The Chestnut Man

by Søren Sveistrup

  ‘What is it?’

  She fidgets impatiently by the utility-room door, but her mum says she has to take off her wellies and come all the way inside. Rosa is surprised to find her mother and father standing in the utility room, both waiting for her with peculiar smiles, and she realizes they’ve probably been watching them play in the garden for a while.

  ‘Do you like playing with Toke and Astrid?’

  ‘Yes. What is it? We’re busy.’

  She’s annoyed at having to stand there in the utility room in her raincoat while the twins are waiting for her by the playhouse. If they get the chestnuts finished this morning, they can fetch the fruit crates from the garage and make the stall before lunch, so they’ve got no time to waste.

  ‘We’ve decided to keep Toke and Astrid, so they can stay here for good. What do you say to that?’

  The washing machine behind her dad starts up with a hum, and the two grown-ups are looking at her.

  ‘They’ve had a difficult time. They need a good home, and your dad and I think it should be here with us. If you think so too. Do you?’

  The question catches Rosa unawares. She doesn’t know what she thinks. She thought they were going to ask her whether they wanted some rye bread snacks. Or some squash or a few Marie biscuits. But that’s not what they’re asking. So she gives the answer the smiling faces want.

  ‘Yes. That’s fine.’

  The next minute Mum and Dad are tramping out into the wet garden, Mum in wellies and Dad in flip-flops. She can tell they’re happy. They’re not wearing their coats, not even warm jumpers, but they make their way over to the playhouse where the twins are sitting on the steps, still preoccupied with the chestnuts. Rosa stays by the door to the utility room where they told her. She can’t hear what they’re saying, but Mum and Dad sit next to the twins and take their time. Rosa can see the twins’ faces. Suddenly the girl grabs Dad and hugs him. Then the boy begins to cry. Just sits and cries. Mum puts her arm around him to comfort him, and Mum and Dad turn their faces towards each other and smile in a way Rosa can’t remember seeing before. The skies open. The rain pelts down, and as Rosa stands in the doorway the others huddle under the small pent roof and laugh.

  ‘We completely understand your decision. Where are they?’

  ‘In the guest room. I’ll go and get them.’

  ‘How is your girl?’

  ‘Not too bad, given the circumstances.’

  Rosa is sitting at the kitchen table, but she can clearly hear the voices from the hall. Mum walks past the slightly open door towards the guest room, while Dad remains in the hall with the man and the lady. Rosa has just watched them get out of the white car in the road outside the kitchen window. The voices in the hall get quieter, vanishing into a whisper Rosa can’t decipher. There’s been a lot of whispering over the last week. Rosa wants it to be over soon. It started right after she told them the story. She doesn’t know where she got it from – well, maybe from kindergarten, that time. She can still remember how the grown-ups reacted when a girl called Berit told them what happened in the playroom with all the cushions. She’d been playing with the boys, until one of them wanted to see her front bottom. He’d even offered her fifty øre for it. So Berit showed him, and then she asked if the other boys wanted to see it too. Lots of them did, and Berit earned loads of money from the boys. They could put stuff up there, too, which cost an extra 25 øre.

  The grown-ups had been scared, that was obvious. There’d been lots of whispering after that day in the playroom, including among the parents in the cloakroom, and not long afterwards they made tons of new rules that were no fun at all. Rosa had nearly forgotten the whole thing. But one evening after Mum and Dad spent all day buying and putting together two new beds and painting the guest room, the story had come to her quite naturally, without so much as a second thought.

  Through the chink in the door she sees the two small figures go past, heads bowed. She hears their feet on the steps outside the front door, where Dad has already put their bags. In the corridor she hears Mum asking the lady where the children will be sent next.

  ‘We haven’t found a new place yet, but hopefully it won’t be long.’

