“I can see this needs a bit of mature consideration,” said Anders Kvistgård. “Perhaps you wish to call an attorney? I’m afraid that I have to caution you that charges may be brought against you.”
T
HE MILE-LONG, SURPRISINGLY
natural-looking beach of the Amager Strandpark was only sparsely populated by bathers, despite the dragging heat. Weeks of drought and sunshine had apparently satisfied the city’s hunger for beach life and firstdegree burns, thought Nina. For most people, the holidays were over. In the spot Nina had chosen for them, they were alone except for a couple of students lying on too-small bath towels with open textbooks in front of them, and their only other human encounter had been with a sweat-soaked young man on rollerblades who had narrowly missed ploughing into the boy on the cement path.
Now here they were, sitting side by side on their brand-new soft towels, staring out across the mirror-smooth sea. Not a breath of wind rippled the surface, and the waves merely lapped the sand in soft, flat, nearly soundless surges. The silence among the three of them was equally noticeable, thought Nina. The boy sat still, with his head lowered, only moving his hand now and then to let the dry sand sift through his fingers in a steady stream. Marija reclined on her towel with half-closed eyes behind new shades bought at a local convenience store. She had taken off her tight jeans, revealing a pair of long, pale legs, as slender as the rest of her T-shirt-clad body. She hadn’t said much in the car. A trip to the seaside would be okay, she agreed, as long as towels, sunscreen, sunglasses and a new bikini were part of the deal. Nina had had a brief flashback to negotiations with her own sulky teenage daughter, and had in the end secured a compromise that left out the bikini. For the boy, she had found a small dusty set of bucket, sieve, rake, and spade in red and yellow, languishing on a rack at the back of the store. Later, she had also bought them all ice cream from the kiosk. Marija had taken the boy by the hand and pointed to the faded pictures of cones and popsicles, and to Nina’s relief the boy had answered her, opting for the biggest of the lot. After that encouraging breakthrough, silence had unfortunately descended, even though Marija had tried to encourage the child with soft, careful questions. Demonstratively, the boy sat with his back to them, working his fingers through the hot, white sand.
Glancing at Marija, Nina decided to break the silence. She and the girl, at least, could have a conversation. But what did one ask someone like Marija? Her work in Helgolandsgade? Her life before Copenhagen? Her hopes and dreams, if any had survived? The fact that Nina had bought her time and her presence here lay like a vague discomfort between them—it was a little too much like the selling and buying that went on between Marija and the men that sought her out at night.
“How long have you been in Denmark?”
Nina had meant to ask how she liked it here, but caught herself in time.
Raising her head, Marija looked at Nina with a faint smile that was at the same time amiable and distant.
“Seven weeks,” she said, jerking her head at the city behind them. “It is a beautiful city.”
Nina looked at Marija’s long slender legs and feet, half buried in the sand. Two small round scars gleamed pinkly on her thigh, just above the knee. Cigarette burns, thought Nina mechanically, and the image of the small muscular man with the serpent tattoo flashed before her eyes. But it might not be him. Marija had, after all, only been here for seven weeks, and the scars had healed as much as such scars ever do.
Noticing her glance, Marija discretely slid a hand down her thigh, covering the scars. Then she suddenly leapt to her feet in a shower of loose sand.
“I go swim,” she announced, indicating the mirror sea. “Just a quick one.”
Nina smiled and nodded agreement, while Marija pulled off her T-shirt to reveal a soft, white cotton bra with wide straps. Another unwelcome image presented itself, this time of Ida and the way she had been standing in front of the mirror in her cramped little room last week.
She had bought herself a bra. One of the tight, elastic sport models that prevented abrasion and over-bouncing, which of course was quite sensible. It had to happen sometime, and Ida was way ahead of Nina in the bosom department. Nina and Morten had actually joked that Ida now, at thirteen, had bigger breasts than Nina would ever have, barring implants. Yet there was still something overwhelming about the sight of her, standing there with her narrow back turned, her shoulderblades sharply outlined under this new bra that she had to have bought with her own money and without consultation. Without asking Nina’s permission, even.
Nina shook her head quickly. And just exactly what was it that Ida was supposed to ask permission
for
? Growing up?
