Chapter 2
Monday morning, October 8. The Institute of Biology was an H-shaped building squeezed in between the Natural History Museum and the August Krogh Institute in the University Park in the Østerbro area of Copenhagen. The main building was a narrow rectangle of four floors, which bordered Jagtvejen on one side and a cobbled square on the other.
Anna Bella parked her bicycle outside the entrance to Building 12, which housed the department of Cell Biology and Comparative Zoology on its second floor. It had been a terrible morning. When she tried to drop off Lily at nursery, Lily had sobbed and refused to let go of her in the coat room. Through the window in the door Anna could see the other toddlers, see them fetch their cushions and get ready for morning assembly. Lily was inconsolable. She clung to her mother, smearing snot and tears into Anna’s jacket.
Eventually, one of the nursery teachers came to Anna’s rescue. Lily’s sobbing grew louder. Desperation gushed from the pores of Anna’s skin. She looked at the nursery teacher with pleading eyes and the nursery teacher lifted Lily up, so they could pull the snowsuit off her.
Anna suffered from a permanently guilty conscience. Cecilie, Anna’s mother, looked after Lily almost all the time. Cecilie had volunteered her help six months earlier when Anna’s studies had become increasingly demanding.
“If you’re to have any hope of finishing your dissertation within the allotted time, you can’t possibly leave the university at four o’clock every day to pick up Lily from nursery,” she had argued.
And that had been that. Lily loved her granny, Anna told herself, so why not? It was the obvious solution.
For several months she had worked virtually around the clock, and although she had finally submitted her dissertation, she still had to prepare for her forthcoming thesis defense. No matter how much Anna missed her daughter and knew very well that the temporary arrangement had gotten out of hand, there simply was no room for Lily in the equation. And, as she kept telling herself: Lily liked being with Granny.
“Stop it, Lily,” she snapped. “I have to go now. Granny will pick you up today. You’re sleeping at Granny’s tonight. Now let go of me!” She had to tear herself loose.
“You go,” the nursery teacher said, “I’ll deal with her.”
When Anna had finished locking up her bicycle, she caught sight of Professor Moritzen in her office on the ground floor. Anna tried to catch her eye, but the professor was hunched over her desk and didn’t look up.
Hanne Moritzen was a parasitologist in her late forties, and four years earlier she had taught Anna in a summer course at the university’s field center in Brorfelde. One night, when neither had been able to sleep, they had run into each other in the large institutional kitchen that belonged to the Earth Sciences department. Hanne had made chamomile tea, and they started talking. At first the topic was biology, but Anna soon realized that Hanne, in contrast to other professors she had met, wasn’t particularly interested in talking shop. Instead they discussed favorite books and films, and Anna found herself genuinely warming to Hanne. When dawn broke, they agreed it was pointless to go back to bed, and when the bleary-eyed kitchen staff arrived, they had just started a game of cards.
Later they had bumped into each other in the faculty lounge, said hello, exchanged pleasantries, and then had lunch together several times. Anna admired Professor Moritzen’s serenity and sense of purpose. It was now a long time since their last lunch. Once she had defended her dissertation, she would make it up to all the people she had neglected: her daughter, Hanne Moritzen, herself.
Finally, Hanne looked up from behind the window, smiled, and waved to Anna. Anna waved back and walked through the revolving doors to Building 12.
The department of Cell Biology and Comparative Zoology consisted of offices and laboratories arranged on either side of a long, windowless corridor. The first office belonged to Professor Lars Helland, Anna’s internal supervisor. He was a tall thin man without a single wrinkle. This was remarkable. Biologists, as a rule, made a point of never protecting their skin when doing fieldwork. The only clues that revealed he was in his late fifties were white flecks in his soft beard, a slowly spreading bald patch, and a photograph on his desk of a smiling woman and a teenage girl with braces on her teeth.
Anna was convinced that Professor Helland loathed her; she certainly loathed him. During the nine months he had been supervising her dissertation, he had barely taken the time to offer her any guidance. He was permanently crotchety and uninterested, and when she asked a specific question, he would go off on an irrelevant tangent and couldn’t be stopped. It had angered Anna from the start and she had seriously considered making a formal complaint. Now she had resigned herself to the situation, and she tried, as much as possible, to avoid him. She had even left her dissertation in his cubbyhole last Friday, rather than hand it to him in person. When she checked the cubby for the fourth time, her dissertation was gone.
