What My Body Remembers

by Agnete Friis

  “It’s cold out there, isn’t it?” He nodded at my light jacket that I still had buttoned up to the chin.

  I smiled.

  “Perhaps you could do with something to warm you up?”

  I decided to be honest and spare myself any unpleasantries later. “I’m broke,” I said. “I came here to visit a friend who’s in the hospital, and I’ll be on a train to Jutland first thing in the morning. If you’d like to buy me a drink, I’d be happy to accept, but there won’t be any sex, and no pawing of my tits.”

  He laughed. “Good company can also be hard to come by. What can I get you?”

  I ordered a beer and a chaser. Then I ordered the same again.

  38

  I noted that the message from Michael had come in at three in the morning when my phone slipped out of my pocket for the third time and landed on the floor under my barstool.

  My ruddy-faced new best friend, Morten from Vanløse, had bought me four shots and three beers and everything was coming at me in a delayed succession of waves. The light from the spots in the low ceiling unraveled into dashes and Morten’s arm reached for the beer on the counter in clips of motion to his lips and back again. We had long since stopped talking, were just sitting there next to each other, enjoying our respective trips for ourselves. I sat submerged in the pulsing heat, lucky to have registered the fall of the phone from my pocket at all. It was a surprisingly arduous and complicated task to bend down and find the finicky little devil on the floor.

  I squinted at the display.

  hi ella, here’s what i could find . . . please note that some of this information is confidential. a favor for my mother. okay?

  Idiotically, I nodded in agreement before reading the list Michael had inserted below his message:

  1961-1984 lea finnbogadottir lives in thorshavn, faroe isles.

  1984 marries, takes on the name poulsen and moves to århus.

  1989 divorces, moves to holstebro, then viborg, then back to århus.

  1994 changes name to christi johansen, no fixed address.

  1997 changes name to helena petersen. lives in holstebro.

  2009 changes name to barbara jensen and moves to hagevej 7, klitmøller. this is her last-known address. something else i thought might be useful: in 1990 lea poulsen was charged with kidnapping and gross negligence. she picked up her two boys, aged 4 and 5, from kindergarten and took them to an apartment in århus. she was high on drugs, only checking on the boys sporadically. a friend found her, took the boys to hospital, where they received treatment for dehydration etc. the boys were returned to their father. the court denied lea any further contact with the boys.

  I leaned against the bar, reading the message again with great difficulty. I had to keep squinting to prevent the letters from flooding over the ends of the display.

  The world was so incredibly small, everyone was connected; Barbara was on Michael’s list. I downed the last of my beer, and read the list again with a creeping sense that I had missed something. Lea became Christi who became Helena who became Barbara, but it was only once I read the message out loud to Morten that I understood what it meant.

  Lea was Barbara, and Barbara had been lying to me all along. That’s what it meant. Barbara had known my mother. She’d been my mother’s best friend. And now she had Alex.

  The nausea that had been stalking me all evening swelled upwards as the realization dawned, quickly followed by images of the implications. Alex was alone with Barbara in my grandmother’s claustrophobic little living room; those long nails in his hair, against his neck. I didn’t know what she was capable of, but there must be a reason why she had wrapped herself in such an intricate tangle of lies.

  I leaned on the bar and got to my feet, knocking my glass over on the counter in the process. I needed to get to the exit, but the door was a blurry quadrangle framed in matte-black panes on the other end of the room, and the air was an impenetrable barrier of smoke. I tripped over the leg of a barstool, banged my shin on the edge of an unexpected step, and chafed my chin on the grain of the pinewood floor as I hit the deck. Someone helped me back onto my feet and I managed to fight my way out onto the street in the hopes of finding a quiet corner.

  The next implication took shape as I twisted my ankle on the cobblestones and landed on my ass on the sidewalk. Pain shot up from my coccyx. At best, there were six hours separating me from Alex and Barbara. More, if I waited for the next train to Thisted.

  I needed to get a hold of someone to drive me home. But there was only one person I knew who would come and get me in the state I was.

  The telephone rang and rang in Jens and Rosa’s bedroom, and I let it ring till the beep at the end. Then I called again. And one more time. Mostly because I didn’t know what else to do. My thoughts were slow, soft as cotton-wool in the midst of my panic. After the fifth try, Jens finally grunted something into the phone.

  “Jens . . . can you come get me?” I could feel that I was on the edge of tears. He was a ship a long way off on a wildly whipping sea.

  “Ella? Where are you?”

  He sounded tired, but clear-headed. Sober. I closed my eyes and thanked heaven and a host of gods I didn’t usually make a habit of calling upon.

  “I’m on Istedgade,” I said. “Jens. You need to help me get home. Now. There’s something wrong with Alex, and I can’t . . . ”

  My phone cut out. I was standing on the curb, alone with the noise of the road; drunkards calling after hookers on Helgolandsgade, the smash of bottles against the cobblestones, high-pitched laughter. I collapsed onto the stone steps in front of a darkened apartment building glaring at the dead screen on my phone. I rested my forehead against the cold of the wall, stuck a finger down my throat, and threw up on the steps.