  The grown-ups say goodbye, and Rosa goes into her room. She doesn’t want to see the twins, because her tummy hurts. Like there’s a knot inside. But she can’t take back the story now, because she said what she said, and it’s not okay to lie about that sort of thing. She’s got to hold it in and never say a thing to anyone. Still, she feels about ready to explode inside when she sees the present they left on her bed. Five chestnut dolls in a ring, as though they’re holding hands. They’re held together with steel wire, and two of the dolls are bigger than the others, as if it’s a mum and a dad with their three children.

  ‘All right, Rosa, they’re gone now …’

  Rosa bolts past her mum and dad. She hears them calling after her in astonishment as she runs through the front door. The white car has just pulled away from the curb and is speeding up towards the bend. Rosa runs as fast as she can in her socks, until the car disappears. The last thing she sees are the boy’s dark eyes, staring at her through the back window.

  114

  By the time she turns down the road into the woods and accelerates, the daylight is almost gone. It has started snowing again, and the snow has nearly obscured the faint tyre tracks Rosa can just make out in the beam of her headlights. At first she overshot, and had to dash into a house to ask for directions. She’s never been to Møn before, and even if she had, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Following the instructions the lady at the house gave her and driving back the way she’d come, it strikes her that she completely overlooked the big chestnut tree and the side road that turns into the woods. The road snakes through bare old trees and tall firs, one hairpin bend after another, but because she can follow the tracks she is able to maintain her speed and stay on the road. As the tracks gradually grow fainter, wiped smooth at last by the driving snow, panic takes hold. There is no farm here. No people, nothing at all, only the road and the woods, and if she’s taken another wrong turn then it might be too late.

  Just as Rosa starts to doubt herself, the forest opens up before her and the road suddenly leads on to a wide farmyard surrounded by enormous trees. It isn’t what she’d imagined. The description in the report she’d read at the ministry had made her picture some tumbledown place, untended and ugly, but it isn’t like that. It’s idyllic. Rosa stops the car, switches off the engine and completely forgets to lock the door as she climbs hurriedly out into the snow and glances around, her breath turning to vapour every way she looks.

  There are two wings to the farmhouse – two storeys, thatched roofs – and at first glance it looks like a nicely renovated country house. But the white-plastered façade is illuminated by modern outdoor lights, their glow extending all the way into the yard where she stands, and in the crannies beneath the thatched roof are small glass domes Rosa recognizes as CCTV cameras. Through the white-mullioned windows she can see something warm flickering inside the front room, and not until she sees the inscription above the front door, which reads ‘Chestnut Farm’ in tidy black letters, is she sure she’s come to the right place. Rosa can wait no longer. She shouts at the top of her lungs, and when she draws in the breath and lets it out, the name echoes through the yard and up among the trees.

  ‘Kristine …!’

  A flock of crows are flushed from the trees behind the farm. They dive through the snowflakes and fly over the wings of the house, and only once the last of them has vanished does she notice the figure by the barn door.

  He is tall, about six foot one. Clad in an open oilskin jacket with a blue heavy-duty bucket of firewood in one hand and an axe in the other. His face is mild and youthful, and at first she doesn’t recognize him.

  ‘You found it … welcome.’

  There is a note of acknowledgement in his voice, almost of friendliness, and after a brief stare he starts walking across the yard t
owards the front door, while the snow crunches beneath his feet.

  ‘Where is she?!’

  ‘I want to start by apologizing that the farm looks different from the way it did back then. When I bought it I planned to recreate the place so you could see it in its original condition – but the thought was too depressing.’

  ‘Where is she?!’

  ‘She’s not here. You’re welcome to look.’

  Rosa’s heart is hammering. The whole thing is surreal, and she snatches at her breath. The man pauses at the front door, opening it amiably wide as he stands back and knocks the snow off his boots.

  ‘Come on, Rosa. Let’s get this over with.’

