The Seventh Child (27 page)

“When a man
…
like my father
…
dreams of getting ahead in the world, he builds his dream around a few words, and he keeps repeating them in his head. I’ve heard my father at night, talking in his sleep.”

Peter looked at his friend and felt the creeping agitation that arises between people when a problem cannot be resolved.

“Those words are like a spine,” My continued. “They run through the body and keep it standing; they keep the bones and muscles in their place, so those words have to be made of the best and strongest material you can find.” He spoke almost like an adult. “Hjalmar thought the strongest and best material was stubbornness and pride
…
like in the books.”
He’d
begun calling his father by his first name when he wasn’t present.

He shook his head and tried to make sense of this complex train of thought. “The minute he needed those words, he couldn’t remember them.” He gazed through the elm canopy at the blue sky. “You know what I mean?”

Peter just stared at his friend. He wasn’t used to such philosophical insight from My, who had grown up in an almost wordless home. He wanted to ask, “But what is the best material then?” Instead he said nothing.

“The words weren’t real,” My said. “They just sounded good.”

They sat for several minutes in silence.

“ ‘Don’t ever give up!’ That’s what he said. ‘Don’t ever give up!’ ” My stared at his hands as though he could see the words right there, between his fingers.

Peter understood. When Hjalmar simply gave up without a struggle, it had been a shock.

“The best material
…
” My hesitated. “The best material is to feel good enough,” was all he said, and a tear appeared on his cheek, like a shiny little insect. Now, more than thirty years later, Peter remembered the answer and the fear he felt upon hearing My’s very simple description of the gate to any human being’s destruction.

He reacted to that simple calling the only way he knew how.

The day the big tabloid reported Principal Nordal’s death—a couple of weeks after the linden tree had been sawed down—My’s father looked up just once from his copy of
The People
. The two boys were eating Christmas goodies at the table, and he met and held his son’s gaze for just a few seconds before slipping back to his crushed world where shame was king.

Peter never revealed his secret to My. The two never spoke about what happened. If their friendship were to continue, it would have to wait.

And as Fate tends to do, it put such postponements off forever.

The production assistant had called his name out loud, probably a few times, because she now sounded a little worried. A tall woman stood on the front stairs, greeting him with a smile as if they’d known each other for a long time.

Maybe it was just a reaction to his fame.

“Susanne Ingemann,” said the woman and curtsied.

It seemed odd to him but also fascinating; she
curtsied
as though they were figures from the nineteenth century, heading upstairs to a ballroom in a fairy-tale castle.

“You’ve been here before,” she said in response to his puzzled look. With her left hand, she waved him into the old house. She wore a green dress and white sandals, and her reddish-brown hair was gathered in a barrette.

He remembered the hallway and the wide white staircase that led to the private chambers—where the matron and her assistants lived—and he remembered the black-and-white photographs by the fireplace, dating all the way back to 1936 and featuring all the children
who’d
passed through those high-ceilinged rooms at the orphanage.

“When did you last see Kongslund?” Susanne Ingemann asked.

“When I graduated from high school in 1980. As per custom, we drove by horse carriage to Copenhagen. But I didn’t come in for a visit.”

“Have you spoken with Ms. Ladegaard recently?”

“I’ve tried calling, but she doesn’t answer.”

They had tea in the sunroom overlooking the lush green lawn, the beach, and the sound.

“Of course we’re not happy about the story in
Independent Weekend
. So if you’re interested in a sensational angle, I’m not the right person to ask. I’m concerned with Kongslund the way it is today, and there are no children of famous people here. Quite the contrary.”

Her accent was Zealandic, whether from the interior or the western part, he couldn’t tell.

“When were you actually adopted?”

“In 1962.” He hated that word,
adopted
, which suggested that nothing remained, that nothing could be undone, and that everyone knew it.

“You were born at the Rigshospital, and then you came here shortly after
…
That’s how it was for most kids then.”

“Yes.” For so long Rigshospital had been just a name on a birth certificate that
he’d
never actually seen. He didn’t like to think about it, and he didn’t want to be haunted by visions of the darkness that had surrounded him during the first hours of his life.
He’d
gone back to that hospital more than thirty years later to bring his first child into the world. It was, as far as he knew, the place
he’d
been born to his unknown mother—and it’d been a fatal act of hubris to return.

Fate woke abruptly. What an opening.

They arrived in the middle of the night and were wheeled into the delivery room. They had access to a tub, body pillows, even a beanbag, which his wife had immediately positioned herself on, moaning. But Peter Trøst had been restless the way journalists are restless when intimacy overshadows the big picture; he wanted to walk around, maybe find a TV broadcasting CNN live from one of the world’s hot spots, then return.

He’d
met Marianne halfway down the hall, and they’d gone into her office to talk about old days. What an opening. He hadn’t expected to see her in this place, as a midwife, and she hadn’t expected that
he’d
be famous (he no longer heard his wife moaning). She laughed. “I was so in love with you in high school,” she said with a sudden intimacy that famous people often elicit. The telephone rang, but she ignored it. She was petite and blond and slender under her white smock, and she turned her back to him as she washed some instruments—what an opening. He remembered her dressed as a little white snowball at a Christmas party in high school.

She turned around.

