You Disappear: A Novel

by Jungersen, Christian

Our folding clotheshorse is also in the kitchen. For once, Frederik’s remembered to hang up the clothes that don’t get tumble-dried, just like I’ve asked him to.

  “It’s great that you’ve hung up the laundry!” I shout. “I really appreciate it!”

  Back in the living room, I see some circulars spread out on the dinner table. A plate protrudes from the top bookshelf, and when I take it down I discover a jam sandwich that looks like it’s been there a couple of days without me spotting it.

  Then I notice that one of the papers on the table is damp. I lift it up and see my cream-colored Odd Molly blouse lying beneath it. Frederik must have gotten distracted when he was about to hang it up. I walk back into the kitchen and hang it on the clotheshorse. Some of the printing ink has rubbed off on it, so it’ll have to be washed again. Perhaps it can still be salvaged.

  “Niklas?” I call out.

  There’s no answer.

  Upstairs, I knock on his door. I look inside, but he’s out. Of course.

  So I go into Frederik’s workshop, but he’s gone too. On the floor is a rolled-up poster that used to lie in my closet. Frederik must have been meaning to hang it up, which would also explain the hammer I saw in the kitchen.

  I find him in our room. He’s lying in bed with his clothes on. I’ve found him here often enough, but today he’s pulled the comforter up over himself and drawn the curtains.

  “How are you?” I ask.

  He doesn’t say anything, just stares at a spot on the wall. He’s different, I can tell right away.

  I sit down on my side of the bed and wait.

  At last he says, “Mia, there’s something I’ve been thinking about.”

  “Yes?”

  “Something I’d like to ask you.”

  “Yes.”

  Another long pause. The curtains in here are pale, with a rather loose weave; they don’t do a very good job of keeping out the light. One of them trembles slightly. The light in Majorca, I think, early one morning.

  “Do you think it was wrong of me to invest that money?”

  I don’t know what to say. This is so major, so different. I stretch out a hand and touch his hair. And he lets me.

  “Yes. I think it was wrong,” I say in my mildest voice. I smile at him, though he doesn’t see it.

  “But I would have gotten the money back when the markets went up, you know. Then I’d have given more back to the school than I borrowed. We could have fixed up the B wing.”

  “But it really wasn’t certain that the markets would have gone up, Frederik. It wasn’t a sure thing, was it.”

  He doesn’t get angry with me, nor does he start weeping. He listens. The curtains, like in Majorca. It grows a shade darker in the room.

  Then he asks, “Do you think Laust is very upset about it?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Is that why he doesn’t call anymore?”

  He pulls the comforter over his head and curls up in a ball, and I can see by his breathing that he’s crying. He’s trying to hide from me; it means something to him that I don’t see his face. Laust and me and the school and all of us; we exist for him again.

  I want to lie at his side and cry with him, from sorrow and guilt over what he’s done to his school. And from sorrow and guilt over my own betrayal.

  I press myself into his foreign scent, his foreign body. I haven’t been so close to him since he became sick. Perhaps the same images are flooding us both: Saxtorph on the last day of school. The flag waving, the happy children, the staff, and all the teacher friends that we still talk to. Frederik making a speech up on stage, and pulling it off so well that everyone praises him afterward.

  And the prison where I visit him: electronic doors slamming, guards behind tiny glass windows, Frederik slumped over when I arrive; him shriveling up and slowly going to pieces.

  And him getting better—so that perhaps we take a walk like normal people, perhaps we can have friends to dinner like in the old days.

  And Bernard’s lips. His body pressing against mine. He was doing the pressing too. He was kissing.

  • • •

  Early in the evening, Bernard calls.

  “We can’t see each other anymore,” he says.

  “What are we going to do about the case then?”

  “I’ll help you find a good lawyer.”

  I hold my tongue. From what I’ve learned about him in the past two months, I should have known that this was the way it would have to end.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “There’s nothing you have to apologize for.”

  “But can’t we continue to talk on the phone?”

  “It won’t work.”

  “But just about the best way to support our sons?”

  I can hear the stiffness in his voice; each word carefully chosen before he called. As if the least nudge in an unexpected direction might break him.

  “I’m sorry, Mia.”

  “It would be better for our kids, we really don’t need to—”

  “I can’t do it.”

  “We were friends,” I say. And now I hear in my voice that we no longer are.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to miss you.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “So now you won’t call me anymore?”

  “No.”

  “And I shouldn’t call you either?”

  “I’m asking you not to.”

  My fingers feel stiff as soon as I hang up. I have to stretch and flex them several times, just to verify that I still can. It feels slow, it feels strenuous. My arms and legs; I can hardly move. A jeep in the desert, a jeep that’s driven thousands of miles but whose engine has seized up. It rolls along slowly in neutral, then stops somewhere in the dunes.

  Without tears, without expression, without any stops for little tasks on the way, I manage to fight my way up to our bed. I’m going to lie here a long time, I think to myself. I lie down in the same position as Frederik. I’m going to remain here for months, looking at the wall, at that sign on the ceiling.

