“Here, gorgeous,” he said, affectionately, placing a cup on her desk. He nudged her softly.
“It was just a joke, all right?” she mumbled.
“But it
wasn’t
funny,” he replied and went back to his desk.
From that day on Johannes and Anna avoided discussing their mutual supervisor, even though Anna was finding Professor Helland’s behavior increasingly bizarre. One evening, after taking Lily to Cecilie’s, she cycled to the Institute to work. It was dusk and the parking lot behind the building was filled with dancing blue shadows. There was the leafy scent that carried the end to an unusually chilly summer. Pigeons were pecking at the ground by the bicycle stand. They scattered when her bicycle keeled over. Johannes had gone home hours ago, which was a shame.
Professor Helland materialized out of nowhere in the twilight. He stood with his back to her, completely rigid, right where the birds had just been congregating and he looked like a wax figure. He seemed unaware of the birds and didn’t turn around. Anna felt unnerved and carefully walked toward him. The light was fading, and she moved in a soft curve, hoping he would, at least, say “hi.” But still he didn’t turn. He remained with his back to her, apparently doing nothing. Anna looked for his car, but she couldn’t see it. She looked for his bicycle, but couldn’t see that either. Nor did he have car keys in his hand, or a bag slung over his shoulder, and he wasn’t wearing a jacket. She was just inside his field of vision now, so she cleared her throat. Helland turned his head and stared blankly at her; he opened his mouth to say something, but only a bubbling sound and some white froth emerged from the corner of his mouth.
“Are you all right?” Anna called out; she was frightened now.
“Gho whay,” he mumbled and lashed out at the air. He gave her a furious stare, but the blow had missed if, indeed, it had been Helland’s intention to push her away.
“Gho whay,” he repeated, a little louder. Some froth dripped from his mouth and disappeared into the darkness.
“You want me to go away?” Anna asked.
Helland nodded. “Yes, go away,” he said, very clearly this time.
Anna had left him there. Her heart had pounded all the way up to the second floor where she let herself into the photocopier room, which faced the parking lot. She stood in the dark window, watching Professor Helland. He stayed there for a while. Then he shuddered deeply, jerked his head, and shook first one, then his other leg and disappeared around the corner to the main parking lot.
She decided to tell Johannes about the incident the next day, and, to begin with, he looked annoyed with her for breaking their tacit agreement not to discuss Helland. But then, to Anna’s huge surprise, he admitted that he, too, had noticed that Helland wasn’t firing on all cylinders. Johannes and Helland were working on a paper based on Johannes’s dissertation and, to be honest, Helland hadn’t displayed his usual professional acuity.
All of a sudden Anna said: “And what’s that thing he’s got in his eye?”
Johannes looked blank.
“He’s got something in his eye,” Anna said, pointing to the corner of her own right eye. “A small hard pouch of some kind. Do you think he’s ill?”
Johannes shrugged. Anna had been unable to figure out if Helland really did have something wrong with his eye, because the only times she ever caught a glimpse of him were when he hurried down the corridor, inevitably leaving mayhem in his wake, roaring “morning!” at the open door to their office before disappearing into the elevator.
Johannes bent over his keyboard again, and Anna decided to drop the subject.
Anna had moved to Copenhagen in 1999 when she was accepted into the biology program at the university. Jens, her father, was already living there, and he had helped her find the apartment in Florsgade. Jens and Cecilie had divorced when Anna was eight. Anna had stayed on the island of Fyn with her mother, in the village of Brænderup, just outside Odense, the largest city on the island. The village consisted of around fifty houses; the community was close-knit, and it was a lovely place to grow up. For years Anna was uncertain as to whether or not her parents had permanently split because Jens, like some hopeful suitor, never stopped visiting them. Anna knew it had been a source of friction to the girlfriends Jens dated after Cecilie; not that Jens and Anna spent much time discussing their feelings, but he had once remarked that it happened to be the case. His girlfriends resented that he would rather spend Christmas with Cecilie (and Anna), would rather go on vacation with Cecilie (and Anna), and never forgot Cecilie’s birthday (but managed, on two occasions, to forget Anna’s). Anna knew her father loved her, but he worshipped Cecilie. Anyone could see that.
