by Linn Ullmann
In August 2008, a month after she vanished, Milla was the most famous person in the country.
It was always the same photograph.
“Oh, she hated when people took pictures of her,” a girl claiming to be a good friend said in a television news story. “Maybe because her mother took so many pictures of her when she was little.”
“But then she posted a picture of herself on her Facebook page,” another girl, also claiming to be a friend, said. “She looked so pretty, she posted it just a few days before she disappeared. And I remember noticing it, because she never posted pictures of herself.”
The photograph graced the front pages of the newspapers and was flashed on television news reports. Siri, who had always called her moon-pretty, stared at it and saw that in this picture her face was no longer quite as moonish. No, right then, at the moment the photograph had been taken, Milla was young and beautiful. And that was how she would be remembered. Beautiful Milla, who disappeared and left this one picture behind. Blue denim dress, ponytail, full dry lips smeared with lipstick a little too red. It’s a light, bright picture. No background to indicate where the picture was taken, just a black smudge in the bottom left-hand corner.
Siri asked: But who took the picture? Was it taken here in our house? While she was here with us?
And Jon shook his head and said he had no idea, probably she took it herself. She was always taking pictures and maybe she took a picture of herself.
Milla is smiling, and squinting in the strong summer light. She is eyeing the onlooker with a faint glimmer of flirtatious annoyance, as if she were saying Come with me, let’s go have fun. “So full of life,” her friends said and lit candles. “A ray of light.”
Many talked of her radiance. And a Facebook page entitled “Finding Milla” was created.
Siri tore the photograph from a newspaper and looked at it again and again. Let’s go have fun. No one could say for certain that she was dead, there was no body, but hopes of finding her alive gradually faded. As the nights grew darker and the summer vacationers started packing up their belongings and cramming into their cars and driving away, another Facebook group was formed, titled “Light a Candle for Milla.”
Siri looked at the photograph. Why is she laughing? I never saw her laugh like that when she was here. Who is she looking at? Did she really take it herself? Light a candle for Milla. It was dark when she disappeared, light a candle to help her find her way back to us.
Always there. Always that same photograph. Come, let’s have some fun! Lovely and lost.
SHE HAD BEEN like a little doll, much smaller than other girls her age, and she was in her mother’s arms and they were running through the long grass, and she remembered her mother’s warm breath and big mouth as she sat her down in the grass and got her camera out. She remembered the sun burning. Her body all hot. Her dotted underpants soft and loose against her skin. She pulled and tugged at those underpants so they might cover a little more of her. Now Milla, I’m right here, see, I’m not going anywhere, I’m right here—and stop pulling and tugging. Her mother ran backward while shouting to Milla, her face flushed, her trampoline body taut, her voice out of breath, eager. Okay, sweetie, now you get up and run, run toward me, like you’re in a hurry, don’t look back, just hurry up and run, but Milla couldn’t hurry. She wasn’t in her mother’s arms. She wasn’t sitting in the grass in the hot sun. She couldn’t run. And she wasn’t as little as a doll. No one was as heavy as her. And her mother wasn’t there. No one was there. And ahead of her stretched the long road to Mailund and she didn’t know if she could make it all the way up to the house at the top. Her legs weren’t working the way they should. Cuts and bruises on her knees. On her thighs. On her stomach. On her face. He had jabbed his knee into her ribs, this was while she was still standing upright, all the breath had been knocked out of her and she had dropped to her knees, skinning them. He wouldn’t listen to her when she said she wanted to go home. His mouth was slobbery and wet, his tongue had swollen inside her mouth and she had pushed him away and said she wanted to go home now, this wasn’t what she wanted, he had misunderstood her, and that was when he jabbed his knee into her ribs.
“You want it, don’t you?” he whispered, and then he drove into her from behind, ripping her apart.
She didn’t want it, but she couldn’t turn around, couldn’t shake her head no, couldn’t answer, clearly choking on grit.
“Can’t hear you, darling,” he said.
They had left the Bellini and he had whispered in her ear that he knew a nice spot where they could be alone and they had ended up on a narrow footpath near the ruins behind the school, not far from Brage Road. Gravel and stones and sand everywhere and that was why her hands were ripped up.
But she hadn’t died. Here she was, walking, and he was gone. The rape had been quick and afterward he had actually made to help her back to her feet, offered her his hand. She hadn’t taken it, just shook her head.
“Can you find your own way home?” he asked politely.
“Yes,” Milla whispered. She meant to speak clearly, but all she could find inside of her was that little whisper.
She was still lying on the ground, curled up like a tiny animal.
“Good, good,” he said. “See you. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Milla.
“I’m going to get the car now,” he said almost as if to himself and then he left and Milla couldn’t understand why he had said that about the car. It crossed her mind that this was important, that this was the sort of thing she had to try to understand, what it meant, but she didn’t want to think about that now, hadn’t the strength to think about anything.
