He had opened both the kitchen and the living room windows in the vain hope of catching a breeze, but the air seemed to have congealed, and the long day still stuck to him like the damp back of his shirt. He considered taking a shower, but this was the first time since he had picked Anton up from daycare that he had been able to sit down quietly with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. He would save the shower for later; it might make it easier to fall asleep.
There were days. There were days when he just wanted to pack all this in a time capsule and come back and open it in, say, four years’ time. Imagine being able to
do
something; God, how he longed to go prospecting for minerals in the tundra, or go to Greenland again, or Svalbard, and return only when he had had his fill of mosquitoes and polar bears, and quite ready to take up family life exactly as it was, with all the pieces in the same positions on the board. Or nearly the same—there were one or two moves he would like to rethink.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want all of this, the children and the flat and the mortgages and the securely salaried job he had. He just wished he could have the other things as well. Once he had imagined that he would be able to do both—go to Greenland for three months, perhaps, while Nina held down the fort at home. But that was before she had run away the first time. Running away was exactly what it was, he had never had any doubts about that. And it had happened just as abruptly as if she had simply left him for good. He would never forget that day. It remained under his skin like a poison capsule, and every once in a while, something would prick a hole in it so some of the poison leaked out.
It had happened five months after Ida was born. They lived in Aarhus then, in an uninspiring but cheap two-bedroom flat near Ringgaden. Nina had just graduated from nursing school, and he was doing a Ph.D. at the Department of Geology. Coming home from the department one day, he had heard Ida crying—no,
screaming
—the minute he came into the stairwell. He took the terazzo steps three at a time and practically took the door off its hinges. Ida was strapped into her baby chair on the kitchen table, her chubby face swollen and scarlet from prolonged sobbing. She had no clothes on, not even a diaper, and the pale green plastic kiddy tub on the kitchen floor was still full of bathwater. Nina was standing with her whole body pushed up against the door to the back stairs, looking as if something had her cornered. With one look at her he understood talking to her in that state would do no good; expecting any kind of answers or assistance or action from her was futile. He had no idea how long she had been standing like that. Long enough for Ida to have wet herself and the baby chair rather thoroughly, certainly.
The day after, she had called him from a phone booth in Copenhagen Airport. She was on her way to London, and from there to Liberia, as a volunteer nurse for an organization called MercyMedic. This was not a position she had obtained with just a day’s notice, of course. But although the decision had been some time coming, and the preparations had to have been made at least some weeks in advance, she hadn’t bothered to discuss it with him, or even tell him about it. Now that he thought about it, it had actually been Karin who helped her, back then. Some French surgeon she was acquainted with had been willing to overlook Nina’s lack of job experience. And Morten was left alone with a five-month-old little girl.
Only much later had she succeeded in explaining herself to him, at least to some extent. He had noticed that she was finding it harder and harder to sleep, that she was constantly watching Ida, day and night, that she seemed to be afraid of disasters, real or imagined. He had tried to calm her fears, but facts and rationality didn’t seem to have much effect on her conviction that something horrible could happen to the child.
“I was bathing her,” she had told him, not that day, but nearly a year later. “I was bathing her, and suddenly the water turned red. I knew it wasn’t, not really. But every time I looked at her, the water was red all the same.” Only the severest form of self-control had made it possible for her to lift Ida from the bathtub and strap her safely into the chair. And the fact that she had not actually fled from the flat but had waited there until he came home … he knew now that that had been a miracle of impulse control.
He had spoken occasionally to colleagues of hers who had been stationed with her at various global hotspots. They admired her. They said she was nearly inhumanly cool and competent in the middle of the most horrible crises. When rivers washed away bridges, when a light grenade set fire to the infirmary tents, when patients arrived with arms or legs blown away by landmine explosions … then Nina was the one who could always be counted on. She led a remarkably efficient one-woman crusade to save the world. It was only her own family who could reduce her to abject helplessness.
Ida was standing in the doorway before he realized that the patapow sounds from her room had died away.
