What My Body Remembers

by Agnete Friis

  The first time was just after Alex was born. Amir had showed up—outside visiting hours, of course—and, with uncustomary gentleness, had lifted Alex out of the crib. The kiss Amir planted on his son’s forehead was a farewell just as much as it was a welcome. I know that now. He had never intended to come back for us. Paradoxically, his parents only lived a couple of miles from where Alex and I lived in Hvidovre—but geography was hardly the decisive factor in such circumstances.

  The second time he came was when Alex was about four years old. Amir had just been released on parole after yet another charge of assault. He was drunk, and when I opened the door, he threw his arms around my neck, and started to cry. For the first time it struck me how small he was. He, no further than the bridge of my nose. He was newly married, he said, to a girl from a good family. When he got to the living room, he picked up his son. Alex had been playing with some building blocks on the floor and immediately started to howl.

  That was it. The moment was neither beautiful nor thought-provoking.

  Parents can fuck up their children’s lives whether they are there for them or not. So unbelievably effortlessly. The mind of a child is as fickle as a feather.

  36

  The telephone rang as Barbara and I were sitting in the sun eating tomatoes, boiled eggs, and rye bread.

  We had just finished unloading a pile of junk from Barbara’s van: a couple of black plastic bags stuffed with clothes, half-done paintings, and four cardboard boxes filled with knickknacks, a lamp, files, tattered paperbacks, glasses, and plates. We dragged the lot into the garage without discussion. It was clear that Barbara’s presence in my grandmother’s house was fast becoming permanent, but neither one of us was in the mood to talk about it. Her van was parked in the middle of the yard, its doors wide open with the radio tuned into a local station that only occasionally managed to rise above the din of the ocean.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?”

  Barbara nodded towards my telephone that was vibrating insistently on the plastic tablecloth. I balked. Kirsten’s name beamed on the display.

  “Go on, take the call.”

  Finally, Barbara picked up the phone herself, punched the button, and held the phone over to me without a word. She was sober today. Her hair was wet and stiff with salt after a short dip in the waves. To wash the dust from her bones, she’d said, before wading into the sea wearing nothing but stretched underwear. Her stomach was scarred, as if she were veteran of war.

  “Hello? Ella?”

  The connection was distorted by static.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  Kirsten sounded tired, impatient, as she sometimes could be. Not surprisingly, Kristen was a highly experienced social worker, whose desk was piled with hopeless cases, including the likes of me. The city of Copenhagen expected her to find solid employment on the job market for all of us. Once in a while, she exploded like the multicolored fireworks display on New Year’s Eve.

  “Nah . . . ”

  “You haven’t found any employment over there?”

  “And what kind of employment would that be?”

  She sighed. “Stop being such a smart ass, Ella. Cut the crap. Get a job, like everybody else. I thought you wanted to make a fresh start.”

  The joy that had fluttered in my chest at the sound of Kirsten’s voice evaporated. My voice flattened out. “There aren’t enough jobs on the job market for the unemployed, Kirsten. It’s a statistically proven fact that if the unemployed weren’t around, there would be less competition for jobs and then the average wage would rise, and then all employers would start whining about having to pay their workers more. In fact, those of you who do have a job, ought to rejoice at the fact that the rest of us exist in order to maintain the balance for a bargain basement price. We have a vital role to play. Would you take it on for the lousy twelve thousand kroner a month we’re getting paid?

  “Ella, sweetheart. For once in your life, drop the socio-economic analyses and start fighting for yourself. No, not just for yourself. For Alex. Get a grip, Ella.”

  “Was there something in particular that you wanted?”

  “Yes . . . no . . . yes.” She fumbled with the receiver. “I wanted to give you a quick heads-up from our side. Lisa has decided to press charges after all, and this could have serious consequences for you as the charges are work-related. For her, I mean. I have tried to get her to drop them, but she has to report the incident if she wants to sue for compensation—and that she does. She sleeps badly at night. Post-traumatic stress and all that, you know . . . ”

  I stiffened. “I . . . I pulled her ponytail. Didn’t the stupid cow ever go to school?”

