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 in 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.
T
HE PHONE WOKE
her. It was Darius.
“Sigita, damnit. You set the cops on me!”
“No. Or … I went back and told them it wasn’t you. That you didn’t have him.”
“Then kindly explain why two not very civil gentlemen from the Polizei were here a moment ago, turning over the whole place!”
He was really mad at her, she could tell. But she was pleased. Gužas was actually doing something, she thought. Ballpoint-clicking Gužas. He had contacted the police in Düsseldorf, which was where Darius lived at the moment.
“Darius, they have to check. When the parents are divorced, that’s the first thing they think of.”
“We’re not divorced.”
“Separated, then.”
“Did you really think I would take him away from you?”
She tried to tell him about the woman in the cotton coat and the mistaken conclusions drawn by Mrs. Mažekienė, but he was too angry to listen.
“Honestly, Sigita. This is too fucking much!”
Click. He was gone.
Dizzy and disoriented, she sat on the bed for a little while. She had been asleep for less than an hour. It was still afternoon. And she still had a headache. She opened the door to the balcony, hoping it would clear the air, and more importantly, her mind.
That seemed to be a signal Mrs. Mažekienė had been waiting for for a while. She was sitting outside on her own balcony, surrounded by a jungle of tomato plants and hydrangeas.
“Oh, you’re home,” she said. “Any news?”
“No.”
“The police were here,” she said. “I had to make a statement!” She sounded proud of the fact.
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them about the young couple, and about the car. And … erh … they asked about you, too.”
“I imagine they would.”
“If there were other boyfriends, and so on. Now that you’re on your own again.”
“And what did you tell them about that?”
“God bless us, but I’m not one to gossip. In this building, we mind our own business, is what I told them.”
“I think you know that I don’t have a boyfriend. Why didn’t you just say so?”
“And how would I know such a thing, dear? It’s not as if I watch your door, or anything. I’m no Peeping Tom!”
“No,” sighed Sigita. “Of course not.”
Mrs. Mažekienė leaned over the railing. “I’ve made cepelinai,” she said. “Would you like some, dearie?”
The mere thought of doughy yellow-white potato balls made nausea rise in her throat again.
“That’s very kind of you, but no thanks.”
“Don’t forget your stomach just because your heart is heavy,” said Mrs. Mažekienė. “That’s what
my
dear mother always used to say, God rest her soul.”
My heart isn’t heavy, thought Sigita. It is black. The blackness was back inside her, and she suddenly couldn’t stand another second of Mrs. Mažekienė’s well-intentioned intrusions.
“I’m sorry,” she said abruptly. “I have to… .”
She fled into the flat without even pausing to close the balcony door. It wasn’t nausea that seized her, but weeping. It ripped at her gut and tore long, howling sobs from her, and she had to lean over the sink, supporting herself with her good hand, as though she were in fact about to throw up.
Several minutes passed before she could breathe again. She knew that Mrs. Mažekienė was absorbed in the spectacle from the vantage of her own balcony, because she could still hear a soft litany of “There, there. There, there, now,” as if the old lady were trying to comfort her by remote control.
“There is no harder thing,” said Mrs. Mažekienė, when she heard the sobbing ease a little. “Than losing a child, I mean.”
Sigita’s head came up as if someone had taken a cattle prod to her.
“I have not lost a child!” she said angrily, and marched over to close the balcony door with a bang that made the glass quiver.
But the double lie cut at her like a knife.
AUNT JOLITA WORKED
at the University of Vilnius. She was a secretary with the Department of Mathematics, but in reality her job consisted mostly of assisting a certain Professor žiemys. The reason she and Sigita’s mother were no longer on speaking terms became obvious fairly quickly. Every Monday and every Thursday, the Professor came to see Jolita. On the Thursday Sigita arrived, Jolita had just kissed him goodbye by her front door. It had been his cigarettes Sigita had smelled.
At first, Sigita couldn’t understand why this should shock her so. Jolita wasn’t married and could do what she wanted. This was not Tauragė. The Professor did have a wife, but surely that was his business.
In the end she came to the conclusion that the shocking thing was that it was all so
petty
. She had always known Jolita had done something awful, something Sigita’s mother could not condone in the depth of her Catholic heart. Jolita had sinned, but no one had been willing to explain to Sigita precisely how and why. As a child, she had vaguely imagined something to do with dancing on a table while drunken men looked on. She had no idea where that peculiar vision had come from. Probably some film or other.
And now, the reality had proved to be so mundane and regulated. Every Monday, every Thursday. A bearded, stooping man more than fifteen years her senior, who always forgot at least one pair of glasses if Jolita did not remind him. She might as well have been married, or nearly so. It might all have been youthful and passionate once, but if so, that was a very long time ago.
