The Boy in the Suitcase

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  SIGITA WALKED TO the nearest trolley stop on legs that felt disconnected. The trolley stop did not represent a conscious decision, more a conditioned reflex. She had lived in this neighborhood herself, once, in two attic rooms in one of the wooden houses where the well was anything but decorative. For three years she had climbed the narrow stairs every day with a couple of ten-liter plastic water containers in her hands, one for Mrs. Jovaišienė , who owned the house, and one for herself. If she needed to bathe, she had to use the public facilities some blocks away, so usually she took sponge baths and relied heavily on a wonder-product called Nuvola, which came in an aerosol can; one sprayed it into one’s hair, waited for a few minutes, and then brushed vigorously, after which everything would be as clean as if one had just showered. Or that was the theory. Once a week she borrowed Mrs. Jovaišienė’s little hand-cranked washing machine, but most of the time she just washed her clothes in the sink, like they had done back home in Tauragė.

  Mrs. Jovaišienė was probably dead by now. She had been over ninety. Sigita deliberately avoided Vykinto gatvė, where the house was, although that would have been the shorter route. She didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to be reminded of that time. Mikas was all that mattered now, she told herself.

  Back home in Pašilaičiai, the flat was unchanged. White. New. Empty. She closed the blinds to the afternoon sun and lay down on the bed with all her clothes on. A few seconds later, she was asleep.

  THE YEAR SIGITA became pregnant, winter had come early to Tauragė. The first snows fell at the end of October. Her father had just taken over the position of caretaker in their building, after Bronislavas Tomkus had moved out. In practice, this meant that Sigita had to help her mother shovel the walks before she could go off to school and her mother could leave for her job at the post office. Her father had “the thing with his back,” of course. He did insist on directing his troops, though, entertaining them with a series of humorous remarks to keep up morale.

  “It’s the secret weapon of the Russians, that is,” he said, pointing to the packed snow. “Direct from Siberia. But they won’t get us down while we have good, strong women like you!”

  He jokingly praised Sigita and her mother as brave defenders of the Independence to everyone passing on the half-cleared sidewalk. It was all rather unbearable.

  At least the cold weather meant that Sigita could wear heavy sweaters without arousing comment. She had begun to cut all phys-ed classes, but she knew it was only a matter of time before Miss Bendikaitė would contact the headmaster, who in his turn would contact her parents.

  Sexual education was not in any way part of the curriculum at Tauragė Primary and Secondary School, but Sigita did realize what it meant when she had missed her period in August, and again in September. She just wasn’t exactly sure what to do about it. Theoretically, she could have bought a pregnancy test at the pharmacy in City Square, but Mrs. Raguckienė, who sat at the register, had gone to school with her mother. And in any case, what good would a test do? She already knew what was wrong.

  She hadn’t told Darius. By the end of August, he had been sent to the States to stay with his uncle and attend an American high school for a year. Sigita rather thought that this unprecedented generosity owed much to the fact that his mother didn’t consider Sigita a suitable girlfriend for her golden boy. Sigita had written him a letter, but without mentioning her condition. Her own mother sorted all mail outbound from Tauragė, and the airmail paper was so terribly, transparently thin.

  She missed him. She missed him so much it made her breasts and her abdomen ache. She counted this longing as one more item on the list of sins she had omitted to tell Father Paulius about, but she had no plans to confess. Eventually she realized that the tenderness in her breasts meant something other than merely thwarted passion. But to write the words: I am pregnant, or, You’re going to be a father. … No. She just couldn’t do it.

  One Thursday night in the beginning of December she packed as many clothes as she could fit into her gym bag. It had to be the gym bag, because the suitcases were kept in a locked storage room in the building’s long, windowless attic, and besides, walking down Dariaus ir Girėno gatvė with a suitcase would definitely cause eyebrows to lift. Someone might even try to stop her. It also had to be Thursday, because that was the day when her mother went to visit Granny Julija, and her father always took that opportunity to go play cards with some of his old mates from the canning factory.