She had used her torn panties to wipe off his semen. Then she had stood up very carefully; a stab of pain ran through her pelvis and stomach and she was scared that something inside her might come loose and fall through her, and then she had taken a couple of steps and picked up her gold evening bag that was sprawled on the ground a little way off the path. A gold evening bag with fringe. How stupid. Milla would never use it again. But she had to put her underwear somewhere, she couldn’t be seen carrying it in her hand, and the little evening bag was all she had. He’d taken her phone too. She wondered why. What was the point in taking her phone? Surely he had his own phone? Now she couldn’t call her mother and ask her to come and get her. She rummaged in the bag again. But no, it was gone. She’d known that, though. That her phone wasn’t in there. She’d been lying on the ground and he’d asked her if she could find her own way home and then he’d turned and walked away, and then she had seen him pick up her evening bag, take her phone, and toss the bag back onto the ground. She wanted to try to sit down again, but it hurt to sit, so she lay down, the way she’d been lying before, curled up, just for a minute, because she’d have to go soon. He had done this to her, but she was alive, she wasn’t dead, he was just going to get the car, why did he say that, and Milla told herself that it was not impossible to stand up and go home. But it was unfathomable to her, that he had taken her phone and that she couldn’t call her mother and tell her to come, and then she began to sob.
She couldn’t see a thing, but she put one foot in front of the other and walked. It wasn’t just that it was very dark or that she was crying; her eyes hurt. She had gotten sand in them, a bit of grit in one eye. There wasn’t too much blood. Not from her eyes, not from her hands, not from the grazes and cuts, not from between her legs, and it was odd, she thought, that she wasn’t bleeding more.
The roads were deserted. It was darker than usual for the time of year, and cold, and raining again. Milla wrapped the red shawl around herself. Although she’d rather have left it lying there on the dirt path. He had nearly killed her when he stuffed it into her mouth. But she was shivering and had nothing else to wrap around her and it occurred to her that she’d better get rid of it when she got home. Think of what to say to Siri. It was Siri’s shawl after all. She could say she had lost it. That someone had taken it. And tha
t she would, of course, buy a new shawl to replace the old one. Milla looked up at the sky. It must be very late. It wasn’t the sort of summer night to be out in and the narrow streets were deserted.
After he had jabbed his knee into her ribs and she dropped down in front of him he had struck her on the back of the head, not very hard, just hard enough to make her fall onto her stomach and lie there with her face in the dirt. He didn’t say a word as he pulled down his jeans, tugged her dress up over her thighs, ripped her underwear and drove into her from behind. When she tried to scream, her face in the dirt, he tore off the red shawl, the one stained with Simen’s blood, crumpled it up, and crammed it into her mouth.
“Okay?” he said. “Is that better?”
His cock ripped apart everything that kept her up, cartilage, bone, joints, flesh, all that held her insides together was crushed and began to seep out of her. There was no stopping it.
Milla stood at the foot of the road that wound upward, dark and narrow, from Simen’s house, second from the bottom, to Jenny Brodal’s at the very top. Simen was the boy on the bike. He was probably in bed by now. But she wondered whether she could ring his doorbell and talk to his parents, say something like: My name’s Milla, I know your boy a little bit, he fell off his bike earlier this evening and hurt himself and I was just wondering how he was doing.
But no. They would probably look at her funny. She wasn’t wearing any underwear and stuff was still running from between her legs. It smelled sour. She had no shoes on her feet and her dress and the shawl were covered in all sorts of stains. She’d lost her umbrella. What would they think? Somewhat difficult, as things were now, as she looked now, as the girl she was now, to explain that she and Simen were friends, that she had walked him home, that she didn’t mean him any harm, that the girl she was now, the one they saw standing before them, the one they smelled, was not the real her, and that she simply needed some help. Could she, say, borrow a phone so she could call her mother? And why couldn’t she use her own phone? Yes, why couldn’t she? What would she have to say for herself? How to explain? Because he had taken it? No, it wouldn’t do. She would break down and start babbling or crying before she was even halfway through all that had to be said.
She walked a little farther, then she stopped. She had to gather herself. Wasn’t that the expression? Wasn’t that what old people said when they were tired? That they had to gather themselves? Once Milla had helped an old lady cross the road and several times the lady had stopped, looked up at Milla, and said, “I just need a moment to gather myself,” and Milla had waited and the cars had waited and everything had seemed to come to a halt waiting for the old lady to gather herself. She wished that she could gather herself back to hours earlier. But she couldn’t, so there was nothing for it now but to shuffle like an old lady, up the road of a hundred bends, and then, yes, there it was, she heard the sound of a car.
She looked back. It was speeding along, lighting up everything around it on the road. For one crazy moment she thought it was her mother coming for her. But then she had to jump out of the way and throw herself onto the verge. The car was going flat-out. It sounded like Jenny’s Opel, Milla pulled herself up and peered. It was Jenny’s Opel. The car stopped, and it was hard to see who was in it, the outlines of two people in the front, she hadn’t been able to see them face on, but Milla was pretty sure it was Jenny and Alma. Why were they out driving at night? Why weren’t they at the party? Was the party over? What time was it, anyway? The car started up again and drove on slowly, it turned the bend and carried on up the last stretch of the road to the house. Even when she could no longer see it she could still hear the drone of the engine. She heard it cease when the car reached the house. And it was good, she thought, it was good that they hadn’t seen her. What on earth would she have said if they had seen her like this?
