Baboon

by Naja Marie Aidt

  But Eva was gone. There was still a faint outline of her body in the grass. He didn’t see her anywhere. He dropped his bag of water and crackers and climbed down to the plateau that stretched out and then down toward the water. He went all the way to the edge and looked down the steep slope of the mountain. It was at least five hundred yards down. Far below, a little strip of sandy beach and large waves hurtling themselves toward the land. The enormous sky. The strong, frightening urge to let oneself fall. Suddenly in his head flashed an image of the tall, stinking man waving his arms and yelling. Tim stepped back with a sinking heart, and when he turned his head to the side, he glimpsed a little yellow spot moving slowly down the bare cliff.

  She was awakened by a boy poking her with a stick. She had no idea where she was. The boy ran away giggling. And then she noticed it, the itchiness over her entire body, prickly and stinging, unbearable, as if she were covered in itching powder or attacked by vermin. She scratched herself in a panic, but that didn’t help. She pulled her dress up and scratched her thighs and stomach. She began running. She tore through the waving grass, she could smell thyme, she slipped and got up again, she rushed forward. And when she saw the sea, sparkling and wild far below her, she tore off her clothes and began to crawl down the impassable cliff. There was almost nothing to grab onto. Here and there were small tufts of something that looked like heather or crowberry. Small rises on the cliff where she could place her feet. It was windy out there, and the wind slipped over her body, cooling her itchy skin. She had to get into the water. She had to dunk under the blue water, the blue water would wash her clean. She had to drink the salt water and rinse her mouth and throat. She had to disappear in the water, the water would free her. There was a sound like voices being carried away on the wind. Then she slipped and missed the foothold. Stones and dirt went rattling down over the mountain. She caught hold of a gnarled branch and searched desperately with her feet for something to stand on. Her arms shook. Then she swung her body up and placed her feet directly on the wall of the cliff. She tried to put the weight on her thighs. That’s how she stood, like a V sticking out from the cliff, clinging to the knotty branch, which, as it was being pulled, was becoming more of a root than a branch, when, from above, Tim reached his arm down and grabbed her wrist. This startled her, her feet slid off the cliff and kicked desperately in the air. A young Greek man grabbed her free hand, and the two men pulled her up with great difficulty onto the narrow ledge they were standing on. The man uncoiled a rope and tied it around her. They carefully lifted her up, tilting sideways. The man walked like a mountain goat on the cliffs. Tim was pale and wet with sweat. He kept his eyes on the passing fleecy clouds that sailed over the mountaintop. The rope bit into Eva’s waist and she cried from the pain. With the man’s help they were able to get up to something that resembled a path, and for the last part of the way, the man bore her on his back. “She’s crazy, she’s crazy,” he kept saying, shaking his head. Eva laid her head against his hair. It was warm and smelled of salt.

  Tim pulled the naked woman behind him through the town to the parking lot. People came out of their houses and lined up to watch them. They whispered and pointed, and a piercing look from an older woman’s black eyes made him lower his gaze. “Hurry up for Christ’s sake,” he hissed. The crowd followed them. They watched how he looked for his car keys, how he shoved Eva into the backseat and slammed the door. They watched how he was unable to get the car started, they heard him swear, and they saw him finally start up the car and back out, raising the dust. They saw him drive away from the town at high speed. And he was about to throw up from exhaustion when he heard Eva humming with an almost childlike, clear voice.

  Much later, in the middle of the night, after he’d washed her with cold water from the faucet in the cheap hotel room, after he had gotten her to drink both wine and water, after he had fed her small pieces of goat cheese and bread, after he had wrapped her up in a blanket, a column of irritation and disgust rose up inside him, a disgust directed at her sunburned skin and her almost pleading, simple-minded eyes that kept on searching for his eyes, and the hand she reached out for him that he kept stuffing back under the blanket, until suddenly she got up, letting the blanket slip down onto the floor. Then she did something strange: She shoved him down on the bed and lay over his knees. She begged him to hit her. And he hit her. He hit so that you could hear the slap. She whimpered and groaned. He kept on hitting. And when he got tired, she fetched his belt. She got on all fours, and he let it flick over her back. He cried. He stuck his hand up between her legs to feel how wet she was. Still those pleading eyes. He grabbed her hair. Her back was bloody. A gurgling sound came from somewhere deep inside his throat. And before he could get his pants all the way off, he emptied himself over her feet. She let herself slide down onto her back, and looked up at the ceiling, smiling. A distant, sheepish smile. Outside, it sounded like the cicadas’ song was rising. Then he heard her whisper, “We will now descend into the valley.”