  She left no letter. She would have had no idea what to say in it. Only her little brother Tomas saw her leave.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Out,” she said, unable to even look at him.

  “Mama said you had to mind me.”

  “You are twelve years old, Tomas. You can mind yourself by now.”

  She caught the last bus to Vilnius. It took nearly five hours to get there, by which time it was past midnight, and the big city of her dreams had closed for the night. There were no trolley busses, and she couldn’t afford a taxi. She asked the busdriver for directions and began to walk through the silent streets, with the freezing snow crunching under the soles of her boots.

  Her aunt was astonished to see her. She had to say her name twice before Jolita even recognized her.

  “But Sigita. What are you doing here? Why didn’t your mother call me?”

  “I wanted to visit you. Mama doesn’t know.”

  Jolita was older than her mother, but looked younger. The hair brushing her shoulders was a uniform black, and a pair of huge golden loops dangled from her earlobes. She was wearing a royal blue kimono dressing gown, but despite this, it didn’t seem that she had been in bed when Sigita rang the bell. From the flat behind her came a series of soft jazz notes and the smell of cigarette smoke.

  Jolita’s penciled eyebrows shot up.

  “You wanted to visit me?” she said.

  “Yes,” said Sigita. And then she started crying.

  “Little darling… .”

  “You have to help me,” sobbed Sigita. “I’m going to have a baby.”

  “Oh dear Lord, sweetheart,” said Tante Jolita, drawing her into a silky, tobacco-scented, and very comforting embrace.

  KARIN IS DEAD. Karin is dead. Karin is dead.

  The thought was pounding away inside Nina’s skull as she turned onto Kildevej and headed back toward Copenhagen. She was nearly certain now that no one had followed her from the cottage. The first harried miles on the narrow road through Tibirke, she had checked her mirror every other second.

  Karin is dead, she thought, gripping the steering wheel still harder. She had tried to wipe her hands on a crumbled, jellybeansticky tissue she had found in the glove compartment, but the blood had had time to dry and lay like a thin rust-colored film over her palm and fingertips.

  Unbidden, the feel of Karin’s skull came back to her. Like one of those big, luxurious, foil-wrapped Easter eggs Morten’s parents always bought for Ida and Anton, and which always got dropped on the floor somehow. The shell under the foil would feel flattened and frail, just like Karin’s head. She had been able to feel individual fragments of bone moving under the scalp as she probed.

  She had been killed. Beaten to death. Someone had hit her until she was dead.

  Nina hunched over the steering wheel, trying to control her nausea. Why would anyone want to kill Karin? Karin was one of the least dangerous people Nina had ever met, big-bosomed in a rather maternal way that had always made Nina think of warm milk and homemade bread. Secure. She had always been secure.

  Nina wiped her eyes with one hand; she felt her gaze drawn to the unwinding ribbon of the road’s central white line and had to yank it back up with an act of will.

  They had always stuck together, back at nursing school. Studied together, gone to parties and Friday drinks together, even though on the face of it they didn’t have much in common. Nina was small and skinny and went in for the pale, doomed, and emaciated look. Karin, on the other hand, would ha
ve looked completely at home in a propaganda film from the Third Reich. Tall, blond, and buxom, with generous hips and smooth, golden skin. And she had been so wonderfully uncomplicated. Not stupid, not at all, just—uncomplicated, and with an overwhelming potential for happiness. Or that, at least, was how Nina had seen her, and it might have been why she stuck around, hoping for some of that happiness potential to rub off, needing to be with someone whose world was just as round and perfect as Karin herself was.

  That Karin, in the end, had been the one who found it most difficult to realize her dream of a family, of husband and children, had always been a mystery to Nina. But for some reason or other, the men around Karin never stayed. Nina was the one who had acquired the whole package without ever really wanting it, and that may have been what came between them in the end.

  While Nina had had her first child and gone off to save the world in foreign climes, Karin had worked as a private nurse to a Danish family stationed in Brussels, and later at some posh and probably hair-raisingly expensive clinic in Switzerland. They tried to meet during those interludes when they were both in Denmark at the same time, but it became more and more obvious that the distance between them was growing.

