The Boy in the Suitcase

The Boy in the Suitcase - By Lene Kaaberbol



AUGUST



THE HOUSE SAT on the brink of a cliff, with an unhindered view of the bay. Jan knew perfectly well what the locals called it: the Fortress. But that was not why he looked at the white walls with a vague sense of dissatisfaction. The locals could think what they liked; they weren’t the ones who mattered.

The house was of course designed by a well-known architect, and modern, in a functional-classical way, a modern take on the Swedish “funkis” trend. Neo-funkis. That’s what Anne called it, and she had shown him pictures and other houses until he understood, or understood some of it, at least. Straight lines, no decoration. The view was meant to speak for itself, through the huge windows that drew the light and the surrounding beauty into the room. That was how the architect had put it, and Jan could see his point, everything new and pure and right. Jan had bought the grounds and had the old summer cottage torn down; he had battled the municipal committee until they realized that they most certainly did want him as a taxpayer here and gave the necessary permissions; he had even conquered the representative of the local Nature Society with a donation that nearly made her choke on her herbal tea. But why should he not establish a wildlife preserve? He had no interest in other people’s building here, or tramping all over the place in annoying picnic herds. So there it was, his house, protected by white walls, airy and bright, and with clean uncluttered neo-funkis lines. Just the way he had wanted it.

And yet, it was not what he wanted. This was not how it was supposed to be. He still thought of the other place with a strange, unfocused longing. A big old pile, an unappealing mix of decaying 1912 nouveau-riche and appallingly ugly sixties additions, and snobbily expensive because it was on Strandvejen, the coast-hugging residences of the Copenhagen financial elite. But that was not why he had wanted it—zip codes meant nothing to him. Its attraction was its nearness to Anne’s childhood home, just on the other side of the tall unkempt whitethorn hedge. He couldn’t help but imagine it all: The large family gathered for barbecues under the apple trees, he and Anne’s father in a cloud of Virginia tobacco, holding chunky tumblers of a very good Scotch. Anne’s siblings by the long white patio table, with their children. Anne’s mother in the swing seat, a beautiful Indian shawl around her shoulders. His and Anne’s children, four or five, he had imagined, with the youngest asleep in Anne’s lap. Most of all, Anne happy, relaxed, and smiling. Gathered for the Midsummer festival, perhaps, with a bonfire of their own, and yet enough of them there so that the singing sounded right. Or just some ordinary Thursday, because they felt like it, and there had been fresh shrimp on the pier that day.

He drew hungrily at his cigarette, looking out across the bay. The water was a sullen dark blue, streaked with foam, and the wind tore at his hair and made his eyes water. He had even persuaded the owner to sell. The papers were there, ready for his signature. But she had said no.

He didn’t get it. It was her family, damn it. Weren’t women supposed to care about such things? The nearness, the roots, the closeknit relations? All that stuff. And with a family like Anne’s, so . . . right. Healthy. Loving. Strong. Keld and Inger, still obviously in love after nearly forty years. Anne’s brothers, who came to the house regularly, sometimes with their own wives and children, other times alone, just dropping in because they both still played tennis at the old club. To become part of that, in such an easy, everyday manner, just next door, on the other side of the hedge . . . how could she turn that down? But she did. Quietly, stubbornly, in true Annefashion, without arguments or reasons why. Just no.

So now here they were. This was where they lived, he and she and Aleksander, on the edge of a cliff. The wind howled around the white walls whenever the direction was northwesterly, and they were alone. Much too far away to just drop in, not part of things, with no share in that easy, warm family communion except by special arrangement now and then, four or five times a year.

He took a last drag and tossed the cigarette away, stepping on the butt to make sure the dry grass didn’t catch fire. He stood for a few minutes, letting the wind whip away the smell from his clothes and hair. Anne didn’t know that he had started smoking again.

He took the photo from his wallet. He kept it there because he knew Anne was much too well raised to go snooping through his pockets. He probably should have gotten rid of it, but he just needed to look at it sometimes, needed to feel the mixture of hope and terror it inspired.

The boy was looking straight into the camera. His bare shoulders were drawn forward, as if he hunched himself against some unseen danger. There were no real clues to where the photo had been taken; the details were lost in the darkness behind him. At the corner of his mouth, one could see traces of something he had just eaten. It might be chocolate.

Jan touched the picture with one forefinger, very gently. Then he carefully put the photo away again. They had sent him a mobile phone, an old Nokia, which he would never himself have bought. Probably stolen, he thought. He dialed the number, and waited for the reply.

