“But why?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure I can explain it. Partly it’s because I’ve come to realize that I’m no longer the same person I was when I took the job. I can’t keep defining myself as the one who has to save everyone else.”
He took off his glasses and started to polish them with a corner of his shirt. He observed her for a long time, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Then he smiled.
“And here I sat explaining and explaining,” he said. “Were you listening at all?”
“Some of the time.”
“Okay. I’m … I’m going to miss you. In several ways. What do you want to do next?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You’re not applying for another of those hellhole missions you used to do, are you?”
She shook her head. “That would be a step in the wrong direction, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“Who is she, your new love?”
“Do you really want to know, or are you just being polite?”
She snorted and took a sip of her wine instead of answering.
He got up. “Do you have a date in mind?” he asked.
“May first. But I’ve done a lot of overtime, so it’ll actually be in a couple of weeks.”
He gave her a long hug on the way out the door. “Take care of yourself,” he said.
“You too.”
WHEN HE HAD left, she felt a relief so intense, it was almost as if she were weightless. As if her feet’s contact with the kitchen floor was a completely voluntary condition. She went over to close the small window overlooking the railroad tracks, then remained standing, looking down at the lamps along the park path, where a lone jogger came running, slap, slap, slap, along the asphalt ribbon under the blooming trees. She took her cell phone out of her pocket and called Morten’s number.
“I quit my job,” she said without preamble.
It took awhile for him to answer. “What does that mean?”
“How hard is it to understand? I’ve given notice at the Coal-House Camp.”
“Where are you going now?”
“Nowhere! I just thought … I could find something where there would be more time for the kids. Something less hectic.”
There was a faint click. He had hung up.
She stared at the telephone. Didn’t understand. She had thought he would be … maybe not exactly happy, but less cranky. Less annoyed with her.
The telephone rang. Now he was the one who didn’t say hello.
“Why now?” he asked, and his voice was so angry, it shook. “Why not one of the approximately six hundred times when I asked you to? One of the times when it would have meant something?”
“I thought you would be …”
“Yes. Sorry.” He sighed. The anger left his voice as quickly as it had arrived. “Nina, I know it’s not your fault, or not just your fault. When I think about what happened with your dad, when I think about the fact that you were younger than Ida is now … I can’t begin to imagine how someone could make it through something like that in one piece. You are as you are, and … and there are many good things about that. But I don’t want to renegotiate our agreement and offer the kids the possibility of something more, just because you’ve suddenly had the idea that you want to be more of a mother to them. And besides …”
“Besides what?”
“No. We’d better talk about that another day, when I know more.”
“Morten. You can’t just say something like that and then leave it there.”
The relief had abruptly disappeared. There was nothing weightless about her whatsoever. What was he going to say? Something about the kids? He had spoken of moving, she suddenly remembered. That terrible Sunday. Far enough away to save the kids from your war zone. Was that it?
“Are you moving?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Nina, there’s no reason to talk about it now. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“They are my kids too,” she said and hated the meekness that had entered her voice. As if she wasn’t sure it was true.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately.”
“Morten …”
“Good night, Nina. I didn’t mean to worry you. Forget it.”
SHE LAY IN her bed with the window open just a crack. The alarm clock’s large numbers shone in the dark: 2:12.
Okay, she said to herself. So it isn’t going to be as easy as you thought. So what? Aren’t you supposed to be the great crisis queen?
The clock’s digits changed with a barely audible click—2:13.
She rolled out of bed, slowly and deliberately, and padded barefoot into the hall, to the closet where the toolbox was. She chose the bigger and heavier of the two hammers and placed it on the kitchen table. The next step was to carry one of the kitchen chairs into the bedroom so she could take the clock down from the hook on the wall.
There was no reason to get glass all over the place, so she wrapped a kitchen towel around the clock before she placed it in the sink and calmly and methodically proceeded to smash it.
She didn’t know how long it took. Nor did she know what time it was when she went back to bed awhile later and eventually fell asleep.
“She is so small,” he says, and there’s a frustrated tenderness in his voice. “So small that you think you can pick her up in one hand. But you can’t.”
The lights are low; the machines are humming quietly. This is not one of Kiev’s overpopulated public hospitals. Here, nothing is lacking.
The doctor clears his throat. “She’s not young,” he says. “And the risk of operating yet again … I hope you understand how great it is. It’s a minor miracle that she is still alive. But that’s the way some people are—the heart just goes on and on.”
“Do you think she can hear us?”
“You’re welcome to try speaking to her. She is unconscious. We’ve recovered more than twenty skull fragments from her brain by now, and there is no doubt that certain areas have suffered permanent damage. I honestly don’t know how much more we can do.”
