A Conspiracy of Faith

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  She felt the same way.

  The charger looked small in her husband’s hand. As if he could crush it with one squeeze. “Where’s this from?” he demanded.

  “I thought it was yours,” she answered.

  He said nothing. So he took his with him on his trips.

  “You might as well tell me,” he said. “I know you’re lying.”

  She tried to look indignant. It wasn’t difficult. “What do you mean? What are you talking about? If it’s not yours, then someone must have left it behind. In which case it’s probably been there since the christening.”

  But she was trapped.

  “The christening? That was eighteen months ago. The christening!” Clearly, he found the idea ridiculous. Only he wasn’t laughing. “There were a dozen guests at most. Old biddies, mainly. None of them stayed the night, and not many were likely to own a mobile phone. And even if they did, why would they bring a charger with them to a christening? It doesn’t make sense.”

  She felt an urge to protest, but he raised his hand to stop her.

  “You’re lying.” He gestured toward the bike in the driveway. “It’s his charger, isn’t it? When was he here last?”

  The reaction came promptly from the sweat glands of her armpits.

  He gripped her arm, and his hand was clammy. She had been in two minds about the contents of the packing cases upstairs, but what decided her was this grip on her arm, as tight and forceful as a vise. And now he’s going to hit me, she thought to herself. But he didn’t. Instead, he turned away when she failed to answer, slamming the door shut behind him, and after that nothing more happened.

  She stood up, hoping to catch a glimpse of his fleeting figure outside. As soon as she felt certain he was gone, she would take Benjamin with her and make her getaway. Down the garden to the hedge at the bottom, find the gap the previous owners’ kids had made, and squeeze through. They would be at Kenneth’s within five minutes. Her husband would never know where they had gone.

  After that, she would have to take things from there.

  But the fleeting figure outside never appeared. Instead came a heavy thud from upstairs.

  “Oh, God,” she breathed. “What’s he doing?”

  She glanced into the living room at her bouncing, laughing child. Could they make it to the hedge without her husband noticing? Were the upstairs windows still open? Was he standing at one of them, watching to see what she did next?

  She chewed on her upper lip and looked up at the ceiling. What was he doing up there?

  Then she picked up her bag and took all the housekeeping money from the tin. She was too afraid to go into the hallway to get Benjamin’s romper and her jacket. They would just have to make do. And hope that Kenneth wasn’t out.

  “Come on, darling,” she said, picking up her child. Once the patio door was open, it would take them less than ten seconds to get to the hedge. The question was whether the gap was still there. She had seen it last year.

  It had been big enough then.

  20

  When he and Eva were children, they had inhabited another world. Their father closing the door of his study gave them peace. They could be in their rooms and let God take care of Himself.

  But there were other times, too, in the obligatory Bible study lessons or during worship amid the outstretched hands, the cries of joy, the grown-ups in transports of ecstasy, when they turned their gaze inwards and retreated to their own reality.

  They each had their own ways. Eva stole glances at the women’s shoes and dresses and preened herself. Ran the pleats of her skirt between her fingers until they were crisp and neat. She was a princess inside. Free from strict looks and harsh words. Or else she was a fairy with gossamer wings that even the slightest breath of air could lift above the gray reality and imperatives of their home.

  And there she hummed to herself. Hummed with glee in her eyes, her feet shuffling on the spot, their parents convinced that she was safely in the hands of God and that these fussy movements were her own form of praise.

  But he knew better. Eva dreamed of shoes and dresses, and a world of adoring mirrors and loving words. He was her brother. He knew.

  He himself dreamed of a world full of people who could laugh.

  In the place where they were, no one ever laughed. Laughter lines in faces were something he saw in the town, and he found them displeasing. His life was without laughter. Without joy. Not since he was five years old, when his father had told them about a pastor of the Church of Denmark whom he had frightened away from his church amid curses and oaths, had he heard him laugh. And for that reason it took years for his soul to grasp that laughter could be something other than taking pleasure in hurting another person.

  When finally he discovered that, he became deaf to his father’s taunts and admonitions and learned to be on his guard.

  He kept secrets that could make him happy, but they were also dangerous. Underneath his bed, in the farthest corner, underneath the mount board of a stuffed weasel, lay his treasures. Weekly magazines—The Home and The Family Journal—with the most marvelous illustrations and stories. Mail-order catalogs from Daells Varehus in Copenhagen, with photographs of women almost without clothes on, staring out at him from the page and smiling. And comic books, too, so insane they made him hoot with laughter: Humor Half-hour, Daffy, Donald Duck. Magazines that tickled and challenged the senses, but which demanded nothing in return. He found them in the dustbins of the neighbors when he crept out of his window after dark.