  Some time passed as the world revolved around me. A young couple touched my shoulder and asked me if I was okay. I was just fine, thank you. A man tripped over my feet, and swore loudly, as did two young girls who came out of the apartment building, swerving to avoid me and the pool of sour vomit on the steps.

  Throwing up had helped to clear my head a little, and the cool evening air gradually made it easier to focus. At last I saw Jens’s lemon yellow Volvo coming down Istedgade at a snail’s pace, Jens’s upper body hanging halfway out the rolled down window. Finally, he pulled up to the curb next to me and waved jovially.

  “Hop in, Beautiful. You can fill me in on the way there.”

  “I am very drunk, Jens,” I said, leaning hard onto the glove compartment. “But she has got Alex.”

  I didn’t hear whether he answered or not, I dropped out of time, but at one stage, I woke up and heard him talking next to me. About Rosa. That she had been far too drunk to be running around alone in the middle of the night.

  “It’s a dump,” Jens was saying about Pub48. “It’s just a pile of shit-faced people up to no good.”

  I tried to nod but my head kept lolling forward onto my chest. Rosa had been just as pickled as I was. And then an idea crossed my mind, slow as tumbleweed blowing in from the prairie.

  “Rosa talked to Barbara, who is staying with me, didn’t she? On the telephone. They were on the phone for more than twenty minutes. She told Barbara everything, didn’t she? About the names Michael had found in the social registry.”

  Jens shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, Ella. I can’t remember shit from the last two weeks.”

  My brain protested against the strain of coherent thought. Through the window I watched the lights of the city trail like the tail of a meteor across the night sky. I resorted to help from my fingers. First came day one, day two, and finally day three. On the first day, Rosa talked to Barbara. On day two and three, Barbara was away without telling me where she was going. It was on the last day that Rosa ended up under a car in a drunken stupor outside Pub48 after an argument with a redhead. The fingers added up.

 
I threw up in a crumpled Netto bag lying on the floor in front of me.

  39

  ANNA. 1994

  It was not the pain that woke her, but a warm sensation, something flooding over her hand, dripping off her fingertips onto the floor. She rolled over onto her side. Her right hand found the source of the flood on her left wrist. Her fingers sank into the open wound, now a sear of pain, making her gasp.

  She opened her eyes, but couldn’t see anything in the dark. All she knew was that someone was in the room, and that it wasn’t Helgi. The smell was strange and sweet, like peaches, the quick breathing was light as the beating of butterfly wings. Her eyes tried to penetrate the dark, finally fixing on the shadow of a figure about a yard’s length from the bed. The posture hunched, the movements halting, hesitant, riddled with doubt.

  “Helgi.”

  Anna whispered into the dark, hoping she’d been mistaken. Perhaps Helgi was there, after all; either that black shadow on the floor or lying next to her in their double bed, but her whispers dissolved unanswered.

  “Helgi!”

  This time she called a little louder, and the shadow lurched towards her. A rubber-gloved hand covered her mouth, but then let go, trying to grab hold of Anna’s shoulders instead, but Anna had no difficulty in pulling herself free. Anna was strong. And she screamed as loud as she could. She screamed louder than she’d ever screamed in her life. If Helgi wasn’t home, Ella was alone in her room at the end of the passageway. She had to warn her.

  Anna rolled onto the floor and rammed into the legs of the dark shadow. He had a knife. The blade cut into her arm as they kicked free of each other. Anna threw herself at the door. The shadow had a hold on her hair from behind, but Anna kept moving forward, felt the sharp pain in her scalp as a large tuft of hair was ripped out at the roots. She stumbled down the stairs and into the living room.

  The television was on. A chaotic succession of images, people and cars, the sound of gunshots from the screen, but the house was dead quiet. Helgi was not on the couch in the living room, and now she knew for sure that he wasn’t anywhere else in the house either. None of this would be happening if Helgi had been there.

  Anna turned to face the dark shadow behind her. The head was covered by a black mask, but it had to be a woman, Anna realized. It smelled like a woman, and if it had been a man, she would not have been strong enough to pull herself free in the scuffle in the bedroom.

  The shadow held the knife in front of her, cutting the air in hypnotic curves, but she made no attempt to come any closer. Whatever her plan had been, she seemed to be having second thoughts now.

  The intruder. The stalker.

  Anna felt a moment of relief, for she was obviously just an intruder. The one who had smashed their vases and planted the bloody stake into the ground earlier that spring; the cross of Jehovah, she’d thought. But it was neither her sister nor the extended arm of God delivering a message just for her. It was just a common thief.

  Her wrist was still bleeding, but the cut wasn’t deep enough to be fatal.

  “What is it that you want?” Anna asked carefully. “Do you want the television? We also have a camera somewhere.”

  The woman had started to circle around Anna, and did not answer. The knife was a mere blackened shadow in the dark.

  “Please just go.”

  Strangely enough, Anna could no longer feel any pain in her wrist. In fact, she felt strong, invulnerable. Her senses were razor sharp, she could feel the intruder’s uncertainty radiating into the room. Now she was the hunter, and the other a wild animal, its back to the wall. But this breed of animal would bite, if it could not flee.

