What My Body Remembers

by Agnete Friis

“Very much.”

  I went to the foot of the staircase and called up to Alex. A faint rummaging upstairs, followed by a score of jazz when he finally opened the door. Billie Holiday’s drawl drifted down the stairs. Soon afterward Alex appeared.

  “Hi, Alex my friend! It’s nice to meet you.”

  The pitch of Henning’s voice had risen by at least an octave, two flat palms raised in a salute to my son. I cringed. Body language could be just as false as spoken words if you mastered the nuances. And that Henning did.

  Alex nodded uncertainly.

  “Agnete and I are from the social services office in Thisted,” said Henning. “We would like to know how you and your mom . . . how you are getting on, that is, how you are spending your time . . . ”

  “Why?” Alex didn’t bite. He strolled past our guests at the kitchen table and made for the counter where he fixed himself some cereal in a floral-print ceramic bowl.

  “Because it’s our job,” said Henning. “It’s up to people like us to make sure that kids like you are doing okay. Are you looking forward to going back to school?”

  Alex shrugged. He remained standing by the counter, shoveling the cereal into his mouth. “I’m doing just fine,” he said. “Other than the fact that the TV is broken.”

  “You’re not missing Hvidovre? You had a foster family over there . . . Lisa and Tom . . . ”

  Alex shook his head and kept wolfing down his cereal. “I’m fine.”

  Agnete laughed nervously. “A young man who doesn’t have anything to complain about,” she chirped. “It’s not very often you meet one of those.”

  Alex ignored her, finished his food, and went back upstairs. Billie’s voice was smothered behind the door once more.

  “And you’ve got a boyfriend?”

  I looked up at Henning in surprise. They worked significantly faster in Thisted than I had given them credit for.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were seen with a handsome young man in a van. Kissing,” said Agnete, and blinked.

  “Lucky you.”

  I sent a mental note of thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Klitmøller, who had been gawking the last time Magnus came to pick me up. Apparently they’d invested in the latest edition of the Welfare Act as soon as it became clear that two exemplars of white trash had moved in next door. I’d bet they’d been reading passages out loud to each other in the sofa in the evenings. People on the dole paid dearly for fooling around in public.

  “We are not dating.”

  “What do you do together then?”

  Henning was still smiling, but the smile had become a little stiff. This was one of the more difficult exercises in the book; a skillful balance on the client’s personal boundaries had to be maintained. Just as Henning needed to know for sure whether a client’s hemorrhoid condition indeed ruled out the performance of a desk job, he needed to know whether I was fucking this guy or not, and if so, when, and how often. There was no reason for social services to take care of me if I had a sugar daddy who was performing this service quite adequately already.

  “We do nothing together.”

  “Forgive me, Ella, but you know very well that we are obliged to investigate circumstances that could impact your capacity to provide for your son as a single parent. If it becomes apparent that this man is spending the night on a regular basis, then perhaps he should be the one providing for you and your son.”

  “He’s a student, and he lives in Aalborg . . . ”

  Henning smiled, and nodded. Scribbled down some notes on his pad.

  “And he is not my boyfriend! He has never spent the night—not even once! Not that it’s any of your fucking business.”

  “Ella!” Henning raised his hands in an apologetic gesture and smiled disarmingly. “The other matter we wanted to talk to you about concerns information we have received that you are no longer living here on your own.”

  “I live with Alex.”

  “So there isn’t another woman staying with you?”

  “That’s temporary. She’s just visiting . . .”

  I wasn’t sure how to explain Barbara’s presence without having to mention the panic attacks.

  “Can we take a look around?”

  As if on command, Henning and Agnete rose in unison and went into the living room without waiting for an answer. Their eyes scanned my grandmother’s shelves, the dusty dining room table, and the gilt-framed pictures on the walls. A Rescue Boat Goes Out to Sea. The furniture that Barbara had cleared out of the room next door stood in the middle of the room like some barricade from the French Revolution. Over in one corner the rain had leaked through the ceiling. Large drops gathered on the plaster, which had become too wet, too heavy to support the water, and was now dripping into the washing bucket I had ready on the floor below.

  I could hear Barbara’s humming from the next room as she worked on her well-endowed Satan.

  The two guests from Welfare followed the sound, their cocked heads curiously yet cautiously preceding them, Henning even took the trouble to knock symbolically on the doorframe before stepping over the threshold.

  Barbara stopped humming the moment she saw them. The smile slipped from her face, leaving it dough-like, expressionless, as she took Henning’s outstretched hand in hers. Just behind him, Agnete had spotted the first of the penis-paintings on the opposite wall. In the absence of other seventh-grade girls, she tried in vain to hide snorts of laughter behind her hand.

  “Good heavens. Someone has been hard at work in here.” Henning smiled, motioning towards the sketches on the walls. A witch riding on a broom with flames coming out of her ass was almost life-size, her face almost on eye level with ours.

  “Historical murals,” said Barbara as she looked Agnete over. The aura of red wine was less penetrating today, but still unmistakable.

  “Excuse me, but I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. Henning Jensen from Thisted Social Services, and this is Miss Agnete Særmark, who is currently in training with us. We just came by to check on Ella and Alex. To make sure that they have settled in nicely.”

