“I don’t know what a D and C is, but I do know the doctor did things to me that were wrong.” She pressed her lips together to control their trembling. She wasn’t going to let them make her cry.
“Miss Hermansen, as Dr. Wad’s lawyer I must advise you to be very careful indeed about putting forward allegations that cannot be corroborated,” Nørvig said, his face ashen yet composed. “You have stated that Dr. Wad performed an induced abortion on you, and yet the physicians here in Odense have been unable to confirm this. Curt Wad is a conscientious and highly competent doctor. His work is to help people, not to carry out unlawful abortions. A curettage was given, yes, but it was for your own benefit, is that not correct?”
He leaned forward, as though about to leap at her throat, but Nete was no more frightened by it than she was already.
“He got on top of me and had sex with me, and I shouted at him to stop. That’s what happened, I’m telling you.”
She glanced at the faces that surrounded her. It was like talking to trees in the woods.
“I think you should be very careful about saying such things, Nete,” said the woman from the Council for Unwed Mothers. “It doesn’t help matters.”
The lawyer looked around smugly. Nete didn’t like him one bit.
“Indeed. Now, you claim that Dr. Wad violated you,” he went on. “To which Dr. Wad graciously responds that the anesthetic ether you were given had a rather powerful effect on you, and that in such instances patients very often suffer from hallucinations. Are you familiar with the word, Nete?”
“No, and it doesn’t matter if I am or not, because he did something he shouldn’t have and it was before he put the mask on me.”
The assembled parties exchanged glances.
“Let me suggest something to you, Nete. Supposing a doctor were to rape a patient in a situation such as that, don’t you think he would wait until after she was anesthetized?” the woman Nete hadn’t seen before interjected. “I have to say that what you’re telling us now is very hard to believe.”
“But that’s what happened.” Nete looked around her, realizing that none of those present were on her side.
She stood up, again feeling the discomfort in her abdomen, the wetness in her knickers. “I want to go home now,” she said. “I’ll catch the bus.”
“I’m afraid it’s not that easy, Nete. Either you retract your allegations or else we shall have to ask you to stay,” said one of the policemen. He shoved a piece of paper across the table toward her. She stared at it, uncomprehending, and he pointed to a dotted line at the bottom.
“Just write your name there and you can go.”
It was easy enough for him to say. But she could neither read nor write.
Nete’s gaze moved from the sheet of paper to the tall man seated opposite her. Their eyes met and she saw what she took to be an appeal to confidentiality in Curt Wad’s eyes. But she was having none of it.
“He did what I said he did,” she reiterated.
They asked her to take a seat at a table in the corner while they conferred. The women seemed to take the matter seriously indeed, and Curt Wad shook his head a couple of times when they addressed him. Finally, he stood up to his full height and shook hands with each of them by turn.
He was allowed to go.
Two hours later she was seated on the edge of a bed in a small room in a house whose location was unknown to her.
They told her the case would proceed quickly and that she would be assigned a lawyer to act on her behalf. They said her guardians would be sending on her things.
She was no longer wanted on the farm.
• • •
Some weeks passed before the charges against Curt Wad were brought before the court, but in the meantime the authorities and Wad’s lawyer wasted little time. Philip Nørvig proved especially proficient when it came to parrying accusations, and the court listened to him eagerly.
They tested her intelligence, called witnesses, and duplicated documents.
A mere two days before the case was due, Nete was finally contacted by her appointed lawyer. A convivial man in his mid-sixties, which was about all that could be said of him.
It wasn’t until she sat in the courtroom that she fully realized no one intended to believe her and that the case had become too serious to be simply ignored.
Not one witness turned to face her from the stand. The air between them felt like ice.
Her despicable former schoolmistress told of skirts uplifted, lewd language, dim-wittedness, laziness, and general promiscuity. The pastor who had confirmed her schoolmates related tales of ungodliness and diabolical tendencies.
And thus the conclusion was formed early in the proceedings: here, surely, was a clear-cut case of “antisocial retardation.”
On this account Nete was deemed not only morally but also mentally deficient. A runt of society, whose presence among normal people they could expect to be spared. Mendacious and sly, despite her lack of schooling. They spoke repeatedly and without mitigation of her “loose and flighty character.” They accused her of actively displaying contrariness, even rebellion. They claimed her offensive, brazenly erotic behavior had never been less than a source of great distress to all those around her and that since puberty she had become a menace. When it transpired that her IQ had been measured at 72.4 on the Binet-Simon scale, all were in agreement that Curt Wad had been the victim of disingenuous defamation and relentless mendacity despite his good intentions.
Nete protested, maintaining that the questions put to her in the IQ test had been silly beyond belief, adding that she had paid Curt Wad exactly four hundred kroner to terminate the pregnancy. Confronted with this latter information, her foster father stated under oath that she couldn’t possibly have put so much money aside. Nete was shocked. Either he was lying or else his wife had not informed him of the sum she had donated. She shouted out to the judge that if they wanted to know if she was speaking the truth, they could ask the wife themselves. But the woman was not present in court, and apparently the will to get to the bottom of the matter was similarly absent.
