by Ane Riel
But Jens Horder saw it.
‘Is your mother still visiting you, Jens? I saw her in town just before Christmas,’ the officer said, while the smile was dragged into a muddy darkness like a fawn in quicksand. His usually steady hand shook as he scribbled down a few lines on a notepad. Presumed drowned. North beach. With his other hand he tried to hide his trembling chin.
‘No, she went back. Before New Year.’
They dispatched a helicopter. People searched everywhere along the coast and in the forest, down along the Neck and the northern part of the main island.
Meanwhile, Liv Horder sat as quiet as a mouse in a locked skip behind her father’s workshop. Hidden behind cardboard boxes and tyres and newspapers and magazines and toys and sand bags and sacks of salt and sinks and blank cassette tapes and broken tools and gas flasks and crispbread and paint and bags of sweets and second-hand clothing and stacks of books and piles of blankets and things, all of which someone had lost and briefly wondered where it might have gone before soon forgetting all about it.
★
The parents didn’t want a memorial service. Nor did they want to be contacted by compassionate, nosy people from the main island, or a visiting psychologist who wanted to help them process their grief.
The parents wanted to be left in total peace.
And when the authorities’ envoy finally left, with a certain degree of horror at the messy conditions under which the poor girl must have lived, calm descended on the Head once more. Jens Horder put up a barrier where the gravel road took a sharp bend to the left before it continued a fair stretch up towards the house. And next to the barrier he put up a post box and a slightly bigger wooden box.
No entry read a new sign.
Not: No trespassing. Just No entry. That meant absolutely no one.
Should someone decide to defy the sign and follow the path around the barrier, they would soon encounter a tripwire, just one of many traps which from now on would safeguard the Horder family against unwanted intrusion.
These were bright months, despite the winter being as black as night. No one sent official letters about Liv having to start school. No one asked questions about the envelope from M which hit the bottom of their post box at the end of each month, regular as clockwork.
Jens Horder continued to pay any bills which, if left unpaid, would attract unwanted visitors. People noticed him when he turned up at the post office. Not because he drew attention to himself, he pretty much didn’t open his mouth, but because an unpleasant smell lingered about him, and his clothes bore evidence of not having been washed recently.
In the past people had admired his beautiful if rather odd shirts, which his wife made for him. And when the chemist’s mother, right up until her death, insisted that the back of Jens Horder’s shirt matched that of her missing slip, it was attributed to the old lady’s increasing dementia. After the tragic drowning accident, however, people only ever saw Jens Horder wear the same faded, grey sweater which was badly in need of washing and defluffing from pilling and wood shavings, just as his corduroy trousers were in desperate need of patching. He no longer changed his shoes but seemed comfortable in a pair of old rubber wellingtons whose shafts, for reasons unknown, he had rolled down, but he never bothered kicking the mud off before stepping inside. The cap was the same as always, even though a compassionate farmer had given him a new one.
Only the smell changed. And every time for the worse.
The two women who took turns being behind the till started arguing over who would serve him when they saw the pickup truck pull up outside. And customers in the queue started letting him walk straight to the front so that he would leave as quickly as possible. Anyone who didn’t know him would scrunch up their nose and wonder who this oddball was. And those who did know Jens Horder would exchange sad, knowing looks. Some tried to greet him amicably as he walked past, but they never got more than a fleeting smile in return, and in time the silent smile was reduced to a stare at the post-office floor.
The postman who served the Head also noticed the change. He had been used to delivering the sparse post to the house and would occasionally depart with a few letters from Jens or Maria to post, but now he had to settle for the impersonal post box down where the road bent. If there were parcels, a rare occurrence, he was to put them in the wooden box next to it. And if he had any messages for the couple, they should also be left in the box. A pen and paper had been left there for that very purpose.
The postman was especially intrigued by the barrier that had been put up, but as he himself was from a rather eccentric family on the main island, he didn’t regard the device as wholly out of the ordinary. He was convinced that he was the illegitimate son of the renowned and very handsome postmaster Nielsen from Korsted and not the ugly cross-eyed farmer who had raised him. That is to say, the postman had a certain appreciation for rumours as well as for family secrets.
He hoped that one day he would deliver a parcel that needed a signature to the Head so that he would have a reason to cross the barrier. As a postman, he was not only dutiful by nature – come rain, come shine, and so on – but also incurably nosy. Besides, he was desperate to bring news of the Horders to his friends at the pub. Not that he was a gossip, heaven forbid, but being able to imply that he knew something the others didn’t would make him very happy. It was a source of great anguish that he had not yet succeeded in convincing his friends, discreetly of course, of his real ancestry. He couldn’t say anything outright; it wasn’t the done thing. But he could hint, and he kept dropping hints, as if his life depended on it, without anyone so much as raising an eyebrow.
Liv knew that not being seen was a matter of life and death, so whenever she had the slightest suspicion that someone was coming, she would disappear, quick as lightning and without a sound, into the furthest corner of the container. Here, with her father’s help, she had made a wonderful little den for herself behind tyres and cardboard boxes. Two big duvets and a whole pile of blankets kept her warm, but should she get cold in spite of that, there was a sack of extra-warm clothing which she could help herself to. She also had books and torches and plenty of batteries and sweets, crackers and bread and bottles of water, so she wanted for nothing.