  “Of course.” Barbara seemed out of sorts. Distracted. And it wasn’t just the red wine. Henning and Agnete’s presence made her otherwise steady gaze falter.

  “And you are . . . ”

  “Barbara.”

  “And how do the two of you know each other, Barbara . . . ?”

  “I’m an old friend of the family.”

  “Really? I wasn’t aware of the fact that Ella’s family had any friends.” Henning looked genuinely interested. Curious. Helpful. He was a man who had mastered the entire catalog of verbal and nonverbal expression. I made a mental note that I would never be able to trust him. He was an exceptionally good liar. But he couldn’t fool Barbara.

  “I know Ella. What else do you need to know?”

  “A little more about you, perhaps,” said Henning now in a more measured tone. “Like whether you can confirm what Ella’s neighbors have observed: that you have moved in here with Ella and Alex. The reason we need to know this for sure is that the social office in Thisted is responsible for Alex’s well-being, and therefore we need to know the circumstances surrounding his immediate domestic environment.”

  “I don’t live here,” said Barbara, turning her back on them. “I’m just here for a couple of days to help Ella get settled.”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Pardon me, but I didn’t catch your surname.”

  “Jacobsen.”

  “And do you have any family of your own, Ms. Jacobsen?”

  “I have two sons in Copenhagen. They’re both grown now. Over thirty.”

  “How wonderful!” Agnete was practically cooing now, probably at the thought of two grown men in the city. All decked out in shiny Armani suits, Gucci sunglasses, an
d jobs in the financial sector. Pretty young women were so predictable.

  Henning rapped his knuckles on the doorframe once more. “We’re just going to take a last look around, and then we’ll be off. It was good to see you, Ella. I’m glad to see that you are getting on just fine . . . ” He backed out the room, forcing Agnete into retreat behind him. Her knees buckled as she tripped over the threshold, sniggered, and apologized behind the same hand with which she’d shared the joke about the huge penis on the wall. I felt about a hundred years older than her and a great deal smarter, but she and Henning were the ones who would be filing the relevant forms. They were the ones who would write the notes that determined how my behavior should be interpreted; whether I was fit and worthy, could be trusted; whether I was in a position to nurture Alex’s happiness and further development.

  As soon as they had closed the door behind them, I went back to Barbara’s room. She was still working with her back turned, drawing lines with a black brush, stepping back occasionally, readjusting here and there, touching up the contours. Outside, the rain hammered against the windows, the light was grey.

  “You lied,” I said.

  She laughed softly. “About what?”

  “About your name. It isn’t Jacobsen. I saw it on the postbox back at your place. It’s Jensen.”

  “Jacobsen, Jensen. Both completely irrelevant names. Whether they hear the one name or the other is not important.”

  I didn’t answer. I opened the window wide instead and lit a smoke. The wind slammed the rain against my face.

  “You’re not mad, are you?” I could feel her eyes in my back. “Ella. We’re in this together. They don’t need to know everything. And besides, it’s in your favor that there’s more than one adult here to look after Alex.”

  “You’re drunk,” I said.

  “So I drink a little red wine,” she said. “Plenty of artists do, it helps them see the world in color—and you drink yourself, my girl. If I were called to testify in a case brought against you for the forcible removal of your son, I would be obliged to reveal this information. And I’m so awfully bad at lying about important matters, Ella. You know this perfectly well. So you be grateful I managed to get rid of them as quickly as I did.”

  Beyond the dunes the sky was blue-grey with heavy rains. All the birds had flown. My unease had returned.

  31

  HELGI, 1994

  A child. Another child.

  Helgi muttered to himself as the flat and colorless fields swept by. He hammered a hand against the steering wheel, furious. He had tried calling Christi at least ten times, and every time he got the same result. A high-pitched tone followed by an automated message that the number didn’t exist. He refused to believe it, but had to admit that he had always known. That Christi’s secrecy ran deeper than that sexual tension sparked by the constant uncertainty underlying their relationship. She was playing with him. And now his child was stowed in her uterus, along for the ride.

  A child could never be kept secret from Anna.

  His relationship with Christi had been a challenge from an organizational perspective alone. All those extra working hours on the building site, the walks in the dunes, the quick showers. Anna could still have her doubts, but her body reacted with a blind and unrelenting certainty. Somewhere in her mind she already knew he was having an affair, even if the fact itself had not yet surfaced in her mind. The pounds were melting away, and the loss of weight made her look older. The wrinkles on her face were more pronounced, her skin sagging under her eyes and chin.

  And now he was going to have a child with a woman he seemed to know less and less. In fact, he didn’t know her at all. He accelerated, overtaking two trucks in a row. A car coming in from the opposite direction made a panicked swerve to avoid him, furiously honking. He banged on the steering wheel again.

  The rifle rattled in the trunk as he slammed on the brakes for a red light.

  “Damn, damn, damn.”

  He scanned the other vehicles around him. If she was on her way home, she could be sitting in one of the cars in front or behind him. She could be sitting in the bus. Segments of her profile reflected in car windscreens all around him. He was hooted at again. The lights had turned green and he fumbled with the gears before finally accelerating off again.