“Mr. Marquart.” The voice was polite, but accented. “Hello. Have you decided?”

In spite of having made his decision, he hesitated. Finally the voice had to prod him on.

“Mr. Marquart?”

He cleared his throat.

“Yes. I accept.”

“Good. Here are your instructions.”

He listened to the brief, precise sentences, wrote down numbers and figures. He was polite, like the man on the phone. It was only after the conversation had ended that he could no longer contain his disgust and defiance. Furiously, he flung the phone away; it arced over the fence to bounce and disappear on the heathered slope beneath him.

He got back into his car and drove the rest of the way up to the house.

LESS THAN AN hour later, he was crawling about on the slope, looking for the damn thing. Anne came out onto the terrace in front of the house and leaned over the railing.

“What are you doing?” she shouted.

“I dropped something,” he called back.

“Do you want me to come down and help?”

“No.”

She stayed out there for a while. The wind tore at her peachcolored linen dress, and the updraft blew her fair shoulder-length hair up around her face, so that it looked as if she were falling. In free fall without a parachute, he thought, only to check that chain of thought before it could continue. It would be all right. Anne would never need to know.

It took him nearly an hour and a half to find the stupid phone. And then he had to call the airline. This was one trip he had no wish to let his secretary book for him.

“Where are you going?” asked Anne.

“Just a quick trip to Zürich.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No,” he said hastily. Fear had flooded into her eyes instantly, and trying to calm it was a knee-jerk reaction. “It’s just a business thing. Some funds I need to arrange. I’ll be back by Monday.”

How had they ended up like this? He suddenly recalled with great intensity that Saturday in May more than ten years ago when he had watched Keld walk her up the aisle. She had been fairytale pretty, in a stunningly simple white dress, pink and white rosebuds in her hair. He knew at once that the bouquet he had chosen was much too big and garish, but it hadn’t mattered. He was just a few minutes away from hearing her say “I do.” For an instant, his gaze caught Keld’s, and he thought he saw a welcome and an appreciation there. Father-in-law. I’ll take care of her, he silently promised the tall, smiling man. And in his mind added two promises that weren’t in the marriage vows: he would give her anything she wanted, and he would protect her against everything that was evil in the world.

That is still what I want, he thought, tossing his passport into the Zürich case. Whatever the price.





SOMETIMES, JUČAS HAD a dream about a family. There was a mother and a father and two children, a boy and a girl. Usually, they would be at the dinner table, eating a meal the mother had cooked for them. They lived in a house with a garden, and in the garden there were apple trees and raspberries. The people were smiling, so that one could tell they were happy.

He himself was outside the house, looking in. But there was always the feeling that any minute now they would catch sight of him, and the father would open the door, smiling even wider, and say: “There you are! Come in, come in.”

JUČAS HAD NO idea who they were. Nor could he always remember what they looked like. But when he woke, it would be with a feeling of muddled nostalgia and expectation that would stay with him all day like a tightness in his chest.

Lately he had dreamed the dream a lot. He blamed it on Barbara. She always wanted to talk about how it was going to be—him and her, and the little house just outside Krakow, close enough that her mother would need to take only one bus, and yet far enough away for them to have a bit of privacy. And there would be children. Of course. Because that was what Barbara wanted: children.

The day before it was to happen, they had celebrated. Everything was done, everything ready. The car was packed, all preparations were in place. The only thing that could stop them now was if the bitch suddenly changed her pattern. And even if she did, all they had to do was wait another week.

“Let’s go to the country,” said Barbara. “Let’s go find someplace where we can lie in the grass and be alone together.”

At first he refused on the grounds that it was best not to alter one’s own pattern. People remembered. Only as long as one did what one always did would one remain relatively invisible. But then he realized this might be his last day in Lithuania ever, if everything went according to plan. And he didn’t really feel like spending that day selling security systems to middle-range businessmen in Vilnius.

He called the client he was due to see and canceled, telling them the company would be sending someone Monday or Tuesday instead. Barbara called in sick with “the flu.” It would be Monday before anyone at Klimka’s realized they had been playing hooky at the same time, and by then it wouldn’t matter.

