his iPhone. His long blond locks had been gathered into a ponytail; his second, loosely rolled joint was dangling from the corner of his mouth.
“I’m really sorry about what happened to you and Anna. About all of it. I wish I had been able to do something for you both before it was too late. But you have to understand . . . ” She squinted into the sun. “Anna had always had something ugly inside her, so in a way, it didn’t surprise us that she died the way she did. Already as a little girl . . . seeing her do up her face like that . . . it was grotesque. She used to paint her lips bright red with a brush, her eyelids light blue.”
The corners of my aunt’s mouth curled in unmitigated disgust.
“And then later, she met him. Your father. We knew he wasn’t the first boy she’d had in that way, but he was the first one who was dumb enough to let her move in. My parents were heartbroken.”
I touched a hand to the heart-shaped amber pendant I always wore around my neck. I wished I could put my arms around my mother; the little girl who liked to paint her eyelids light blue, her lips a dramatic shade of red. I would have told her she was just fine the way she was. My aunt turned on her heel and made for the house.
“You and your father harassed her,” I said quietly. “You persecuted her when she moved in with my grandmother. Why?”
My aunt turned and looked at me long and hard.
“We tried to save her—till there was nothing left to save. The police called it harassment, but it was merely a loving reminder that her family was still there for her, that she could come back to us, if she wished. For a long time, we hoped that we could be reunited after her death. In spite of everything. What your mother said about us was all lies. The evil upon her was too great. It happens. We couldn’t save her, but if she had stayed with us, she would still be alive today.”
“If she had stayed with you, I would never have been born.”
My aunt nodded, and smiled faintly. Clearly she wasn’t deaf to the conversation’s sharp undertones. “It’s purely hypothetical, Ella. You shouldn’t take that kind of speculation personally. Sometimes one has to take a theoretical stance to life. Imagine, for instance, what is lost by choosing one road instead of another. How different one’s life could have been. Anna could have been happy with us.”
“I’m trying to figure out what happened . . . ”
I no longer knew what I wanted from her. She had known my mother, but it was hard to believe that my aunt had ever seen my mother for who she was. Everything my aunt saw was clouded by moral and religious interpretation. Not to mention persistent anger over being deserted. Drops of sweat had collected on the surface of her perfectly pale foundation, and her hands were clasped so tightly together that you would think she was fighting back a suicidal impulse.
“Ella.” She turned and came up to me abruptly, opened her arms, and pulled me close with unexpected feeling. “I am really sorry about what happened to the two of you. You mustn’t believe anything else. It hurts so terribly much. We are flesh and blood after all.”
My aunt was luxuriously perfumed, but below the pall of expensive perfume was her own body odor. Summer sweat and something sharp, like that of an animal, a smell that brought flashes of my mother’s face along with it; their bodies had the same odor, the characteristic scent of my herd. I saw my mother bent over me as I lay in my bed.
Then the two faces glided apart once more.
“She had a friend,” my aunt said into my hair. “I know this, because her friend also fell out with the church. And there was gossip. The friend came from the Faroe Isles originally. Lea Poulsen was her name. She married into our congregation shortly after your mother left the church. She and her husband had two boys together, but they split up, and Lea got mixed up with drugs. Narcotics. Your mother and Lea were seen together a couple of times—they met each other in a support group for fallen members of the congregation.”
An elderly man had appeared in the doorway on the porch behind her. He hadn’t taken the trouble to greet me. My aunt let go of me and seemed to be making a determined effort to shake me off, as if I were an unwelcome burst of rain.
“I would invite you in,” she said. “But I’m not feeling very well today.”
I nodded, and smiled. She had given me what I’d come for after all.
“Farewell, Ella. It was good to meet you.”
The man behind her stood completely still. He just stared at me and his comely wife till she finally turned her back and walked away.
27
ANNA, 1994
“Anna!”
Cool hands were laid over her eyes, pulling her backwards. A mouth against her neck. Soft lips and warm breath.
Anna spun round and threw her arms around her neck.
Lea. At last.
They walked north along the beach, hand in hand. The tourists had long since gone home and they had the beach to themselves. The wind whipped the water onto the shore, the sky was gigantic. Far, far at sea, a container vessel lay like a stone on the horizon. They walked for a while before either one of them spoke.
“I’ve missed you.”
Anna shot Lea a sidelong glance. She rarely said that kind of thing. Not to Helgi, not even to Ella, but the whiskey from that morning had dulled her nerves and made her speak more freely. Say the truth.
Lea smiled. “Have you?”
Lea looked a lot better than she remembered. If it hadn’t been for that voice, Anna would not have recognized her. She had bleached her hair and gained a healthy deal of weight. Her hips were fuller, her breasts heavier, and that characteristic restlessness underlying each and every movement had disappeared along with the drugs. It suited her.