  Like the time when she had been pregnant with Anton. Very pregnant, actually, and very nearly due. She could still recall the hurt, offended look in Karin’s eyes when Nina opened the door to her in the new flat in Østerbro she and Morten had just moved into. It had been that rarest of times when everything seemed right with the world, and she had felt, perhaps for the first and only time in her life, at peace with herself. She had gained fifty-five pounds and enjoyed every ounce of it, feeling pleasantly round, firm and soft at the same time.

  Karin hadn’t said anything. Not even congratulations.

  Since that visit, the phone calls had come at greater and greater intervals, and when she had seen Karin at that ill-fated Christmas party, already a little soused and wearing a pair of glittery reindeer antlers on a headband, it had been four years since they had last met.

  Nina, too, had become rather drunk rather quickly, but she did remember Karin telling her that she was home to stay. That she had found a great job near … Kalundborg, wasn’t it? And what else?

  Nina frowned, trying to recall the scene more precisely. There had been little handcrafted schnapps glasses and chubby Santashaped candles on the table, vats of beer, and for some reason the kind of confetti people usually used for New Year’s.

  Karin was a private nurse again, she had said, and she was raking it in. Nina suddenly remembered seeing a peculiar weariness in Karin’s eyes. She had had entirely too much schnapps, and she sat there twisting a plastic beer glass between her hands and telling Nina exactly how much she brought home every month, after taxes. And that she didn’t even have to pay rent because there was this great flat that went with the job, with a brilliant view of the bay. The dim light deepened the furrows on her brow and made little vertical lines appear around her mouth, and for the first time ever, Nina had felt a dislike for her friend. It was as if she didn’t know her anymore, and as the evening wore on, she had been full of contempt for the choices Karin had made. They were both dead drunk by then, even more so than when they used to party together when they were students. And Nina was feeling tired, and mean, and sick at heart.

  Perhaps that was why she had said it. That she was still saving the world. That she was happy. That she had the perfect family, and the perfect husband, and that she spent her spare time helping all the children, women, and crippled little men no one else in all of fucking Denmark seemed to care about.

  She had told Karin about the network.

  The first part of it was a pack of lies, but it felt fantastic to say it. The rest was true. She did spend a lot of time on the network. Too much, thought Morten. Sometimes he complained that she was only in it for the adrenalin fix, but it was more than that; she still needed to save the world, still needed to feel that she wasn’t powerless.

  Nina wiped her eyes again, and eased her foot off the accelerator. This was not a motorway, although she was not the only driver who seemed to be driving like it was. The boy was quiet now. He crouched on the seat next to her, his knees drawn up to his chest, staring wide-eyed at the fields slipping past, and the dark forms of dozing horses under the trees.

  She thought of the words that had tumbled out of him in that desperate wail, and tried to recall the unfamiliar sounds. The word “Mama” had been easily distinguishable, but other than that Nina could not identify a single syllable. Not one. Nor could she recognize the general tone of it. It was probably some Eastern European language, she thought, especially considering the boy’s fair hair and skin. On the other hand, she didn’t think it was either Russian or Polish. Not enough z-sounds. She cursed at her lack of linguistic skill and rubbed the bridge of her nose with one hand. God, she was tired. It felt as if she had been awake for days, and she had to force her eyes to focus on the digits of the car’s clock.

  8:58.

  She wondered what Morten and the children were doing now. Ida would probably be in her room, hypnotized by one of her endless computer games. And Anton would be in bed, bedtime story over and done with. If Morten had been in a mood to read to him, of course. He might have been too angry. He had asked Nina to stay away, hadn’t he? Or what was it he had said? Nina could no longer recall the exact words.

  Had he asked her to come home?

  Probably not. Nina felt a clean, cold calm spread from her chest to her stomach.

  Morten didn’t get angry very often.

  In many ways, he reminded her of those big, soft dogs who let their ears get nipped and their tails get tugged day in and day out. The kind of animal you are completely certain is the nicest dog in the world, until one day it explodes in a fit of rage and sinks its teeth into the leg of the pesky seven-year-old boy next door.

