The Woman from Bratislava

by Leif Davidsen

  ‘I wish it was that simple,’ I sighed. We both said goodbye at the same time and I stood for a moment staring down at the road and the traffic, missing Janne and the kids. It was at times like this that one really had need of a mate. Someone with whom to share one’s troubles. I could have called her, of course, but I would not. Janne was actually a good woman, I was extremely fond of her and she was a good listener, but I did not want to run the risk of the other man answering the phone.

  I made some sandwiches, left the coffee filtering in the kitchen and carried them through to the television along with a carton of skimmed milk. On the news were reports on the NATO air strikes. As usual things were going very well. There had been no losses, and civilian casualties on the Serbian side were minimal, so said a uniformed American general. Serbia was being systematically bombed back to the Stone Age. A Danish officer explained why it would at some point be necessary to send in ground troops, then came a piece on the stream of refugees into Albania. More grim shots of shivering, distressed people. But there was no sign of the woman from Bratislava. I suddenly remembered the words of an American officer during the Vietnam War. ‘In order to save the village it was unfortunately necessary to destroy it,’ he was reported to have said about a little South Vietnam village. That was then. Nowadays there was something cartoon-like about the whole thing. High-flying, high-tech jets firing off laser-controlled missiles and then zooming back to Italy for evening coffee. What must it be like on the ground? We would probably never know. Once the war was won the media would lose interest and the dead and wounded would be forgotten. Among the living nothing would be left but the hate.

  The telephone rang. The voice on the other end, a deep bass, enunciated with exaggerated care.

  ‘Teddy Pedersen? You are speaking to someone who knows who you are. I was wondering whether we could meet. It’s about your sister.’

  The question mark was left hanging in the air. I had reached the stage where nothing could surprise me. Why shouldn’t a stranger call to ask about my sister? After all, nothing was the same as it had been only a couple of weeks earlier.

  ‘I have nothing to say to the press,’ I said shortly.

  ‘I’m not a reporter. This is personal.’

  ‘I don’t know you,’ I said.

  ‘I think you would do well to meet me. Tomorrow perhaps?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To talk about your sister. It’s about Irma.’

  ‘That much I understand. What’s this all about? My sister’s in jail. And who the hell are you anyway?’

  ‘That is of no importance.’

  ‘It is to me. I’d like to know who I’m talking to.’

  ‘I realise that, but I would prefer not to discuss it over the phone,’ he said in that deep bass. The man was obviously paranoid.

  ‘And where do you suggest we meet?’

  ‘How about the new Knudshoved service area. On the Fünen side, just after the bridge.’

  ‘You expect me to drive all the way to Fünen, pay the bridge toll and all, when you could easily tell me on the phone what this is all about? You must be mad!’

  ‘I don’t think it’s such a good idea to discuss it on the phone, but it’s about a woman in Slovakia. She gave you some papers. She told you a story.’

  Now he had my full attention. Nobody knew about that except Lasse, who had shaken his head at the whole thing. Then there was the message on Irma’s answering machine and an email.

  ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘I think we should meet,’ was all he said.

  ‘Okay,’ I said without stopping to consider. ‘When?’

  ‘Why don’t we say tomorrow morning, around eleven. Park your car, go into the cafeteria and you will be contacted.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘We’ll recognise you. Do we have a date?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said – Teddy was born curious. The bass voice hung up. Might he have been afraid that my phone was tapped? The worse of it was that I had to call Janne and ask if I could borrow my own car. She griped about it, even though it was me who had paid for the damn thing. We had kept our finances separate. It just so happened that she would be needing it the next day. What about the kids? Couldn’t it wait for a couple of days. What did I want it for?

  ‘That’s none of your business. You’re the one who chose not to have any part in what I do. It’s my bloody car, Janne! And I’m going to be needing it tomorrow morning at nine o’clock sharp. So fucking well get it over here!’ amiable old Teddy snapped and slammed down the receiver. I waited an hour, but she did not call back, so I went to bed feeling cross and resentful.

