Allan, standing next to her, shook his head and sighed.
“I’ll lose my license if they find out about this. If anything happens to him… .”
“They won’t. Why should they? And I’ll take good care of him,” said Nina. “He’ll be all right.”
Allan looked at her with a strange uncertainty Nina wasn’t sure she cared for. Then he turned to the boy again, this time completely removing the blanket, which until now had shrouded the boy’s lower body.
“Did you find him like this?” he asked.
Nina nodded.
“Would you be able to tell whether anything has been done to him?” she asked. “Whether he has been … abused?”
Allan gave a partial shrug and rolled the boy onto his side again, so that his back was turned to them. Nina again felt the sour metallic taste in her mouth, and turned to look out the window. There was a slight breeze now, and she could hear the leaves of the large chestnut tree outside rustle in the hot wind. Except for that, there was barely a sound. No voices, no cars, no children. People in Vedbæk obviously weren’t as noisy as those in the inner city, she thought, suddenly aware of the sweaty stickiness that made her T-shirt cling to her back.
Behind her, Allan spoke in carefully measured tones.
“I see no evidence of abuse, but one can never tell with complete certainty. People can be horribly inventive about such things.”
Allan pulled off the thin white plastic gloves with a snap, covered the boy to the waist once more, and gently stroked his forehead.
“This is my professional advice to you, Nina,” he said, looking at her directly for the first time. His eyes were the color of corroded steel. For God’s sake, thought Nina, the man might have stepped right off the pages of a Harlequin romance, fit and tanned in an affluent kind of way that spoke of tennis courts and long sailing trips in the boat she knew he kept in Vedbæk harbor. A note of casual ease was introduced by the dark blue denim jeans, trendily scuffed at the knees to just the right degree. A handsome, humane suburban GP who did everything right and proper, even running great personal risks by doing his bit for the network. His place in the practice was on the line, she thought. This was so obviously a good man.
And yet she felt a guttering animosity. In a minute, this nice, humane man would tell her that he couldn’t help her anymore. That there was nothing further he could do for the boy.
Allan sighed again, a mere exhalation of breath.
“My professional advice is that you take this boy to Hvidovre Hospital. And if anything goes wrong… .”
Nina knew what he was about to say, but now it didn’t matter, because she also knew she had won the essential victory: he wouldn’t call the police.
“If anything goes wrong, and questions are asked of me and this practice, then that is the advice I have given you. And I want to hear you accept it.”
She nodded quickly.
“I’ll take him to Hvidovre Hospital,” she obediently replied, with a quick glance at her watch.
3:09.
She had been there for more than thirty minutes.
Allan looked at her again with the skeptical expression that reminded her so much of her long, exhausted fights with Morten. Morten, who seemed to think that she could no longer be trusted to handle anything alone. Least of all the children. He didn’t say it outright, but she could hear it in the way he spoke when he gave her detailed instructions on how to make Ida’s lunch box, or how to dress Anton for school. He spoke slowly and clearly, enunciating each syllable, all the while trying to fix her eyes on him as though she were hard of hearing, or mentally defective, or both. More than anything, she could see it in his eyes when he packed his bags for his monthly shifts on the company’s North Sea oil rigs. Leaving her alone with the children had begun to scare him.
He no longer believed her. He no longer believed in anything she said.
Nor did Allan, it would seem. But at least he was not about to stop her. The suitcase boy was not his responsibility, and never would be. Only for that reason was he letting her go.
“Keep the IV going until the unit is empty,” said Allan. “After that, I want you gone. Don’t let anyone see you leave. And Nina… .”
He caught her eyes again, and she could see that his impatient irritation had returned.
“I’m through with this,” he said. “Don’t come back.”
A
ND IT
is your claim that your husband has abducted Mikas?”
“Evaldas Gužas from the Department of Missing Persons looked at Sigita with visible skepticism.
“We are separated,” she said.
“But he is the father of the child?”
She could feel herself blushing. “Of course.”