Milla picked herself up and walked a little farther.
She looked up at the dark sky.
“Mama!” she whispered. “Papa!” And then she sat down on the verge again, clasped her hands, and tried to pray. She had heard another car approaching and knew that it wasn’t her parents in that car. She had known it all along, that they wouldn’t be coming and that she wouldn’t make it home in time. He had said he was going to get the car and she had known this was important and had tried to understand what it meant, and now she understood that he was coming for her, and so she shut her eyes and covered her ears. Didn’t want to hear the car. Didn’t want to see it. Now all she wanted to do was sit here and breathe until she was no longer breathing.
The car drew closer and even though she had closed her eyes, she was aware of everything around her being flooded with light.
THE SUMMER DISAPPEARED along with Milla and already it was October and she had been gone for three months. Jon’s book was postponed. The dog needed a walk.
Leopold raised his head and looked at his master: He is not writing. And pretty soon he will rest his head on his computer keyboard and cry.
Jon’s writing room in Oslo was in the attic, just like at Mailund. The room was partially renovated, the walls painted white, and a double-glazed skylight had been installed in the sloping ceiling so that he could look out. He had a desk in the corner and a mattress on the floor.
Jon stared out the window facing up to the sky and down onto the driveway, but the sun was too bright to see anything so he grabbed the dog’s gray blanket, pulled it out from under its long black forepaws, forcing Leopold up onto his feet. The animal staggered slightly, shook himself, and Jon draped the blanket over the old curtain rod so that it covered the window completely. There! Now it was dark!
He will never finish that book. Leopold lay down warily on the floor, this time without his blanket, his muzzle against Jon’s feet. Never!
Jon and Siri were still living off the income from the Oslo restaurant, plus the money from a huge bank loan and a rapidly disappearing fourth advance from the publisher. All Jon had to do now was write the third part of what had once been described (on the basis of the two parts that were already written and published) as the “great turn-of-the-millennium trilogy” and “the most important novel of the decade about our nation.” Expectations were overwhelmingly high, or at least they had been, it was in part three that he would prove to be at the very height of his powers. Jon should have completed the manuscript five years ago, but no, the days went by, his marriage went down the drain, his daughter Alma was troubled, and then there was Milla who came and disappeared and after that, it had been impossible to write anything at all.
Jon was himself over fifty, confronted every day in the mirror with a slightly shriveled, prune-like face and a not inconsiderable paunch that stuck out from or, rather, drooped from his otherwise skinny frame. The attractive young mothers he met every morning when he took Liv to nursery school looked straight through him.
Every Thursday evening Jon went running with his dentist friend Kurt Mandl, the husband of his dentist mistress, Karoline. Once, twice, three times around the lake and guess who was out of breath and struggling with steamed-up spectacles after the first round, and calling to cancel more often than not?
“We’re not getting any younger, Jon!” Kurt Mandl shouted.
“No, of course not,” Jon shouted back.
Kurt’s dogs were, like Kurt himself, admirable in most every way. Kurt only had to make a clicking sound with his tongue for the dogs to be there by his side. Taking Leopold for a run like that was quite out of the question. If Leopold were allowed to go loose, he would simply take off. If he were on a leash, he would drag and tug and bark at other dogs and make a spectacle of himself and his master.
Jon ran his fingers over the keys and wrote:
Miseries, October 16, 2008
1. I have no money and lead a wretched life, am financially dependent on my wife.
2. I hate Kurt Mandl.
3. My daughter hacked off her teacher’s hair and is a topic of discussion in the news media: “Thirteen-year-old gir
l attacks English teacher.” Expelled from school. Why????
4. I am a philandering bastard.
5. I have a stupid dog that pulls and tugs at the leash when I take him for walks: daily proof of my lack of control and character.
6. I don’t exercise and I drink too much.
7. I can’t write.
8. Milla?
And it was only going to get worse, everything coming undone. He thought of Milla’s mother, Amanda, wandering from room to room, screaming out her grief for her lost daughter.
He and Siri had often talked about how they must write a letter to Milla’s parents, they had to try to make amends for those awful summer days in July and August right after she had disappeared and they were all out looking and they hadn’t known what to say. He remembered that on the second day, Amanda—until then holding herself together—shouted at them: “You can’t just stand there and not know! It’s not good enough! Please! She lived in your house! You were supposed to watch over her!”
Write them a letter. But with what words? What could you possibly write in such a letter?
Jon slid the mouse up to point four and point eight in his misery list and pressed DELETE. Siri checked his mobile, she checked his e-mails, she opened the documents on his computer entitled “TRILOGY PART THREE,” partly searching for traces of what she in arguments referred to as his “untold life,” but also to check whether he was, in fact, writing. They didn’t talk about it and he didn’t stop her.
Sometimes he did write something. A page maybe, precisely because he knew that she would read it. He wrote for her. And he wouldn’t let her find out about the other women. That was nothing. Or not nothing. It was beside the point.
He deleted the entire misery list and wrote a new one, fit for Siri to read.