  She evidently had no wish to see me. I looked out of the window at eight o’clock the next morning to see our natty little Renault parked neatly alongside the kerb. It was streaked with the muck of the Copenhagen spring and when I slid into the driver’s seat at nine thirty to set out for Fünen, the petrol gauge was reading close to empty. I felt a lump in my throat when I saw one of the children’s little cuddly toys lying on the back seat and caught their and Janne’s scent in the car – I cursed the morning and the grey, dismal weather. Janne was dead set against anyone smoking in the car so in order to establish my rightful ownership I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke over the upholstery. But I was not used to lighting up in cars either now, the smoke soon started to get to me, so I opened a window, chucked the ciggie out and managed to get the window rolled up again before another shower swept over the rain-ridden city. Teddy Regretting His Actions might be a good title for this picture.

  I stopped at a petrol station to fill the tank and had a cup of coffee in the adjoining cafeteria. There were only a couple of us in the place and it cheered me up no end when the young girl behind the counter wished me a nice day, although I don’t know what in hell it had to do with her. Still, a little politeness does make life easier all round. The weather cleared up a little. The sun came out and sent long, shimmering rays playing over a landscape that looked green and ready for anything, bristling with signs of spring. Apart from the big, heavy trailer-trucks there was not too much traffic on the road to Halsskov. I stayed on the right side of 130 kph, while one shiny new car after another went flying past me. These people were clearly in a hurry and regarded speed limits as no more than gentle guidelines. The bridge over Storebælt loomed ahead. Its pylons reared up far off on the horizon, glinting in the spring sunlight. I did miss the ferries sometimes, but it wasn’t as if I had ever used them much and to be honest like most Danes I was very impressed by the costly suspension bridge. No one gave it a second thought now, although initially there had been a lot of opposition to the project. Like every other bridge built by man, once it was finished and the dust had settled no one could imagine a time when it hadn’t been there. I had driven across it often, but I still got a kick out of skimming over that blue belt of water, feeling the wind buffet the car as I passed the massive anchor cables. Sprogø disappeared briefly from view when a sudden fall of rain over the water swept across the tiny island, giving rise for a few seconds to a rainbow which arched from the edge of the island out into Storebælt. A large coaster seemed to sail, Flying Dutchman style, through the rainbow, shimmering like a mirage. Teddy Witnesses One of Nature’s Wonders would have made a good title for this picture, I thought to myself, before driving out onto the low section of the bridge. This, on the other hand, was just a stretch of motorway running across water. Nothing to write home about.

  The cafeteria lay next to the old ferry wharf. The water in the harbour was like glass, the dock empty apart from one of the Lifeboat Service’s red craft and a small, covered wooden boat which I guessed must be used by local anglers. There were only a handful of cars in the car park when I got out, buttoning my coat against a stiff breeze which the sun was incapable of warming. I stretched, massaged the base of my spine. My back was better, but it did not take kindly to being stuck in a car for an hour and a half. I glanced round about. A vehicle pulled int
o the car park, but stopped some way off, as if the driver could not decide where to go. Or maybe he or she had been under the impression that there was also a petrol station down here.

  I went into the cafeteria, bought a cup of coffee and a copy of Ekstra Bladet and sat down. I had drunk half of my coffee and flicked through the newspaper when a youngish man stopped in front of me and said my name. There had been a small item in the paper about Edelweiss. The spy who will not talk, the headline said, but it was merely a rehashed spin on an old story, so it left me none the wiser. I recognised the deep bass voice. I had expected him to be much older, but he could only have been in his early thirties.

  ‘Finish your coffee, by all means, but then we ought to be on our way,’ he said.

  ‘It tastes like shit,’ I said as I got to my feet and made towards the entrance, but the man took my arm politely but firmly and drew me towards the back door. It opened onto a terrace on which, in summer, patrons could enjoy their coffee or a snack. Once outside he led me towards the little fishing boat.

  ‘Are we going for a sail?’ I asked.

  ‘Only across to the other side of the fjord.’

  ‘What on earth for? This is absolutely crazy. Why all the secrecy.’

  ‘Just get on board,’ he said, his voice suddenly hard.

  I stepped down into the boat which gave and rocked under my feet. I felt the first faint surge of nausea.

