In the Shadow of Sadd

THE RAT

Sara Blaedel


It was raining in sheets the day she buried the rat.

Rikke Berg had just arrived home from the hospital, and the tension in her body and manner made the smooth stroking of her dog’s fur seem mechanical. Its head rested heavily in her lap, and long, loose dog hairs fell to the floor without her noticing.

She closed her eyes, shut out the shadows from the dense tree branches, and created the void she sometimes managed to qualify as a sense of security. The pills began to take effect. She felt the restlessness disappear and the anxiety dissipate. She opened her eyes slightly and cast a glance at the wall, where the clock ticked down the minutes.

She thought back to the time when everything was different, when she met Christian at the age of twenty-one. Everything had come so easily, like lavish gifts being sprinkled over her by some benign hand. First she’d found the apartment. It was strictly by chance that she even paused long enough at the supermarket’s bulletin board to study the postings. Wondering what kind of place she’d be able to get, if she so chose, had led her to plow through the many homemade advertisements. She concluded quickly, however, that the bulk of the ads were of no interest. An older man had come over with a paper in his hand, as she stood on her toes and read about puppies and a collection of home improvement magazines spanning an impressive number of years.

“Excuse me, could I use that space up in the corner?”

She had politely ceded her spot, but had run after him with his posting in her hand, catching up to him out on the sidewalk. The next day she’d signed the rental contract and been presented with the key. Afterwards she’d gone to a party, and it was there Christian had appeared along with a few of his fellow law school students. They became a couple the next weekend. The job had been a similar story: circumstances that had broken in her favor become the foundation of her life. But she hadn’t appreciated it, she had taken it for granted that things came easily, and that life was uncomplicated.

She snorted, her eyes still half-closed, recognizing how much wiser she had become over the last ten years.

She pulled her shoulders down and exhaled slowly. She felt that her right leg had begun to fall asleep under the weight of the Labrador. With an effort she opened her eyes completely, then sat and stared, and contemplated that the raindrops rolling down the large landscape windows out to the yard resembled tears.

“Oh, enough already,” she said aloud to herself. “Tears? Jesus Christ!” She shook her head angrily, forced the troublesome feelings back into storage and nudged the dog to one side, so she could get up. She got to her feet in one stiff motion, using the sofa for support, and then went out to the kitchen with the dog at her heels.

She stopped at the door and looked around. The electric kettle still lay on the floor, but otherwise there was no trace. She had turned her back even before sensing that it was leaving her hand. She was running into the living room when it hit the planking of the kitchen floor, and she had lain with her head smothering the sofa pillows, as the boiling tea water spread out to form a small lake on the dark wood.

It hadn’t even been a day since she returned home. In one fell swoop it would destroy the confidence between them that Christian had fought so hard to rebuild, and she wanted to do her part in making that effort a success. It meant more to her, actually, than anything else, and it would be a disaster if she ruined it all again on day one by saying that nothing had changed.

“Find your inner peace,” she chanted to herself, as she rose from the sofa and went out to the kitchen to clean up. “Peace, deep in the core of your being ... and exhale.”

It annoyed her that she hadn’t managed to stop it while it was still brewing. She had answered the phone, only to have the caller hang up when she said her name, and at that moment the feeling had overpowered her.

Now she stared at the water and gathered herself before bending down, picking up the kettle and studying the crack that had formed in the hard plastic, just over the handle. Irritated, she put it down and decided to drive into the City. She had to buy a new one before Christian got home. He’d see it and ask her what had happened, and in the end she’d have to tell him that, for a brief moment, she’d thought it had returned.

She went over to the kitchen table, rested both hands on the surface, leaned forward and looked outside. She stretched so she could see down the road. Everything was quiet – no people, no traffic. The suburban street was deserted, as it usually was from the morning through to the early afternoon, when the mothers came home with their kids. She didn’t like running into them – it made her feel lonely.

“Aren’t you bored without any kids to take care of?”

They kept at it. And she continued to respond that she had the dog, and the children would come in good time!

The water ran off from the dish cloth when she wrung it out over the sink. She put some muscle into it, until all the water had been squeezed out, and then cleaned the floor one more time. She felt a chill, so she closed her housecoat and tightened the belt.

Everything was all wrong already. The morning was supposed to have been peaceful and quiet. She had looked forward to enjoying it – she’d planned on drinking her tea out on the terrace. Perhaps the deer would appear at the edge of the forest. Her imagination had played out this first day home in great detail. She would stay in bed when Christian left, feel the warmth of the soft duvet, enjoy the calm of the house and take in the feeling of having a private life – a luxury her body had been screaming for. Imagine, being able to go from one room to another stark naked, if she felt like it! To stand under the hot shower as long as she saw fit, without the pressure of the line forming outside the door.