  Morten was actually capable of scaring Nina a little on such occasions, especially because his anger was directed at the whole world even though the spark that triggered it was usually something she had done. When they had had a bad fight, he became curt and dismissive with Ida and Anton. As if they were an extension of her and all the things about her that he couldn’t stand.

  On such rare days Morten found it hard to cope with Anton, and Ida was asked to turn off the television in her room for no better reason than that it annoyed him that it was on.

  Nina pictured him now, sitting alone on the sofa with the laptop open on the low coffee table in front of him, restlessly surfing job ads, trekking equipment and cheap trips to Borneo or Novo Sibirsk. Anything that would give him a fleeting sense of what life could be like without her.

  Her skin suddenly felt chill despite the muggy heat still trapped in the car. What was she going to do? She would learn nothing more from Karin now than she already had, and that was practically nothing.

  SHE LEFT ROUTE 16 by Farum and stopped at a Q8. Stiffly, she turned in her seat to look at the boy. His eyes were closed now, and he lay huddled against the opposite door like small, limp animal. He must be completely exhausted, she thought.

  She was no more than a few minutes away from the Coal-House Camp. And what then? Tuck him into one of the baby blue cots in Ellen’s House? Sit by his bedside, praying and hoping that the man from the railway station wouldn’t find them?

  He had already found Karin. She was almost certain about that. Found her and killed her, despite the fact that Karin had left her job and the flat with the great view of the bay and had tried to hide in a small summer cottage on the Northern coast.

  The boy didn’t stir as she got out of the car. She closed the door as gently as possible so as not to wake him, edged past the trailers for rent, and headed for the store. To one side of the door was a wooden pallet loaded with firewood bagged in purple sacking, on the other a huge metal basket full of sprinkler fluid promising to be especially effective against dead insects on the windshield. Right now it seemed completely absurd that there were people i
n the world who cared deeply about such things.

  Inside, the boy behind the counter, much too young for his job, eyed her with the special wariness convenience store staff acquire after dark: Is this it? Is this where it gets unpleasant and dangerous, is this where armed strangers stick a gun in my face and tell me to open the till? The fact that she was female immediately lowered his anxiety levels, and she tried to smile disarmingly to soothe him even further, but the smile felt more like a rictus.

  Oh hell, she thought. I still have blood on my hands. Maybe on the T-shirt too. She hadn’t even thought to check. What the hell was she using for brains? She tucked her hands into her pockets and asked to borrow a telephone. And perhaps a bathroom?

  Helpfully, he showed her into a small lounge-like area at the back of the store. She opted for the bathroom first, and used the cloyingly perfumed soap from the dispenser to rub the last rusty remnant from her nails and the wrinkles on her knuckles. Miraculously, the T-shirt had escaped smears and stains. She didn’t have the patience to use the blower, but wiped her hands on her jeans instead.

  Then the telephone.

  She dialed the number for North-Zealand Police, helpfully provided on the message board by the phone together with details on how to reach the local cab company, Auto-Aid, hospital emergency room and other useful services. But as the line established the connection with a click, she caught sight of herself on a surveillance monitor mounted above the counter.

  “Nordsjælland Police.”

  Nina stood motionless while clumsy thoughts waddled through her tired brain. These days, there was no such thing as a truly anonymous call.

  “Hello? This is Nordsjælland Police, how can I help you?”

  You can’t, thought Nina, and hung up. The certain knowledge that there was nothing more she could do for Karin came back to her. She had to concentrate on the boy.

  HE HADN’T MOVED. He was still curled against the door of the car, and she wondered if she should put him in the back seat instead, where he would be more comfortable. But the feeling of being hunted and observed had come back. She started the Fiat and turned onto Frederiksborgvej. At least she felt more awake now, and coherent thought no longer appeared an unsurmountable task. She hit the motorway at the Værløse exit and joined the flow of cars gliding towards the city in the dense, warm summer night. One thing, at least, was clear now. Her only key to the mystery of where the boy came from was the boy himself.