  ‘I’m not a good sailor,’ I said. ‘I get seasick on the Storebælt ferry in a dead calm.’

  ‘It’s only a short trip,’ he said and pointed to a small cabin containing a table with a bench seat on either side of it. Curtains hung at the windows and there was an all-pervading reek of petrol and fish. Peering out of the low doorway – for which there was no doubt some other nautical word – I saw him cast off and start the engine, which kicked into life at the first turn of the key with a cough that was actually quite reassuring. I heard a car accelerating, the sound of running feet and a shout.

  ‘What was that?’ I cried.

  ‘You were being followed. We suspected as much,’ he said above the steady, monotonous drone of the engine.

  ‘Why in hell’s name would anyone be following me?’ I yelled.

  ‘Because of your sister, of course,’ he said. ‘Come on up into the fresh air if it makes you feel better. I’m Karl Henrik Jensen.’

  My stomach was heaving, but despite the wind there were no waves, not even when we drew clear of the old ferry harbour and cut over to the narrow spit of land extending into the water. We sailed round the tip and down the other side. Only a few minutes later Jensen pulled in alongside a small jetty. We were in a little marina. There did not seem to be anyone else around on this chilly spring weekday. Seagulls wheeled and screamed overhead, as if searching for the long-lost ferries. I noticed what looked like a golf course. Red flags fluttered in the breeze and a man was helplessly searching the ground for something. Karl Henrik Jensen gave me a hand up onto the jetty and pointed to a car parked nearby.

  ‘Go on over to the vehicle, I won’t be a moment,’ he said. I walked over to what was a perfectly ordinary saloon car. A young man sat behind the wheel. He reached behind and opened the back door.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Pedersen,’ he said. Helluva polite, they were. A moment later Karl Henrik Jensen appeared. He got into the front. Before he slammed the door shut and we drove off I heard the throb of an engine again. So they had a third man to take the little boat away again. It seemed to be a very well-planned operation.

  ‘Who’s following me? Why would anyone be following me?’ I asked with a note of panic in my voice.

  ‘Either PET or the CID. At any rate we saw one car turn in to the car park behind you, and there was another one sitting by the exit, in case you decided to drive out again.’

  ‘But I haven’t done anything wrong,’ I said.

  ‘Neither have we. We simply want to have a quiet chat with you, somewhere we won’t be disturbed. That’s all. Do you have the documents with you?’

  ‘No. My suitcase went missing. I actually have to go to the SAS office. Apparently I can claim compensation.’

  Jensen turned to look at me. In the same placid tone he said:

  ‘That’s not so good.’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing I can do about it,’ I retorted sullenly.

  ‘All I’m saying is it’s not so good,’ he muttered.

  We drove towards Nyborg and then south in the direction of Svendborg.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We’ll be there in less than half an hour,’ he said. ‘All your questions will be answered then. Just have a little patience, Mr Pedersen, and in the meantime sit back and enjoy our beautiful Fünen countryside.’

  There was nothing else for it. No further explanation was forthcoming. And Fünen is very pretty. Besides which, I felt safe in assuming that this small island had not turned into a Danish version of Chechnya. What would be the sense in kidnapping a middle-aged lecturer in Russian and history? So I sat back and watched the lovely Lilliputian scenery slip past until we turned off the main road, drove down a narrow side road, then made a sharp left onto a dirt track leading to a small whitewashed farmhouse with a thatched roof hidden behind a hawthorn hedge. Once parked in the front yard we were invisible from the little side road.

  I clambered out of the car and stretched my back. An upright man of around sixty-five was standing in the doorway. A thick mane of white hair was swept back from his high, narrow forehead and long, strong arms protruded from a short-sleeved shirt buttoned right up to the throat. When he stepped towards me and smiled I saw a row of even white teeth, and appraising eyes held mine a fraction too long, just as his firm, lengthy handshake was a little overdone. One would have thought we were old friends, miraculously meeting after years apart. From behind him Fritz edged out and looked at me.

  ‘Hi, Teddy,’ he said.