By eleven o’clock she had reached item three on her ‘back home list,’ which she had meticulously written into a little hardcover journal, and looked forward to for the last four weeks. She would drink the tea from one of the large porcelain cups, and the tea itself would be allowed to draw precisely long enough for the tea leaves to give off the strength necessary for the flavor to take hold, even when diluted with milk. In the time that had passed, she’d had to make do. Several times she had closed her eyes and vigorously imagined the exclusive taste of the tea in her mouth. She had even tried to convince herself that she was close to that exclusivity when she lifted her teabag out of the plastic cups they used in the ward, but in truth there was no comparison at all. And now the water had ended up on the kitchen floor.

“Great start,” she said half-aloud, squatting down to scratch the dog behind the ear. It looked at her with deep, dark eyes, as though it understood every word she said – and sympathized with her.

The dog had always been hers, and had never strayed more than a few yards from her side since the day she came through the door.

“You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?” she asked, gently touching the dog’s forehead to her own. The dog pulled back a little, and she stood up and hesitated for a moment, before going over to the kitchen sink, filling the kettle and switching it on. It might as well make one last liter of boiling water before it’s tossed out, she thought.

The next item on the ‘back home list’ was to take pleasure in being back at home – to feel how she belonged there, how everything that belonged to her was coming within reach.

She opened the cabinet under the sink and looked in the garbage bag, and saw that the garbage had been taken out. She opened the refrigerator and saw that it was full – there were even paper bags from the deli. Someone had spared no effort. She wondered if it was Christian himself who had made the arrangements, or if he had gotten their maid, Jessica, to take care of it.

He probably expanded Jessica’s job description, she thought bitterly. She usually took care of the shopping herself, but somebody had apparently taken over while she was away. The sensation was so pronounced that she slammed the refrigerator door, ran into the bedroom and tore the sliding glass door to their walk-in closet aside. The closet was so spacious that they each had their own section, and the ironing board was allowed to stay upright and unfolded on a permanent basis. Christian thought it sounded snobby to call it a walk-in closet, when in reality it was just a room with a sliding glass door. His shirts hung freshly ironed and grouped by color, most of them white. He hadn’t done that himself. There weren’t enough hours in his day for that kind of thing – she knew that by experience.

She understood that he had gone to great lengths to spare her. She’s got enough to deal with already, he’d undoubtedly thought. She was certain of that. Still, it irritated her that others had been engaged to keep her house without her knowing of it. She swore. Not that long ago she had discovered that by damning the realities to hell she could toughen herself up a bit and banish the irrational feelings and thoughts to the background … where they could keep each other company, the psychologist had said with a smile. She seldom swore otherwise, but he had been right, it actually did help a little, and it was really of no consequence how Christian had gotten along without her, she thought, as long as he had. And in a way she was relieved to know that she hadn’t been indispensable – though at the same time it was this very fact that irritated her – especially now, when she was desperate to feel needed.

She rose from the bed and again pulled the sliding door aside. She wouldn’t reproach him for bringing others into his life and his routine. First he would shake his head at her, then he would get very close to her, put her face between his hands and stroke her cheeks with his thumbs. And he would probably kiss her nose.

She could almost feel him in front of her. “You are my life,” he would whisper, and she would feel the lump in her stomach growing. He didn’t like it when she doubted him. It seemed like the doubt activated something inside of him, which then caused him physical pain.

She went out into the kitchen again. The dog, half-asleep, trotted after her. The water had already come to a boil, but she turned the kettle back on and repeated the process anyway. When the water came to a boil a few moments later, she coiled a dishrag around the handle, so the boiling water couldn’t trickle out. She slowly poured a long stream of water over the tea leaves in the teapot, and watched as they swirled up and dispersed.

Christian had offered to bring good tea in to her, but for some strange reason she had felt the need to be content with things the way they were, in the time she’d been gone. Bizarrely, she had found something satisfying about the idea that her taste buds were not being stimulated. Perhaps some sort of a short circuit at the time of her hospitalization had rendered them inoperative – the senses tuned out. It was only logical, considering the fact that she’d been in a psychiatric ward. She had tried to explain to him several times that those two things go together.

Still, he’d turned up with a package containing a small travel kettle and the finest tea from the most exclusive tea shop in the City, which had remained unopened.

The nurse had encouraged her to make use of the gift and prepare herself that cup of tea she had been yearning for since her first week in the ward, but she had stubbornly shaken her head and allowed the package to gather dust.

It was still there two weeks later, when the nurse sat down in the guest chair next to the bed. Rikke had noticed the nurse’s piercing gaze, and it had amused her to observe how the older woman in the white uniform had prepared the foundation before finally getting to the heart of the matter.

“Your husband is a distinguished attorney,” she said. “He’s a clever man, and very well respected. He brings you gifts to make you happy.”

She looked down at the package with the electric travel kettle.

“There’s nothing at all that connects him in any way to the mafia ...”