Later came the head of the parish council, who was related to one of the boys who had thrown her into the mill stream at Puge. The man took the stand and declared that a girls’ home—or better yet, a reformatory—would be a more appropriate form of placement than another foster family. This had been obvious, he stated, ever since she had begun cavorting with whoever took her fancy and had provoked a miscarriage by throwing herself onto jagged rocks. The girl was a disgrace to an otherwise peaceful parish.
One by one, the charges brought against Curt Wad were dismissed by the court. From the self-satisfied look in Philip Nørvig’s eye it struck Nete that these proceedings were meant to catapult his career into the higher courts, and all the while Curt Wad sat with a smug smile stuck to his dependable, trustworthy face.
And then, on one of the final, freezing days of February, the judge, having weighed up the pros and cons, conveyed to Curt Wad the court’s regrets that he had suffered the indignation of being dragged through the mire by such a mendacious and despicable child.
As he passed Nete on his way out, Wad nodded briefly to her in order that the court might note his magnanimity while remaining unaware of the triumph and scorn in his eyes. At the same moment the judge instructed that this seventeen-year-old minor be placed in the charge of the National Authority for the Mentally Handicapped in order that they might work for the rehabilitation of this defective individual so that she in years to come might return a better person, fit to be a part of the community.
Two days passed, and then she was sent to the Keller Institution at Brejning.
The consultant there informed her that he did not at first blush consider her to be retarded in any way and that he would write to her parish council to tell them she would be discharged from the institution should tests in
dicate that she was normal.
But things turned out differently.
Rita made sure of it.
23
November 2010
The First National Congress of the Purity Party was a resounding success. Curt had looked out on the assembly with pride, misty-eyed, as he was only on rare occasions.
Here, in the winter of his life, the task of setting up a political party with realistic parliamentary aspirations had finally been accomplished, and now almost two thousand fervently upstanding Danes were giving him an ecstatic ovation. Finally, there was hope for the native land of his sons. If only Beate had been able to stand at his side.
“A good thing you stopped that journalist before he finished his nasty tirade,” said one of the local chairmen afterward.
Curt nodded. If one was prepared to fight for beliefs that spawned resistance and created enemies, it was important to have strong men who could step in when the situation demanded. This time he had managed without, but if it happened again, as it surely would, he would make certain there were people around him to take care of unpleasantness.
Fortunately, the situation had been dealt with swiftly and the rest of the meeting had gone off without a hitch and with excellent presentations of the party’s election platform and parliamentary candidates.
“This is a fascist party you’re trying to build here, isn’t it, Dr. Wad?” the journalist had shouted, pushing his way through the throng with his Dictaphone aloft.
Curt had shaken his head and smiled. It was what to do when people got too close.
“Certainly not,” he’d shouted back. “But let’s talk under more amenable circumstances. I’ll put you straight and tell you all you want to know.”
He sent a quick, reproachful glance in the direction of security, holding them off just in time, allowing the throng to close around the troublemaker once more. Parrying the jibes of hecklers and fending off everyday loonies was acceptable, but physically assaulting a journalist doing his job wasn’t. He would have to make sure his people knew.
“Who was that man?” he asked Lønberg, once the doors of the old assembly hall had been closed behind them.
“No one of any note. He’s from the Free Press, gathering ammunition for his base. His name is Søren Brandt.”
“In that case I know him. Keep an eye on him.”
“We already are.”
“I mean really keep an eye on him.”
Lønberg nodded and Curt gave him a brief pat on the shoulder before opening the door to a smaller conference room. Here sat an exclusive gathering of some one hundred men, waiting for him.
He stepped up onto a little podium and looked out on his loyal supporters, who sat up in their chairs and began to applaud. “Well, gentlemen,” he began, “here sit the nation’s elite, ignoring the smoking ban.”
There were broad smiles all round and someone in the front row reached out to offer him a cigar from a small leather case. Curt Wad smiled and held up his hands deprecatingly. “Thanks all the same, but a man has to look after his health. Especially once he’s past eighty.”
His audience laughed heartily. It was good to be among them. These were the initiated. People he could trust. Able men who had devoted themselves to The Cause, the majority of whom had been with him for a good many years. What he had to say to them now would not go down well.
“Our meeting today went off magnificently, and if the atmosphere in there in any way reflects the sentiments of the population, I think we can look forward to securing a significant number of seats at the next election.”
The cheering assembly rose in a standing ovation.
Curt savored the gesture for a moment, then raised his hands to silence them, breathing in deeply before continuing to speak. “Please, be seated. We are all equal here. We who are in this room now are the Purity Party’s very backbone. We manned the barricades over the years and carried out the work. We have been the moral vanguard, always ready to step into the breach discreetly and in confidence. ‘He who wisheth only to serve the Lord shall reap the greatest reward,’ as my father used to say.”