They drove out to Lake Didžiulis. Once, this had been a holiday camp for Pioneer children. Now it was a scout camp instead, and on an ordinary school day at the end of August, the whole place was completely deserted. Jučas parked the Mitsubishi in the shade beneath some pines, hoping the car wouldn’t be an oven when they returned. Barbara got out, stretching so that her white shirt slid up to reveal a bit of tanned stomach. That was enough to make his cock twitch. He had never known a woman who could arouse him as quickly as Barbara. He had never known anyone like her, period. He still wondered why on earth she had picked someone like him. They stayed clear of the wooden huts, which in any case looked rather sad and dilapidated. Instead they followed the path past the flag hill and into the woods. He inhaled the smell of resin and sun-parched trees, and for a moment was back with Granny Edita on the farm near Visaginas. He had spent the first seven years of his life there. Freezing cold and lonely in the winter, but in the summer Rimantas moved in with his Gran on the neighboring farm, and then the thicket of pines between the two smallholdings became Tarzan’s African Jungle, or the endless Mohican woods of Hawkeye.

“Looks like we can swim here.” Barbara pointed at the lakeshore further ahead. An old swimming platform stuck into the waters of the lake like a slightly crooked finger.

Jučas stuffed Visaginas back into the box where it belonged, the one labeled “The Past.” He didn’t often open that box, and there was certainly no reason to mess with it now.

“There are probably leeches,” he said, to tease her.

She grimaced. “Of course there aren’t. Or they wouldn’t let the children swim here.”

Belatedly, he realized he didn’t really want to stop her from taking her clothes off.

“You’re probably right,” he said, hastily.

She flashed him a quick smile, as though she knew exactly what he was thinking. And as he watched, she slowly unbuttoned her shirt and stepped out of her sand-colored skirt and string sandals, until she stood barefoot on the beach, wearing only white panties and a plain white bra.

“Do we have to swim first?” he asked.

“No,” she said, stepping close. “We can do that afterwards.”

He wanted her so badly it sometimes made him clumsy like a teenager. But today he forced himself to wait. Playing with her. Kissing her. Making sure she was just as aroused as he was. He fumbled for the condom he always kept in his wallet, at her insistence. But this time she stopped him.

“It’s such a beautiful day,” she said. “And such a beautiful place. Surely, we can make a beautiful child, don’t you think?”

He was beyond speech. But he let go of the wallet and held her for several long minutes before he pushed her down onto the grass and tried to give her what she so badly wanted.

AFTERWARDS, THEY DID swim in the deep, cool waters of the lake. She was not a strong swimmer, had never really learned how, so mostly she doggy-paddled, splashing and kicking. Finally she linked her hands behind his neck and let herself be towed along as he backstroked to keep them both afloat. She looked into his eyes.

“Do you love me?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Even though I’m an old, old woman?” She was nine years older than him, and it bothered her. He didn’t care.

“Insanely,” he said. “And you’re not old.”

“Take care of me,” she said, settling her head on his chest. He was surprised at the strength of the tenderness he felt.

“Always at your service,” he murmured. And he thought that perhaps the family in the dream was him and Barbara, perhaps that was the point of it all—him and Barbara, in the house just outside Krakow. Soon.

Just one little thing to be done first.





SATURDAYS WERE SIGITA’S loneliest days.

The week went by quite quickly; there was work, and there was Mikas, and from the time she picked him up at kindergarten shortly before six, everything was done in a strict routine—cook, eat, bathe the child, tuck him in, lay out his clothes for the morning, tidy up, do the dishes, watch a little television. Sometimes she fell asleep to the drone of the news.

But Saturdays. Saturday belonged to the grandparents. From early morning the parking lot in front of their building was busy as cars were packed full of children and bags and empty wooden crates. They would return Sunday evening laden with potatoes, lettuce, and cabbage, and sometimes fresh eggs and new honey. Everyone was going “up to the country,” whether the country was a simple allotment or a grandparental farm.

Sigita was going nowhere. She bought all her vegetables at the supermarket now. And when she saw little four-year-old Sofija from number 32 dash across the pavement and throw herself into the bosom of her hennaed, sun-tanned grandmother, it sometimes hurt so badly that it felt as if she had lost a limb.

This Saturday, her solution was the same as it always was—to make a thermos full of coffee and pack a small lunch, and then take Mikas to the kindergarten playground. The birch trees by the fence shimmered green and white in the sun. There had been rain during the night, and a couple of starlings were bathing themselves in the brown puddles underneath the seesaw.

“Lookmama thebirdis takingabath!” said Mikas, pointing enthusiastically. Lately, he had begun to talk rapidly and almost incessantly, but not yet very clearly. It wasn’t always easy to understand what he was saying.

“Yes. I suppose he wants to be nice and clean. Do you think he knows it’s Sunday tomorrow?”