To begin with, while everyone was searching for her, she hadn’t dared to switch on the torches. Instead she had lain quietly under her duvet in pitch darkness, listening out for the faintest sound. In the constant darkness she had lost track of time, and it wasn’t long before she couldn’t tell whether it was day or night. Soon the darkness also started to feel heavy in her eyes and lungs.
She was missing Carl, who wouldn’t join her.
Finally, after far too much time, he came. She didn’t see him, but she knew that he was there with her in the silence. She didn’t dare talk to him, due to the risk of being overheard, but he whispered to her that he was there – and that he was scared of the strangers, of the darkness, of time, of uncertainty, of the air. And the smell, which enveloped them like a thick blanket of old rubber and dust and mould and dried-out paint and turpentine rags.
His fears made her calm down. She comforted Carl without a word, and felt stronger than she was. As long as she focused her attention on reassuring her twin brother, fear would not take hold of her.
They lay like this for a long time, she and Carl, surrounded by the darkness, which was surrounded by things, which were surrounded by a sealed metal container. They thought about the air outside, the scent of the forest, and tried to pull it deep into their den, through the thick blanket and right into their lungs.
Eventually they heard sounds, they heard the padlock on one of the hatches being unlocked, and through a gap between two tyres Liv caught a glimpse of a starry sky, and she heard her father’s voice speaking to her. At last she dared turn on the torch, which she had been clutching in her hand the whole time.
He brought her tea and tinned food, which he had heated on the camping stove outside his workshop. Reaching the stove in
the kitchen had become difficult, so now that it was just him doing the cooking he preferred to use his own kitchen, as he called it. He had stretched a canvas sheet over it as an awning, so that it was reasonably protected against the rain. Sometimes he would light one of his home-made torches and stick it in the umbrella stand next to the camping stove. On such occasions, the smell of food and resin would fill the air and Liv imagined that her father was happy.
Right now it was the tea and the food that made Liv happy. The air from the open hatch felt like happiness too. The light was warm and good. Dad was with her.
Liv told him about the darkness and the heavy air. And he left, came back and drilled three holes in the side of the container and metal shavings snowed on the newspaper below. Afterwards he folded the newspaper and placed it and the shavings in between the other newspapers. Then he placed a piece of black fabric over the three holes and fixed it at the top with gaffer tape.
‘Now you can have fresh air whenever you want,’ he said. ‘You’ll need to lift up the cloth if you want more air and you can also look out at the road. But be careful with the light. You must never switch on the torch, unless the cloth is in place. The light can be seen from the outside. Do you understand?’
Liv nodded. Then she switched off her torch like a good girl, lifted up the cloth and pressed her face against the three holes arranged as an inverted triangle. Through the bottom hole she took a long, deep breath; she could smell spruces and coarse grass and salty sea air. And through the two top holes she could see the night sky and the moon lighting up the gravel road. Somewhere, an owl was hooting. She imitated it quietly, and smiled when she felt her father’s hands on her shoulders.
‘You’re very good at this,’ he whispered. Then he told her that it was best that she stayed in the container until people had finished looking for her. ‘The police must be absolutely sure that you’re dead, Liv. But then we’ll be left in peace.’
She understood. Being left in peace was a good thing.
And one day she was allowed out. Her father lifted her up over the dark blue metal edge and out through the opening with the slanted hatch, even though she insisted she didn’t need any help. He had placed a couple of crates and a tractor tyre outside, so she could easily climb back into the container, if necessary. She obviously couldn’t lock the hatch from the outside once she was inside, but he had made a device so that she could secure it with a metal bracket from the inside. Just to be on the safe side.
He had a surprise for her in the living room: two baby rabbits that had been left in a box for collection along the roadside. She experienced a strange, unknown joy as she stuck her hand into the cardboard box and stroked the animals’ soft fur. They would be allowed to live in the house; they wouldn’t be caught in snares in the forest and be flayed and eaten as ragout. The small, living rabbits looked cheerfully at her and chewed and munched and moved about the hay in soft jumps. Liv’s heart leapt.
And yet, for some reason, she still began to cry when she climbed into her mother’s bed. And for some reason, her mother also cried. Then they ate sweets and biscuits and snapped them and shook them and read a book about a woman who was very much in love. It was Liv who did the reading aloud but her mother who recognized being in love and felt it ripple deep inside her.
★
And one day the child arrived. Too soon. Maria gave birth in the bedroom, which at that point she could just about leave. But only just and only if she forced her way out.
Her husband and daughter helped welcome the baby.
Liv stared at the drama unfolding in front of her eyes. The head. The tiny head that came out towards her like a marbled moon before it became a complete head that stuck out of the bottom of a giant body.
She marvelled at the effort, the fluid, the small body attached to the tiny head which eventually followed it outside, but with great reluctance. A transparent, wet and far too small body with a long, grey-and-white snake squirming from its tummy.