  BLACKCURRANT

  As long as there were berries on the bushes, we’d continue to pick them. That’s what we agreed on. Helle didn’t say a word, and so I was silent too. The sun baked. You could see the cows in the field beyond the garden. We sat on the ground surrounded by shrubs, it was the middle of the day and I was afraid of getting a tick. Our hands were blue and we had already filled an entire pail. There were enough for many jars of jam, and I thought about how wonderful it would be to stand in the kitchen, in the sweet scent from the blackcurrant jam, taking turns skimming it. We’d talk then. There was so much we hadn’t had the chance to talk about. I wondered how I should prepare the chicken we bought at the grocery store. I wondered if Helle would soon be tired of picking berries and we could go in and have coffee. But she wasn’t getting tired. She dried the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand, squinted her eyes toward the sun, but then continued. I looked at the tattoo on her upper arm. A faded rose. She got it a long time ago. I was with her that night, we were drunk and she yelled out in pain each time the tattoo artist pricked her skin with the needle. But afterwards we had a beer with him; Helle dried her tears and gave him a kiss right on the mouth. I remember thinking that it didn’t seem like her at all, either to do something as wild as getting a tattoo, or to kiss a man right on the mouth like that. But of course we were drunk. We were often drunk back then. Afterwards, we bought some fresh morning buns, and rode our bikes to the beach and sat there watching the sun rise, and I tore off all my clothes and ran into the water and pretended I was drowning, but Helle was already walking away. I yelled after her, but she didn’t stop, and I saw her stagger up over the dunes and disappear. Then I cried. I sat and cried and shivered and got sand in my eyes and under my dress. But of course I was drunk. I don’t remember how I got home, and a few days went by before Helle called, but we never spoke about it, why she left without saying good-bye.

  Helle pulls the pail toward her and crawls over to the other side of the bush. I attempt to pull a handful of berries off the stem to get around picking them one by one, but they just smear in my hand and I lose most of them. I’m thirsty. I can hear the neighbor driving the tractor back around the barn. He’s probably going in for lunch now. There’s a sheep that bleats somewhere. I pick at a scab on my knee and look over at Helle’s dark head. Her hair is matted. “I’m thirsty,” I say. But Helle doesn’t answer. A bit later I get up; my legs hurt from having squatted so long, and one of my hands is asleep. It is really boiling hot. Red spots dance in front of my eyes, and for a moment I’m so dizzy that I think I might faint. I turn to look at Helle, but she’s still bending over the bush; I can see her hands working fast and steady, the berries nearly flying through the air as she tosses them into the pail.

  Once I loved a man passionately. It was a couple of years after Helle got tattooed; he was red-haired and had close-set eyes. He was so gifted that when he spoke, I thought I was the luckiest person in the world: his words were like colorful pieces of gum
wrappers floating inside my head, and my heart lifted up, and I was so light, and I looked at him and I could almost feel my pupils enlarging so I could suck him and his whole brilliantly colored language right in. I begin thinking about this as I walk through the house. And as I drink water from the faucet in the kitchen, I think about him, about his soft fingertips running over my face. Although his fingers never ran over my face—I don’t know if he even loved me—anyway we never got that far. I open the refrigerator and look at the chicken. It’s big and pale, I have no idea what to do with it. I wonder what became of that man. But we have onions and tomatoes so I can simply throw the whole thing in the oven. I sit down on a stool, and at the same moment I hear Helle come in through the door to the garden. She puts down the pail on the kitchen counter and goes into the bathroom. It sounds like she’s splashing water on her face. “Helle?” I shout. She doesn’t answer. She turns off the water, it’s quiet. I start removing leaves and small twigs from the berries, while listening to figure out what she’s doing. But I only hear the neighbor on the road driving by on the tractor, or it could be his son because the neighbor usually rests after lunch. And suddenly I too am overwhelmed by fatigue. On the way into my room I carefully open the door to Helle’s room. She’s lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. I see her chest rising and falling, but otherwise she looks like she’s dead.

  I slip under my blanket. I think about the man’s eyes, the light that shone from them. I see the faded rose on Helle’s arm clearly in my mind. And then I must have fallen asleep.

  The next thing I remember, Helle is standing in the doorway. She has the chicken in her arms. When I look her in the eye, she turns on her heels and walks away. She looks confused. For a moment, I think it’s a dream. But when I stumble into the kitchen, she’s standing at the window looking at the neighbor’s son. He’s walking down the dirt road pulling a black sheep with him.