More applause.
A smile passed over his face. “Thank you. My father would have been proud to be here today.” He bowed his head slightly to look down on those sitting closest. “Our work forestalling the birth of offspring unworthy of our nation, and preventing conception in women who might produce them, is the continuation of a long and honorable endeavor, and through this work all of us present have come to understand that indifference leads to nothing good.” He raised his hands to the audience in acknowledgment. “We who are gathered here have never been indifferent.” A ripple of applause went round the room. “And now from our founding ideas a political party has emerged that will strive toward a society in which the work we hitherto have carried out in secret and with the law of the land against us might soon be brought forward into the light. Not only made lawful, but also lauded.”
“Hear, hear!” shouted several at once.
“However, until this happens I am afraid the activities of this circle must cease.”
His words triggered consternation and alarm. Many froze in their seats, cigars smoldering between their fingers.
“You all witnessed the efforts of that journalist to cast aspersions upon us earlier. There will be more like him, and our most imperative task is to keep them in check. For that reason, the work carried out by those present must for a time be curtailed.” There was a murmur of voices that died away when Wad held up his hand. “Only this morning we received the sad news that one of our finest friends, Hans Christian Dyrmand of Sønderborg—and I note that many of you knew Hans Christian personally—has taken his own life.”
He looked down on the faces before him. Some were devastated, others pensive.
“We know that for the past two weeks Hans Christian had been the subject of investigations by the health authorities. An instance of termination and subsequent sterilization allegedly performed so ineptly that the girl in question was forced to seek treatment at Sønderborg General Hospital. Hans Christian opted to take the consequences, destroying all his records and personal documents and then proceeding along the ultimate path.” Again, this sent a murmur through the assembly, though Curt was unable to gauge its more exact nature.
“If Hans Christian’s membership of The Cause had come to light, I’m sure you can imagine how it would have impacted on our work. Hans Christian obviously realized this himself. All that we now strive to achieve within the framework of the Purity Party would have been destroyed.”
There was a long silence.
“Such weaknesses cannot be accepted in the present climate, at a time when the Purity Party needs to be marketed and firmly anchored in the minds of the Danish people,” he said.
Afterward, he was approached by several members who informed him that they would continue their clandestine efforts despite his appeal, though with assurances that they would scrutinize all their records to make sure nothing could compromise The Cause.
Which was exactly what he had wanted. Safety first.
“Will you be attending Hans Christian’s funeral?” Lønberg asked as they were leaving.
Curt smiled. He was a good man, Lønberg. Always on the lookout for flaws in other people’s powers of judgment, including Curt’s own.
“Of course not, Wilfrid. But we shall miss him, don’t you agree?”
“Indeed.” Lønberg nodded. It had surely been far from easy for him to convince an old friend that sleeping pills were his only remaining option.
Far from easy indeed.
• • •
By the time he got home, Beate was already asleep.
He switched on the iPhone his son had given him and saw the abundance of text messages he’d received.
They’ll have to wait until morning, he thought to himself. He was
too tired now.
He sat down for a moment on the edge of the bed, gazing at Beate’s face with eyes narrowed, as if to soften the harsh workings of time. To him she was beautiful regardless, and he preferred to dwell on the fact rather than how frail she had become.
He kissed her brow, then went into the bathroom and undressed.
Under the shower he was an old man. Only there was he unable to ignore his own body’s decline. When he looked down at himself he could see how his calves had withered away to almost nothing, his skin white and bare where once it had been covered by vigorous dark hair. His stomach was no longer firm as in former days, and his arms could hardly reach to scrub his back.
He leaned his head back to wash away this sudden melancholy, feeling the jets of hot water stabbing at his face.
Growing old was hard, releasing the reins likewise. While he had indeed received the tributes of the assembly today, it had been a man stepping down, a man whose work was done. He was a figurehead now, destined to sit in state and nothing more. As from today, others would speak on behalf of the party. He would retain an advisory role, of course, but the congress had selected those who would represent them in the public eye, and who was to say they would always choose to follow his advice?
Always. He repeated the word ruminatively. Such a strange word to utter at the age of eighty-eight. How empty it suddenly seemed.
He toweled himself dry, taking care not to slip on the floor, when the iPhone rang in the pocket of his trousers on the toilet seat.
He took it and said his name, a puddle of water at his feet.
“Herbert Sønderskov. I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”
“I see,” said Wad. “Herbert, it’s a long time since I’ve heard from you, my friend. And yes, I’m sorry, but my phone’s been switched off on account of the congress in Tåstrup.”
Sønderskov congratulated him, though he sounded anything but happy. “Curt, we’ve had the police here looking into some missing persons cases, among them Philip’s. A Carl Mørck from Police HQ in Copenhagen. Mie mentioned your name in a couple of contexts. I’m afraid she mentioned The Cause, too.”
The Purity of Vengeance Page 23
