The Dinosaur Feather

by S. J. Gazan

  “This is Troels. He’s goes to school with Anna.”

  “He’s gorgeous,” Anna heard Cecilie’s friends whisper.

  Jens decided they should all play baseball. Everyone leapt from their chairs; four large stones were found, along with a bat and a yellow tennis ball, and two teams picked. The mood in the backyard was light-hearted and boisterous. Anna and Karen rolled their eyes at the silly grown-ups. They were both wearing makeup, but none of the adults had said anything. It was Troels’s turn to bat. He said, “I don’t want to”—not very loudly, but loud enough for Anna to hear it, and she was some distance away. Troels sent her an apologetic smile.

  Jens’s old friend, Mogens, who was bowling, encouraged Troels.

  “You can do it,” he said warmly. He positioned himself behind Troels and guided his arms in a horizontal arc through the air.

  “Keep the bat high,” he instructed him. “Don’t let it drop.” He tapped Troels’s drooping elbow. “And watch the ball.”

  Troels’s arm was still limp.

  “Come on! Concentrate. It’s not that hard!” Mogens called out. Anna instinctively glanced at her mother. Cecilie wanted to say something. She raised her hands as if to object. Next to Troels, Mogens was a gentle giant.

  “What do you think this is, eh?” Mogens roared with laughter and grabbed Troels’s white, freckled arm and dangled it. “Flab?” he chuckled. Troels looked vacantly at Mogens, who was ducking and diving like a boxer, throwing mock punches at Troels.

  “Come on, son, show us what you’re made of!”

  Troels raised the bat and hit Mogens over the head. Clonk. Mogens clutched his head. Everyone went very quiet.

  “What did you do that for?” Mogens gasped.

  Troels ran off, and Cecilie chased after him. They had been gone for nearly an hour when Anna decided to look for them. She found them in the back seat of the car. Troels looked red-eyed and lay with his head in Cecilie’s lap. She stroked his hair. He didn’t want to go back to the party, even though Cecilie assured him that it would be all right. That Jens would definitely have explained to Mogens why Troels had hit him. This puzzled Anna. Troels refused point-blank. He wanted to go home. Cecilie hugged him, and she and Anna watched Troels ride his bike unsteadily down the road before his speed increased and he was gone.

  In the garden, the mayhem had come to a halt and people were sitting around again. Mogens was pressing an icepack against his head. He still looked stunned. An eerie silence reigned.

  “Are you all right?” Cecilie asked.

  “Yes,” Mogens replied. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yes, you humiliated him,” Cecilie replied.

  “Hey, listen,” Jens objected. “That’s not fair.”

  “No, I mean it. Not deliberately,” she said, addressing Jens. “I know that. And 99 percent of boys would have reacted differently. But not him.”

  “No, it was a real pity,” Mogens said, miserably, and touched his sore head again.

  When Troels turned seventeen, he had his tongue and his nose pierced and he started wearing tight trousers and Doc Martens. The skinny boy was gone. Troels was now almost six feet tall, he had large, supple hands and broad shoulders. He had come close to being expelled from high school, but Cecilie intervened and pleaded his case. He didn’t visit them as often as he used to, so Anna and Karen no longer knew as much about what he did or who he was with, but he told them that he sometimes took the train to Århus or Copenhagen to go to a gay club. The girls thought it sounded very exciting.

  One day, Troels stopped by to ask Anna if she wanted to go for a bike ride. After riding for a while, he grew hot, pulled his jumper over his head, and bared a torso mottled with bruises.

  “What on earth’s happened to you?” Anna was shocked.

  “I went home to see my dad and to wash my clothes,” Troels said, giving her a cheerful look.

  “He hit you?” Anna whispered.

  “Yes, but I hit him back.”

  Anna stepped hard on the pedals to keep up.

  “And do you know something?” Troels gave Anna a complicit look. “It’s a real pain that I look like this.” He rose up on his pedals with studied indifference.

  “Why?” Anna panted.

  “I’ve been spotted by a modeling agency in Odense.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No, it’s true. They want to make a portfolio about me. They said they could get me a lot of work.”

