by Piotr Ryczko
In her condition, playing Russian roulette was a far safer option.
She never could imagine herself adopting. She detested the idea, worrying that, for her, it would only be a bitter reminder that she had given up. She had lost the battle with her own body. Lost the last vestige of her womanhood. No. She would never go this far.
But as her options dwindled into dust, her world turned upside down, and suddenly this alternative seemed far from unacceptable. And for every day that went by, the thought grew on her. Until it blossomed into a full-blown fountain of desire. All of a sudden, she felt reborn, ready to start a new life, with her adopted child by her side.
That was the idea, anyway.
But the reality proved to be something else. There was the inevitable needle eye of the Bufetaten, the Norwegian child adoption council. The men in charge performed psychological profiles and scored every woman with half a dream. The points were only points, stupid numbers, yet these numbers mattered. They decided her future.
And everyone else’s.
So, she did everything she could to paint the picture-perfect future mother. But the Bufetaten’s Orwellian-like prying eyes, dissected her persona into bits and bytes. Found out about her long-standing depression diagnosis, her bad drinking habits, and even her anger problems. She wanted to gut their beer bellies wide open, wrench their eyes out from their sockets. But then she reminded herself she was past that, her heavy emotional baggage melted away by the way of the heart. Breathe in. Breathe out. Right.
And maybe she would have had a chance. Or so they told her. But the simple fact she didn’t have a partner, that was unacceptable. She might as well forget it.
As if childless women didn’t have enough of a struggle, why not build a catch-22 into this whole wanna-have-a-baby-badly-but-don’t-have-a-partner thing? Set up an even bigger hurdle for them, one that they will surely not even consider jumping. They all needed a partner, but many men just didn’t want to be with women who couldn’t give them kids. And Viola couldn’t blame them. You don’t pamper a horse with a broken leg, in some vain hope it will win more races.
You shoot it in the head.
But it didn’t stop there. The hard fall came only after that. The changes started off subtly, not all at once, rather in small, almost imperceptible ways. But, this time, her reality warped into some evil twin version of the world of Oz.
The habits were the first to go. She stopped shopping at malls, especially during the holiday season. And by that time, malls meant incessantly shrieking kids, ugly, loud, howling babies with heads that were way too big. They were there in all kinds of nasty forms and variations, the stuff that made her queasy. She had to do everything to avoid this. Naturally.
Then there were the holidays. Viola put up a list on her fridge. It was a long checklist of her love-to-dos. The list was the only thing that kept away the sinister shadows of her own mind gone awry.
Even worse than holidays, was spending them with both close and distant relatives. Fortunately, her family was small, and way too career-obsessed to bother with children.
Still, there were some exceptions to this rule. Distant cousins who loved to smother her with their new-born babies. After a weekend of stomach-wrenching, nauseating baby diapers, she had to take a week’s sick leave. After a few of those, she did the only thing she could. She avoided them all. But when pushed further by recurring invitations, she finally cut off ties with everyone who either had kids, or was planning on having them.
The few friends she had left suggested vacations. They would surely alleviate some of her loneliness. Maybe she would even meet someone.
Yeah, sure.
The holidays were another black hole of inner traumas and silent disasters. Wherever she attempted to travel, she was attacked by hordes of toddlers. Perfectly happy families with perfectly carefree kids made for perfectly grisly holidays. She attempted to adjust her trips according to her needs, book places where there would be no teensie-weensie, itsy-bitsy, eensie-weensie thrown her way. But the simple truth was that it was hard. No. It was impossible to find places devoid of that smothering happiness. After a few more attempts, she gave the idea up altogether. If she wanted torment, she could just as well stay at home and drink herself into a stupor.
Two decades flowed by, and for every year that passed, her checklist of love-to-dos shrank. No more ski weekends, no more baby showers, no more christenings, no more children-focused news pieces, no more beers with baby-obsessed colleagues, no more personal talks during work, just in case kids were mentioned.
Then one day, she realised as she gaped at her checklist that there were no bullet points left on it. And she was alone, right in the middle of a Christmas evening.
Finally, Viola stopped in a deserted street, as her mind snapped back from the past.
She eyed herself in some window filled with baby clothes. She saw a face mirrored back to her.
It wasn’t her.
This was some alien woman standing, moping at her. Some bystander on the sidewalk, watching her life from afar. That woman’s face was numb, and it wanted something from her. With its needy eyes, it expected something of her. Only she didn’t know what anymore.
Once that woman’s desire had been to experience the greatest gift life can give. Something as uncanny as unconditional love. Yet who had she become instead, with her crippling disease?
A child murderer.
Chapter 7
Night
It was the middle of the night, but she was still in her coat and shoes. Viola sat on her bed and watched Ronny as he slept.
After the meeting with her mother, Viola had more than five hours to decide what to do next. And the longer she thought about it, the further she seemed from an actual answer.
She glanced at his face, which was covered with an inner stillness. Given her life situation, this guy may as well have been from another world. A constant reminder that another life path was possible. A promise of intimacy and true kinship. Just thinking about it carved an aching hole in her.
