“No, that wasn’t the idea. Tell me about the cross.”
“He set it up yesterday, and then it was freshly painted, I think. He was giggling the whole time he was doing it. As if he was proud. The point was for me to be afraid, but I was more scared of the prod. I was also supposed to say when it was hanging straight.”
“He’s sick. Now let’s try to feel. Put your cheek and ear against the wall, and try to feel as much as you can. I’ll do the same.”
The wall was granulated and felt cold. Pauline Berg also thought it felt damp and concluded for both of them, “It’s an outside wall.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Fine, and now listen, this is the most important sense. Are you ready to concentrate?”
“I’m ready.”
The two women listened in the darkness. For a long time Pauline Berg did not hear anything other than her own and Jeanette Hvidt’s suppressed breathing, but then suddenly she picked up a faint, deep rumble vibrating through the cellar.
“Did you hear that, Jeanette?”
“Yes, it’s the S-train.”
Berg kept her voice down as best she could.
“How do you know that?”
“The bunker isn’t very far from the tracks.”
“We’re in a bunker?”
“Yes, it’s buried in the ground.”
“Why didn’t you say that before? I mean, that you knew where we are?”
“You didn’t ask me, and I thought you knew that too.”
Pauline admitted her mistake.
“No, I didn’t, but tell me what you’ve seen. Where are we?”
“Hareskoven, I think it’s called, you know, the forest. Our bunker is buried in the ground.”
“What is there around us?”
“Trees.”
“Nothing else?”
“A path.”
“It ends here?”
“Yes, I think so, but I’m not sure.”
“How do you know that we’re close to the S-train ?”
“I could see it from the car when we turned into the forest, and when he dragged me in here, I could clearly hear the train. The tracks are not far away.”
“Where did you sit in the car?”
“Beside him, but I didn’t dare do anything except look. He had his prod and . . . well, you know.”
“How many times has he given you shocks?”
“Once when he caught me, it was in my uncle’s garden, and then twice down here one after the other, because I was crying and using ugly . . . shouted at him, called him names and such. No, three times down here. He made me scream after I sang for you.”
“Tell me, were there people on the path?”
“No, but it was raining.”
“Do you think that was why?”
“I don’t know . . . no, I just don’t think very many people go this way.”
“So it won’t help to cry out for help?”
“No, I think no one can hear us.”
“Can you tell me anything else about our bunker?”
“It’s called an air raid shelter, and you can rent them for thirteen hundred kroner a month plus electricity.”
“How in the world do you know that?”
“He told me. I don’t know if it’s true.”
“Why did he say that?”
“To humiliate me, I think. When I came there were bags in here, he carried them into another room. He said the price, when he said that he had paid three years in advance, and that no one except him ever came here. But that’s not correct.”
A little light bulb came on for Berg.
“What do you mean? Has anyone else come while you’ve been here?”
“Yes, you.”
“Well, yes, but besides me?”
“No, only you.”
Berg thought for a moment and said, “If he’s rented this bunker, it’s only a matter of time before they find us. They are trawling through his entire life at the moment. Every single day he’s been alive.”
“He didn’t rent it in his own name, he bragged about that. He also said what he called himself, but I can’t remember.”
“Did you see anything else on your way in?”
“Yes, there was a red square in the grass. I don’t know what it was.”
“What do you mean?”
“The grass was red there. I don’t know why.”
“How big a square? What colour red? Tell me.”
Jeanette Hvidt told her. When she was done, Pauline Berg asked, “Tell me, what colour was his car, can you remember that?”
“Red too. The same colour, now that you mention it. Do you think he painted it?”
Berg made light of it. Her fellow prisoner was afraid enough already, there was no reason to worry her further. But this was not good. Her colleagues were searching for a white car, not a red one, a detail that could be decisive. She tried to sound optimistic.
“Okay, let me think over what we’ll do.”
“Don’t we need to smell and taste?”