“You have to try.” It’s not a request; it is an order, and that is how the doctor hears it.
“Yes, sir,” he says.
“You don’t know my mother, you don’t know how strong her will is. If anyone can survive this, she can. She’s not afraid of battle or of pain.”
“I can assure you, there is no pain, not now.”
“But … she’s still there, right? There are still thoughts and dreams and memories in there?”
The doctor places a gentle hand on his elbow. “Even if we manage to wake her up, you can’t expect her to be the same. The damage is too extensive.”
SHE SEES ALL of this from above. Looks down at Nikolaij, her beloved Kolja, as if she was standing in a tower. It is that tenderness. That admiration she cannot do without. She might have been willing to let the rest of the world think what it likes about both the past and the present, if not for him. He has to love her. For his sake, for the sake of that love, she will not let anybody drag her name through the mud. The lies, the secrets, those many, many songs of betrayal, Kalugin’s bloody nightingale … all that must stay where it belongs, in the tangled, filthy darkness of the past. She will not let it touch him. Whatever the cost, he must not learn the truth.
Then she falls down. Not into her body, but in the darkness of memories, where old ghosts rise from the grave and will not let you be. She can’t eat, speak, move; she has a tube in her mouth and another up her ass. Most of the time she can neither see nor hear. But in the darkness she remembers.
UKRAINE, 1934
“Where is your devil of a sister?”
Olga opened her eyes just as a huge hand hit her roughly on the side of the head. She attempted to roll away from the next blow and to sit up at the same time. Attempted to get free of sleep’s clutches. It took a long moment before she realized that the man standing in front of her wasn’t Father but a
man that she had said hello to only a few times down by the cooperative shop. Sergej’s father. Fedir’s uncle. He wasn’t a big man. A bit bent and scarred, like his son.
He looked angry but for some reason Olga was sure that he had just been crying. It was something about his eyes and voice, which was thick and soft as if he had coated his throat with oil.
She didn’t dare say anything because the man clearly wasn’t normal. Men didn’t usually cry. Not in that way, in any case. Olga crept even closer to the wall and pulled the blanket all the way up to her chin, staring at him all the while.
“Fedir is dead,” said the man. He seemed to be mostly telling himself. One tear had made it all the way to his frost-cracked lips and hung there for a moment like a small, clear pearl. Then he sniffed. “Tell me. Tell me where she is, that little bitch of an informer.”
Fedir. She remembered the infatuated puppy eyes he had made at Oxana the day the GPU officers evicted them from the house and sent them off to Siberia in a freight car. Now he had died somewhere out there, like the little girl with the hare-like cry, and that’s why Sergej’s father was standing here, shaking her with red, wet hands.
Olga felt a watery fear in her stomach. A nauseating lurch that went both up and down at the same time, so that something loosened in her bowels. And yet there was, somewhere behind the fear, a sense of unholy scarlet glee. At last, Oxana would be punished. Punished for everything she had done.
“Oxana usually walks along the stream on her way home from school,” she said quickly. “She’s probably on her way home already.”
Sergej’s father let her go, without a word, without a look. He left the door open on its hinges when he walked out, and Olga lay motionless for a long time, watching as his tracks slowly filled with snow.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
IN THE COURSE of the creation of Death of a Nightingale, we have come across questions that we couldn’t answer ourselves—just as we did with our other books. How do you handle a frozen corpse, what is the PET’s department for the Prevention of Organized Crime in common parlance, and how do you say “Where is the toilet?” in Ukrainian? Luckily, we have once again had many, many kind, helpful and wise people to advise us along the way, and with their aid, we hope we’ve been saved from the worst mistakes. A special thank-you also to family and friends, who again have taken the time to read, encourage and take care of dogs and children when things got hectic.
Thank you:
Nina Gladkowa Johansen
Lone-emilie Rasmussen
Hans Jørgen Bonnichsen
Vladimir Stolba
Henrik Laier
Gustav Friis
Kirstine Friis
Else Rognan
Inger Møller
Marie Friis
Lars Ringhof
Anders and Louise Trolle
Esthi Kunz
Lisbeth Møller-Madsen
Eva Kaaberbøl
Anita Frank
Inga og Henrik Friis
Lotte Krarup
Bibs Carlsen
Inger Johanne and Jakob Ravn
Knud-Erik Kjær Madsen
Erling Kaaberbøl
Lasse Bork Schmidt and Martin Kjær Madsen of SustainAgri
—and thank you also to our Ukrainian friends who have wished to remain anonymous. You know who you are.
Death of a Nightingale (Nina Borg #3) Page 29