Anna had once told her best friend Karen that she thought parents liked each other better than they liked their children. They had both been ten years old at the time. They were building a secret hideaway, and Anna had asked Karen why grownups seemed to like each other more, and why children seemed to come second, and Karen had said that was just not true. Karen’s mom said she loved Karen more than anyone on the planet. That grownups could choose whether or not they wanted to be together, but that you loved children all the time, for as long as you lived, and that you never regretted having them. Karen and Anna had almost ended up having a row. In the middle of it all, Jens called them into the kitchen for toast and chocolate milkshakes. Jens and Cecilie must have been divorced at that point but, nevertheless, Jens was there, in the kitchen, reading the newspaper by the window. And making toast.
The girls came in and Karen said to Jens: “You don’t really like Cecilie more than Anna, do you?” He lowered the newspaper, appearing shocked. Anna was small with dark hair; Karen’s hair was blond and curly.
“Why on earth do you want to know that?” he had replied, and Anna had blushed. She hadn’t wanted Jens to know about this, not at all, she hadn’t wanted Karen to ask him. Anna glared defiantly at the tablecloth. She couldn’t remember what happened next, only that she refused to play with Karen for the rest of that day and that she took back the special stamp she had given her, even though Karen said she couldn’t do that. However, that evening Jens told her something. When Anna had been born, Cecilie had been very ill, back problems of some sort. She was in great pain and had been in and out of hospital, Jens explained, and even though Anna only weighed six pounds, Cecilie hadn’t been allowed to lift her. That had made her feel really sad. Jens tucked Anna into bed and kissed her forehead.
“And that’s why I take good care of Cecilie,” he said. “Special care.”
Anna nodded. Anna, too, always tried really hard to please Cecilie.
“But I love you more than anyone, Anna,” he said, and suddenly looked very serious. “Parents just do. Otherwise something’s wrong.”
The next day Anna gave the stamp back to Karen. Along with a small rubber animal that could walk down the window all by itself.
When Anna told Jens in the spring of 2004 that she was pregnant by Thomas and they had decided to keep the baby, Jens’s response was, “Why?”
They were in a café in Odense and had just bought a luxurious dressing gown as a birthday present for Cecilie. They were having coffee before going to Brænderup where Cecilie was cooking dinner.
Anna gave her father a furious look.
“Do you want me to start with the birds and the bees, or how much do you know already?”
“I didn’t think you and Thomas were getting along very well.”
“It’s better now.”
“How long have you two known each other?”
“Almost five months.”
“How old are you?”
“Have you forgotten how old I am?”
“Twenty-five?”
“Twenty-six.”
“And how many years of your degree do you have left?”
“Three years.”
“Why do you want to keep the baby?” he asked for the second time. “The last time I saw you, you wanted to break up with Thomas because he . . . how did you put it? . . . only cared about himself. You weren’t sure you could cope with that. And he was working all the time. Have you forgotten that?”
“You don’t like him.”
“I don’t know him very well.”
“But what you do know, you don’t like.”
Jens sighed. “I do like him, Anna. He’s all right.”
A pause followed. Anna gritted her teeth. Her legs were itching, and she had to make a real effort not to scream out loud. Suddenly Jens hugged her.
“Congratulations,” he mumbled into her hair. “Congratulations, sweetheart. I’m sorry.”
Afterward they had made a beeline for a baby supply store and bought a dark blue stroller for Jens’s grandchild. A dark blue parasol was included, and Anna twirled it while Jens paid. The stroller was a display model and slightly faded on one side, but there was a waiting list to get a brand new one. And Jens didn’t want to wait, no sir. He said “my grandchild” ten times at least, while they were in the store. The cashier glanced furtively at Anna’s stomach, which was as flat as a pancake. Anna giggled.
When they came back to Cecilie, the aroma of roast lamb filled the whole house. Cecilie was standing on the kitchen table hanging a paper chain along the window. Jens rolled the stroller into the kitchen.
“What’s that?” Cecilie said.
“What do you think it is?”
“A stroller.”
“Bingo!”
“I’m menopausal,” Cecilie said, and spat out the pins she had been holding in the corner of her mouth.
Anna started to laugh, and Jens did a round with the pram in the kitchen as he called out to Cecilie:
“Get down, Granny, roll your walker to the fridge and give me your best bottle of champagne. From now on I want to be known as ‘honored Granddad.’”