The door to Professor Helland’s office was ajar. Anna tiptoed past it. Through the gap she could see part of Helland’s recliner, the last centimeters of two gray trouser legs, feet in socks and one shoe lying carelessly discarded with the sole facing up. Typical. When Helland was in his office, he spent most of his time lying in his recliner, reading, surrounded by a Coliseum-like structure of books and journals piled up in disarray around him. Even on the very rare occasions they had met, Helland had been reclining as if he were a nobleman receiving an audience.
Helland wasn’t alone. Anna could hear an agitated voice and she instinctively slowed down. Could it be Johannes? She tried to make out what they were talking about, but failed. She would have to find out later, she thought, and accelerated down the corridor.
Anna and Johannes shared a study. Johannes had finished his graduate degree, but he had been allowed to stay on because he was cowriting a paper with Professor Helland, who had been his supervisor as well. Anna could vividly recall her first day in the department last January when Helland had shown her into the study where Johannes was already working. Anna recognized him instantly from her undergraduate days and had spontaneously thought “Oh, shit.” Later she wondered at her reaction because, until then, they had never actually spoken.
Johannes looked weird, and he was weird. He had red hair and looked at her as though he were leering at her with droopy eyes behind his round, unfashionable glasses. For the first three weeks, she deeply resented having to share and office with him. His desk looked like a battlefield, there were half-empty mugs of tea everywhere, he never aired the room, never tidied up, every day he forgot to switch his cell phone to silent and though he apologized, it was still infuriating. However, he seemed delighted to have acquired someone to share the tiny study with and talked nonstop about himself, his research, and global politics.
During those first few weeks Anna deliberately kept him at a distance. She went to the cafeteria on her own, even though it would have been normal to ask if he wanted to join her, she gave curt replies to his questions to discourage him from striking up a conversation, and she declined his friendly suggestion that they take turns to bring cakes. Yet Johannes persisted. It was as if he simply failed to register her aloofness. He chatted and told stories, he laughed out loud at his own jokes, he brought in interesting articles she might want to read, he always made tea for both of them and added milk and honey to her cup, just the way she liked it. And, at some point, Anna started to thaw. Johannes was warm and funny, and he made her laugh like she hadn’t laughed in . . . well, years. Johannes was extraordinarily gifted, and she had allowed herself to be put off by his peculiar appearance. Nor were his eyes droopy, as she had first thought, they were open and attentive, as though he were making an effort, as though what she said really mattered.
“You’re wearing makeup!” she exclaimed one spring morning, not long after they had become friends.
Johannes was already behind his desk when Anna arrived. He was wearing leather trousers and a Hawaiian shirt, his hair was smoothed back with wax and his long white fingers were splayed across the keyboard. His glasses magnified his brown eyes by 50 percent, so when he looked at her, there was no way she could miss it.
“I’m a goth,” he said with a mysterious smile.
“You’re a what?” Anna dumped her bag on her chair and gave him a baffled look.
“And things got a bit wild last Friday. I was in drag,” he continued, surprisingly. “I thought I had got all that stuff off.” He waved her closer. “Come on over, I’ve got something for you to look at.”
He showed her some pictures on the web while he talked. The club he had been to was called the Red Mask and events were held the first Friday of every month. The club’s name was inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe short story
The Masque Mask of the Red Death
, and it was a meeting place for goths from all over Scandinavia. Goths were a subculture, Johannes explained when he saw the blank expression on Anna’s face and pointed to a photograph. Anna failed to recognize the slightly androgynous-looking woman with red hair, black lipstick, and dramatic eyes, wearing a tight black corset, a string vest, leather trousers, and studs. The caption below the photo read
Orlando
. Anna frowned.
“It’s me,” he said, impatiently.
“You’re kidding!” Anna exclaimed, thinking she really was an idiot. It was obvious: Johannes was gay!
“What does ‘Orlando’ mean?” she asked.