The office was stifling in the summer heat, and a house fly buzzed desperately in the window overlooking the street, caught between the net curtain and the glass. Gužas’s desk looked to be a scarred veteran of the Soviet era, several years older than Gužas himself was. Sigita would have preferred an older policeman, not this young, black-haired, sharp-featured man of thirty at the most. He had doffed his blue-gray jacket and loosened his burgundy tie, so that he looked for all the world like a café patron on holiday. It didn’t give a serious impression, she thought. She wanted experience, steadfastness, and efficiency, and she wasn’t sure she was getting it.
“And this alleged abduction … you say it happened Saturday?”
“Saturday afternoon. Yes.”
“And you waited two days to come to us because … ?”
He left his unfinished sentence hanging in the humid air.
She nearly lowered her eyes, but resisted the impulse. He would only see it as uncertainty and become even more skeptical than he already was.
“I was in hospital until this morning.”
“I see. Can you relate to me the circumstances of the alleged abduction?” he asked.
“My neighbor saw my husband and a strange young woman take Mikas to a car and drive off with him.”
“Did the child resist?”
“Not … not as far as Mrs. Mažekienė was able to see. But you see, the woman has been spying on us for some time, at least two or three days, and she gave Mikas chocolate. That’s not normal!”
He clicked his ballpoint pen a couple of times, watching her all the while.
“And where were you when this happened?”
Now she could not keep the uncertainty from coming out in her voice.
“I … I don’t remember clearly,” she said. “I’ve suffered a concussion. Perhaps … perhaps they attacked me.”
The words felt odd in her mouth because she didn’t herself believe that Darius was capable of something like that. But the woman. She didn’t know the woman, did she?
“And at which hospital were you treated?”
Her heart dropped like a stone. “Vilkpėdės,” she said, hoping that would be the end of it. But of course it wasn’t. He reached for the phone.
“Which ward?”
“M1.”
She sat there on the uncomfortabe plastic chair, frustrated and powerless, as he was put through to the ward and had a brief conversation with someone at the other end. The fly kept buzzing and bumping into the glass. Gužas listened more than he talked, but she could guess what he was being told. Alcohol content in the blood, fall on the stairs.
“Mrs. Ramoškienė,” he said, replacing the receiver. “Don’t you think you should simply go home and wait for your husband to call?”
“I don’t drink!” She blurted out the words even though she knew they would only confirm his suspicion.
“Please go home now, Mrs. Ramoškienė.”
MECHANICALLY, SHE GOT
on the number 17 trolley bus at T. Ševčenkos gatvė. Several stops too late, she realized that she had failed to get off at Aguonų gatvė to change lines. It was as if the city in which she had lived for more than eight years had suddenly become strange to her. The sunlight pierced her eyes like needles. Only once before in her life had she felt this helpless.
Please go home now, Mrs. Ramoškienė
. But to what? Without Mikas, the whole thing made no sense—the flat, the furniture, all the clean and new things she had fought so hard for.
God’s punishment, a voice whispered inside her.
“Shut up,” she said under her breath, but it did no good.
She hadn’t attended mass since leaving Tauragė. Not once in eight years. She didn’t
want
to believe in God, but it was as if it wouldn’t let her go—the hot, waxy scent of the candles, the old women who could barely kneel but insisted on doing so all the same, the flowers on the altar, the sense of solemnity that had made her sit quietly even when she had been so young her legs dangled from the pews in white stockings and shiny black shoes—that one day of the week one should make the effort, her mother said, and dress in one’s best. Her first communion … she had felt so grownup, so important. She was old enough to
sin
. The word unfolded inside her, releasing a scent of darkness and sulphur, of guilt and lost souls. But above all, sin was
interesting
. Interesting like Mama’s sister, Aunt Jolita, who lived in Vilnius and had done things that no one would explain to Sigita. Sinners were far more interesting than ordinary people—it even said so in the Bible. Now this world of sin and confession had opened to her, too. It was peculiarly intoxicating to be a part of the chorus of response when the congregation murmured its “
Esu kaltas, esu kaltas, esu labai kaltas
.” I am guilty, I am very guilty. She went at it with a will.
“Shhhh,” said her mother, twitching her scarf into place. “Not so loud!”