  Anna stepped aside so the thief could walk past her to the door, but she remained frozen to the spot, staring at her through the holes in the mask.

  “Just go,” Anna said, pointing at the door. “You can still get away. My husband will be here soon. He’s just . . . gone out.”

  The other sniffed briefly, but took a step in the right direction after all, a moment where anything was possible, where something could still be saved; they could both walk away and never look back. Life could go on as before, and Anna sensed that both of them knew it. A bond, some common understanding that the situation had gotten out of hand, and yet could still be salvaged with a single move.

  A sound from the first floor.

  Perhaps it was only Anna who had heard it, but the sound was so distinctive and familiar to her, and it pierced her heart.

  It was the tread of bare feet above.

  She knew that sound, and she knew those feet. As a rule, she knew precisely where Ella was in the house at any given time, as if they were bound by invisible cords. But her sixth sense had failed her this time. Only now did she register her daughter’s silent, unseen presence at the top the stairs.

  Anna turned her head to her daughter, feeling the blow in her stomach in the same instant. She hit me, Anna thought in amazement. Why did she hit me? Then something burning hot and wet coming from the same place. She looked down, and saw a dark stain spread over her nightdress, just above the hip. Then the next blow fell, and she stumbled two steps back, colliding into the television. Anna put both hands against the wall to prevent herself from falling.

  “Stop.” Her voice was weak. “It hurts.” She stared at the motionless, black mask in front of her, tried to catch those eyes, perhaps identify some feeling there that could help her make some sense of it. Anger or fear or pity. But Anna saw nothing. The woman lunged at her again, but this time, Anna moved. She staggered through the living room and into the kitchen. Away from Ella. She had to get the intruder away from her daughter.

  The black shadow followed after, but stumbled over a chair in the dark. Anna reached the back door, opened it, and ran out into the night. Cold rain hit her face, her bare arms, the wind ripped at her hair and nightdress, as she half-ran, half-limped over the uneven lawn, onto the path between the naked hip bushes, and down to the sea.

  Behind her, she could sense a presence, some hesitation radiating towards her.

  But now there were no steps to be heard other than her own, no heavy breathing, only the ice-cold rain whipping into her. She was still bleeding: a warm stream flowing over her stomach and pelvis, and it hurt. Glowing hot, forging a path from within and out, as if working its way out of her body. She didn’t dare look down, just pressed one hand firmly against her stomach, felt the warmth of her body seeping through her fingers.

  Behind her, nothing but the massive darkness of the house. If Ella was still in there, she had not turned on the lights.

  “Big girl,” whispered Anna. “Go back to your room, crawl under your bed, or hide in the cupboard. Be absolutely still.”

  Anna took a couple more steps down the path towards the sea. A window in Agni’s house shone through the storm, and she slowly made for the house. Agni would know what to do. Agni would find Helgi, and call for help.

  The lyme grass pricked at her numb, naked feet, and it was difficult to see the bends in the path. Twice she fell down, but she managed to get up again, keeping one hand pressed hard against the rip in her nightdress. The third time she fell, she had to stay down, rest a little with her eyes closed. Grey dots, black dots flickered behind her eyelids, but still the panic didn’t come. There was no room to feel it. She opened her eyes, and looked up into the colossal, starless sky. It was still raining, but the cold was coming from within.

  She couldn’t just lie there in the sand, she thought, so she got to her feet, stumbled onward, her legs reluctant to obey. Anna leaned on the wind and rain, and followed the light.

  40

  Klitmøller lay bathed in sunshine as we bumped along the main road into town.

  It was nine in the morning and a group of tourists was already heading for the beach. The sky was clear and bright over the sea, and I was so scared my teeth were chattering.

  I
wasn’t sure exactly what I was afraid of. All I knew was that this was a different kind of fear to the one that usually left me flat on the floor, arms and legs flailing.

  This fear stemmed from something beyond my own person, from someone else, and it kept me awake on that madcap trip clean across country roads and bridges. Jens had been driving like a maniac, way too fast, not thinking to stop when I had to throw up once, twice, as we flew over the Great Belt Bridge—he simply leaned over and handed me a fresh Netto bag without a word. In fact, there were several plastic supermarket bags lying ready on the floor in front of me. Jens had taken just precautions before picking me up on Istedgade in Copenhagen.

  For his own part, Jens was painfully sober, and he looked like hell. He had always been thin, but now he was skin and bone, his eye sockets sunk deeply, darkly into his skull after almost two weeks straight of hard drinking. But he hadn’t had a drop to drink since the day before. He wanted to be sure that the hospital staff would let him see Rosa. It was a worthy project that he tackled with chewing gum, chips, cola, and a couple of joints from the glove compartment to take the edge off the worst of the jitters.

  “I think she’s mentally ill,” I said. “When we met her on the beach . . . she knew who we were, but didn’t say anything. She’s lied to us all along. The drawings of Alex, everything . . . ”