  “You pulled her ponytail till she fell to the ground . . . and then there’s the incident with the diaper in her face, and no, Ella, she didn’t go to the kind of school you’ve obviously been to. Stop being so stupid. You are lucky she didn’t bring charges against you immediately. That she has chosen to do so now is exactly what you could expect under the circumstances. I just thought you should know.”

  “Fuck it . . . ” I looked at Barbara. “How bad can it get, Kirsten?”

  “Bad enough. You’ll probably be charged with assault, and then there will be a court case, perhaps prison, what do I know. If I were you, I would start behaving really, really well around Thisted Social Services. Drop the booze. Polish up your act. And those panic attacks of yours . . . Find a psychologist or a psychiatrist—and don’t mouth off the moment you walk through the door. And arrange a backup plan for Alex. Find a good place for him to live if things go up shit creek. Otherwise you’re going to lose him, Ella. You will. If Social Services doesn’t take him, he’s going to leave of his own accord—and he won’t be coming back.”

  I had a “fuck you” on the tip of my tongue, but for some reason, it didn’t get past my lips. In fact, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. I just sat there, glaring at Barbara.

  “Ella? Are you still there? Are you listening?”

  I said yes.

  “And one more thing. I wasn’t sure whether I should tell you this, but . . . it’s your friend, Rosa . . . She was hit by a car late last night outside Pub48 in the city. She was drunk. Everybody in Hvidovre is talking about it. Or at least that part of Hvidovre we are responsible for. I don’t know how serious it is, but, you know . . . It couldn’t have done her any good.”

  “Where did they take her?”

  “Hvidovre Hospital, I would imagine.”

  “Thanks.”

  I ended the call, feeling as if all oxygen had been sucked out of the atmosphere. Rosa and Jens. I had to get over there immediately. I thought of borrowing Barbara’s van. I could drive okay, even though I’d never had the money for a driver’s license.

  “Problems?” Barbara was watching me with raised eyebrows; a few hairs remained, the bow drawn in thin black pencil, the stragglers helplessly sprawled in a thick cake of foundation.

  “Can I borrow your van to drive to Copenhagen? You could come along. Visit your sons.”

  I got up and started collecting my things randomly. Scraped coins off the top of the garden table and put them in my pocket together with my packet of tobacco. I tried to call Jens, but nobody picked up. I called again. Still no luck.

  “How are you intending on getting over the toll-bridge without any money?”

  “Don’t you have any? Can I borrow some?”

  She shook her head. “There’s also the question of gas, and who is going to look after Alex and Lupo while you’re gone?”

  “We could take them along. It’s . . . there must be a way we can get over there. I have to go and see a friend.”

  “Ask that guy . . . Thomas.”

  I shook my head. Not Thomas. That was not an option. But I needed a plan for Alex. Barbara would have to take him for a couple of days, and then I’d ha
ve to take my chances with the train or hitchhike to Copenhagen—not a problem when you were traveling alone.

  This was Rosa and Jens. But especially Rosa. They were the only family I had.

  37

  Barbara drove me to Thisted station. I bought a ticket for the first stretch of the five-hour trip to Copenhagen and used the last of my cash for a bag of rye-bread rolls and a bottle of water.

  The weather was beautiful; the corn fields bellowed in yellow waves under blue skies that made me feel sad, like when you watch a beautiful love scene in a film, but have already seen the trailer and already know that the lovers part in a hailstorm of vicious words in the end. Soon I would be surrounded by a landscape of telephone wires, road work, and asphalt playgrounds, but for the moment, everything was filled with the beauty of what once was.

  The train conductor was a friendly, dark-skinned man who merely glanced at my ticket and hurried on. This gave me some hope that he would overlook me on his next round, perhaps just remember me vaguely but forget where I was headed. I leaned my head against the window and closed my eyes. Made as if I was sleeping for half an hour, and then I actually did fall into a light, dreamless sleep with my legs tucked up against the edge of the table in front of me. The first time I woke, we were already in Southern Jutland and I ate two rolls with a little of my water at the stop at Fredericia. The next I knew, we were on the outskirts of Greater Copenhagen with a view of the concrete blocks of Høje Tåstrup, followed by the villa gardens in Valby, and finally, the filthy end of Vesterbro with its intricate network of railway tracks sprinkled with diesel-blackened stones and crossbeams. The electric lines loomed above, weaving in and out of each other under a pale night sky.