There was a cot in the room where staff could rest. Fate lounged comfortably, almost innocently. And then it happened. It locked the door with one hand and pushed them into each other’s field of gravity with the other hand; she looked in surprise at his hands on her, then she gasped deep in her throat, and he knew everything was all right and that
she’d
entertained the same fantasy
he’d
had, perhaps the worst fantasy any woman can have (personally and professionally); she wanted to make him forget he was about to become the father of another woman’s child.

If
he’d
had any reservations, they disappeared in the feel of her hot breath as her small body tensed up again and again and her nipples pointed directly at his mouth. She came the second she felt him in her (another result of his fame no doubt), and she screamed—and screamed again—it was as though her screaming went on and on, until she suddenly stiffened in his embrace, pushed him out of her, threw on her white smock, and unlocked the door.

Dazed, he suddenly realized what was happening: a laboring woman was screaming.

Two doctors had been called. They had attempted a cesarean; they tried with oxygen and tubes, and then with threats and prayers and curses, but the child remained dead and limp. It was a boy. He lay on the white sheets, looking exactly like a human being should: innocent, mild, joyful. At the end of its life.

Peter had been full of excuses:
he’d
just gone to the kiosk; nothing could have been done; we’ll try for another.

“I heard another laboring woman scream, and I got scared,” his wife said. He didn’t respond.

A short while later, they divorced.

“When did they tell you?” Susanne Ingemann said, crossing her legs.

He blinked a few times, brought back to the present. He realized he probably seemed strange to her. He usually hid it so well.

“That you’re adopted, I mean,” she added.

“They adopted me in 1962, but they didn’t tell me until my thirteenth birthday.”

“Some people are never told.” Susanne looked directly at him. “I sometimes wonder what’s best.”

He nodded.

“If only parents were better actors. If only they could really identify with the role, then the children would never need to know about the sins of the past. It’s the
bad acting
that causes all the crap,” she said.

Peter was taken aback by her brutal choice of words. Her voice was muted. She lived alone, his researchers had told him. She used the old matron’s apartment upstairs as her private quarters, but she also owned a small row house in Christiansgave.

“How were your parents?” she asked, though he was the one who was supposed to ask the questions.

“Well, we lived in Rungsted,” he began a little foolishly, as if he were answering a different question. “That’s why we visited Skodsborg so often. Back then, I mean. After they told me.”

“No traumas?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “None visible.”

She smiled.

He relaxed a little. Of course he was damaged.
He’d
always known that. He saw his daughters from his second marriage approximately twice a year, he had no friends, and he visited his adoptive parents as infrequently as possible. “I was spoiled. My mother was a homemaker. It was the kind of childhood where the most frightening thing that happened was when my pencil broke during the English composition exam in high school.”

“Protected against all external dangers.” She pronounced each of the words slowly.

“Yes.”

He fell silent. Her openness made him shy, and that was a feeling he rarely encountered. On television, those kinds of reactions were encapsulated in a membrane of light and presence and left behind a buzz of static electricity.

“Of course there are areas of Kongslund where you’re not allowed to record.” She changed the topic abruptly, standing. “One of those is the infant room, but you’ve been here before
…
and Kongslund might be able to make an exception for a guest with special qualifications.”

He rose as well. Her words made him momentarily dizzy.
She’d
just given him permission to enter the infant room.

It was a strange declaration of confidence.

With the tip of her fingers, she carefully tapped on a blue door in the corridor. A young woman opened it.

“It’s unchanged since the sixties.”

He stood in the Elephant Room, where it all began. The ceilings were higher than he remembered. Four beds to the right, four to the left, white curtains fluttering in the breeze from the open window. There was no other movement in the room. The walls were covered with the painted figures that gave the room its name: blue, in the very same bright lines that he remembered; hundreds of plump little elephants that seemed to tower over the little Mowglis sleeping under soft, heavy duvets. He examined a sleeping face, the closed eyes and mouth, the white skin and the dark hair. He swayed slightly over the child, unsure of his footing.

She paused in the middle of the room. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. “ Peter smiled his TV smile to show that everything was okay. “It’s just strange to be back.”

Of course that sounded ridiculous.

There must be at least a thousand elephants around him, as though they’d been cloned from the same source. How had they managed to paint so many of them?

Later he stood in the hall again, looking at the black-and-white photographs, but she managed to stand in his line of vision and shepherd him to the door.

“I just wanted to see if I could recognize myself,” he said.

“Few can,” she said.

“I assume I’m listed in the records you must have here from that time period?” It was an awkward way to inquire into off-limits territory.

She didn’t respond.

“Aren’t there any records from those years?”

“I don’t know. I think the old records have been filed. I certainly don’t use them. I imagine that Magna—Ms. Ladegaard—has thrown them out or taken them with her.”

“I gather you’ve read the article in
Independent Weekend
that you were interviewed for?”

“No. And to be honest, I rarely read the papers.”

“You’re not interested in what’s going on? Whether things have happened here that”—he searched for the right words—“that weren’t so fortunate?”

“Fortunate?” She laughed suddenly and with great sincerity. “I don’t think fortunate is a word that our children associate with their time here, then or now. Fate is a better word for it
…
the finger that points down from above at
you,
giving you the worst possible start to life. Abandoned by your parents right from the start
…
” She grew serious again. “Surely you understand that better than most?”