Here was a man prepared to give her everything. His time, his tenderness, himself completely. Everything she had wanted for the past twenty years. And now that she was here, why was she about to blow it all?
Then doubt crept in, like it usually did, and covered her senses. Would she be able to give him the kind of closeness that he longed for? Would she be able to fulfil some of his needs? But it struck her it was best to shy away from questions she already knew the answer to.
So, she touched his hand gently and Ronny woke up. He eyed her quizzically, seeing her clothes, her shoes, and the time of night. But she interrupted him before he could ask her anything.
“Remember the Marianne girl? The one with the mitochondrial disease?”
“Yeah?”
“Stine, her mother, was here during the party,” she said quietly and shied away from his eyes.
Ronny sat up in the bed.
“Yeah. I didn’t want to bother you. But you know what? She found something on her daughter’s blog. She is reliving the past, I guess. Marianne blamed herself for wrecking every relationship she had because of her disease. And then she met this great guy. Prepared to do everything for her. And this time, she decided to lie. Lie about her condition. Her struggle. Her desire for kids. Everything.” She said all of this. And for every word, she felt a little bit lighter. She doubted that he sensed what lay behind these words, what sort of truth she had actually uttered.
“And him? Did he want kids?” Ronny asked. Viola felt that although they were talking about people he had never met, Ronny was still able to offer them his full empathy. She saw it in his eyes.
“Badly. And she tried to tell him. But I guess she was just too damned terrified of losing him,” she whispered, weighing her words carefully. One wrong step and she could say too much, damaging what they had together beyond any repair.
“Damn.” Ronny mulled this over.
“I guess it was his right, wasn’t it?
To know, I mean.”
“A deal-breaker, huh?” she finally said, presenting the question she longed to ask. She had never before had the guts to talk to him about this. Not in her situation. On the contrary, she avoided it like the plague. She felt her body begin to tremble. Too subtle to be noticed. But enough to hurt. How did he feel about children?
He eyed her. Then threw up his arms. And laughed. Disarmed the bomb that ticked inside her.
“Come on! What’s up with you women? Maybe a little too much in your own head? Do you realise there are actually guys in this world who can settle down without kids? Guys more, like, traditional. You know, beer and rough sex only. Like me.” He let out a chuckle.
She snickered back. Ronny was the last guy on earth to touch beer. And that rough sex was more talk than anything else.
“Yeah. That would be you.” She continued to laugh, the colour returning to her cheeks. Then she brushed her hand along his cheek, and got up to exit. This sudden exit was necessary. The only way she could hide the truth as tears began to flow down her face. She had to flee.
“Hey, Lady! What’s with the story? No ending, or what? Did she summon the courage to tell him?” he yelled after her.
“I... I wish that for her,” Viola whispered to herself and scurried out of the room.
Chapter 8
Wednesday, 10th February 2016
Morning
For the first time in three days, Viola had woken up feeling good about herself. After she had talked to Ronny the day before, the black hole inside her had somehow lost a little power over her. She felt like she could breathe again and had the strength to get into her car. Make her way to Stine.
She had some bad news for the woman. The kind of news she would rather deliver in person.
Viola peeked at the wintery Oslo landscape sliding behind the windshield. She was approaching the Skiptvet community where Stine lived. Soon the typical Norwegian treehouses were replaced by single houses. And then, even more separated farmhouses. This was Skiptvet, where both Marianne and Stine had grown up and lived. With a population of just two hundred people, it was a flourishing farming community, but still an hour’s drive away from the heart of Oslo. It was a different world from the one Anne and Viola came from. A simpler place, devoid of the pretences of the city. A place with all the time in the world.
The Voss family came from a different area, more central in Oslo, the suburban area named Østkanten, and more specifically, Bogerud. Viola had moved from Bogerud to the centre of Oslo.
But she hadn’t done this because of the so-called ‘Whites-Escape’, when the native Norwegians fled from the multi-ethnic population that was streaming into Oslo.
Rather, she moved right into the heart of the melting pot of the Norwegian capital, Grønland. Despite Anne’s violent disapproval, Viola prided herself on the fact that success for her was not measured in the apartment’s location or how few Pakistani neighbours she had, but in how early she could go out into the street and grab a cappuccino on the sidewalk or buy the most exotic Thai food. A flurry of social classes, languages, customs, and just plain contact with people who had such a wildly different outlook than her – all this suited her perfectly. And as a bonus, she was a bicycle trip away from the Aftenposten’s offices.
* * *
Viola eyed Stine’s austere house. When Marianne first disappeared, Viola had practically moved in here. At that time, she was prepared to do everything she could to locate the missing girl.
So, she spent endless nights slaving away over every shred of evidence she could find in this house. Despite Stine’s intense intrusions into Viola’s life, she still felt her heart ache when she remembered Stine’s desperation. An obsessive, all-encompassing need to find her daughter.
This unbearable desperation had a familiar ring for Viola. If she could feel a connection with Stine, it certainly was this black pit. So Viola practically threw away her duties, her own life, while searching for the young woman.