Lea had always been beautiful, thought Anna. Even in her most pained and emaciated version, she had always been a beautiful woman. The dark-blue eyes, the classic profile, the heavy, dramatic jewelry, and the long black robes that somehow transformed her aura of frailty and misery into a sophisticated fashion sense. But she had obviously recovered, and her cheeks were a glowing crimson in the icy wind, her blond hair flying. It had been five years since she’d seen her, but miraculously, Lea had become a younger-looking woman than she was before.
“They’ve started doing it again.”
Anna studied her worn galoshes. Just saying the words out loud sent a bolt of fear through her.
“Who? Your family?” Lea was watching her closely.
Anna nodded. “My sister—or my father. Or . . . I don’t know.”
Anna looked at her hands. They were red from the cold and the eczema that now had spread to the rest of her body.
“It’s been such a long time since I’ve thought about all the warnings we were given. But they’ve all come back. I will be punished for . . . for being with Helgi. For
deserting my family . . . and God. I know it’s insane. Sometimes I feel insane. During the daylight hours it’s still okay, but at night it just doesn’t stop. There are so many of those signs we were instructed to look out for, the wars, the natural catastrophes. At three in the morning, I really feel as though God is sitting out there somewhere, watching the earth through a magnifying glass, ready to strike down dead those of us who haven’t lived a life of obedience. If it were just me . . . but what about Ella? I keep thinking about all the terrible things that will happen to her before we die. It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I think before I fall asleep. I feel like I’m living in a burning building. Do you know what I mean, Lea?”
It was a relief to say it to someone. Pour out the madness in all its naked horror, even though she knew it was a tub that would fill to the brim just as easily again.
Lea regarded her with those intense, dark-blue eyes of hers. “Of course I do, Anna. What you learn in your childhood remains on your mind. Dark discolorations—like brown patches on a sheet, right? But they’re just feelings, Anna. It’s not real. In many ways, you have always been the stronger of the two of us. You left the church of your own accord; I was kicked out. I was stoned and drunk for years. You have wrestled this devil before—and won.”
Anna laughed. She couldn’t believe that anyone could think of her as being strong right now, or at all. “I’m not strong,” she said. “Something broke when I left my parents’ home. I know very well that our . . . that their reality is twisted. My head knows this. But my body believes every word. It remembers everything. Sometimes I wish that I had stayed. At least then I would have had the comfort of the church.”
They had reached the harbor and walked along the row of small fishing boats that had been pulled up onto land and covered with dark tarpaulin for the winter months. An icy mist of rain blew in over the deserted buildings. A handful of men in blue overalls were packing crates of fish at the warehouse. Several freshly caught eels were writhing in a bucket of stinking ammonia.
“What’s that?”
Lea had stopped to watch the sprawling eels. They were half-covered by a foaming slime, their eyes open, blind, jaws repeatedly opening and closing. The stench from the bucket burned in the nose. Lea’s eyes shone in the shaft of light from the warehouse.
“An eel’s private hell,” said Anna. “They put them into the ammonia while they’re still alive so the slime will ooze out of their bodies. Gruesome.”
Lea squinted against the stinging vapor, then reached out to touch one of the slithery eels, almost as an afterthought. “Human beings do many gruesome things,” she said softly.
She took a moist napkin out of her bag and meticulously rubbed the sticky fish-slime off her hands and beautifully painted fingernails.
“I survived. I have found something to live for, and it’s wonderful, Anna. I can see myself being with someone again. Having children. And a job. Who would have believed it?”
“I get these sent to me.” Anna took a photograph out of her pocket and gave it to Lea. “Just when I think I’ve managed to forget, I get another one of these.”
It was a color photograph of Anna in a bikini when she was young. She is walking hand in hand with Helgi on the beach, her shoulders are a little red, but she’s laughing, her head is resting on Helgi’s shoulder. It was their first summer together after she’d left the church. Her breasts and pelvis had been cut out of the picture, and on the back someone had written a message in fat, red capital letters, WHORES END UP IN HELL, followed by a citation from the Bible:
The stars in the sky fell to the earth . . .
“I don’t even know where they get the pictures from. This photo is thirty-two years old. It comes from one of my photo albums; they’ve been in my house, Lea. Why are they doing this?”
“It’s all bullshit, Anna.”
Lea gripped her shoulders firmly, turned Anna round to face her, looked deep into her eyes. “There will be no Judgment Day, Anna. Certainly not the kind the church claims there will be. It may very well be that the world, as we know it, will disappear one day. But there will be no shining-white figure swooping in to save a chosen few. None of us are destined for special attention. We are all going to die, just like everybody else—of cancer or a heart attack, or a fall from an eighth-floor window. This is how it has always been, Anna. And this is what you have to learn to live with. Life can be hard enough as it is, but the church is just a scam operation that tries to make money out of getting us to believe something else. Forget it, Anna. Think about something else. Think about your daughter. Your garden. Your roses and your lilies.”