  They spent the rest of the afternoon discussing Troels’s future modeling career. Paris, New York, and Milan all beckoned. Anna promised she would definitely visit him. They ended up on a fallow field where they lay among meadow flowers, gazing at the sky and fantasizing about champagne fountains and silver confetti descending from the ceiling. Or rather, Anna did. Troels sat next to her. His back hurt too much for him to lie down.

  In 1997, the year Anna, Troels, and Karen graduated from high school, it seemed the summer would never end. It was so hot their clothes stuck to their bodies, and the nights, too, were warm, azure, and endless. The three friends were euphoric; the world was theirs and they felt that if they exhaled simultaneously the heavens would expand forever. They went to parties in houses owned by people they didn’t know and drank themselves senseless. Houses empty of their friends’ parents who were away on vacation, where neglected houseplants were shoved aside so the windows facing the fields could be flung wide open, where they could crash and sleep under the sky, if they felt like it, or accidentally start a small fire, as happened early one morning in late July. The teenagers watched in contrite silence as the fire engines pulled up, and then stared at their feet while a fireman held up a cigarette butt to their faces and lectured them. Of course, it wasn’t the actual butt that had started the fire, merely one of the many strewn across the garden. The next day, the party carried on as if nothing had happened, houseplants pushed aside and windows thrown open.

  Later, when Anna looked back on that summer, she wondered if things might not have ended so badly between them if it had rained. They rarely slept, and when they weren’t partying they hung out in Karen’s small apartment in Odense, eyeing each other like wild animals.

  It all happened one night when Karen had scored some cocaine, and they snorted it all at once. Anna went to the bathroom, and when she returned, Karen and Troels had gotten the bright idea that now was a great time to try group sex. Well, why not, Anna thought. Her mouth felt dry like sandpaper, and she went to the kitchen to get a drink of water. When she returned, Karen and Troels were dancing around, naked from the waist up.

  “I thought you were gay,” Anna exclaimed. Troels and Karen collapsed in heaps of laughter.

  “And we thought you were open-minded,” Karen called out. They gestured for Anna to join them.

  They climbed into Karen’s bed, and Anna and Troels started kissing while Karen pulled off his trousers. Troels started laughing into Anna’s mouth, because Karen was fumbling, and temporarily let go of Anna to come to Karen’s aid. Troels and Karen began kissing, and Karen managed to pull Troels’s pants down. His dick was pierced. Anna stared at Karen’s hand enclosing it. Troels closed his eyes, and Anna could hear him gasping with pleasure while he continued kissing Karen. Anna rolled aside. At some point, Karen opened her eyes, looked at Anna and held out her hand to her, but before Anna had time to take it, Troels lifted Karen up and turned her over, so she lay on her back, her curls spilling over the pillow. His dick pointed momentarily at Karen and then it disappeared inside her. They both shut their eyes. Anna sat up. Everything went black. She kicked at their joined bodies and hit Troels right on the hip, sending him rolling with a howl. His mouth opened, his erection subsided, and Karen looked from one to the other, confused. Anna flew at Troels, and let her clenched fists rain down on his face, his chest, and his stomach, as he lay halfway across the bed. Troels’s face went white and his eyes burned.

  “Stop it, Anna,” he hissed. But she didn’t stop. Karen tried to grab Anna, and Tr
oels, who had passively let the blows fall, got up to gather his clothes. Anna pushed Karen aside and slumped on the bed. Troels had put on his jeans and he pulled his T-shirt over his head as he left through the front door. He didn’t close it behind him. His footsteps echoed down the stairs, then he was gone.

  Karen sent Anna an outraged look and said: “What you just did, Anna Bella, was fucking unnecessary.”

  That was ten years ago.

  Chapter 6

  As Søren began to think about leaving the office on Monday October 8, he was firmly of the opinion that Professor Helland’s death would be classed as one of Mother Nature’s enigmatic early recalls, and decided to wrap up the case as quickly as possible. Lars Helland had dropped dead—that was all there was to it. Hearts stopped beating in Denmark every day; even in people who, like Professor Helland, biked fifteen miles to and from work, and never smoked or drank. Admittedly, the severed tongue was a bit out of the ordinary, even to Søren, but it was a relatively common occurrence for people to sustain serious injuries in the process of dying. Søren had seen broken necks, smashed teeth and skulls, burns, shattered bones, and skewered torsos inflicted by everything from barbecues and radiator valves to lawnmowers and cast iron fences. Helland must have suffered convulsions of some sort and had bitten off his own tongue before he died.