  It’s dark when Thorkild calls. I haven’t slept, haven’t stirred, haven’t gotten up to eat dinner. And Frederik, who in the meantime has gone to the workshop, hasn’t noticed.

  Thorkild always sounds serious. I think he was that way before his son became ill, but I’m no longer sure.

  “Frederik sounded quite upset on the phone this afternoon,” he says. “I just wanted to hear—”

  “Yes, we’re pretty upset,” I say. “The school and everything, it’s just devastating him now.”

  “But in a way that’s good, right? A sign that he’s still getting better?”

  “Yes, it’s good.”

  “Something to celebrate, right?”

  “Yes.”

  The conversation doesn’t last much longer.

  The next day there’s a letter from Bernard’s firm, informing us that we now have a new lawyer by the name of Louise Rambøll. I manage to make it through the school day. I don’t know if my students notice anything wrong with me, but as soon as I’m home I go back to bed.

  Frederik is already lying on his side of the mattress. I start to console him but have to stop; I can tell that it’ll only make me bitter, for I need solace as much as he does, and I never get any. We lie under our respective comforters with our backs to each other, the air still; it’s stuffy in here.

  I get up, cry, go to bed, cry, take some Tylenol because the roof of my mouth hurts so much from crying, get up, take a shower, cry, go to bed again.

  I’m down in the kitchen making a jam sandwich with the cheap jam from the blue plastic bucket I bought for Frederik when I hear laughter out in the street. Through the window I see Niklas and Emilie. She has a sweet way of laughing with a single tone, like the signal call among some pygmies I once saw a documentary about.

  They grow quiet as they approach our front door. Will she come in here again after her experience with Frederik? Yes, I can hear them
in the hallway. Brave girl.

  They mustn’t see me in this state. I slip into the unlit living room, just in case they want to get something from the kitchen, and I sit down in the armchair. My sight adjusts to the darkness of the room, my hearing to the silence.

  Some of my friends have told me about their teenagers having sex at home. When we were their age, we too would have sex when our parents were elsewhere in the house, but we were quiet. My friends’ kids aren’t; there are moans and grunts and smacks regardless of who’s nearby. Youngsters have gotten so unself-conscious, though I can’t imagine Niklas being that way.

  Have the two of them done it before? Of course they have. Has he done it with other girls? I don’t think so, but what do I know? Are they going to do it tonight? Of course they are.

  And you can’t help but see it unfold before your eyes. The smooth young bright faces, the lean bodies, the swelling red-brown genitals pumping away at each other. You can’t help but see their laughing, kissing, and groping, or the quiver of their faces in orgasm.

  In the darkness here, I can’t hear a thing. I listen but no, there’s nothing. I’ve got to make sure that Frederik doesn’t try to barge in on them. I have to protect them.

  Quickly I tiptoe up the stairs. Outside Niklas’s room, I remain standing a little while, and again I hear Emilie’s laugh—softer now, more of a giggle, while Niklas speaks with a mild adult voice that I’ve never heard before. The voices stop—and then?

  I ought to walk away. I hear a light clattering noise in there. What’ll I say if the door opens? My mind goes blank. I should definitely walk away.

  The sounds are so muted now as to be almost inaudible—a YouTube clip? Some synthetic-sounding voice? Is that Niklas speaking again? Silence? Breathing? Gasps?

  A few steps down the hall, I open the door to Frederik’s workshop. The light here is cold and overwhelming after the darkness of the hallway and the room downstairs. He sits at his desk, bent over some technical diagram. He doesn’t react when I come in; he probably has no idea if Niklas is even home.

  I remain silent too, standing just inside the door. How different it would all be if it were Bernard who sat there, in the same posture and the same clothes, bent over the same sheet of paper. I’d walk over to him without speaking, take his head in my hands, turn his face up to mine. And then I’d do it again, the thing I mustn’t—I would—I’d kiss him.

  He would laugh, speak, do something. And it would be something that had meaning, something that fit the occasion, that fit him in particular and me in particular—because he’s a real person and not just a diseased brain with a body attached.

  Or no, no words. I would let him know that with just my eyes, and immediately he’d understand. And then he’d rise, and we’d press our bodies together, in a way I haven’t pressed my body against anyone’s in more than half a year.

  He won’t get sick. He won’t call later and say that we can never see each other again. This time we can keep going. And we’ll unbutton each other’s pants right there on the desk that stands in front of me, there where my foolish, sick husband sits with nothing but speakers in his head.

  I look at Frederik’s face. He’s gotten small pimples on the top of his forehead these past few months, and fat deposits on his cheeks; all that unhealthy food. What’ll he do if Emilie’s noisy when she comes? He must be just as starved for it as me. Will he try to go in there? Will he throw himself on me? Will he become aggressive and unbearable so that I have to hit him again?

  “Come, we’re going for a walk,” I say.

  He stares at me, only aware now that I’m in the room. “Now? It’s nighttime! We never go for walks at night.”

  “No, but tonight we’re going to.”

  “I’m sitting here in the middle of deciding whether—”

  “It’ll have to wait for another time. Come. We’re going now.”

  “Why?”