Rikke had already closed herself off by that time. She was stuck in the same groove, every time one of the ‘whites’ sat down in the chair next to her bed.

She didn’t really think that he had acquired the electric water heater through his hidden connections. It irritated her when they brought it down to that level. The two things weren’t related. No one had taken the time to distinguish between her response patterns. Every time she reacted to something her husband had done, they thought she was linking it to his supposed mob connections, and that just wasn’t the case.

***

She had been furious with Christian – and their doctor, for that matter – for exploiting one of her weak and fragile moments, convincing her that she would feel much better once she had been cured of her delusions. They had insisted that she suffered from a type of compulsive behavior that responded well to treatment, after which she would get her old life back and be happy again – like she had been before.

She had relented in the end, knowing all the while that it was something entirely different that required attention – namely Christian’s double life, which he naively believed he could keep to himself. But they had known each other too long. There was no way he could hide it from her – she had eyes in her head, after all.

In the weeks prior to her admission, he seemed to become exceedingly considerate, yet all of her worried questions were lost on him. EVERYTHING would be just fine when she was feeling better. He’d watched her, when he thought she wasn’t aware of it. He’d always done that, but before she was able to see a certain pleasure in his gaze, when she succeeded in catching him. Now there was something else in his eyes, and she didn’t want to know what it was. It was something that widened the gap between them.

She wasn’t sick, but he couldn’t see that. He decided to take refuge in the belief that she had become delusional, and since then he had treated her as though she were a precious and fragile glass figurine, and that was just wrong. She was the strong one – it was he who had stumbled and been weak enough to get involved in something that he apparently didn’t dare account for when she questioned him.

***

“I wonder who’s been feeding you,” she said to the chocolate-brown Labrador, patting it affectionately while concluding that it appeared to have been sufficiently cared for.

She poured the tea into a flowered porcelain cup she had inherited from her grandmother. She had heated the milk in the microwave and used equal parts of tea and milk, with a little sugar. She went into the living room holding the saucer with both hands. After setting the tea down without any spillage, she opened the door out to the terrace and felt the heat hit back at her in spite of the persistent rain.

She looked out at the yard, which stretched down to the edge of the forest. It had a therapeutic effect on her volatile humor, when she allowed herself to be overpowered by all the harmlessness just outside the door. She leaned into the door frame and was hit by a few raindrops. Her eyes followed the ring of treetops that stood motionless at the forest fringe, as though the wind had simply stopped.

The tea tasted precisely as she had dreamed it would – actually as she had imagined. Her sense of taste seemed vivid and receptive. She had made a decision the day before she was discharged. She had even written it down: Christian would never again be confronted by her doubt and suspicion. On the other hand, she would never again be hospitalized voluntarily. Never again.

She twitched slightly when the telephone rang – so slightly that no one other than herself would have noticed. With calm, even paces she went over to the phone and picked it up.

“Rikke Berg.”

“Hi, honey, you sound happy!”

“Do I?” she thought surprised, staring at a picture of herself and Christian that stood on the sideboard next to the phone. He was smiling widely, dressed in a heavy sweater, with a steep slope in the background. His crooked front teeth made him look a little boyish.

Just because you have a propensity for happiness doesn’t mean that I do too, she thought, a little irritated, as she looked at the big, dark-blue eyes that were drawn together by his laugh lines. His dark hair looked a bit tousled, but that was only because the picture had been taken while they were hiking. Normally his hair was so neat and perfectly brushed that it rounded off the image of a wealthy and well-dressed man. In the same picture, her own light hair created a halo around her, making her face seem mild, but unlike Christian she looked sullen and withdrawn.

That’s how it always was. He always attempted to transfer his own good humor by pretending that she sounded happy.

She gathered herself and lightened the tone of her voice, hoping not to dash his enthusiasm.

“Yeah, well, I am happy. It’s great to be home.”

She sighed. She was actually happy, certainly more so than she had been in a long while. The heavy tide of misery that had flowed through her the last year, giving sustenance to her suspicion – or as Christian had chosen to put it: before the illness got the better of her – had disappeared.

He had been furious the first time she confronted him and said she was aware that he’d gotten mixed up with the mafia. He’d reacted similarly the next many times she aired her suspicion, but gradually he began to react simply by allowing a shadow to glide over his face and finding a spot below eye level where he could rest his gaze as she spoke.

They hadn’t spoken of the matter since her hospitalization, as though they’d agreed that, as long as they didn’t speak of it, it had never happened. She knew that was nonsense, and still felt he was involved in something, but now he thought she had accepted it, and that was for the best, she had thought, as she had lain awake at night and heard the other patients walking down the corridor outside the half-open door. It was best that she just played along, so he couldn’t accuse her of being ill.

“How do you feel?” he asked nervously, as though in fear of the response.