She had hoped that there might be a child or two in the playground, but this Saturday they were alone, which was usually the case. She gave Mikas his truck and his little red plastic bucket and shovel. He still loved the sandbox and would play for hours, laying out ambitious projects involving moats and roads, twigs standing in for trees, or possibly fortifications. She sat on the edge of the box, closing her eyes for a minute.

She was so tired.

A shower of wet sand caught her in the face. She opened her eyes.

“Mikas!”

He had done it on purpose. She could see the suppressed laughter in his face. His eyes were alight.

“Mikas, don’t do that!”

He pushed the tip of his shovel into the sand and twitched it, so that another volley of sand hit her square in the chest. She felt some of it trickle down inside her blouse.

“Mikas!”

He could no longer hold back his giggle. It bubbled out of him, contagious and irresistible. She leaped up.

“I’ll get you for this!”

He screamed with delight and took off at his best three-year-old speed. She slowed her steps a bit to let him get a head start, then went after him, catching him and swinging him up in the air, then into a tight embrace. At first he wriggled a little, then he threw his arms around her neck, and burrowed his head under her chin. His light, fair hair smelled of shampoo and boy. She kissed the top of his head, loudly and smackingly, making him squirm and giggle again.

“Mamadon’t!”

Only later, after they had settled by the sandbox again and she had poured herself the first cup of coffee, did the tiredness return. She held the plastic cup to her face and sniffed as though it were cocaine. But this was not a tiredness that coffee could cure.

Would it always be like this? she thought. Just me and Mikas. Alone in the world. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Or was it?

Suddenly Mikas jumped up and ran to the fence. A woman was standing there, a tall young woman in a pale summer coat, with a flowery scarf around her head as though she were on her way to Mass. Mikas was heading for her with determination. Was it one of the kindergarten teachers? No, she didn’t think so. Sigita got hesitantly to her feet.

Then she saw that the woman had something in her hand. The shiny wrapper glittered in the sunshine, and Mikas had hauled himself halfway up the fence with eagerness and desire. Chocolate.

Sigita was taken aback by the heat of her anger. In ten or twelve very long paces, she was at the fence herself. She grabbed Mikas a little too harshly, and he gave her an offended look. He already had chocolate smears on his face.

“What are you giving him!”

The unfamiliar woman looked at her in surprise.

“It’s just a little chocolate. . . .”

She had a slight accent, Russian, perhaps, and this did not lessen Sigita’s rancor.

“My son is not allowed to take candy from strangers,” she said.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that . . . he’s such a sweet boy.”

“Was it you yesterday? And the other day, before that?” There had been traces of chocolate on Mikas’s jersey, and Sigita had had a nasty argument with the staff about it. They had steadfastly denied giving the children any sweets. Once a month, that was the agreed policy, and they wouldn’t dream of diverging from it, they had said. Now it appeared it was true.

“I pass by here quite often. I live over there,” said the woman, indicating one of the concrete apartment blocks surrounding the playground. “I bring the children sweets all the time.”

“Why?”

The woman in the pale coat looked at Mikas for a long moment. She seemed nervous now, as though she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t.

“I don’t have any of my own,” she finally said.

A pang of sympathy caught Sigita amidst her anger.

“That’ll come soon enough,” she heard herself say. “You’re still young.”

The woman shook her head.

“Thirty-six,” she said, as though the figure itself were a tragedy.

It wasn’t until now that Sigita really noticed the careful makeup designed to eradicate the slight signs of aging around her eyes and her mouth. Automatically, she clutched her son a little tighter. At least I have Mikas, she told herself. At least I have that.

“Please don’t do it again,” she said, less strictly than she had meant to. “It’s not good for him.”

The woman’s eyes flickered.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It won’t happen again.” Then she spun suddenly and walked away with rapid steps.

Poor woman, thought Sigita. I guess I’m not the only one whose life turned out quite different from expected.

SHE WIPED AWAY the chocolate smears with a moistened handkerchief. Mikas wriggled like a worm and was unhappy.

“Morechoclate,” he said. “More!”

“No,” said Sigita. “There is no more.”

She could see that he was considering a tantrum, and looked around quickly for a diversion.

“Hey,” she said, grabbing the red bucket. “Why don’t you and I build a castle?”

She played with him until he was caught up in the game again, the endless fascination of water and sand and sticks and the things one could do with them. The coffee had gone cold, but she drank it anyway. Sharp little grains of sand dug into her skin beneath the edge of her bra, and she tried discretely to dislodge them. Leafy shadows from the birches shimmered across the gray sand, and Mikas crawled about on all fours with his truck clutched in one hand, making quite realistic engine noises.

Afterwards, that was the last thing she remembered.