  ‘Hi, Fritz. I had a feeling you might be mixed up in this.’

  ‘If only Irma were here,’ Fritz said, wiping his hands on his trousers. He was wearing his old grey tweed jacket over a light-coloured shirt with neatly knotted tie and navy flannels. In his hand was his unlit pipe.

  ‘Yeah, well, Irma can’t get us out of this one,’ I said.

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Teddy. I’m pleased to meet Irma’s brother. You’re more like your mother, I think,’ the upright old man said. Although I don’t know why I should have thought of him as old, when I had just gauged him to be in his mid-sixties: that would make him only about fifteen years older than me. Maybe he was actually seventy? Well, at any rate we were on first name terms, while to the younger men old Teddy was still Mr Pedersen.

  ‘I’d really like to know, Mr …?’ I said.

  ‘Karl Viggo Jensen. Come in and have a bite to eat. Then I will tell you all about your father and my father, and about Irma’s secret life.’

  7

  FRITZ CAUGHT THE DIRTY LOOK I shot him as we walked through the narrow door into a low-ceilinged living room. I could feel anger starting to well up inside me. Not so much over the strange secrecy surrounding this particular meeting, but also at the fact that I had for so many years been kept in the dark about certain crucial aspects of my family history: that my unknown natural father and my dear, but now totally senile mother had lived a double life, like secret agents living in a hostile country. The living room was small and very cosy in an old-fashioned way, with heavy furniture and naturalist pictures on the walls – the royal stag and the weatherbeaten fisherman. Classic, petit-bourgeois kitsch, I thought to myself, with typical academic arrogance. As if my own equally inoffensive abstract poster art was anything other than a reflection of what I and others like me considered pleasing to the eye. Were we not just as rigid in our own ideas of good taste? There was a large bookcase filled mainly, I noticed, with volumes on war and military history. In one corner a worn battered leather armchair was flanked by a small round coffee table and a black pot-bellied stove. There
were three books on the table, bookmarks protruding neatly from each one. These volumes were not for decoration. This was where the man of the house sat to read and expand his knowledge. The room had the faintly stuffy air of an old man’s home, overlaid with the smell of pipe smoke. The resulting odour was not unpleasant, though: a little musty, rather like windfall apples; a whiff of childhood which brought back memories of my maternal grandparents’ smallholding, where I had spent my holidays as a little boy. From where I stood I could see into an antiquated kitchen where a woman of Karl Viggo Jensen’s age was bustling about. She gave me a quick nod and wiped her hands on her apron before coming through to the living room and offering me her hand. It was damp and cool, but her handshake was firm and the grey eyes in the wrinkled face were bright.

  ‘Karla Jensen,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you could do with something to eat – it’s not as if you can catch a bite on the ferry nowadays.’

  ‘That would be lovely, thank you,’ I said, ensnared by the outmoded surroundings and atmosphere. In Copenhagen one forgot that in the country another life still went on, at a different tempo and in a different tone. One in which old words and expressions continued to be used, as if television had never been invented.

  ‘Can it wait fifteen minutes? I’d like to show Irma’s little brother the museum first,’ Karl Viggo Jensen said.

  ‘There’s no reason why not,’ she said. ‘It’s only a bit of lunch. It won’t come to any harm in fifteen minutes, but if the gentleman is hungry …’

  ‘No, I’m fine, really,’ I said.

  ‘Well in that case I’ll put the aquavit back in the fridge,’ she said, as if the schnapps was more important than whatever was pervading the house with such delicious odours.

  The rest of us filed through another room in which a table was set for lunch, out into the garden and over to a low, whitewashed building which might once have been a pig shed. Our feet swished through the matted layer of leaves from the autumn still lying around a copper beech tree. Karl Viggo, straight-backed, led the way with me trudging at his heels and Fritz bringing up the rear, trailing his feet and panting slightly. He was not as young as he had once been and he had never been one to deny himself anything. Were the cigars and the pipe starting to have too marked an effect on my brother’s lungs, I wondered, feeling genuinely worried about him. Families are funny that way: we do not choose them, they can often be a pain in the neck, and yet they are the one constant in our lives.