by S. J. Gazan
Søren and Vibe had been together for almost six months when Vibe figured out that a generation was missing between Søren and the couple she—up until that moment—had assumed to be his parents. It hit to her one summer’s day when Søren was in the kitchen making iced tea. Elvira had already gone outside; they could hear her spreading a cloth over the garden table and insects buzzing in the uncut grass. While Søren mixed the tea in a pitcher, Vibe studied the wedding photograph of Søren’s parents that was standing on the sideboard in the dining room. Suddenly a dark cloud of wonder spread across her face, and she scrutinized the photograph as if seeing it properly for the very first time. She looked as if she wanted to say something, but then thought better of it.
Later, they were lying on Søren’s bed listening to records.
“Who were the people in the photograph?” Vibe asked, at last. Søren turned over and folded his hands behind his head.
“My parents,” he said. Vibe was silent for a moment, then she jerked upright.
“But they can’t be,” she burst out.
“Why not?” Søren looked at her.
“Well, because you can’t change your eye color, and in that picture, Knud has brown eyes and…” she frowned. “And now they’re blue. Your parents have blue eyes.” She looked at Søren. “And yours are brown,” she whispered.
Søren rolled over, rested his elbows on the mattress, and cradled his chin in his hands. It would only take a minute to fetch the dusty box from the attic and show it to Vibe. After all, it was no secret that Elvira and Knud were his grandparents, though they never talked about it. It was just the way it was.
“Knud and Elvira are my grandparents,” he said. “My parents died when I was five years old. In a car crash. The photograph on the sideboard is of them. My parents on their wedding day. Their names were Peter and Kristine.”
Vibe lay very still.
It was Jacob Madsen’s father, Herman, who inspired Søren to become a policeman. Jacob also lived in Snerlevej, and he and Søren were friends. Herman Madsen was a sergeant in the CID, and Søren looked up to him. Jacob had an older sister and a mother who worked part time in a library. His family was different than Søren’s. Jacob’s parents weren’t hippies. Not that Elvira and Knud were—not proper hippies anyway—but their left-wing politics regularly created mayhem in the living room, where meetings were held and banners painted. They frequently protested against nuclear power, and though Søren was proud of his grandparents, he always enjoyed walking down the road and into the haven of peace that was Jacob’s house. Jacob’s father would come home from work and make himself comfortable in his winged armchair with the newspaper, Jacob would lie on his bed reading comics, and Jacob’s mother would be in the kitchen making mashed potatoes or hamburgers. At Søren’s they ate oddly concocted casseroles, salads topped with chopped up leftovers, and a lot of oatmeal.
When dinner was ready at Jacob’s house, his mother would strike a small gong and everyone would gather. When Jacob’s father joined them, the children would go very quiet. Sometimes, but not always, he would tell them the stories they were so desperate to hear. They knew from experience that if they pestered him before they had eaten, he would usually remain silent; however, if they were good and only said “pass the salt please,” and let Jacob’s father eat some of his dinner in peace, he would open up.
“Herman, not while we’re at the table,” Jacob’s mother would sigh.
The children waited with bated breath until Herman started telling them about murdered women, kidnapped children, hidden bodies, and vindictive ex-husbands. The two boys, especially, were riveted once Herman got into his stride. At some point he started giving the boys murder mysteries to solve, and Søren got so excited about going to Jacob’s house that Elvira, rather anxiously, asked if it really was all right with the Madsens that Søren ate with them three times a week. Oh, yes, Søren had replied. It became a kind of real-life game of Clue where Herman knew who the killer was, where the murder had been committed, what the motive was, and which murder weapon was used, but it was up to the boys to come up with a plausible scenario. Herman taught them how to think, and Søren displayed considerable aptitude. Though he was only twelve years old, he could spot connections and produce explanations that, at times, were really quite far-fetched, but that to both Søren’s and Herman’s surprise—and to Jacob’s irritation—often turned out to be correct. Søren had no idea how he did it. It was as if he visualized a network of paths through which he could, quite literally, trace the solution to the mystery. He could keep track of everyone involved in the case, even though Herman would frequently throw in some red herrings to confuse the boys. In addition, Søren was a skilled bluffer with the ability to ask seemingly innocent questions, only to suddenly come up with the answer to the whole mystery.