“Is she coming home?” she asked. She was wearing neon-green shorts and a black T-shirt that read
I’m only wearing black until they make something darker
. A small silver sphere in one nostril represented his latest defeat in the teenage wars.
She never says “Mom” anymore, he suddenly thought. It was either “she” or sometimes “Nina.”
“Of course she is,” he said. “But she may have to work through the night.” He was aware that the last statement was a fairly transparent piece of arse-covering, but he wasn’t quite sure whose arse. Was it out of some remnant of loyalty to Nina, or was it just that he didn’t like to sound clueless?
“Oh.”
Ida withdrew, showing neither relief nor disapproval.
“Bedtime,” he called after her.
“Yeah, yeah,” she drawled, managing to suggest that she
might
be going to bed now, but only because she felt like it.
He put down the paper and stared into space, unable to focus his mind on the words. Nina had lied to him. He had heard it clearly in the pauses, in the way she was distancing herself from what she said. That, more than the fact that she had entirely forgotten about Anton, had been what got to him. But he hadn’t had the energy to confront her, just as he hadn’t had the energy to fight Ida over the headphones issue. Lately, he had been in danger of running out of energy altogether.
Things
were
better. Or so he had thought. No, they really were. Olav had helped her. Helped both of them, in fact. During an otherwise fairly routine debriefing after things had become a little rough in Tbilisi, the Norwegian therapist had somehow made Nina realize that she needed help. Not so much because of Tbilisi, Dadaab, or Zambia, but because of the obsessions that drove her to
be
in Tbilisi, Dadaab, or Zambia.
Nina had come home. Her hair almost shaved to the skull, her body reminiscent of a stick insect’s, but with a new … well, serenity was perhaps not quite the word. Balance, maybe. A cautiously maintained equilibrium that made him believe they might after all be capable of staying together, of loving each other again. They had moved to Copenhagen. A new beginning. She had begun working for the Red Cross Center at the Coal-House Camp, he had become a “mud logger,” as other geologists somewhat condescendingly described his job—collecting and analyzing bore samples from the North Sea oil rigs and other none-too-exotic locations. They both agreed that family was now the priority, if the torn ligaments that bound them together were to have a chance of healing.
Well. He was still here. She was still here. Except that she had lied to him this afternoon. And he didn’t know, he couldn’t be sure, that he would not get a phone call tomorrow or the next day from Zimbabwe or Sierra Leone or some place equally distant and dangerous.
God damn you, Nina. He set down his mug and got up with an unfocused sense of urgency. He wanted to get away from here. Out of the flat. Just for a few hours. Or a few years. If only everything would still be here when he returned.
A LITTLE AFTER
four in the morning, the door buzzer woke him. It wasn’t Nina who had lost her key, as he had half expected. It was the police. One in uniform, one in a suit.
“We would like to talk to Nina Borg,” said the suit, presenting his ID with a motion that had become habit many, many years ago.
Morten felt too much coffee turn into acid in his stomach.
“She’s not here,” he said. “She’s staying with a friend. Is anything wrong?”
“May we come in for a moment? I’m afraid this is a murder inquiry.”
T
HE
B
ARONAS LIVED
in a small wooden house which stood like an island amidst an advancing tide of project developments. The bareness of the grounds between the new apartment buildings made their modest garden seem like a veritable jungle. A small red bicycle was padlocked to the fence with heavy duty chains.
Sigita opened the gate and approached the house. A smell of frying onions greeted her; Julija Baronienė was cooking supper, it appeared. Sigita pressed the bell button on the peeling blue doorframe. Almost at once, a boy of twelve or thirteen answered. He was wearing a white shirt and a tie and looked somehow unnaturally clean and well-groomed.
“Good evening,” said Sigita. “May I speak to your mother?”
“Who may I say is calling?” he said cautiously. It sounded as if he had orders not to let just anybody in.
“Tell her it is Mrs. Mažekienė from the school board,” said Sigita, so that the door would not be slammed in her face with the same precipitous speed that had severed the telephone connection.