Marija ran into the water wearing bra and panties, and dived in when it was up to her thighs, her arms describing a perfect curve over her head. She surfaced several meters away and swam back and forth at a practiced crawl for a while before flipping over onto her back. She kicked up a furious cascade with her legs.
“You come too,” she called, with a grin that reached her eyes for the first time. “
Ateik čia!
”
The boy had left off his sand-sifting to look at her, and something was released in his expression, an eagerness, a yearning. He looked questioningly at Nina, causing a melting hot sensation somewhere behind her midriff. He was asking her for permission.
She nodded briefly and drew him close, so that she could help him out of his T-shirt and underpants. As soon as she let him go, he scurried across the firm damp part of the beach until the first ripples reached his bare feet. When a deeper surge lapped his ankles, he gave an enthusiastic shriek and continued a few steps forward, then stumbled and pitched onto his bottom, a mixture of elation and anxiety visible on his face. Marija reached him in a few long steps and helped him to his feet again, and Nina could hear them talking. Marija said something, and the boy answered her in the characteristic whine children employed when they were in need of help. Marija smiled, ruffling his short white-blond hair so that it stuck wetly in all directions. Then she said something else, taking his hands and towing him gently through the water. The boy was giggling and shrieking so that all his white milk teeth showed, and Marija was laughing too, now, a high-pitched girly laugh. She waved a hand at Nina.
“Come,” she said. “Very nice.”
Nina returned the wave but shook her head. She wanted the boy and Marija to be alone together in this. The boy had clearly missed having someone around who could understand him. The same might be true of Marija, thought Nina, watching the tall, skinny girl leaping joyfully about in the water. Hearing her own language spoken might not be an everyday occurrence, certainly not from someone as friendly and unthreatening as this. There was no reason Nina should butt in now. Marija knew what she was supposed to do—win the boy’s confidence and try to find out where he came from. Anything would be useful, thought Nina. His name, the name of a town or a city, or of a street. Anything at all, as long as it helped pull him from the void he was floating in and anchor him somewhere,
with
someone.
Marija hadn’t asked why, and Nina guessed that not asking questions had become a survival mechanism. That she had agreed to help, despite the man with the serpent tattoo, was little short of a miracle.
And another small miracle was taking place before her very eyes.
Marija said something to the boy, and he struggled free of her embrace with a scream of laughter. He splashed her with water, and then replied to her question, feet firmly planted in the wet sand. Instinctively, Nina understood what it was, even before the boy repeated his answer in a louder voice.
“Mikas!”
It was his name.
MARIJA AND THE
boy whose name was Mikas stayed in the water until Mikas’s lips were blue from cold and his teeth chattering like little castanets. Marija’s long, dark hair hugged her shoulders wetly, and there was still laughter in her eyes as she let herself drop down onto the towel next to Nina, stretching so that she caught as much as possible of the hot afternoon sun.
Nina wrapped Mikas in the other towel, rubbing dry the narrow white shoulders, his chest and back, his legs. Then she helped him put on the T-shirt and the pants and liberated the spade-andbucket set from their net bag for him. At once, he ran the few feet to the wet part of the beach and set to with an eager enthusiasm that made Marija and Nina smile at each other tolerantly, as if they were a married couple sharing a moment of pride in their offspring. Then Marija crouched forward, looking at Nina with a small sharp worry-wrinkle between her eyebrows.
“I know his name now,” she said, in her heavy English. “He is Mikas, and his mother’s last name is Ramoškienė. He remembered that when I asked him what the daycare staff calls his mama.”
“Preschool?” said Nina, taken aback by the apparent normality of it. She knew precious little about Lithuania, she realized, and her ideas had run along the lines of Soviet concrete ghettos, TB-infected prisons, and a callous mafia. Somehow, preschools had not been part of the picture. “Anything else?”
Marija asked Mikas another question. He answered readily, without pausing or looking up from his work with the spade and bucket even for a second.
“He is from Vilnius. I am sure,” said Marija. “I asked him if he liked riding on the trolley buses, and he does. But not in the winter when the floor is all slushy.”
Marija smiled in triumph at her own invention.