When Jacob went off to boarding school, Søren felt awkward going to his house. Besides, he had started high school and met Vibe, and the riddle-solving faded into the background, except on Sundays when Herman washed the family’s Peugeot on the driveway. Søren would swing by for an update on the week’s events at the police station, and Herman would always have a mystery for him to crack. It wasn’t until Søren was an adult that he started questioning just how much of what Herman had told them had actually been true. After all, he must have had a duty of confidentiality.
At eighteen Søren left home and got his own place in Copenhagen. One day, a year later, when he returned home for a dinner with Elvira and Knud, a moving van was parked outside Jacob’s house, but there was no one around apart from four moving men carrying boxes and furniture. The next time Søren visited his grandparents, two unknown children were playing on Jacob’s old front lawn. Søren watched them and made up his mind to become a policeman.
Søren quickly became the family’s official detective, charged with finding lost items such as reading glasses, user manuals, and tax returns. He asked a lot questions, and nine times out of ten he would locate the missing object. Knud’s reading glasses lay on top of his shoes in the hall where he had bent down to scratch his ankle, the user manual for the coffee maker was in the trunk of the car, on top of a box of telephone books for recycling, and the tax return was found in the ashes in the fireplace because Elvira, in a moment’s distraction, had scrunched it up and thrown it there.
“How do you do it?” Vibe asked one evening when Søren, after a most unusual interrogation, reached the conclusion that her calculator had accidentally ended up in the garbage can in between some old magazines. He even offered to go downstairs to check—there was a chance that the trash might not have been collected yet. Five minutes later, he presented Vibe with her calculator.
“I knit backward,” Søren began. Vibe waited for him to continue.
“When you solve a mystery,” Søren explained, “you should never accept the first and most obvious explanation that presents itself. If you do that, it’s just guessing. You’ll automatically assume that the man with blood on his hands is the murderer and the woman with the gambling debt is the grifter. Sometimes that’s the way it is, but not always. When you knit backward, you don’t guess.”
Vibe nodded.
In December 2003 Vibe attended a course in Barcelona with her business partner, and Søren was home alone. While she was gone, he caught himself enjoying the solitude. Vibe had started to look at him with deeply wounded eyes, and Søren had felt guilty for weeks. The whole point was that he did not want to betray her. In her absence he went to work, organized old photographs, watched The Usual Suspects, which held no interest for Vibe, and read Calvin and Hobbes while sitting on the toilet. At the end of the week he played squash with his friend and colleague, Henrik.
At first glance, Henrik was the ultimate cliché. He pumped iron, had a crazy number of tattoos (including a prohibited one on his neck, which had nearly cost him entry to the police academy), and his hair was never more than a few millimeters long. A small, aggressive mustache grew on his upper lip; Søren thought it l
ooked ridiculous. While still a recruit, Henrik had married Jeanette and they had two daughters in quick succession. The girls were older now, teenagers, and Henrik was forever moaning how there was no room for him in their apartment because of all their girly stuff, clothes, shoes, and handbags, and when they go to school, he ranted, they look like bloody hookers, the sort we keep arresting in Vesterbro, and Jeanette just tells me to shut up, it’s the fashion, she says, what’s that all about? And Jeanette had started going to yoga all the time and he wasn’t getting any, what the hell was that all about, no, he missed the good old days, when he was single, blah-blah-blah. His bark was infinitely worse than his bite. Søren knew perfectly well that Henrik loved his wife and daughters and would do anything for them.