It wasn’t until then that it hit her. Cecilie dove off like a rock star and hugged Anna. Half an hour later, when they were sitting at the kitchen table and the champagne bottle was empty—Anna hadn’t had any, and Jens and Cecilie were in high spirits—Cecilie suddenly said:
“Who’s the father?”
Anna felt movement under the table and knew Jens had tried to kick Cecilie. Anna looked from one to the other.
“You’ll be the death of me, the pair of you,” she sighed and went up to her old room to watch TV.
The next morning when Anna got up, Jens and Cecilie were looking up something on the Internet.
“I’m moving to Copenhagen,” Cecilie announced. Jens carried on searching while Cecilie got up to toast some bread for Anna.
“You just sit down,” she said and put butter, milk, and cheese on the table, as well as her homemade jam and a cucumber. She made a fresh pot of tea and poured Anna a cup. When she had set down the teapot on the table, she looked at Anna and said, “I’m sorry I asked you who the father was. Of course it’s Thomas. I was just under the impression that things between you two weren’t good. That it was only a question of time before . . .”
“Well, you were wrong,” Anna interrupted her.
Cecilie smiled a fleeting smile.
“I like him very much,” she said, with emphasis.
The truth was that things between Anna and Thomas were a total nightmare. They had known each other only five months, and they didn’t live together. Obviously, they would live together now that they were having a baby.
It had started with a chance meeting in a bar in Vesterbro. He was way out of her league, she thought, when she spotted him by the window to the courtyard where he stood with his arms folded, feet at ten to two, with a very straight back and a cigarette in a clenched fist. His T-shirt was rather tight, but it was probably hard to resist the temptation to dress like that when you had a great body, which he did.
Smug, Anna had thought. Thomas was a doctor at Hvidovre Hospital, he was currently training in his specialty, and he was in his mid-thirties. His hair was short, almost white; his skin was fine and freckled, and his eyes were very intense. He left at ten to two; just like his feet, Anna thought, as she watched him exit the bar.
He called her two days later. She had told him her name, and he had found her on the Internet. Dinner? Okay. From then on, they were dating.
It had gone wrong almost immediately. Anna still couldn’t understand exactly how it had happened, but the fact was that she had never been so miserable in all her life, and how this was linked directly to her being madly in love got lost in the drama. Or it did at the time. Thomas loved her, he told her so. But she didn’t believe it. You’re a bit paranoid, he laughed. Anna, however, loved him to distraction. The more he kept her at arm’s length, the more she loved him. She didn’t have a clue what was going on. She didn’t know if they were a couple, if he loved her (he said he did), or if he didn’t (he behaved that way). He would arrive several hours late, or fail to show up altogether without a phone call of explanation. She didn’t know if they had a future together; she didn’t know where he was, why he said the things he said, why sometimes she was allowed to go out with him and his friends and other times not: “Why would you want to do that, sweetheart?” She could offer no reply. She just wanted to go.
Thomas told her to calm down. “Don’t ruin it, it’s fine as it is,” he would say. She tried, but it didn’t work. Thomas had only met Anna’s parents a few times, and none of the occasions had been a success. Anna had never met Thomas’s parents. In the spring Thomas wanted a two-week break; “I love you Anna, never doubt that, I just can’t have this pressure all the time,” he had said and looked irritably at her. In fact, he had been so exhausted after an all-night argument, which Anna had started, that he nearly gave a patient the wrong medication. During their two weeks apart, Anna did a pregnancy test.
“Looks like we’re having a baby,” he said and smiled when they met up again. Anna stared at him.
“Are you pleased?”
“I would have chosen a different time,” he said.
They moved in together shortly before Lily was born. That was nearly three years ago.
The Natural History Museum was an upward extension of the Institute of Biology, and it towered like a decorated ferry over the surrounding buildings. The top two floors of the museum were open to the public. The rest of the building consisted of laboratories and offices symmetrically arranged around a fireproof core where collections of insects, mollusks and vertebrates had been gathered, identified and preserved by Danish scientists for hundreds of years. The Vertebrate Collection on the third floor housed a vast amount of vertebrates; downstairs were two invertebrate departments with mollusks, and furthest down was the whale basement, which included the mounted skeleton of an adult baleen whale.