By and by she learned the correct volume—not self-promotingly loud and shrill, nor so low that it sounded reluctant; a sincere murmur reaching the nearest without echoing through the dome. Esu kaltas. There was a beauty, a sweetness to it.
Until the day when she actually had something relevant to confess and couldn’t bring herself to say it. At first she had tried for teenage rebellion by stating flatly that she wasn’t going. Had it been only her mother, she might have carried it off. But when Granny Julija looked at her and asked her if anything was wrong, her weak attempt at mutiny collapsed. No, there was nothing wrong. Nothing at all. Granny Julija had patted her arm and told her that she was a good girl. It was all right to doubt a little sometimes, she said. God could take it. Then Sigita had had to hurry up and change into her Sunday best, so that they wouldn’t be late. On the outside, everything was the way it had always been. On the inside, the world had come to an end.
THE CHURCH OF
St. Kazimiero was silent and nearly empty now. Two older women were busy cleaning. Volunteers, probably, like they would have been at home in Tauragė, thought Sigita. One of them asked if Sigita needed anything.
“Thank you, no,” said Sigita. “I just want to sit here for a while.”
They nodded kindly. The need to “sit for a while” was understood by any true believer. Sigita felt like a fraud. She was no longer a believer of any kind.
If that is so, what are you doing here? whispered the voice inside her.
She couldn’t explain it. She felt as if she was standing at the edge of an abyss, but she was in no way counting on God to rescue her. On the contrary.
I don’t believe in any of it. Not anymore
. But when she looked up at the image of the Holy Virgin, she could no longer hold it back. The Madonna cradled the Baby Jesus tenderly, her face aglow with love. And Sigita fell to her knees on the cold flag stones and wept helplessly, hard involuntary sobs that echoed harshly under the vaulted ceilings. Esu kaltas. Esu labai kaltas.
SHE HAD ONLY
just left the church when her mobile phone started vibrating in her bag. She fumbled through the contents onehandedly, with the bag hanging from her plaster-encased lower arm, until wallet and makeup purse and throat lozenges tipped out onto the pavement and rolled in all directions. She had eyes for nothing except the phone. The call was from Darius, she noticed, as she snatched it from the ground.
“What’s up with you?” he said in his usual happy warm voice. “You’ve called about a mllion times.”
“You have to bring him back here. Now!” she snapped.
“What are you talking about?”
“Mikas! If you don’t bring him back, I’ll call the police.” She neglected to tell him that she had in fact already done so. They just didn’t want to know.
“Sigita. Sweetie. I have no idea what you’re talking about. What is wrong with Mikas?”
Years of training had made her an expert. She was able to tell, by now, if he was lying or telling the truth. And the confusion in his voice sounded one hundred percent genuine.
Strength drained from her legs like water from a bath tub, and she dropped to her knees for the second time, in the middle of the sidewalk, surrounded by the debris from her bag. A distantly tinny Darius-voice was shouting at her from somewhere: “Sigita. Sigita, what is it? Where is Mikas?”
She was no longer at the edge of the abyss. It had already swallowed her. Because if Darius did not have Mikas, who did?
5
:
10 P.M.
Whose turn was it to pick up Anton today? Suddenly Nina couldn’t remember, and felt a long, cold tug in the pit of her stomach, as though she was about to be pulled under by some deep, chill current. The after-school child care program provided by the city would have closed at 5:00. Her son might be standing by the gate right now, accompanied by a seriously cross member of the staff.
She had seated herself on the couch with the unknown boy half in her lap, his bare white body curled against her. A few damp streaks had appeared in his hair. His skin felt warmer now, and after the fluid had begun to run into him, he seemed more alive. Not awake, but alive, at least. Once, he whimpered in his sleep, turned a wrist, moved his leg a bit. It had to be a good sign, thought Nina. She had done the right thing in staying away from the hospital, and even though she had felt her resolution firm every time she thought of the furious man at the railway station, it was still an enormous relief. The boy hadn’t died. He lived, and she could tell by the tiny twitches beneath his eyelids that he was on his way back up from the deep darkness he had rested in.