Søren hadn’t mentioned to Henrik that he and Vibe were going through a rough patch and whenever Henrik tried to pry with his what’s up, you getting any these days? he deflected him. His private life was nobody’s business. Nor had he told Henrik he was home alone, but when they were cooling off in the locker room after their squash game, Søren blurted out that Vibe had gone to Barcelona. He could have kicked himself. Henrik lit up like a Christmas tree; the two of them were going to hit the town. He called Jeanette from the locker room, and Søren could hear an argument erupt—something to do with their younger daughter—and quietly hoped this would lead to their night out being canceled. But Henrik stood his ground. Bitch, he said, as he hung up, she can go to her power yoga some other fucking time. Time for them to have some beers.
“I don’t know,” Søren said, pulling his sweater over his head. “I was just going to get a pizza and watch a DVD at home. I’m bushed.”
“You’re a boring old fart, that’s what you are,” Henrik scoffed.
Søren said nothing.
They found a small bar in Vesterbro and got drunk. Henrik grew increasingly raucous, and Søren was desperate to leave when Henrik struck up a conversation with two women at the table next to them. One was called Katrine, she was from Århus, but had lived in Copenhagen for a few years while she was training to be a teacher; her course would finish just after Christmas. She was very dark, like a gypsy, even though she spoke with a strong Jutland accent. What did Søren do for a living? They got talking and, at Henrik’s suggestion, they pushed their tables together. Later they went on to a club that Søren had never been to before. He felt strangely animated, oblivious. It was wonderful. His old life seemed so far away.
At two o’clock in the morning he decided to call it a night and went to find a cab. Katrine wanted to share it. She lived on H. C. Ørstedsvej and could be dropped off on the way. Afterward, Søren could barely remember how they had started kissing. It was so random. When the cab stopped outside Katrine’s block, she invited him in. He nodded and paid the cab fare.
Katrine lived in a two-bedroom attic apartment with coconut mats, plants, and lots of books. She went to brush her teeth and he could have left then, but he stayed, flipping through a book with photographs of churches. She even unloaded her washing machine and hung her clothes out to dry on a rack in the living room, as though she was deliberately giving him a chance to reconsider. He told her about Vibe. His girlfriend, who was in Barcelona on business. Katrine just smiled and said Barcelona was great. He stayed. They made love, and it was wonderful. Different, because she wasn’t Vibe. Søren had been unfaithful to Vibe a couple of times at the beginning of their relationship, but that was years ago. Katrine felt and tasted different.
He stayed the night. The next morning Katrine got up and made toast and coffee for them. It was nice. They didn’t exchange telephone numbers, and Søren went home.
Later that afternoon Søren was racked with remorse, the strength of which he hadn’t believed possible. He took a shower, but it was no good. Henrik telephoned and behaved intolerably. She was hot, wasn’t she, eh? Had he done something about it? Of course he hadn’t. Søren pretended to be offended and ended the conversation. Vibe would be back in three days, and during those three days Søren forced himself to think about having children. His guilt had nothing to do with Katrine; he had already forgotten all about her. He had slept with her because he was stressed about Vibe and the baby business. He had tried to relieve his frustration by doing something completely unacceptable and outrageous. He didn’t want to be that guy. Suddenly it was clear to him: he either had to get Vibe pregnant or he had to let her go so she could have children with someone else.
When Vibe came home, she was happy and relaxed. Søren wondered if she, too, had been unfaithful. In the days that followed, they appeared to benefit from their break. Vibe’s eyes no longer held that hurt expression, and she seemed so absorbed by work that she was far too tired to think about having a baby and their relationship. They spent a lovely Christmas with Knud and Elvira, they cuddled in front of the fireplace and exchanged presents; on New Year’s Eve they hugged each other for a long time when the clock struck twelve. Neither of them spoke, but it felt like a commitment. Søren woke up on the first of January believing the crisis had passed.