  115

  Rosa shouts her daughter’s name through the corridors of the dark, cold house. She runs up the stairs to the first floor and searches beneath all the sloping roofs, but with the same result. There’s nothing. No furniture, no possessions, only the scent of varnish and fresh wood hanging over everything. It’s an empty, newly renovated house, and it feels as though nothing has ever been inside. On her way down the stairs she hears him. He is humming something, an old nursery rhyme, and when she realizes what it is her veins freeze to ice. When she walks through the doorway from the front hall to the living room, he is crouching with his back to her, jabbing a poker at the smouldering firewood in the stove. In the blue bucket beside him is the axe, and in one swift movement she grabs it. But he doesn’t move a muscle. He is still crouching when he looks up at her, and her hands begin to shake, but she tries to position them on the handle so she’ll be ready to use it.

  ‘Tell me what you’ve done …’

  He shuts the door of the stove and carefully fastens the hasp.

  ‘She’s somewhere nice now. Isn’t that what people say?’

  ‘I asked you what you’ve done!’

  ‘That was what they told me, anyway, every time I asked about my sister. Bit ironic, really. First you lock twins in a basement and let hubby do whatever he wants while mummy films the whole thing. Then you split them up for years without a word of contact because you think it’s best for them …’

  Rosa doesn’t know what to say, but as he rises to his feet she tightens her grip on the axe.

  ‘But somewhere nice, that isn’t very comforting. I think the not knowing is the worst thing. Do you agree?’

  The man is insane. All the ideas that had come to Rosa on her way down are unusable. There is no reasoning, no strategy or plan that can be used before those calmly staring eyes. Instead she takes a step closer.

  ‘I don’t know what you want. And I don’t care. You’re going to tell me what you’ve done and where Kristine is. You hear me?’

  ‘Or what? Or you’ll use that on me?’

  He points casually at the axe, and she feels tears welling up. He’s right. She’ll never use the axe, because then she’d never know. Even as she fights them back, the tears begin to come, and she sees the ghost of a smile on his face.

  ‘Why don’t we skip this part. We both know what you want to know, and I want to tell you. The only question is how much you want to know.’

  ‘I’ll do anything … just tell me. Why can’t you just tell me …’

  He’s quick, and she has no time to react before he’s standing close to her, pressing something wet and soft against her face. The sharp stench sears her nostrils. She tries to twist free, but he’s too strong, and his voice is whispering much too close to her ear.

  ‘There, now … breathe. It’ll all be over soon.’

  116

  The light is harsh, blinding. She blinks and struggles to open her eyes, and the first thing she registers is the white ceiling and the white walls. To her left, away from the wall, she can make out a low steel table that shines in the light, and that plus the flickering monitors on the opposite wall make her think she’s in hospital. She is lying in a hospital bed, and the whole thing has been a dream, but when she tries to sit up she realizes she can’t. It isn’t a bed she is lying on. It’s an operating table, also steel, and her bare arms and legs are spread, tightly bound with leather straps that are bolted to the table. The sight makes her call out, but the strap that holds down her head is stretched across her open mouth, leaving her cries muffled and incomprehensible.

  ‘Hello again. Are you all right?’

  Rosa feels groggy, and she can’t see him.

  ‘The effect will wear off after ten minutes or so. Not many people know this, but ordinary horse chestnuts contain aesculin, a poison that’s just as effective as chloroform if you make the right cocktail.’

  Rosa’s eyes flick back and forth, but she can still only hear his voice.

  ‘In any case, we’ve got plenty to do, so you’d better try to stay awake from now on. Deal?’

  Suddenly he enters her field of view, wearing white plastic coveralls. In one hand he is carrying an oblong flight case, which he sets down on the low steel table, and as he bends down and opens the lock she hears him say that Kristine’s story began the day he suddenly recognized Rosa on the news, after many years of searching.