“Fine, fine,” she said quickly, drowning out the discord, “I’ve just made myself a cup of tea, and it tastes as heavenly as it did in my dreams.”

It was remarkable how easily the words and the tone flowed, she thought as she spoke.

“I’m taking Caro for a walk in the woods after I’ve eaten lunch.”

She looked down at the dog, who had curled up at her feet, and scratched its fur with her toes.

“That sounds nice.”

He hesitated, as if weighing whether or not is was wise to continue.

“If you feel up to it, I’d like you to do me a favor.”

“Of course,” she said quickly.

“Now you should only do this if you have the energy,” he said, adding that it could always wait until he was home.

“I have lots of energy,” she answered without really listening, determined to appear strong and stable.

“I killed a rat this morning. It’s behind the car. Could you bury it somewhere in the backyard, so the dog doesn’t get to it?”

“Of course!”

She laughed, relieved that it was something so mundane. She realized that she’d have to pull herself together if she was to succeed in convincing him that she was in good health.

They’d been forced to get used to the idea of mice, and to a lesser extent rats, since they moved to The Villa Grove. She’d succeeded in adopting a more relaxed relationship to the rodents, though she still struggled when the rats were too big for her to pretend they were simply overgrown mice.

“You can dig a hole behind the garden shed,” he suggested.

“I’ll take care of it. I’ll do it right away.”

She didn’t like the idea of the neighbors being able to see it, and didn’t want people to think of the Bergs as the family with the rodent problem.

“When are you coming home?” she asked, feeling a bit stressed at the thought that she also had to go into the City to get a new kettle.

“I’ll try to get home a little early.”

She glanced at her watch and told him that he needn’t hurry. It was a little past twelve-thirty. If she skipped lunch, she could still make it into the City when she was done burying the rat.

He offered to pick up some Thai takeout on the way home.

“Good idea,” she said, relaxing a little once again.

“It’s so nice to have you back.”

He said it so softly that the words flowed through the receiver.

“I love …”

She heard that someone was knocking on his door, and he hurriedly ended the conversation.

“Me too,” she said, after the line went dead.

***

“You stay right here – I’ll come back and get you in a little bit.”

She pushed the dog away and tucked her trouser legs into the rubber boots. It was still raining, so she pulled her oilskin jacket off the hanger on her way out. She fumbled with the padlock to the shed before she succeeded in opening it. Spade in hand, she went to the double carport to find the rat.

As always, her Polo was parked on the right side of the carport, farthest away from the house. It went without saying that Christian’s dark-blue Lexus occupied the space on the left, so it could be seen from the kitchen window.

“You think that’ll keep the car thieves away?” she’d asked just after they’d moved in.

He hadn’t answered, and she’d smiled to him. She could never make him admit that he’d prefer the thieves to make off with her car – which in his eyes was utterly worthless – instead of the luxury automobile he lovingly drove to the carwash twice every week.

She was glad that she couldn’t see the rat when she approached the carport, which meant it couldn’t be seen from the road, either. She guessed that he’d shoved it under the back end of the car. She shook the water off of herself before going behind the car, ready to stick the spade under the rat and remove it, but there was no rat to be seen behind the car. She quickly took a turn around the car, but there was nothing.

She leaned the spade against the shed and bent one knee down to the tiles, so she could check under the car. No dead animal. Perhaps he had only knocked it unconscious, or maybe one of the neighbors’ cats had already made off with it, she thought.

Rikke went back to return the spade to its place, but stopped in the middle of the tiled pathway and stared in wonder at a large white van parked on the narrow dirt road along the edge of the forest. It was parked just beyond the gate in the backyard. She was surprised she hadn’t seen it before, but she’d been looking down, on her way to the shed, to avoid getting the rain in her eyes – so it could easily have been parked there. When they ate lunch they often saw someone drive by, or use the place to turn around or just pull over. It irritated her to begin with, but after a while she hardly noticed it anymore.

Suddenly it occurred to her that the van must be the car Christian was referring to. Of course, he wouldn’t leave a rat on the ground in front of the house!

Sometimes I think the worst of him, she thought, and started off toward the van with the spade. She looked in the window on the driver’s side, then she walked all the way around the van. It couldn’t belong to a car lover, as it was in dire need of repairs. The right fender had been replaced with a newer red fender, the side mirror was missing, and nobody had troubled themselves to stop the invasion of rust around the door. Curious, she went to look through the side window in the back, but she stopped when she considered how embarrassing it would be if she were caught snooping, if it turned out some couple were enjoying themselves inside.

Nonsense, she mumbled. The car seemed utterly abandoned. There was no sign of any movement, and besides, the windows would fog up, she thought, and proceeded to look for the rat behind the van.

But there was no sign of the rat there or anywhere else. At once she was overwhelmed by a violent feeling of exhaustion. She leaned up against the back door and closed her eyes.