  Convinced the case would soon be closed, Søren had started his preliminary interviews at the university. The first person on his list was the rather strange-looking and practically transparent biologist, Johannes Trøjborg, who had reported the death. He had been in the department because he was co-writing a paper with Professor Helland. He was hoping to get his PhD application approved, despite the PhD and Human Resources Committee having already turned his application down—twice. Søren had met many oddballs in his time, people whose head and body decorations were so extreme that you could barely make out the naked person underneath them. Johannes, however, was one of the most peculiar creatures Søren had ever seen. His transparency reminded Søren of those little white creatures you find under paving stones. Johannes’s hands were long, slender and silken, his skin stretched tight and pale across his face and he stooped. Only his red hair and intelligent eyes contradicted Søren’s impression of being in the presence of something stale and musty.

  Johannes appeared to have nothing but positive things to say about Helland, and only when Søren held a gun to his head—metaphorically speaking, of course—did he reluctantly agree that Helland’s behavior had recently been unfocused and distracted. But then again, he quickly added, Anna wasn’t the easiest person in the world to get along with, either. Søren failed to see the relevance, and Johannes spluttered as he explained that Anna and he had differed wildly in their opinions on Helland’s qualities, both as a human being and as a supervisor, a topic they had discussed several times over the summer. Johannes paused, then he blurted out that Anna had, in fact, been toying with the idea of playing pranks on Helland. Pranks? Søren gave Johannes a baffled look. What did he mean? Johannes blinked as though he had said too much. Nothing, it was just…. He looked away. Anna was angry with Helland, he admitted at last. She felt he had let her down. She had a young child to look after, so she was already under pressure, and she had grown disproportionately mad at Helland in a way that Johannes didn’t like. They had argued about it. Søren listened.

  All of a sudden, Johannes asked Søren if he was aware that someone had made threats against Helland. He mentioned it casually, his tone bordering on flippancy, but then rushed to make it clear Helland himself had laughed and declared the threats to be pranks. Johannes didn’t know the nature of them, he only knew Helland’s interpretation, which was that someone at the university bore a grudge and had decided to send him some nasty e-mails. Søren wanted to know if Johannes suspected the sender might be Anna Bella Nor. Johannes dismissed it instantly. Of course not! It would never cross Anna’s mind. Professor Helland was a member of several committees and his administrative influence was considerable; he knew that he was an obvious target for people’s dissatisfaction. He was on the PhD and Human Resources Committee—to name but one—Johannes explained, and was thus in a position to decide the future academic careers of several biologists.

  Søren nodded slowly, thanked him and had just closed the door behind him when he remembered something. Johannes looked up, surprised, when the door opened again and Søren popped his head around it.

  “Does that mean,” Søren said kindly, “Professor Helland was involved in rejecting both your PhD applications?”

  “Yes,” Johannes said, calmly. “It does.”

  Søren left, a touch perplexed. Johannes was clearly upset about Helland’s death and hunted high and low for a logical explanation; he had accidentally implicated his colleague, Anna Bella Nor, but then had gone on to defend her, as though it was Søren and not Johannes himself who had made the insinuation. Just as well this was a straightforward case, Søren thought, it saved him from having to dig more deeply to find out what Johannes Trøjborg had actually meant.

  Anna Bella Nor’s turn was next. They met in the small library, and she sat with her back to him, but turned around warily when he approached. She had short, brown hair, an oval face, and a slender, yet strong body, he thought. There was something sullen about her movements, as though she minded being here very much. Her eyebrows and lashes were dense and black. Her eyes were indescribable; at first sight they seemed muddy, but when she said something with emphasis, they shone golden. To his surprise, the pace of the interview was sluggish—it was clearly a matter of great inconvenience to Anna Bella Nor that Professor Helland had died. She came across as angry and fraught, and at one point she said outright: “My dissertation defense is in two weeks. This really is very bad timing, to put it mildly.”