“He said he is sometimes allowed to press the STOP button. But he has to wait until the driver says, ‘Žemynos gatvė.’”
Nina rummaged in her bag and came up with a ballpoint and a scruffy-looking notepad from some company of medical supplies.
“Will you write it out for me?”
Marija willingly took the pen and paper and wrote down both the name of Mikas’s mother and that of the street near which she must live. Nina took it with a feeling of having brought home the gold. Then she realized that knowing his name and roughly where he came from was not actually enough. There was something else she desperately needed to know.
“Ask about his mother,” she said. “Does he live with her? And why isn’t he there now? What happened—does he know?”
Marija frowned, and Nina guessed that she was searching for the right words, comforting and unthreatening enough that she wouldn’t upset the boy too much. A stab of outrage at Marija’s own capsized life went straight through Nina’s chest. She felt such rage at the thought of the Danish, Dutch, and German men who felt it was their perfect right to serially screw a young girl month after month until not the least remnant of the girly sweetness and the coltish awkwardness would remain. What do such men tell each other? That it is quite okay because it is her own choice? That they are offering her a way to make a little money and start a new life? How very grand of them.
With so many men, and such fine generosity, a national collection aimed at young Eastern European and African girls ought to raise millions. Why didn’t Marija’s customers keep their flies zipped and organize a fundraiser instead?
Marija had moved closer to the boy and was helping him turn the sand-filled bucket upside down. She ran her finger round the edge of the resulting cupcake shape, saying something with a reassuring smile.
Mikas was obviously uncomfortable with the question. He twisted, and began to fill the bucket with fresh sand, but the purposefulness had gone out of him, and after a few spadefuls, he dropped the little red spade and looked around, as if searching for something to hide behind. Then he looked directly at Marija, and answered her with a few soft words.
She nodded and put her hand against his cheek to keep his attention a little while longer. But at her next question, he struggled as if overwhelmed by a cold wave. His face closed, and with a thin frightened exclamation, barely audible, he tore himself free of her gentle grasp and ran towards the water.
Marija shot an accusing glance at Nina, blaming her, or, at least, her questions.
Nina got up quickly and caught up with Mikas in a few long strides. She swung him onto her hip and held him as gently as she could. At first he fought her, kicking against her shins and thighs with bare feet. Then he curled limply against her shoulder, not in trust but in resignation. Marija had risen too, and was pulling on her clothes with angry jerks.
“His mother?”
The question hung in the air between them while Marija buttoned her jeans, not looking up.
“Marija.”
Nina put her free hand on Marija’s arm, and finally the girl gave up her button battle and met Nina’s eyes.
“Sorry.” Marija took a deep breath. “It is just that he was so upset. I do not like it.”
Nina shook her head slightly, but she had to know.
“What did he say about his mother?”
“I don’t understand all. Children say what they like, no more,” said Marija apologetically. “But he said he lives with his mama, she is nice, but he couldn’t wake her.”
Nina frowned. Couldn’t wake her? She looked at Marija doubtfully.
Had Mikas’s mama been ill? Or unconscious? And did it have anything at all to do with his involuntary trip to Denmark? As Nina recalled it, a three-year-old’s grasp of the concept of time left something to be desired. She cursed her own linguistic inadequacies.
She needed to know if his own mother had sold him. Such things did happen. She knew that very well.
“What happened to take him away from his mother? Did he say?”
Marija raised her carefully plucked and penciled eyebrows.
“He said the chocolate lady took him. I do not know what that means.”
“Does he miss his mother? Does he want to go back to her?”
Marija froze, and the look she gave Nina was completely naked.
“Of course he misses his mama. He is just a baby!”
S
UNNY
B
EACH
S
OLARIUM AND
W
ELLNESS
, said the glass door leading down to the basement floor, with the added legend
New lamps!
Inside was a reception area with a dark-haired woman behind a desk. She was talking to someone on the phone, and Jučas could not make out which language she was speaking. Not Lithuanian, at any rate, but then that was hardly surprising. She was dressed in a white uniform as though she were a nurse or some kind of clinic assistant, and in Jučas’s estimation, she was too old to be a whore. Perhaps it was actually possible to acquire a tan in this place.