Why isn’t anything straightforward? she thought. Why the hell couldn’t that damned rat just be where he’d left it, so she could be done with it and move on?

She felt like crying. Everything that happened around her had become so complicated. It hadn’t been like that before they moved. And she couldn’t even say precisely when it started. Suddenly it was just there.

Christian said one thing, but she sensed that he really meant something else. Nothing was clear and simple anymore. She hadn’t thought so much about what she did, before, but now she registered the most trifling irregularity. Why couldn’t all this mistrust and suspicion just disappear so everything could be like it was before? she thought, and wondered, as she had many times over the past year, whether it would help if they moved back to the City – but she could still feel the claustrophobic sensation of being squeezed between tall buildings that stood so close it seemed dark even in broad daylight.

Occasionally, when she was really down, she would concur with their opinion, if only for a short time. Maybe she was ill, maybe it was all in her imagination. No one else seemed to think that Christian led a double life. Was everything that happened in her reality simply a product of her imagination?

“No chance,” she said aloud, holding onto the last shred of her common sense. She felt the rain roll down over her closed eyelids. Her bangs stuck to her forehead. She brushed her hair aside and dried her eyes, then opened them and blinked against the gray daylight.

She was capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality. And now she was going to find that rat, so she could bury it and get into the City – and be glad that she’d be able to leave it again.

***

With her gaze focused on the ground, she took another lap around the van, kicking the tall grass to the side, so she could see the ground. Before she had made it all the way around, it occurred to her that Christian might have meant that the rat was in the back of the van.

She used the sleeve of her jacket to wipe the sliding-door window on the left side of the van, and she looked inside. Palm fronds blocked most of the window, like a living curtain, but she had the feeling that there was a sprawl of material under the large palm. A small, boy’s bicycle was apparently the last thing to be scrunched in before the back door was closed.

She wanted to have a better look but hesitated, wondered if opening the door would trigger an alarm. She looked around nervously before turning the handle and hearing it click. The back door was not locked. She saw that the bicycle would tumble out the moment she opened the door, so she stretched her arm out to receive it. She felt it moving, and opened the door a little more, so she could push it back into place. When she did so, the palm threatened to fall out. She opened the back door completely, to gain control of the situation. There was an open toolbox on the left side, and she saw that the shaft of a hammer had gone into the back wheel of the cycle. She put the hammer back into the toolbox. After a good shove, the palm was on its way deeper into the van.

The rain was running down the back of her neck. When the cycle was back in place, she looked around for the rat. There was everything in the van but a dead animal, she concluded. It must not have been what Christian had meant after all.

The van’s owner had spread a dark-blue rug over his belongings, and as she was about to shut the door, she discovered that she had shifted the rug to the side in her struggle with the palm and cycle. She leaned forward to spread it out again, so it would cover the toolbox.

It was so unexpected that she froze in mid-motion, locked into an awkward position by her own reflexes. Her torso and legs were perpendicular to each other, causing her to lose her balance and fall forward into the van.

Her face landed just a couple of inches away from the hand. Terrified, she got to her feet and stared at the transparent plastic. She had grazed it when shifting the rug, but it took her brain a few seconds to register what lay underneath it.

She stared at the hand. Her eyes perceived the contour of a folded human body under the blue rug. The form, the spot where the legs were doubled up at the knees, the torso, and the round bump that had to be the head.

The rain poured down over her when she sat in the open door and took a number of short, jolting breaths. Suddenly it occurred to her that she should check the body’s pulse and respiration, but she remained seated, not budging an inch. She knew. You wouldn’t lie perfectly still inside a plastic garbage bag if you were alive. And the body was still – deadly still, she thought. She felt herself being engulfed, along with the car and the body, by a vacuum that isolated them from the rest of the world. There was a dead body right next to her, and she’d already arrived at the common denominator.

It was the rat.

Christian had asked her to get rid of a body, while he himself was at work. And she remembered how he had once used the American slang word for an informer to describe one of his clients: the man was a rat.

Suddenly it made sense. She hadn’t occurred to her at all, when he asked for her help, but it confirmed everything. She shook her head at herself and stared into the distance.

The landscape around her, the winding brook, and the dirt road that ran over the hill and disappeared into the forest – all of the things that usually gave her a sense of comfort, began to recede from her perspective. In a moment she became so nauseous that she barely had time to lean forward, so the stream of vomit didn’t hit the fender of the van.

“What is he thinking?” she whispered, once she’d dried her mouth on the rough surface of the oilskin jacket.

It all started from the top – and had really been there all the while, she corrected herself, suddenly feeling a warm sense of inner calm. She wasn’t the sick one. Her reality was the true reality. Here was the evidence, which she would never be able to share with anyone other than Christian. She felt a great sense of relief spread throughout her body. Finally he was ready to incorporate her into the life he had kept strictly to himself.