The boy stood still for a long moment, and Sigita suddenly realized that he was trying to weigh all the possibilities that this might somehow be to do with him. She smiled reassuringly.
“Er, come on in,” he said. “Mama is making supper, but she’ll be right with you.”
“Thank you.”
He showed her into the living room and disappeared, presumably to report to the kitchen. Sigita stood in the middle of the room, taking in her surroundings. The sofa was large, soft, and pale brown, clearly a recent purchase, but apart from that, everything had been here for a long time. The floor was dark from innumerable coats of shellack, and in front of the couch was an Afghan rug that glowed in strong red, white, and turquoise hues. Three of the walls had beautifully carved bookshelves from floor to ceiling, which by the style of the carpentry looked to be as old as the house itself. The shelves sagged from the weight of books and sheet music, and by the fourth wall, between the two tall windows, was an upright piano in shiny dark mahogany, with keys so old and worn they were slightly concave, the ivory yellow with age.
The door opened, and a small, compact woman entered, with a girl who must be her daughter physically hanging on to her in a manner that seemed too young for the seven or eight years she looked to be. A waft of kitchen smells entered with her, and when they shook hands, Sigita felt a cool dampness that somehow made her think that Mrs. Baronienė had been peeling potatoes.
“Julija Baronienė,” she said. “And this, of course, is my Zita.” Zita stared at her feet and showed no inclination to say hello to the stranger. Her hair was parted into braids, the immaculate partition showing like a straight white line against the darkness of her hair. “You’ll have to excuse her,” said her mother. “Zita is a little shy— and very much her mama’s little girl.”
She hasn’t recognized me, thought Sigita. And why should she? It’s all such a long time ago. But Sigita knew at once, the moment she saw the copper hair and the warm, prune-colored eyes. This was
the
Julija.
“I suppose that is only natural,” said Sigita. “Considering what’s happened to her.”
Julija Baronienė stiffened.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
No point in beating about this particular bush, thought Sigita.
“I’m not from the school board,” she said. “I’ve come to ask you how you got Zita back. You see—the same people have taken my little boy.” Her voice broke on the last few syllables.
With a small mewling sound that made Sigita think of drowning kittens, Zita turned completely into her mother’s embrace and hid her face against her belly.
For a moment, Julija Baronienė looked as if Sigita had jabbed a knife into her body. Then she made an obvious effort and forced a smile.
“Oh, that silly story,” she said. “No, no, that was all a big misunderstanding. It turned out Zita had been picked up by the mother of one of her friends, right, Zita?” Zita did not reply, nor did she let go of her mother. Her anxiety made her seem far younger than she was.
“It was awfully embarrassing to have wasted police time like that. But … but of course I’m sorry for you and your little boy. Are you sure it’s not a misunderstanding too? He could be with a friend. Or perhaps he may have wandered off somehow?”
“He’s only three. And my neighbor saw them take him. Besides… .” She hesitated, then ploughed on. “There
has
to be a connection. Don’t you remember me at all?”
Julija’s gaze fluttered around the room before it finally came to rest on Sigita. This time, Sigita saw recognition flare in the prunecolored eyes.
“Oh,” was all she said.
Sigita nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry I lied to you. But after you cut me off on the phone I was afraid you wouldn’t even talk to me if you knew … if you knew who I was.”
Julija Baronienė stood perfectly still, as if the revelation had completely robbed her of the ability to speak or move. In the background, Sigita heard the sound of a door slamming, and voices talking, but she kept her eyes squarely on Julija.
“Just tell me what you had to do,” she said. “I won’t tell the police, I promise. I just want my Mikas back.”
Julija Baronienė still said nothing. The door to the sitting room opened.
“Hello,” said the man entering. “Aleksas Baronas. Marius tells me you are with the school board?” He held out his hand politely. He was somewhat older than Julija, a kind, balding man in a grayishbrown suit that hung a little loosely on his frame. It took a moment before he realized something was wrong.