And she heard her mother make noises that grew louder and louder as the hours passed. They weren’t screams, not the loud, high-pitched cries of a bird of prey. They were cries that came from deep inside the earth. Deep roars without consonants.
And the earth fought with itself in the bed. The big body lay like a trembling landscape with mountains and gorges and wild shrub fighting in front of Liv.
Shouting.
At something or for something.
And then the tiny person dangling in front of her.
At the head.
And her father holding its feet and slapping it.
Why did he slap it?
And then the silence.
Carl was terrified.
Liv was told to cut the cord with her dagger. They attached a clip. And some gauze. In time she had picked up so many rolls of gauze and compresses and white surgical tape from the small ‘help yourself facility’ on the outskirts of the Head that a sign had been put up asking the islanders if they really needed quite so much gauze.
The child also fought. It really did. It had fought its way out of the earth, out of the water, out of the darkness, and now it gasped for air, surrounded as it was by so much of it. Without vowels or consonants. It just opened its tiny lips. Like the flounders.
And then it stopped.
It couldn’t do it. It was far too small to live.
Liv tried to cover Carl’s ears when their father screamed. He screamed like the owl, like the seagulls, like an injured hedgehog; like a deer screams for her lost fawn; like a badger screaming out of passion. He screamed like a child screams when he finds his father dead in the heather.
His scream was as high-pitched as it was possible to scream. A shade of white so blinding and luminous that it was like looking straight at the sun at noon and seeing nothing and everything at once.
But more than anything, Jens Horder screamed as he had screamed on the inside when he discovered his baby boy under the cradle with his skull broken – and at that moment realized the unbearable truth: that in his rush of expectant joy he had forgotten to put in the final screws, that he had failed as a carpenter and a father, that he had killed his own son. And that he would never ever be able to share that truth with his darling wife out of sheer terror of also losing her.
With numb hands he had picked up the side piece and screwed it in place so that no one could tell the two cradles apart. Then he had knelt in front of the lifeless child on the floor. He hadn’t touched it; he had stared at the small head in the scarlet halo and finally screamed at the top of his lungs until Maria had come running and picked up the child and held it tight and screamed in unison with him.
The back of Carl’s soft head had hit one of his father’s toolboxes as he fell. A merciless, steel-grey corner.
That was how Jens screamed now. And Liv recognized her father’s scream from an early memory.
Maria cried herself to sleep with soft vowels, and Liv washed her bloodstained mother while her father disappeared with the small, lifeless body.
‘It was a girl,’ was all he said as he walked away with the child in his arms.
Dear Liv
We should never have tried to give you a baby sister or brother, but your dad insisted. We must have two, he said. Just like before. Just like he had had a brother, and you should have had a twin brother. We would restore the balance, he said, and after all, I loved him. I still do.
But perhaps that child was never intended to live because we wouldn’t have been able to look after it, not properly. I was scared of giving birth to it. Scared of giving birth to it far too soon and scared that it would be alive when it got out of me. I was frightened of the child. Frightened for the child.
So I didn’t press it out as I should have; I tried to keep it inside me. I squashed it; perhaps it suffocated. Perhaps I killed my own child.
Or perhaps some children aren’t meant to live. Perhaps your baby sister wasn’t meant to live, and perhaps it isn’t my fault.
I
don’t know, Liv.
I’ve also tried to come to terms with Carl’s accident, but I’ve failed. I suspected your granny because she was on medication, which made her unpredictable at times. It mostly made her drowsy, but she could also suddenly become irascible, wild. It frightened me, and deep down I think it frightened her as well.
Carl cried a great deal, and perhaps she couldn’t handle it. That’s what we think happened. She couldn’t handle his crying, and so she took him from the cradle, shook him, and dropped him on the toolbox on the floor. Perhaps she did it on purpose? We think so. That’s why it was a relief when she moved. And yet I cannot find peace because I will never know what really happened.
Perhaps it wasn’t her at all. What if it was me? I got so little sleep the days blurred into one another, and I too was sick in my own way, in my head. Exhausted and frightened for the future. At times I couldn’t remember what I had just done. Might I have hurt your twin brother?
If I had, could you forgive me?
All my love,
Mum
The Pub and the Child
When a brutal storm grabs a big chunk of coastline, people notice. Men with pipes and briefcases tucked under their arms stand in far too smart shoes for the harsh landscape, narrowing their eyes before taking measurements with too long strides in the morning fog and making notes about the direction of the wind and the risk of mudslide on lined notepads with blue ballpoint pens before they drive back and drink coffee. But when a peaceful sea decides to lick its way quietly through a headland, no one pays attention, at least not to begin with. Who would notice if a little sand disappears on each side? How the sea intrudes inconspicuously, adding inch after inch to itself.
The Neck grew a little slimmer every year, but only a little. The gravel road’s parallel universes of seaweed and stones and sand and box thorn diminished proportionally, but unobserved. And the gravel road itself was being suffocated by weeds that lived in very little danger of being flattened by cars. The most frequent traffic these days was a solitary child running off at night with an empty rucksack, only to return home with a full one.