  Then Helle takes some onions out and begins to peel them. “Are you hungry?” I ask. She takes a knife out of the drawer and cuts the onions in quarters. Then I rinse the tomatoes and turn on the radio. Hard rock is playing, but I leave it on. I try to slice the tomatoes so that all the slices are the same size. Helle turns on the oven and places the chicken on the counter in front of me. But I pretend not to get the hint and instead put some water on for coffee. She’s sat down on the stool. I turn up the radio and hand her a cup of coffee when it’s ready. I look into her blue eyes and keep looking until she looks down. I reach out and carefully touch the rose on her arm. “What’s the matter, Helle?” I ask.

  We never cooked that chicken. I sauté the tomatoes and onions in a pan, and we eat them with rye bread. Helle has a tremendous appetite. She gets up several times during the meal and opens the refrigerator. She takes out cheese and sausages. She stuffs herself. After this she opens the box of chocolates I got from my grandmother and eats half of it. I just watch her eat. The neighbor drives the tractor out, and now I see clearly that it’s him. I get up and go over to the window and he waves to me when he drives by. We’ve always had good relations, he and his wife are both friendly and helpful. Then Helle washes the dishes and goes back to her room. I start rinsing the blackcurrants. I boil them and measure the sugar. I turn off the radio and enjoy the sounds from the garden flowing in through the open window, the birds chirp and a soft breeze whispers in the large elm. Dusk creeps over the garden and rises like a blue shadow. I scald the glasses then pour in the jam. I lick my sticky fingers. And think about another man I have known. He was dark and short and stocky and had gentle eyes. His skin was so soft that I was surprised each time I touched him. We clung to each other. He made me laugh at things that weren’t even funny. I made him long for me wildly, just by walking to the store for cigarettes. I remember every inch of his body. Every little hair growing on his toes. And when I close the door to the garden behind me and gather Helle’s green jacket around me, I think about his voice. About what he said to me when he left. We don’t have words for everything. It was just that there was someone somewhere else. The gravel crunches under my wooden clogs. I turn left at the road and see that there’s a light on in the stable. But the neighbor must have gone to sleep long ago. A sheep bleats loudly. I can’t stop myself from opening the door a little and peeking in. The few cows in there look as if they’re sick. There’s a sharp scent of manure and ammonia. And there, in the narrow path between the stalls, I see the neighbor’s son on his knees. He’s holding on tightly to the black sheep’s wool. And he pushes his groin hard into the animal’s backside. The sheep bleats loudly. He lifts his head backward. And as he rattles out a cry like a howl, I see that he has braces on his teeth. Train tracks. I hold onto the doorframe with both hands and shove myself out backward.

  At home, Helle has probably already fallen asleep. I sit down in the kitchen and eat jam with a spoon. It’s still warm. Helle could’ve said something before. That she’s pregnant and will not have the child. As if I could read her mind. The jam looks almost black now.

  The next morning the chicken is still lying on the kitchen counter. It’s beginning to smell. I pick it up and carry it all the way across the garden and up to the road. There I let it drop down into the garbage container. Then I wave to the neighbor and his sweet wife, who are now just backing out of their driveway.

  They’re probably going out shopping.

  TORBEN AND MARIA

  What can you say about Maria? That her hair is blonde and dark at the roots? That she loves roast pork with cracklings? That as a child she loved to look out at the flat fields at dusk in February? Her eyes rested there, under the low sky, in the gray gray light, until it got so dark that she could see only her face reflected on the window, the green lamp on the table behind her, and all the way back to her mother, leaning against the door smoking.

  The window, a black mirror.

  Maria.

  She hits her small child, until the screaming stops. It’s a boy and his name is Torben. Not many people call their sons that any more. Ah, Maria! You can say this about her: “She gave her son the name Torben.”

  Soon he’ll be two. He’s a little weakling, and there’s nothing special about him.

  They’re walking down the pedestrian street. Torben and Maria. They’re holding hands. They stop at the fountain. Maria sits down on a bench and Torben runs under the chestnut trees. They’re in bloom now and very beautiful. He scares up a flock of pigeons, then finds a little black rock. He takes his time with a piece of gum that has been trampled in the grass.

  Meanwhile, Maria’s phone rings. It’s Bjørn.

  “We’re waiting for you, where the fuck are you, asshole?”

  Bjørn is held up. Maria sighs and turns to look for Torben. He’s in the middle of a conversation with two young women. They smile and gesticulate. Torben shows them something. They bend down to get a closer look, and both laugh. One pats him on the head. Then they wave good-bye and cut across the lawn. Torben watches them until they disappear. A fly crawls across his forehead.

  Maria lights a cigarette and calls him over. He darts back to his mother.

  “What a good boy,” says an older man who’s sitting beside Maria on the bench. “Nowadays kids never do what they’re told.”

  Maria pulls Torben up onto her lap. He shows her the black rock. The man smiles and says, “Hello there little friend.” Torben hides his face in Maria’s neck.