  ‘I’d actually started to think I’d never find you. But from the backbenches of parliament you were promoted to Minister for Social Affairs. Just imagine the irony. I found you because of exactly that appointment …’

  It strikes Rosa that the white coveralls are identical to the ones she’s seen the police techs wearing. He wears a white mask over his mouth and a blue hairnet, and with plastic-gloved hands he opens the lid of the flight case. When Rosa forces her head hard to the left, she can just make out two hollows in the foam inside. He is blocking the contents of the first, but at the back she can see a gleaming metal rod. One end is fitted with a metal ball roughly the size of a fist, covered in small, sharp barbs. At the other end is the handle, but where the handle ends and the rod ought to stop, the metal protrudes to form an awl five or six centimetres long. She strains and jerks at the leather straps, while she hears him say that he discovered why he and his sister were transferred to Chestnut Farm when he accessed an old file from Odsherred Council.

  ‘You were just an innocent little girl, of course, struggling to cope with delayed gratification. But your little lie got away from you, and every time you came out and started talking about the poor wee children I could tell from your smug face you’d forgotten all about it.’

  Rosa screams. She wants to tell him it isn’t true, but the sounds that come out are like a wild animal’s, and from the corner of her eye she senses him take out the object in the first hollow.

  ‘On the other hand, it seemed too lenient to just have you die. What I really wanted was to show you the suffering you’d caused – I just didn’t know how. Not until I discovered you had a daughter, one about the same age as my sister had been, in fact – and that gave me the idea. I started studying your routines, especially Kristine’s, of course, and since she wasn’t especially bright or original, living her coddled upper-class life, it was easy to figure her out and come up with a plan. Then all I had to do was wait for autumn. By the way, was it you who taught her to make chestnut men?’

  Rosa tries to get her bearings. There are no windows, stairs or doors in her line of sight, yet she starts systematically screaming. Although most of the sound is blocked by the leather strap across her mouth, it fills the room and gives her the burst of energy she needs to writhe in an attempt to free herself. But then the voice is suddenly much closer, and she realizes he is standing fiddling with something by her side.

  ‘It was a very special pleasure to watch. At that point I didn’t know how I could use it, but it had its own poetry, her selling them by the roadside with her friend. It actually made me hold back for a few days, before I followed her from the sports hall like I’d done so many times before. Only a few streets away from your house I made her stop and show me the way to Rådhuspladsen so I could shove her into the van. I drugged her and left her bike and sports bag in the woods so the police would have something to occupy them, and then we dr
ove off. She was well brought up, I’ll say that for you. Trusting and friendly, and believe me, you only get that way if you’ve got the right parents …’

  Rosa is crying. Her chest rises and falls with the rhythm of her sobs, which force their way up her throat and try to escape. She is overpowered by the sense that she deserves to be here. It is her fault, and she deserves her punishment. No matter what has happened, she hasn’t looked after her little girl.

  ‘Now then. Funnily enough there are four chapters to this story, and that was the first. We’re going to take a break now, and then I’ll tell you more afterwards. Sound good?’

  There’s a piercing noise, and Rosa tries to turn her head. The implement, steel or aluminium, is maybe the size of an iron. It has two handles, a metal plate, and a saw guide with rough, hand-welded seams, and it takes Rosa a moment to realize that the noise is coming from the rotating blades at the front of the instrument. Suddenly she understands why her arms and legs are tied so that her hands and feet protrude over the edge of the table, and when the saw bites into the bones of her wrist she begins to scream again behind the leather strap.

  ‘Are you all right? Can you hear me?’

  The voice reaches her, and the harsh white light flickers again before her eyes. She tries to orientate herself and remember what had happened before she lost consciousness. For a moment she is filled with relief that nothing else has happened, but then she feels the paralysis on her left side. When she turns to look, panic rises. A large laboratory clamp made of black plastic stops the blood gushing from the open wound where her left hand had been, and in the blue bucket on the floor she can make out the tips of some fingers.

  ‘The second chapter begins in this basement. By the time you’d just begun to sense that something was wrong, Kristine and I were already here.’

  She listens to his voice as he moves around to the other side of her with the instrument and the blue bucket. The white plastic overalls are spattered with blood, her blood, all the way up to his shoulder and on the mask over his mouth.