“They’re dying on me out here,” said Anna. “Nothing can survive this wind. And something is not right with Helgi. He hasn’t been himself lately.”
Lea smiled. “All marriages go through rough times once in a while. Don’t take it so hard.”
Anna felt the tears burning in her eyes. “He’s all the family I have, Lea. Without him, I would be completely alone. I don’t want to be like . . . ” she interrupted herself.
“Like me?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I know exactly what you mean.” Lea smiled and spun around, her arms stretched wide. “Freedom is nothing to be sniffed at, Anna. You should try it—at least once in your lifetime. It’s as good as sex and drugs.”
“Hmm.” Anna laughed. “If damnation were a matter of degrees, I’ve still got a few rungs on the ladder to spare. And that suits me just fine.”
“Of course you have.” Lea pursed her lips and looked out to sea. “You have always been a better and stronger person than I. I don’t believe in God and damnation. I believe in pills and alcohol. And you know where that got me. I would have been dead if you hadn’t found me and brought me back to the land of the living.”
Lea smiled and put an arm around her. Pulled Anna close.
“How did you find me this time round? It’s been such a long time since we’ve spoken, and I’ve got a new number. An unlisted one. There are people I cannot associate with anymore.”
“Don’t be angry with me . . . ”
“Why should I be angry?”
Lea took her hands in hers, brought them up to her lips. Her cheeks were burning hot. “I went to see Tobias. He gave me the most recent number he had for you.”
“Where?”
“At the school.”
“How did he look?”
“Beautiful, Lea. Both your sons are beautiful.”
Lea suddenly let go of Anna, as if she’d been stabbed with a knife. She picked up a stone and flung it into the foaming sea.
“They never call,” she said. “They’ve never called. Not once.”
Walking back to the beach Lea held Anna’s arm below the elbow, as if they were two little old ladies going for a stroll in the gardens of a nursing home. The touch of her fingers was a long sought-after sign of affection.
“Thank you for coming, Lea.”
“You would have done the same for me . . . ”
“So you’ve forgiven me for what happened?”
“I can’t even remember what happened, Anna. I was as high as a kite, remember.” Lea laughed. “You did what you thought was right for both me and my boys. I know that now. I’m not the fucked-up junkie I used to be.”
“I would still like to hear you say it.”
“Say what?”
“That you forgive me.”
Anna wretched and bent over. She hadn’t been eating properly, and her stomach cramped in protest. Stomach acid was eating its way through its own lining.
Lea smiled and turned to face Anna. Then she took a small plastic bag out of her pocket. “They were not easy to get hold of, but I still have a couple of contacts.”
“Will they work?”
“Yes, they will. Yo
u’ll lose your mind if you don’t get any sleep. You need sleep so you can think, so you can get back on your feet again. Everybody needs sleep.”
28
Alex was sitting in our back yard trying to untangle a fishing line. His gaze was intense, his face locked like a fist.
He didn’t notice me standing in the driveway watching him. In the three weeks since our arrival in Klitmøller, the city boy had been replaced by a barefoot fisherman. Sandals simply got in the way; they filled with sand when you went on the beach, and this is where he was most of the time, either with Lupo or his fishing tackle over his shoulder. He had stopped wearing his T-shirt—to spare his clothes, he said. The muscles and tendons of his arms and shoulders played under his skin as he worked.
Up on the road, Magnus revved the engine of his car and drove off. We had listened to music on the way home and I jerked him off in a parking lot. It never got any more passionate than that and I doubted that I would be hearing from him again.
“It’s really cool you’ve got a son,” he’d remarked. “Were you one of those chicks who just couldn’t wait? Like in The Young Mothers?”
“Alex was an accident. There was nothing in the world I wanted less than a child.”
Exit Magnus with the beautiful locks of hair.
Alex looked up and smiled when he saw me. “Take a look, Mom.”
He pointed to a blue plastic bucket standing on the drive. It was filled with sand.
“What is it?”
“Lugworms.” He smiled broadly. “Thomas showed me how to dig them up with a spade. There are a couple of brush worms as well.”
He dug a hand into the sand and pulled out a finger-fat worm. Its body was covered in red hairs and it wriggled furiously between his thumb and forefinger when he held it up under my nose.
I grinned, knocking the worm out of his hand, and it fell onto the ground between us. There was a long red stripe along the ridge of its slimy body. Its blood supply line. You have to avoid this line when you attach the worm to the hook, or it will die and float motionless in the water. I could hear my father’s voice; see his rough fingers on the thin membrane of the worm as he slipped the hook in, twisting it around and up against the counter hooks; careful and gentle as an angel to avoid bursting its body.