  I called Jens again.

  I still couldn’t get a hold of him, but when I did, I would personally break his fingers so he couldn’t open any more beer cans. I ducked into the S-train tunnel, hopped onto the train to Hvidovre, and jogged the last stretch of the way to Hvidovre Hospital along one of those anonymous highways leading into the city of Copenhagen.

  Actually, she looked okay, Rosa, as she lay there on the starched white sheets. You could see that she had bumped her head, but apart from that, she had come clean with a broken hip and some additional patchwork to her already patched pelvis. It was after nine in the evening and visiting hours were over, but the nurse let me in with a reminder to be absolutely quiet. Not that there was anything else I could do; Rosa had just been wheeled out of operation number two, and her consciousness was still hovering somewhere in the deep. Jens had been in to see her about lunchtime, the nurse kindly informed me, but they’d been obliged to throw him out because he was making such a racket, clearly under the influence of alcohol.

  I sat down on a chair by the bed and watched Rosa’s face of medicated calm; it was probably the best trip she’d ever had. At least that was something. How she was going to manage with a piss-drunk husband at home and a broken hip was another matter. But there was their son, of course.

  I tiptoed out of the room and on down the corridor to the nurse’s station, where I carefully rapped on the window.

  “Yes?”

  It was a different nurse to the one I had spoken to earlier. An elderly woman with a round face and a sharp gaze.

  “Rosa Jensen,” I said. “Do you know if her son has been informed?”

  “Nobody but her husband has come to see her,” said the nurse. “As I far as I know, she specifically stated that her son should not be informed.”

  “But you do have his number?”

  She nodded. “Yes, we can find most things in the system.”

  “So I could give him a call?”

  “Ye-es . . . ” she began with a shrug. “I can’t prevent you from doing so. The number isn’t a secret, just hard to find when you happen to be one of several hundred Michael Jensens in Copenhagen.”

  She had already pulled the number up on the screen and briskly scribbled it down on a yellow Post-it.

  “There you go.” She handed me the note with a reserved smile. “I hope someone comes to take care of her. Else she won’t be getting out of here anytime soon.”

  Rosa and Jens’s son was twenty-three years old and still plagued by pubescent acne.

  I had nodded a brief hello to him on the staircase in Hvidovre when he came on one of his rare visits, but Rosa had never let me come close or talk to him, terrified as she was that both her own misery and that of her neighbors would scare him off for good. He shook my hand like a polite teenager when he arrived at the hospital, although we were roughly the same age.

  “It was nice of you to call. I had no idea Rosa was in the hospital. But I managed to get hold of Jens on the phone. Jesus Christ.” He bobbed a little on his toes and avoided my gaze, and I could see an inkling of Rosa’s awkwardness in her son.

  “Is Jens okay?”

  “I don’t know, to be honest. He bawled the whole time, and it was hard to tell if he was sober or not. Jesus, I had no idea they had started drinking again.”

  He sat down next to me on the low wall bordering the hospital parking lot and offered me a smoke that I accepted gratefully. I had already bummed two smokes off arbitrary passersby, but it was starting to get dark, and soon there would be no one left to ask.

  “So . . . can you take care of her?”

  He was staring at his hands. They were nice-looking, clean. He was a computer nerd, and—according to Rosa—a really bright one at that. Welfare had found him a good foster family and his somewhat stunted size and lack of coordination seemed to be the only damage inherited from a childhood in a concrete block in Hvidovre, a prenatal development in Rosa’s alcohol-stewed uterus before that.

  “Can you take her in?”

