The Silent War

by Andreas Norman

  ‘What happened at school?’ she asks him.

  ‘They took my trainers,’ he says.

  And he ran after them. He hates them. He hates them because they’re always messing with him, he says, and she feels the worry plummet through her. What does he mean, messing with him? He looks dejectedly at the lawn and says nothing.

  He is lonely. She knows that now. She can imagine him in the playground, and how difficult it is for him to make headway in the crowd, she can see him alone on the football pitch with his ball, doing his monotonous movements, in his own world. She wishes she could put her arm around him and protect him from everything, climb into his isolation and tell him he isn’t alone, but she knows she doesn’t have that power. She can’t help him when he furiously chases the people who say things to him and torment him, and that hurts her. In that moment, she also hates the boys, hates his school, and his teacher who won’t help him.

  She strokes his back to make sure he isn’t subsumed by his rage; she wants him to be calm and tell her more. He was given his trainers by Dad, he says, lost in his memories. Dad gave them to him. He got them for being good, he says. ‘Good and clever,’ he says with a hiss.

  She strokes his back.

  ‘Why the hell did they need to take my trainers?’ he exclaims.

  The intensity of emotion is rising rapidly, and she interrupts and says in a calm voice that it was very stupid.

  His face crumples. He sobs. She carefully puts an arm around his shoulders and feels him leaning towards her, seeking support. Dad gave him the trainers as a present, he eventually says. Even though he already had new trainers, he got given these ones. But he isn’t allowed to say anything else.

  She isn’t sure she has understood properly, but tells him she understands and reassures him that he can tell her everything. He looks at her suspiciously. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘anything he tells Dad he can tell her.’ She won’t say anything, she promises.

  So he explains. She sits stock-still next to him and listens.

  He came home early one day. He was at school, but after lunch he didn’t want to go to his lesson. He doesn’t know why, he just didn’t want to be in the corridor with all the others when the bell went. So he stayed on the football pitch and then he walked home. When he got home there was no one in. Daniel was still at school, and she and Dad were at work. But then he heard that there was someone in the house. There was someone who seemed to be coughing, as far as he could tell. He took a knife and hid in the living room.

  Bente hardly dares to breathe, fearing that the very slightest movement, the smallest sound, might distract him and make him stop talking.

  He sat there for quite a long time, he explains. Then Dad came downstairs. He was naked. There was a girl following him. He saw them stand on the stairs and kiss, and it was disgusting. He didn’t know who she was and he didn’t understand why Dad was with her. He could tell that they were having sex. They were at it for a long time. Then they caught sight of him and the girl screamed and disappeared, and Dad looked weird, as if he didn’t recognise him. Then he went into his room and started playing games on his iPad, because he didn’t want to see them like that, he just wanted the girl to disappear. ‘Whore’ is the word he uses to describe her. ‘She was probably some stupid whore.’ He heard them talking to each other and they sounded angry, they argued, and after a while the house fell quiet and he felt better. Then Dad came and knocked on the door and wanted to talk to him. Dad said the girl had gone and explained that she was just a friend. But he looked strange and sounded strange, hoarse. ‘Like this,’ says Ramus, impersonating his father: ‘Ah, ah.’ It was as if he had lost his voice. He didn’t want to talk to Dad, he didn’t want him in his room after he had been with that whore, he just wanted to know that she was gone. And Dad promised she was gone. He asked him who she was, and he said it wasn’t anyone important, that it was him and Daniel that mattered. You’re the most important people in the world, he said. Then Dad told him that the two of them now had a secret. Something no one else knew. And he asked whether he could keep that secret. If he was grown-up enough to not tell anyone about their secret. And he said he was. He remembers that Fredrik smelled different when he hugged him; he smelled sweet. Then they went and bought new football trainers – Dad let him pick any pair. ‘I chose these ones,’ he says pointing at his feet. He sighs.

  ‘I haven’t told anyone,’ he says.

  ‘But you could have told me? I’m your mother.’