Then one evening, completely out of the blue, Vibe said that they had to talk about it. Barcelona had been amazing, inspirational, and when she came back, her work had meant as much to her as in the old days when she had worked late practically every night. But since they had completed their latest project, her life had become humdrum.
“And I can still feel it,” she said, quietly. “I want to have a baby. My body wants to have a baby. I can’t help it.”
Søren sat down in the sofa and put his arms around her.
“Perhaps it’s time for us to go our separate ways,” he said. The tears started rolling down Vibe’s cheeks.
“So you still don’t want to? Never, under any circumstances?” she asked.
“No.”
Shortly afterward Vibe went to bed. She didn’t kiss him goodnight, she just closed the door to the bedroom. Søren stayed behind feeling like a total dick. He didn’t want to have children. The feeling couldn’t be mistaken, but neither could he fathom what lay behind it. Was it about Vibe? Did he want children with another woman, but not with her? No, he didn’t. So what was it all about? He grabbed a beer from the fridge and turned the TV volume to mute. The world was a dangerous place, that was why. Children might die, children did die, he thought, angrily. It wasn’t all romantic, as Vibe imagined. Children were born only to end up in the morgue; young girls, half-naked, bruised, battered, and dead. Teenage boys high on designer drugs, beaten to a pulp by each other, or smashed up in cars or motorbikes driven by their drunk friends. Søren had accompanied countless parents to the morgue. He didn’t want children. When he had finished his beer, his sadness overwhelmed him. They would have to break up, so Vibe could have her child with another man.
They decided to tell Knud and Elvira together the following Friday. It was a Tuesday and Søren was dreading the moment because Vibe was like a daughter to the old couple. He was convinced they wouldn’t accept the reason for the breakup as they had both hinted, repeatedly, that they would like some great-grandchildren soon. Vibe slept on the sofa the whole week, even though Søren offered her their bed. She didn’t want it. She was fine sleeping in the living room, she said.
That Friday, Søren picked Vibe up from work. They drove to Snerlevej and parked in front of the house. Søren loved to go back to his old home. He loved opening the door with the key he had been given when he turned ten and started making his own way to and from school, he loved the smell in the hall, a mixture of what was cooking in the kitchen and damp coats, boots, shoes, and old wool. There was always a bottle of red wine waiting on the radiator when Vibe and Søren came to visit, always delicious food and warmth, and after dinner they would play Trivial Pursuit, the men against the women. But that evening when Søren unlocked the door, something was clearly very wrong. Vibe followed behind him. They had hugged each other briefly on the garden path, and Søren had asked if she was sure.
“I’m sure I want a child,” she had replie
d, and looked away. They went inside the house. Søren called out. The hall was cold, there was no smell of food or wine, and the hall light, which was always on when his grandparents were expecting guests, was off. They hung up their coats and exchanged baffled looks before Søren opened the door to the living room. Knud and Elvira were huddled together. Elvira was crying. She was sitting on Knud’s lap, her head resting on his shoulder. Knud had both his arms around her. They stayed like this, even though Vibe and Søren had now entered.
“What’s happened?” Søren exclaimed. Elvira raised her head and looked at him, red-eyed.
“Come here, my love,” she said, patting the sofa. Vibe and Søren stared at them, paralyzed.
“No,” Søren said. “Can’t you just tell me what it is?”
Elvira was ill. She had a tumor in her breast, and the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. She had been told that very day. It was terminal.
That night they reminisced about Elvira’s life. That was what she wanted. Past summers, the plums, Perle, the goat kid they had bottle-fed in the back garden, about the time Søren had found her wedding ring in a jar of strawberry jam. They laughed and drank wine and ate pizza, which Søren went out to get. They lit candles, and the evening concluded with Vibe and Elvira beating the men so emphatically in Trivial Pursuit that Vibe suggested that Søren and Knud should ask for their school tuition back. At no point did Søren and Vibe tell Knud and Elvira why they had come.