She had been obstinate in her efforts to make him open up, but she’d never, ever believed that he was involved in such serious things! She was shocked – much more so than she had imagined she would be, the many times she’d fished for the truth, and been met by his steady insistence that he knew nothing about the mafia or their practices.

Finally all the pieces were falling into place. She had taken him into her confidence by allowing herself to be committed, and now he was reciprocating.

But why?

Christian couldn’t kill anyone.

He hadn’t taken the life of the person who was hidden in the van – she was certain of that. Someone had forced him to get rid of the body.

She had asked him several times if it was one of his clients who had gotten him mixed up with the mafia. It was no secret that business life in the City was more or less controlled by the many tentacles of the mob. But Christian had vehemently claimed that his office had avoided that fate. He had even once shouted at her – something he seldom did – that he would close his law office should that ever happen. But now she understood the outburst was prompted by his own feeling of helplessness. And what else could he have said?

As far as she knew, the normal procedure was that the mafia went straight after the money. If they didn’t get what they came for, they went after the family.

He wouldn’t want to frighten her, of course. She guessed that they had pressured him so violently that he had decided to work with them instead of against them. A logical thought process for a man who wanted to protect his wife, she thought. She rose to her feet.

Her vomit had already been washed away by the rain. She knew the local men would soon be leaving their workplaces, and decided to get rid of the body before they returned home to The Villa Grove in their big luxury cars.

He lay folded up in the transparent plastic garbage bag. He didn’t appear to be very big at first glance, she thought, but it was hard to judge, so she simply concluded that it was a man. His eyes were closed, and black wisps of his hair fell over his face.

Straightened out, she regarded him for a moment, recognizing that she would never be able to carry him back to the house. She would have to find another solution.

She put the rug back in place, so it once again covered the body, and then she closed the back door. She felt as though her skin were giving off steam under her clothing. When she unzipped her jacket she felt the rain beat against her, and enjoyed the refreshing sensation for a moment.

Inside the door to the shed was a wheelbarrow that Christian used to gather garden waste. She didn’t normally use it because it was too heavy to maneuver, but she saw no other way to move the dead body.

The door to the shed slammed shut as she was about to back out with the wheelbarrow, so she kicked backwards to make it swing open again. She abandoned the notion of protecting herself from the rain – she was only thinking of getting back to van and disposing of the body before anyone came by and noticed what she was doing. She jogged, making the wheelbarrow hop over the uneven path. The gate was still open at the very back end of the yard. When she realized that the wheelbarrow was slightly too wide to pass through, she tilted it out on its side.

She stood a moment to catch her breath. Her sweat mixed with the raindrops. Perhaps it would have been smarter to leave the wheelbarrow in the yard, she thought, when she realized she wouldn’t be able to lift it on its side once the body was added to its weight. She accepted that she’d have to move the dead body the short distance from the van into the yard. She quickly returned the wheelbarrow to the other side of the gate, before opening the back door and removing the rug.

She exhaled deeply before grabbing onto the bottom of the plastic sack. When she began to move the body, the palm and the clay flowerpot threatened to fall over onto it. She struck the palm, grabbed the man’s ankles and pulled. When she’d gotten his legs and lower torso out of the van, she stood awhile and regarded him. She wasn’t strong enough to lift him onto her shoulder. Instead she closed her eyes and, in one motion, pushed the sack down onto the wet ground, so it landed with a thud.

That’s it, she said to herself, deciding then to concentrate on performing the task in stages, instead of trying to deal with the project as a whole. She grabbed the sack’s constricted opening and pulled it across the grass without looking at its contents. She thought only of getting it up into the wheelbarrow.

Slightly dispirited she tried to lift the sack the way she lifted the bag of the dog’s dry food, but that wasn’t going to work. She could barely get it off the ground. She bent down and tried to get both hands under the body, but couldn’t really get a good grip. She let out an angry growl. The fury she had withheld, like a safety valve, while she was struggling, escaped, and she resolutely ripped off the sack, grabbed the body under the arms and lifted him the way one would lift a small child out of bed.

She succeeded in getting the body up into her grasp – a grotesque embrace that ended with the lifeless head dangling against her shoulder. After yet another growl, she traversed the distance to the wheelbarrow, leaned over and released the body. The arms and legs hung loosely over the sides. She noticed his crushed glasses on the grass. She picked them up, placed them on his stomach and folded his arms over them.

She gathered herself before starting to maneuver the wheelbarrow through the yard. She stopped to rest several times. The rain slammed into the body’s face with undiminished force, and he just lay there and took it. She ran back for the plastic sack and placed it loosely over the body. It would take a while for her to dig a hole that was deep enough.

“Goddamn you, Christian, I’m not strong enough for this!” she said, but then checked herself. Of course she was. She was stronger than they thought, and finally her husband had seen this, so there was no way she’d fold her hands in her lap and give up.