  He shook his head. “I live in a two-room apartment in Albertslund,” he said. “On the fourth floor. It’s not the ideal place to recover when you’ve got a broken hip, but I’ll see what I can do. Maybe I can check in on them back in Hvidovre . . . talk to Jens. Although he sounds totally spaced out. He says Rosa was pushed in front of a car outside Pub48. That she’d gotten into a fight with some redhead bitch. Somebody saw them arguing. Jens has flipped out completely.”

  “Yes. Paranoia is one of alcohol’s most prized effects.” Suddenly I felt terribly tired.

  “What about you?” He looked at me intently, all at once seeming a lot older than his twenty-three years. A wise old man in a young man’s body. “Rosa was worried about you when you moved out. She said you had made a private pact with the alcohol devil.”

  “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” I said. “I’m doing fine. Days can pass without me having a drink.”

  “Wow. Entire days!” He laughed, and stubbed his cigarette on the wall. “Did she get you those names I found in the social registry?”

  A moment passed before I realized what he was talking about. Of course. Lea Poulsen. He’d found something.

  “No,” I said. “Rosa rang a couple of days ago and spoke to the woman who is staying with me, but I didn’t talk to her myself. Did you find that woman, Lea?”

  “Yes. It’s not that easy to disappear in Denmark,” he said. “Although I must say this lady gave it a good shot. Five names in a space of thirty years, and a long line of different addresses.”

  “But she’s still around?”

  He nodded. “Yes. I don’t know all the details off the top of my head, but now I’ve got your number. I’ll send you a message, okay? Have you got a place to sleep?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll figure something out. Probably take the first train back tomorrow morning. I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay, I’ll be getting back to my girlfriend, then. She’s four months pregnant, and she doesn’t like me going out at night. It makes her kind of . . . needy.”

  He smiled crookedly, and it struck me that Rosa had been wrong. They hadn’t managed to fuck him up. He wa
s solid. He had a stable core and a place in the world that couldn’t be shaken by what he saw in Hvidovre. I made a mental note to call and tell her so when she sobered up. She would probably get mad at me, but it would make her happy.

  I stuck my hands in my pockets and made my way to the train station. It had cooled down considerably, and I hugged my jacket up around my ears. At least I’d had the foresight to exchange my flip-flops for a pair of sneakers, and I congratulated myself accordingly. Barbara wasn’t picking up her phone.

  She didn’t pick up either once I got to Copenhagen Central Station and learned that the first train to Thisted was at five o’clock the next morning. The battery of my phone was almost dead and I hadn’t thought to bring a charger with me. I cursed. It was close to midnight and the night-life of Vesterbro was already crawling the streets. If I sat myself down in a bar on Istedgade and turned on the charm, I might be able to score a couple of beers to sleep on for the train home. Alcohol tends to soften the floor of the toilets on the train. It might even do something about the smell. I thought about Kirsten’s advice and what Michael had said about my consumption of alcohol.

  Yes, I had been drinking more since moving to Klitmøller. I had been drinking too much. A natural consequence of my surroundings. The dunes, the roses, the lyme grass, and daisy chains. And Barbara. I pictured those long nails of hers, tap-tapping on the glass of a bottle of vodka. It wasn’t a crime to drink alcohol as long as you did it in the company of others, she liked to say. But it had to stop. Once I had finished my business in Klitmøller, once I had found what I was looking for, I would stop.

  The bar I went into near Copenhagen Central Station was called Viggo. There was a dart board on the wall and a scratched pool table located at the back of the establishment. The kitchen was closed for the evening but the hint of roast pork and peas still lingered in the cloud of smoke and alcohol-sweat that bathed the guests at the bar counter. The clientele resembled the flock at Friheden so much that I experienced a brief, nauseating bout of déjà-vu, but there was nobody I knew, and nobody I had to talk to about anything other than the weather. I sat down next to a ruddy-faced guy in a checkered shirt, leaning my elbows on the counter. He was relatively old, an indecipherable age between fifty and seventy, and cast from a jovial mold. He was humming Aerosmith’s “Crazy” above the din of corny nineties hits coming from the loudspeakers overhead.