  He simply shakes his head. Why would that be a relevant reason?

  Then he gets worried and asks her not to say anything. She has to promise not to say that he told her. She promises, and looks at the house, and wonders how it can remain standing in the evening sunlight, how it can look so sound when everything is rotten. ‘I promised Dad,’ he says again, as if now realising that he has said too much.

  ‘Rasmus,’ she says. ‘You can tell me everything.’

  But this merely makes him shake his head even more, because that’s not how a promise to keep a secret works – if he isn’t allowed to tell a secret to anyone else, then he isn’t allowed to tell it to her, either.

  ‘You’re right,’ she says, and he calms down.

  The logic is heart-rendingly clear, she thinks to herself. It could cut an entire family in two.

  Rasmus knows everything about trust. He is completely dependent on that trust enduring. She understands him, he uses exactly the same reasoning as her colleagues do in secrecy assessments.

  She is in no hurry to go inside; better to sit on the grass with her son for a little while longer, because then there is no going back.

  An enemy. That’s how she has to regard Fredrik. In war, there is only one victory that is decisive – the final one. Now she knows what awaits her: a battlefield.

  Her body is curiously heavy when she walks across the lawn and back into the house. Everything around her looks different and she sits down at the kitchen table as if numb. But the silence in the kitchen is too dense, and she gets up and starts to sort the larder before emptying the dishwasher and putting cups and glasses, plates and cutlery, in their rightful places.

  All this will disappear, she thinks. Everything they have built together will come crumbling down. She’s holding two wine glasses that should be in the cabinet above the kitchen counter, but she is tempted to crush them against the beautiful marble. Yet what is the point of shattering them? They’re just glasses, and the damage has already been done.

  He is with another woman. The thought is like a sharp kick to her stomach, and it winds her. What happens now? Her body becomes denser and more compact. She gasps for air. It is as if the room were closing in on her. He is sleeping with someone else. All the late work meetings and trips to Copenhagen . . . Why didn’t she spot it? Her heart pounds.

  She can’t stand still. It is like her body, in blind anxiety, is looking for a way out, and is driving her in and out of the other rooms in the house.

  Rasmus comes in from the garden. She doesn’t want him to see her like this, and she hurries upstairs. She feels the smooth painted surface of the banister against her hand, and shuts her eyes.

  ‘Are you okay, Mum?’

  Rasmus is standing at the bottom of the stairs and looking at her in concern.

  It is as if her son is rescuing her. She smiles and says there is nothing to worry about.

  ‘Dad should bloody well apologise,’ he says as he passes her on the stairs. And it occurs to her that it must have been here that he was standing with the woman when Rasmus interrupted them.

  She locks herself in the bathroom and sinks down onto the edge of the bathtub. It’s all so hopeless, she needs to gather her thoughts in peace. In a few hours he will come home, and by then she needs to know what to do.

  What has happened to my family? she thinks. A deep sense of despair runs through her, and slowly sets into a me
ss of hate that is as heavy as concrete. She could kill him. How dare he do this to her and the boys? She is calmer now.

  Part of her is already thinking about tactics. She can hold him accountable, ask him, and then confront him with what Rasmus told her, but he will probably deny everything and claim that Rasmus was mistaken, that everything is a misunderstanding, that the boy is lying. Because if he were so inconsiderate as to buy the boy’s silence, he will be prepared to defend every inch of his lie. What a shit! How could he do that to his children? Because she believes Rasmus; the boy doesn’t lie, and he wasn’t mistaken. But that isn’t enough, she needs to tie Fredrik down with facts. Dissect his lies with the knife of truth.

  She makes lasagne, and they eat at the kitchen table. She doesn’t want the boys to notice anything, but they look at her quizzically as she talks about how fun it would be to see a film together.

  The fourth chair is empty. Usually this would be nothing out of the ordinary, but it is as if she can’t stand to see it like that.

  ‘What’s up, Mum?’ says Daniel.