She fetched the spade, which was leaning up against the shed where she had left it when she went to search for the rat behind the van.

With all her strength she struck it deep down into the earth. She had decided to dig the hole behind the shed – away from the yard and the house. The pile of dirt grew in size, but the hole still didn’t look like much. She tried to control her breathing by taking deep, long breaths that filled her lungs to capacity. She took a little hop with each hack of the spade, and used all her strength when adding the earth to the pile.

A large puddle had formed on the bag, over the stomach of the dead body. His clothing was wet, and he looked absurdly pathetic, but she couldn’t work any faster. She considered running over to the van to get his blue rug to lay over him, but was sensible enough to reason that such an act would only be for her own sake, and was thus a waste of time.

She stood awhile and assessed the hole, before deciding it was indeed big enough. She carefully rolled the wheelbarrow to the edge and hoped she’d be able to unload him by simply tipping him over. He glided headfirst, landed in a heap with his legs over his upper torso, as though he were about to go for a back somersault. She kicked away the wet plastic sack that had landed on top of him, and freed his arms from under his body, so she could go about dragging him down.

“Come on!” she motivated herself. She didn’t dare think of the time, but she could see from the light that she had already spent a lot of time on the process. Occasionally she heard the dog bark inside the house, and remembered that she hadn’t even taken it for a walk.

She saw that the hole was a little short, once the body was stretched out alongside it, but she was certain he would fit if she bent his legs.

She gave him a hard push, so he rolled a half turn and landed with his face down. She rearranged him until she was sure his feet would be covered when she’d replaced the earth. It went quickly from there, but her arms had begun to quiver from overexertion.

Not so strange, she thought. She hadn’t used her muscles for a month, so it was no surprise they were protesting.

There was a visible bump over the ground when she was done, even though she had stomped all over the newly-covered hole. She had also rolled the wheelbarrow back and forth over the spot and patted the earth with a shovel to even it out. It was still visible, but by now she was done. Though the air temperature was still somewhere in the low seventies, and there was no wind to speak of, her entire body was shaking. The tears began to roll down her cheeks. She let them roll, an expression of her relief that the effort had been completed.

The dog launched its heavy body against the door when she approached the house, but she didn’t dare let it out. It would immediately pick up the scent of the dead body, and she couldn’t take the risk that it might tear off behind the shed and dig the body up again. She didn’t even dare walk the dog on a leash, as she wouldn’t have the strength to hang on, if it started to pull – it would have to suffer until Christian got home.

She’d given up on the idea of driving into the City – and at this point it seemed utterly insignificant if Christian discovered that the electric kettle was broken. Now that they had this event in common, she could allow herself to admit that she had been gripped by fear momentarily.

The dog was on her the moment she entered, whining and whirling as she kicked off her muddy rubber boots, and let her soaked oilskin jacket fall on the utility-room floor. She stood a moment and collected herself, before going into the kitchen and putting the kettle on for a new pot of tea. She then went over to the sideboard in the living room and opened the chocolate drawer. She selected a sheet of fine Swiss milk chocolate with hazelnuts that Christian usually bought in the duty free shop when he was returning from a business trip. She ripped open the package and snapped off a whole row, which she broke in half and stuffed into her mouth, one after the other. When the electric kettle clicked off, out in the kitchen, she went in and found a teabag. She couldn’t deal with rinsing the teapot – speed was of the essence – and quality was the last thing on her mind. She just had to get the tea in her system as quickly as possible.

She broke off another row of chocolate, and lifted the teabag out of the cup after one minute. The warm tea made the chocolate melt in her mouth. She alternated filling her mouth with tea and chocolate, until there was nothing left of either, and she sensed that she was feeling a little better. She felt heavy and drained, but she had stopped trembling. She sat for a few moments, then decided it would be a good idea to take a bath.

She went out and turned on the water – as if she hadn’t had enough water the past couple of hours! Still, the hot water would be wonderful. It felt as if every muscle in her body was sore, and the area behind her right shoulder was in spasm from swinging the spade so many times. She didn’t even dare think about how it would feel over the coming days, when the pain from her overtaxed muscles was at its height.

She poured bubble bath into the water and watched as the bubbles began to form like puffy clouds. She came to look down at herself when she was unbuttoning her pants. The thighs of her trousers were black with soil. She hadn’t noticed that the soil had kicked up under the bottom of her jacket as she dug. She stood up straight and stared at her own reflection. Her entire face was smeared and blackened. The light mascara she had applied in the morning had formed a solid borderline under her eyes, and below that were any number of muddy stripes. She’d transferred the mud to her face while trying to wipe away the rainwater. It looked like camouflage, she thought. The dirt under her nails was compacted so densely that it took a while for the water from the gushing faucet to dislodge it. Several of her nails were broken, but for once she didn’t care.