Sigita had fled to Vilnius to escape Tauragė’s judgment. To be free of prying and gossip, of moralizing parochial prejudice. Of everything
provincial
. Since she was nine or ten, she had been a highly secret admirer of Jolita’s courage; she imagined that her aunt had done everything she herself dreamed of: that she had broken free and made a life for herself on her own terms, up there in the impossibly distant big city. This was why Sigita had sought her out. Jolita would understand. She would be able to see they had kindred souls, rebellious and free. And when Jolita had embraced her and let her move in with no questions asked, it had seemed an affirmation of everything she had dreamed.
But on Mondays and Thursdays, Jolita became anxious. She cleaned the flat. She bought wine. She awkwardly told Sigita she couldn’t stay in the flat, but must keep away from five in the afternoon until midnight at the earliest. Highly embarrassing, it would seem, if the Professor were to meet Jolita’s uncouth country niece, who had been so stupid as to get herself knocked up at age fifteen. If Sigita didn’t leave quickly enough, Jolita’s gestures became increasingly jerky and hectic. She would press money on Sigita, so she could buy herself a meal somewhere, go out on the town, see a film, that would be nice, darling, wouldn’t it? Damp, crumpled notes would be pushed into Sigita’s hands as Jolita damn near forced her out the door. Sigita saw a lot of films that winter.
It occurred to her that Jolita was not free or independent at all. She hadn’t acquired her job by sleeping with the Professor—the job came first, and the Professor later—but that was seventeen years ago, and no one remembered that now. If the Professor were to lose his position, Jolita would be sacked as a matter of course. For the university, as for many others, the Independence hadn’t been all sweetness and light and patriotic hymns. Funds were at a minimum, and everyone fought like hyenas for the pitiful scraps and jobs that there were. Jolita’s whole life dangled by the thinnest of cobweb threads. Her position, her salary, her flat, her entire way of life … everything depended on him. Mondays and Thursdays.
Jolita didn’t think Sigita should go to school.
“You can do that next year, darling, when this is all over and done with,” she said, jiggling the coffee pot to try to gauge its contents. “Another cup?”
“No, thank you,” said Sigita distractedly. She was seated on one of the ramshackle wooden chairs in the kitchen; she had to sit with her legs apart to accomodate her belly. “But Jolita. There will be a baby, then.”
Jolita froze for a minute, with the coffee pot raised in front of her as though it was an offensive weapon. She looked at Sigita seriously.
“Little darling,” she said. “You’re an intelligent girl. Surely you don’t imagine that you’ll be able to keep it?”
THE CLINIC HAD
recently been established in a big old villa in the Žvėrynas Quarter. There was a smell of fresh paint and new linoleum, and the chairs in the waiting room were so new that some of them still sported their plastic covers. Sigita sat heavily on one of them, squatting like a constipated cow. Sweat trickled down her back, soaking into the awful, bright yellow maternity dress Jolita had acquired through a friend at the University. For the past four weeks, this had been the only garment that would fit Sigita’s bloated body, and she hated it with a will.
At least it will soon be over, thought Sigita. And clung to that thought as the next spasm gripped her. A deep grunting sound escaped her, and she felt like an animal. A cow, a whale, an elephant. How the
hell
had it come to this? She gripped the edge of the table and tried to inhale and exhale, all the way, all the way, as she had been taught, but it made not the slightest bit of difference.
“Aaaaah. Aaaaaah. Aaaaaah.”
I don’t want to be an animal, she thought. I want to be Sigita again!
Jolita came back, accompanied by a slight, redhaired woman in a pale green uniform. Why not white? Perhaps it was meant to match the new mint green paint on the walls.
“I’m Julija,” she said, holding out her hand. Sigita couldn’t release her grip on the table, so the woman’s gesture transformed itself into a small pat on the shoulder, presumably meant to be soothing. “We have a room ready for you. If you can walk, that will probably be the most comfortable for you.”
“I. Can. Walk.” Sigita hauled herself upright without letting go of the table. She began to waddle after the woman whose name was the same as Granny Julija’s. Then she discovered that Jolita wasn’t following. Sigita stopped.
Jolita was wringing her hands. Literally. One slim-fingered hand kept stroking the other, as though it were a glass she was polishing.
“You’ll be fine, darling,” she said. “And I’m coming back later.”
Sigita stood utterly paralyzed. She couldn’t mean … surely, she couldn’t expect Sigita to go through this alone? Unthinkingly, she reached for her aunt with a begging gesture she regretted seconds later. Jolita backed away, staying out of reach.