Johannes looked exasperated.
“Orlando is a reference to the eponymous hero of the novel by Virginia Woolf, obviously. Orlando starts off as a man and is later transformed into a woman. Like me, at nightfall.” He laughed. Anna gawked and said: “Okay.”
“But, no, I’m not gay,” he added, as though he had read her mind.
“So what are you then?” Anna asked, before she could stop herself.
“I’m into women.” He winked at her. “And, in addition, I’m a goth. From time to time I go to goth parties in drag; women’s clothing, that is.”
“So do you all have sex with each other or what?” Anna blurted out.
Johannes raised his eyebrows. “Sounds like someone’s interested in going?”
“Shut up.” Anna threw an eraser at him, but she couldn’t help smiling. “That’s not why I’m asking. I was just curious. You look like a . . .” she nodded in the direction of the screen. Johannes followed her gaze.
“Yes, I’m well and truly dolled up,” he said, pleased with himself. He drummed his fingers on the table and looked at Anna as though he was debating with himself whether or not he could be bothered to explain this to her.
“There’s no sex at the Red Mask,” he said eventually. “But quite a few people belong to the goth scene as well as the fetish scene. Me, for instance.” He gave her a probing look. “That club is called Inkognito, and events take place twice a month.” He scratched one eyebrow. “And yes, there we have sex. There are darkrooms, and people arrive dressed in latex and leather. Here you can be hung from the wall and given a damned good thrashing if that’s your thing.”
Anna held up her hand. “Yes, thank you, Johannes. That will do.”
“And prudes are very much in demand on the fetish scene. Very.” Johannes flung out his arms by way of invitation. Anna threw a notebook at him; Johannes parried by rolling his chair backward. He roared with laughter. Anna could restrain herself no longer and joined in. With Johannes, everything seemed so easy.
The only time the harmony between them soured was when the subject turned to Professor Helland. Shortly after they had become friends, Anna asked Johannes what was bothering Helland. In her opinion, he was always in a hurry; he was grumpy and vague. To her great surprise, Johannes seemed genuinely baffled. What did she mean? Helland had been a brilliant supervisor for him, he protested, beyond reproach.
“Don’t you find him distracted and apathetic?” she asked.
Johannes didn’t think so at all.
One day they almost had a fight about Helland. Anna happened to mention that she often fantasized about playing practical jokes on the supervisor; hiding his favorite reference book, for example, or removing a small, but vital part of his dissecting microscope, which was worth millions of kroner—just a tiny bolt so the lens wouldn’t focus or the eye pieces couldn’t be adjusted to fit the distance between Helland’s eyes. Or how about grafting mold onto his wallpaper? Or releasing a couple of mice in his office? Something that would wind him up without resulting in serious repercussions for her? They were enjoying a tea break and had discussed a film they had seen, they had been laughing, but Johannes paled when she shared her fantasy.
“That’s not funny,” he said. “Why do you say stuff like that? That’s really not funny.”
“Hey, relax,” Anna said, instantly embarrassed at suddenly finding herself isolated with an evidently highly inappropriate idea.
“You can’t go around playing tricks on people,” Johannes had muttered.
“It was just a joke,” Anna said.
“It didn’t sound like it,” Johannes said.
“Hang on, what are we really talking about?” Anna asked, defensively, and turned on her chair to face Johannes who was bent over his keyboard. “Are you saying you think I would actually hurt Professor Helland?”
“No, of course not.” But Johannes sounded unconvinced.
“It’s beyond me why you always have to defend him,” she continued, outraged.
“And it’s beyond me why you always have to attack him.” Johannes gave her a look of disbelief. “Honestly, Anna, just give the man a chance.”
“He’s not committed,” she said and could hear how ridiculous that sounded.
“And so he deserves mold on his wallpaper that will give him a headache, itchy eyes, and a runny nose?”
“It was a joke!”
Johannes studied her closely.
“Tell me, why do you have to be so harsh sometimes? Your tone . . . it can be really cutting. And Helland isn’t so bad. In many ways, he’s cool.”
Anna turned to her screen and hammered away at the keyboard. She was close to tears. Johannes reheated the kettle and made more tea.