  “Get a grip,” he chided himself. “Everything can still be fixed. We can all sit down and figure this out. We’re all adults, for Christ’s sake. And with a child on the way . . . ”

  He ran a hand through his sweat-drenched hair and turned down the road of dingy houses in Holstebro, where he had been once before. There was no car in the drive in front of the low-roofed house; it was late in the afternoon and already dark outside, but the windows were black.

  At the front door he found her name on an antiquated bronze plate. Christi Pinholt Johansen. Thin spider webs connected the door handle with the wall. The curtains were drawn. He banged on the front door, a stone lodged in his breast.

  The silence was massive. No scraping or shuffling. No doors slamming. Only thick, dead silence. All around him the wind tore at the leafless crowns of the trees in the garden. He walked along the wall till he reached one of the dark windows, cupped his hands against the pane, and tried to peer inside. Nothing to be seen but dark shadows. Dead things. He walked round the house and into the back garden, panic rising from the pit of his stomach.

  The neighbors’ houses were hidden behind the shabby hedge and thorny brambles. The wet grass was so long that it had flattened out, turning yellow in a tangle of rotting autumn leaves and fallen apples, but he managed to kick free a well-laid, cobbled border of what he assumed had once been a flower bed. He worked one of the border stones free, testing its weight in his hand. On the road the headlights of a car swept through the hedge as it slowed down and parked against the curb with a thump of tires. He waited till the car doors slammed and the echo of voices had faded. Then he felt his way to the terrace door and shattered the pane. The smack of the stone against the glass was no more than a dull, lifeless thud, but an instant later, he held his breath as the shards fell from the frame with a crisp clang. Nothing but silence followed.

  The house was deserted.

  He could smell it the moment he stepped in the door. It hadn’t been heated in months—if not years. The cold and damp clung to the walls. Even though he couldn’t see the full extent of the decay in the semi-darkness, he could still make out the relatively pale patches on the carpet where furniture once had stood. Against the wall, a single bookcase and cabinet with open drawers remained, as well as a couple of collapsed, half-filled cardboard boxes. In the kitchen, the washing machine was disconnected carelessly. There was nothing of any value in the adjacent room. The house was stripped like a moped that had been deserted on the beach, and a single glance in the bedroom, at the darkly polished mahogany bed, was enough to conclude the house had been inhabited by an old woman. The floral bedding lay crumpled in a heap, a jewelry box gaped on the old-fashioned dresser. But there were also signs of more recent inhabitants. A pizza carton, the leftovers still identifiable. On the bedside table were several paper cups containing a rancid black-brown liquid, and a thin copy of the Bible was lying open on the bed. It had been purchased in a bookstore in Århus, still so new that the pages were stiff. He frowned as he swiftly paged through it. On several passages someone had underlined passages in pencil.

  I am the way, the truth, and the light.

  A caricature of cockeyed, dancing trolls rollicked in the margins, contrasting sharply with the industrious highlighting. He put the Bible down and went into the passageway again. Peeked inside some of the cupboards in the entrance at random. They were empty, apart from a few old blankets and a partly decomposed cardboard box containing a set of crockery. Something crunched under the sole of his boot as he stepped into the bathroom, and in the weak light from the window, he could see it. A hypodermic needle
.

  •••

  “Christi Pinholt? She died, let me see . . . hang on a minute.” The man behind the door turned and called over his shoulder. “Pia? When did Christi die? Was it three years ago . . . ?”

  The man’s wife, a woman in her forties with a cascade of birthmarks on her face, appeared in the doorway beside her husband. He caught a glimpse of a half-grown boy in the brightly lit kitchen behind the couple in the doorway.

  “Yes, it was the summer of ninety-one,” the woman said helpfully as she dried her hands in her apron. “The house has been empty ever since.”

  Helgi cleared his throat. “Yes, well, please forgive the intrusion, but I’m looking for someone . . . and nobody has lived in the house since? No tenants or borders or . . . ”

  The woman shook her head. “The children can’t decide what to do with it. The son is . . . he’s a drug addict, and his sister doesn’t want to sell the house so her brother can use the money for drugs. At least that’s what she said the last time I saw her. So now the house is just going to ruin. The son—we don’t know him personally—has been to the house a few times to get some things. And he stayed there once or twice with a girlfriend, but apart from that . . . ”

  “What was the name of the sister?”

  “Charlotte Lundgård. She now lives with her husband near Viborg.”

  “And what does she look like?”

  The woman stole an uneasy glance at her husband. He had gone too far. He looked down at his hands and realized that they were still stained with the blood of the buck, as were the knees of his overalls.

  “She has short, dark hair, about fifty years old, I think, and is somewhat heavy-set . . . where did you say you were from . . . ?”

  He recalled the needle crushed under the sole of his boot. The half-eaten pizza.

  “I’m looking for my sister,” he said quickly. “I haven’t seen her for a long time, and I’m starting to worry. Sometimes she forgets to take her medication. She is thirty-three years old, and tall with blonde hair . . . pretty.”