She took off the rest of her clothes. The dog sat in the doorway and stared at her. She uttered a few comforting words to her, and considered that nothing had played out the way she had planned – her ‘back home list’ was screaming to her from somewhere in the house, but she had forgotten where she’d left it.

The water surrounded her like a heated sleeping bag that closed over her shoulders. She blew carefully at a cloud of bubbles, causing it to fly up into the air in small tots. When she thought over what had happened, she was without anger for Christian and his actions. She couldn’t even reproach him for not being straight with her on the phone, as she had long believed that the phone was being tapped. It was smart of him to speak in code, but still, it would’ve been nice had they been in on it together.

She rubbed her forearms and massaged her legs to loosen up the muscles, and a wave of warmth slowly began to flow through her. Her body was perking up again, but at the same time, the first hint of a worry was creeping into her consciousness, and a moment later it exploded with enormous force.

What if someone had seen her? What if someone knew what she had done? They could use it against her, and then she’d be caught in their net, and would have to indulge their every wish. Just like Christian.

The anxiety made her cold. All the while, she had thought it would be over when the body was in the ground. Her husband’s account would be balanced. But maybe it wasn’t nearly enough, maybe they’d want more. Her body began to tremble again under the hot water. She lay awhile with her eyes closed, trying to get out in front of her anxiousness, but eventually gave up, reached for a large bath towel and rose from the tub, straightening her trembling legs.

Would it ever stop? she wondered and stepped out of the tub. Oddly, she still felt happier than she had when she woke up that morning, in spite of the anxiety, because now she and Christian were playing on the same half of the playing field. She would demand that he be straight with her, but after they’d talked about the situation and together found a way out of it, everything would be fine – and there was already one less fight to worry about, now that they wouldn’t have to fight against each other.

She dried herself thoroughly and fetched a sweat suit out of the closet – even though she had sworn that she would dress nicely as soon as she was back at home. She’d worn nothing but comfort clothing for the duration of her stay at the psychiatric ward. She yearned to wear something that followed the contours of her body, but right now she just didn’t have the energy to get dressed up.

More tea. She turned on the kettle and decided that she’d take the dog for a walk after all, at least until the water came to a boil. It hadn’t peed on the floor, but at some point nature would take its course.

She whistled and went out into the hall. The dog thundered straight at her and rammed her leg with such force that she nearly fell over. She cursed at the dog, and when she saw herself strike it, she began to cry. She was exhausted, run-down and completely in tatters. She sank to the floor and tried to wrap her arms around the dog’s warm body.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she gasped.

The dog danced around her, apparently registering neither the blow nor her mental condition – it just wanted out.

“But I made it,” she said, a little more deliberately. She wiped her nose with the white sleeve of her sweatshirt. “I did it, the rat is gone, and it’s all over.”

She got to her feet. When she picked up the rubber boots, they left a sludgy blotch of mud on the tiled floor. They were still wet, and more filthy than she had noticed when she came in. The oilskin jacket also left a large, dark stain when she picked it up. Instead of the pleasure of coming home to a nice, clean house, she was presently making a mess of the place without even noticing it.

She only remembered the leash when they were halfway out the door. She used the last of her energy to push the dog back inside, and click the leash onto the collar. She wrapped the leash around her hand a few times and went outside.

“This will have to be a quick one,” she said as they went down the driveway, in the opposite direction of the yard, and the dead body.

The dog squatted down before they even got to the road, and the moment it was done, she was pulling at the leash to get it back inside.

Before turning around on the driveway, she cast a quick glance up the road, to ensure that no one was keeping an eye on her. She had seen them several times prior to her admission. She’d told Christian, who had either brushed it aside or tried to change the subject. Nice and calm at first. But on those occasions where she had persisted, he would eventually put his hands on her shoulders and squeeze, then control his irritation and calmly, clearly explain to her that there was no one out there who wanted to waste their time keeping their house under surveillance. And then she would give up.

In principle, the spying didn’t have to concern her, as they were watching him and not her, but that wasn’t the way it worked. As long as he was her husband, it concerned her.The dog wasn’t happy about being shepherded inside again so quickly. Once her paws had been dried, she took up a position by the door, beseeched her mistress with her eyes and let out a heart-rending howl.

“No, go lie down. Daddy will be home soon, he’ll take you for a walk.”

She experienced a strange, floating sensation in her body – she suddenly felt what a great relief it was that she wouldn’t have to defend herself, that she would no longer be doubted. It occurred to her that it had been a feeling of mistrust that had gnawed a big hole in her stomach. No one had believed her when she told of her experiences, and in the end, when she had begun to doubt herself in her weakest moments, the hole in her stomach had become more permanent. It was such a great relief, now that she wouldn’t be forced to walk the line between fantasy and reality – she would never have been able to convince anyone that the others were wrong and she was right.

***