  Rasmus gets up and leaves the table without a word. She lets him go. Daniel stays where he is and looks down at his plate of lasagne. They keep eating. The food is ungainly and difficult to chew. The mince and white sauce fill her mouth and disgust her.

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ she says.

  She wishes she could say the words to overcome the silence she has accustomed them to. She just wants them to be happy. For them to live their lives with confidence. She reaches for Daniel’s hands and caresses them, as if saying grace. The boy stiffens and slowly withdraws his hands as if they have been burnt.

  After putting things away in the kitchen, she stands aimlessly looking out of the window. She should have been more vigilant; it is incomprehensible that he has been able to deceive her like this. But she has trusted him, and she has loved him. She barely remembers who she was before she met him. A whole life together, and now this. She drinks wine alone in the kitchen and watches bad TV. The boys come downstairs and say goodnight, none of them mentioning Fredrik at all, but she can sense their dogged worry.

  It is almost midnight. Then she hears him at the front door. There is a faint ‘Hello’ from the hallway. She has been in the study, going over his social media again, raging, stubborn, and she gets up. Suddenly she doesn’t know how she will manage to go down to meet him. No, she can’t do it. She stands there, with blood rushing through her head, and pulls herself together to step forward, to go down the stairs and into the abyss.

  Fredrik is standing in the kitchen drinking a glass of water.

  ‘Rasmus was in a fight at school today,’ she says.

  He turns around and looks at her, worried. In the clear light of the kitchen he is transformed and has become a stranger. She has the uncanny feeling that he is someone completely different.

  She explains what the teacher saw. Fredrik stands by the kitchen counter and listens with a serious expression. She notices that he prefers to look out of the window rather than looking her in the eye. ‘Dear God,’ he sighs. ‘Yes, that’s serious.’ She has to fight to contain the impulse to wag her finger and say: ‘You did this. You have made Rasmus feel this bad.’

  It occurs to her that Fredrik may have forced him to lie before. Perhaps Rasmus is actually a totally normal boy who shouts because he is being crushed by all the secrets.

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ he says.

  ‘I’ve already talked to him. He has quite enough on his conscience.’

  You can’t be allowed to frighten the boy into yet more silence, she thinks. What a shit! How can he be so coolly calculating? It surprises her.

  Does he suspect that Rasmus has told her? But if he is worried that he has been discovered, he is hiding it well. ‘We have to hope he doesn’t become more withdrawn,’ he says with his back to her, and she has the strange feeling that his face is contorting, that he might turn to face her at any moment and smile scornfully.

  The blue light bathes Fredrik’s impassive face as he scrolls restlessly through his feed with a finger on his mobile. She pretends to read a book – it is a taxing charade. Then, finally, he puts away his phone.

  She waits.

  When she is sure that he is sleeping, she quietly sits up in bed. She can’t help bending down to smell him, but he smells of his usual shampoo. Then she carefully puts her bare feet on the floor, and shuffles around the bed, taking care not to step on the points where the floor creaks.

  His mobile is lying on the bedside table, her fingers find it in the darkness.

  Standing in her study, she opens the safe and pulls out a leather case. She works quickly, opening the case on the desk, pulling out a USB and inserting a cable. Her fingers are deft. USB to cable, cable to phone. She has done it many times before, but never to her own husband. The mobile vibrates softly to confirm the code has been installed.

  She waits for it to take hold – it should only take a minute or so. All is quiet.

  That is how easy it is to cross a line. She has promised herself never to do this, but ‘never’ is a word for amateurs and those newly in love. Given the situation, targeted surveillance seems a reasonable measure. She doesn’t want this, but Fredrik has forced her hand.

  In the early days, he had always been curious. He often asked about counter-terrorism, bugging, and how to carry out surveillance. Was she a spy? Was she chasing Russians? She had laughed and, because of secrecy, all she would offer in reply was a smile and teasing kisses. Over time, he came to understand the depth of her silence. He realised that her work was not only a job, but a life that he would never share with her.