  “We just are. Come.”

  “But I don’t want to go for a walk.”

  Since the operation, it’s been me who decides everything here at home. Which friends we’re going to call, and when; what we’re going to eat, and when; which websites we visit, and when. He grouses about it all the time, but he always does what I say anyway.

  “Let’s go,” I say, pulling him out past Niklas’s room. I still don’t hear any sounds from in there. Downstairs, I throw Frederik his jacket, the lining the color I imagine Bernard’s pubic hair must be, and then I drag him out onto our small residential street, with the high hedges standing there so peaceful and lovely in the night. This is where we live.

  Which Alcoholic Would You Prefer as a Son-in-Law?

  TOM BUCHMANN

  Our society risks becoming much more callous in its treatment of deviants.

  Tom Buchmann has an MS in sociology and serves as a senior researcher at the Center for Future Studies.

  IN 2009, AFTER IT WAS revealed that Tiger Woods had had at least 11 extramarital affairs, it didn’t take long for the golf star to be admitted to a rehabilitation facility for the treatment of sex addiction. Woods wasn’t a mendacious, egotistic person—no no, he was merely the victim of an illness.

  After similarly embarrassing public episodes, other celebrities have explained that they too suffer from disorders, including various forms of dependency and the inability to control anger. We’re inclined to shrug off these statements with a quick laugh and not think any more about them, but in point of fact the celebrities are right. They haven’t wanted to take drugs, or to destroy their marriages and careers with angry outbursts. They’ve never consciously wished for lives like that.

  In recent years, science has found genetic and neurological explanations for a host of human weaknesses, including:

  • alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse

  • lack of concentration

  • poor social skills

  • excessive fits of rage

  • timidity

  • self-centeredness

  • loss of initiative

  The latest research has shown that all of these character traits have a physiological basis—and that if it’s at all possible to change them, it isn’t simply by “pulling yourself together.”

  As a result, we live in an era when our shared sense of what it means to be human and exercise responsibility has been changing at breakneck speed. The way we think about our impossible son (ADHD), our boozing uncle (addictive personality), and our killjoy mother (hidden depression) is shifting. Who are these people really? And how should we relate to them if they’re not to blame for their own actions?

  IN THE COURSE OF the next few years, many other human traits will become closely associated with neurological functions and dysfunctions. This is something that can be stated with complete confidence, since it’s an unavoidable consequence of the huge breakthroughs in brain research.

  If someone is lazy, for instance, soon we may be able to measure what it is in his or her brain that is causing the laziness. And perhaps all lazy people will be able to address this trait merely by taking a pill—just as we’ve seen with the tremendously widespread use of anti-anxiety drugs and antidepressants, and of concentration-enhancing drugs for children with ADHD.

  The causes of numerous other personality traits will doubtless be determined in the same fashion; the only thing we don’t know is the exact order in which they’ll be identified. They may include the reasons for things like compulsive lying, pigheadedness, and poor long-term planning. And we’ll be able to address some of these traits pharmaceutically.

  Accordingly, human personality will become something one can increasingly design and purchase. Certain coveted personality traits will require the newest, most advanced treatments—perhaps even surgical or electromagnetic intervention in the brain. In this way, these characteristics will become status symbols in the course of a couple of decades, just like costly cosmetic surgery has been in recent years.

  This development isn’t an abstraction
or something that belongs to the distant future. It’s already happening now, and in a few years it will pick up a great deal of speed. Consider for instance how rapidly the ways we think about depression, childhood hyperactivity, and male impotence have changed after having stood essentially still for millennia.

  OF COURSE IT IS DIFFICULT, if not impossible, to predict how our culture will react to new knowledge about how we really function. But the following thought experiment may provide a clue.

  Imagine that you know two men who both have serious drinking problems, and who both hit their wives and children when they are drunk. You find the way they treat their families deeply disturbing. Brain scans reveal that one of the men is neurologically normal. They also show that, neurologically, the second man is highly disposed to alcoholism and violence—and in fact, on the basis of his scans, the specialists expect him to behave at least as terribly as he does.

  What is your attitude to each of these men? Would you be more forgiving of one than the other? Would you be able to be friends with one and not the other—and if so, which one? Take your time mulling it over, for the answers to these questions are far from straightforward.

  Your reaction to the man who is neurologically normal is probably reminiscent of the way many people regarded violent alcoholics 20 years ago, when few people knew that alcoholism could be considered a disease. This man has made some despicable choices and quite likely attracts your greatest moral condemnation.

  By contrast, your reaction to the man who is neurologically abnormal should provide some indication of where our culture will stand in 20 years—and not only with respect to violence and alcoholism, but also with respect to countless other human traits that will be mapped out in the brain by that time.

  Many of us would feel a certain sympathy for this man if we knew he was an unwilling victim of his neurological flaws. (How awful it must be, to be relentlessly compelled to hurt the ones you love!) We would be inclined to forgive him—for after all, the doctors have said that he can be expected to behave at least as horribly as he does. Perhaps it has required an extraordinary effort on his part simply not to murder his family. He’s pulled himself together and done the best he could.