Somehow she had explained to herself that if she found the young woman, if she fulfilled Stine’s wishes, then maybe her wounds might also be healed. But it wasn’t only some kind of redemption Viola saw in Marianne.
Viola became more and more convinced the young woman held some unforeseen key to Viola’s own search. Every night, she lulled herself to sleep with the conviction that Marianne had found an answer to her mitochondrial disease. And every night Viola would fall asleep with a silent prayer concealed somewhere deep in her mind. There had to be something that would help her locate the young woman. And then, only then, would Marianne tell her exactly what she needed to do. In order to be happy again.
She knew she was mad to entertain this thought. It was more than ludicrous, considering everything she had been through. And she caught herself in this constantly. Was this the only way to be happy? Was this a prayer, or simply a toxic attachment?
Someone told her that an attachment was a belief that without a specific thing one wouldn’t ever be happy. This helped her get things in perspective. But then she woke up the next day and felt her mind was rearranged again. And her prayer was renewed. With even more vigour.
But gradually she realised that no one listened to her prayer. It was never answered. Stine never found her daughter. And Viola’s Markus died. So, if anything was to be learned, Viola was always confronted with the sad irony of life. The more intensely her prayer grew, the less likely it was to be answered.
Or maybe it was because she never believed she deserved an answer? She couldn’t decide.
Viola stepped towards the door and was about to knock when she felt someone behind her. Stine came around the back in an apron, smeared in blood. The woman carried a headless chicken, which was still wiggling its feet. The bloody spectacle seemed natural for Stine. Nothing could be more appropriate for her.
“Come in, Miss. I have some wonderful stew for you.” Stine glowed as she practically pushed Viola inside.
“Sorry... Can’t. Dropped by just to tell you... Well... I can’t be of any further help, you see.” This case was never easy, and turning the poor woman down was even harder. Viola hated herself for this. She could have done this on the phone to make it easier on herself, but she simply didn’t have the heart. Not in this case.
And now that she glanced into Stine’s eyes, Viola understood she had made a fatal mistake. Her physical presence and the intense disappointment in Stine’s eyes just made it worse.
Seeing this caused an immediate panic to surge within her. She had made it all the way out here, with good intentions, but she didn’t need this guilt trip. She swerved her body to leave.
But Stine was quicker and moved to block her exit.
“No!” Stine spat out firmly.
“Please... Miss. I have proof. Real this time,” Stine whispered, but her attempt at submission felt even more awkward.
“Stine, I just can’t undo my life and career based on some prank comment on the blog. You see that, don’t you?” She had to make the old woman understand. After all, it was so obvious.
But as Viola glanced into Stine’s eyes, she could see that the clarity of the matter escaped the old woman.
“But, Miss. I know Miss is from a better family. In Miss’s eyes, I am not much. But Miss Viola knows how it is to be Marianne.”
“No! I know nothing of what it is to be like her.” Viola made sure there was no doubt this time. She should get away from this woman as fast as possible, while she still had the strength. But Stine thrust herself into Viola’s face.
“Miss knows exactly how it is to be like her.” There was just something strangely odd about this old woman’s stare, maybe even a touch of psychosis.
“Because Miss Viola is broken. Loss broken. Broken over little ones? I know. But Miss Viola fought for a little one, didn’t she? And when Miss finally had it? What happened? Something even worse happened? Didn’t it?” Stine whispered the words.
“How do you...? My mother had no right.” Viola did every
thing to pull herself together, but the damage had already been done. And the planned escape was now impossible. She was as defenceless as a new-born.
“Your mother? No. I don’t need anyone’s stories. People talk lies,” Stine scoffed at Viola’s suggestion. Then she burned her gaze into Viola’s face.
“But eyes tell the truth. Huh, Miss?” she whispered in a hoarse voice. At this point Viola just couldn’t handle it anymore. The weight of Anne’s earlier words crushed her.
And then, without any notice, Stine suddenly loosened up, stepped back, and glowed towards Viola as if nothing had happened.
“Now, Miss. Let’s go eat my stew. And watch the new evidence.” Viola was yet again reminded of the black hole inside her. If someone wanted to wreak havoc in her life, Markus was the place to do it. A place where she couldn’t tell up from down, or right from wrong. How long would it be like that? Pain ground into the fabric of her soul. Or maybe that was not the right question. Maybe she should be asking if it would ever pass.
Viola eyed her car. It was still not too late. She made up her mind to make her way towards it.
Instead, she felt her body move inside Stine’s house. Some unknown force pushed her into an inevitable chain of events.
* * *
The images from Stine’s video danced before Viola’s eyes. She pressed the mouse instinctively and rewound the whole thing. Then she pressed play once again. How many times had she done that? She had lost count, and by now, she didn’t care.
Viola had told herself that Stine’s talk was some kind of delusion. Brought on by way too many years of grief. This conviction was more straightforward. And certainly more convenient.
“Miss?” Stine said.
Viola was prepared to deny what she had just perceived on the screen. Maybe even try to convince the old woman she was crazy. But that would be lying. After what she had just seen, she just couldn’t.
At this point, she knew that everything she was hoping to avoid would come to pass.