  It is ready.

  She is tempted to wake him up and show him how it works; he would have found it interesting. It is a strange idea to involve Fredrik in the surveillance of himself: a tickling rivulet between laughter and tears.

  She sits in the dark in the study. She can see him on the screen as a stationary point on the map – or rather, his phone – fixed with precise coordinates south of Brussels. She really ought to wait to search his phone until she is in the office, a safe environment, but she can’t wait.

  She wants to go through all his messages and emails and find out exactly what happened, yet she hesitates, her mouth dry. She barely dares to look at the screen because she knows that once she finds the evidence for his infidelity the pain will be unbearable.

  She hastily flicks through some messages and emails and soon finds a thread about meeting up for coffee. From someone called Chloë, a week ago. A few days earlier there is a brief and slightly flirtatious exchange with someone called Amanda about having lunch together. Are you coming out with us? asks someone called Alice three weeks earlier. Someone called Heloise asks one Thursday whether he is already at the restaurant. They send meeting times and addresses, links and files. She glances at the date and thinks back, trying to remember what he said at breakfast, what he was like when he came home. She reads the names and memorises them all. Alice. Catherine. Heloise. Marie, Chloë, Amanda. These women clearly know him, and she has no idea who they are. Judging by their tone, they are competent and intelligent women. Many of them seem to be colleagues as well as friends. Perhaps he’s sleeping with all of them. She must consider them all as threats.

  Naturally, he is in contact with a string of men: Jacques, Patrice, Thomas, Jean, Martin, Timothy, Mats. Some of the names are familiar and she wonders how much they know about what Fredrik is up to. Perhaps there is a silent agreement amongst them to keep her out of the loop; the thought is so humiliating that she is obliged to push it to one side.

  It is as if she has glimpsed a completely new dimension of his life, populated by people she didn’t know existed. Why does she know so little about her own husband? Even his tone is different. He is factual, briskly professional. Sometimes, in an occasional guarded joke, she is reminded of the Fredrik she fell in lov
e with long ago and whom she thought she knew. Who is he, who is this enemy?

  They are in a hurry the next morning. The rush provides a good cover. She makes coffee and talks to the boys and sets her gaze everywhere except on Fredrik.

  On the way out to the car he says he is going to Copenhagen and will be gone for the night. She can see on her mobile that he has indeed entered several trips to Copenhagen in their shared calendar. What a bitter parody! The calendar usually gives her a pleasant feeling that their lives are in harmony; she wonders which of all his meetings and trips are actually real. A pulsing spot of pain is growing across the top of her head.

  All four of them are in the car together, as a family, a habit that might stop at any moment. She watches Rasmus lumber towards the school playground and thinks sadly that all she wants is to catch up with him and hug him and tell him it will be okay.

  After dropping off the boys, she and Fredrik head for the city centre. She bites her cheek, bringing tears to her eyes, because all she wants to do is scream, ‘You shit! How could you?’ But however exquisite that battle might be, she would lose it.

  She drives through the city in silence while a light drizzle falls onto the windscreen. She even manages to be normal enough to say, ‘Have a good time in Copenhagen, see you tomorrow.’ She watches him hurry to the main entrance of the glass skyscraper in northern Brussels where he works, where Chloë and all the others are waiting for him.

  Sitting in her office, she contemplates the nebula of thin lines on her screen. More than three hundred names joined together in a dense cosmos of phone calls and emails. Slowly, she twists and turns Fredrik’s network and clicks on names and numbers.

  Metadata refers to the impersonal, precise details of where, when, how long, and which phone numbers a mobile has been in contact with. Interpersonal communication as a mathematical model, free from emotions and always accurate. Metadata usually puts her in a good mood. She usually enjoys opening up a mobile and examining the vibrant life within. But this is different, because the surveillance she is directing at him also covers her and the boys. There they are: Bente, Daniel and Rasmus Jensen, reduced to nodes in his network.