  Søren asked about her relationship with Helland and learned that Helland was slightly better than useless, and Anna had even considered making a formal complaint about him to the Faculty Council. He also learned that Helland had upset everyone, including Johannes, though Johannes wouldn’t admit it.

  “Johannes is a friend,” she interjected, and narrowed her eyes, “but he’s horrible at reading people. He’s just too nice, and he has convinced himself it’s his mission on earth to excuse every single reprehensible act. Johannes can always find a reason, and do you know something?” Anna gave Søren a hard stare. “Sometimes even the best explanation isn’t a justification. Professor Helland didn’t care about me at all, and that’s a fact.”

  She went on to tell him that Professor Ewald and Professor Jørgensen hadn’t been huge fans of Professor Helland either, and, as far as Anna could see, with good reason. Helland had managed to get himself a seat on every single academic and administrative committee there was, and was consequently responsible for myriad things that affected the daily running of the department. Anna refused to specify what they were: “Trust me, they’ll bore you to death, seriously.”

  What Anna was at pains to point out was that Helland had twice removed the electric kettle, which she and Johannes had bought and kept in their study, and taken it to his office without asking. At this point, Søren’s fingers had begun to itch with irritation, and he told Anna to leave out irrelevant information, whereupon Anna looked straight at him and said: “You want to know about Helland’s relationship with his colleagues at the institute? How better to describe the climate that surrounded him than by explaining what a petty, self-important, emotionally stunted fascist he really was?”

  Søren was genuinely impressed at how swiftly Anna could weld so many words into such a hard-hitting sentence.

  The next thing he wanted to know was if Helland had seemed all right lately.

  Anna replied: “I tended to avoid him, but he was always quite odd. The strangest thing recently was his eye. Whatever it was, it was bad.”

  She had first seen it in the early summer and thought little of it, but recently she had noticed that the growth had…

  “Bigger isn’t the rig
ht word,” she said. “But it grew more visible, as though it was changing character and hardening.” She fell abruptly silent.

  Søren thanked her and asked her to remain at the department from where she would be driven to the police station. Anna demanded to know why and looked most unhappy when Søren explained it was procedure. When he left and closed the door between them, he could feel himself sweating.

  The two professors were next on his list. They were speaking quietly in Professor Ewald’s office and exuded an atmosphere of profound trust. When Søren knocked, they both rose and asked him to take a seat in a stylish, but rather uncomfortable chair with a metal back and a thin seat pad. Professor Jørgensen was the doyen of the department and had, Søren quickly realized, partly retired, but was still working on a range of research projects.

  At first glance, Professor Ewald came across as the most normal of the four biologists. She was petite, but she had the edge over the rest of them—expensive, well-fitting clothes, a good haircut, modern glasses, and discreet makeup. At second glance, however, he realized that she was fundamentally a worrier. While they spoke, Søren unobtrusively checked out her airy office where every surface was covered with biological specimens. Her subject was invertebrates, she told Søren, and when he looked baffled, she said: “Animals with no spine,” and gestured in a way Søren took to indicate that the numerous animals decorating her shelves and window sills were all such unfortunate creatures.

  The professors were terribly upset. Professor Ewald admitted openly that she was plagued by horrible guilt, and Professor Jørgensen nodded in agreement: they had both loathed Helland. Unequivocally. Helland and Ewald had worked in the department for over twenty-five years, Jørgensen even longer, and when they looked back at their careers, the only obstacle had been Helland. He had poisoned the working environment and prevented joint and targeted research by constantly looking out for number one. Further, he was a member of several administrative committees and Professor Ewald and Professor Jørgensen strongly agreed this was the equivalent of giving a baby a razor. Helland had no administrative skills whatsoever, and yet he got himself elected chair of several university bodies, with chaotic consequences for the department every single time. Once, for example, Helland forgot the submission date for joint grant applications, despite the fact he had been reminded of the approaching deadline on an almost daily basis in the preceding six months. The department had been forced to survive a whole term on the remains of the previous year’s grants, students had to pay for photocopied handouts, the annual field trip was canceled, and they had been forced to use faulty microscopes.