  And he would lie beneath his duvet in the night and chuckle without a sound.

  It was during this period of his life that he learned to pull the doors ajar, so he knew where everyone was inside the house. He learned to wait for an opening so that he might bring his trophies back home without risk of being caught.

  He learned to listen like a bat on the hunt.

  No more than two minutes passed from the moment he left his wife downstairs until he saw her sneak out through the patio door with the child in her arms. As he had expected.

  She wasn’t stupid. Young and naive and easy to read, perhaps, but not stupid. She knew he was on to something, and so she was scared. He saw it clearly in her face, heard it in the tone of her voice.

  And now she was trying to escape.

  As soon as she spotted an opening, she would react. It was only a matter of time, he had known that. That was why he stood now at the window upstairs, tramping his feet on the wooden floor so she’d know she could get away, stopping only when she was almost at the hedge.

  It was so easy to make certain of her. He felt a wrench inside him, though he had long since grown accustomed to the faithlessness of others.

  He looked down at the woman and the child. A life was about to close. In a moment, they would be gone.

  The hedge had grown thick. He waited for a moment before descending the stairs in two bounds and following her out into the garden.

  So conspicuous she was, this young, beautiful woman in her red dress with the child in her arms. It would be a simple matter to follow her from a distance, though she was already down the road by the time he squeezed through the hedge.

  At the main road, she turned the corner, passed a single side street, then slipped back into the peaceful residential area once more.

  It was a move he had not expected.

  “Stupid woman,” he muttered to himself. “Are you making a cuckold out of me on my own turf?”

  The summer he turned eleven, his father’s congregation erected a hired marquee on the town common when it was time for the annual fair. “If those godless socialists can do it,” he declared, “the free churches can, too.”

  They labored all morning to make it ready. It was heavy work, but there were other children, too, bullied into lending a hand. And when they were finished putting down the floor, his father patted all the other children on the head.

  His own children received no thanks and were instead deployed to put out the folding
chairs.

  There were a lot.

  The fair opened. Four golden halos shone above the entrance of the marquee, and a guiding star swung from the center pole. Embrace The Lord—Let Him In implored a banner that ran along the side.

  And they were there, in numbers, his father’s flock, and they praised the good work that had been done. But despite all the colored leaflets he and Eva ran around handing out to people, not a single outsider came.

  His father’s anger and frustration was taken out on his mother when no one was around to see.

  “You brats get out there again,” he hissed. “And do things properly this time.”

  They lost each other by the stalls at the edge of the fair. Eva dallied over some rabbits that were on show, and he went on alone. It was the only way he could help their mother.

  He held out his leaflets with beseeching eyes, ignored by everyone. If only they would take some, perhaps she might not be beaten when they got home. Then she might not cry all through the night.

  He scouted around for a kind face, for someone who might share their fear of God. He listened out for a voice as mild and gentle as Jesus preaching.

  That was when he heard children laughing. Not the way he had heard before, passing a playground, or on a television seen in the window of the electrical shop. These children were laughing as though their vocal cords would snap, and no one could resist their appeal. They laughed as he had never laughed at home beneath his duvet, and the sound of it drew him on.

  The voice inside him could whisper for all its might about anger and repentance. He was simply unable to walk past and ignore the sounds he heard.

  A small crowd had gathered in front of a stall, grown-ups and children together. On a banner of white linen, a child had written GREAT VIDIO FILMS HALF PRIZE ONLY TODAY, and on a makeshift table of planks was the smallest television set he had ever seen.

  The children were laughing at the flickering monochrome images running across the tiny screen, and he soon found himself laughing with them. Laughing until it hurt inside, right down in the pit of his belly and in the part of his soul that was only now allowed to flourish.

  “No one compares to Chaplin,” one of the grown-ups said.

  And everyone laughed at the little man as he boxed and danced his pirouettes on the screen. They howled when he twirled his cane and lifted his bowler hat, and when he pulled faces at the fat ladies and the men with blacking around their eyes. And he laughed, too, and the cramp in his belly and all that was delightful and unsuppressed and unexpected overwhelmed him, and no one slapped his neck or took the slightest notice of him because of it.

  This experience would, in its own singular way, change his life, and that of a great many others besides.

  His wife did not look back. In fact, she didn’t see much at all, her legs propelling her and the child forward along the pavement as though invisible forces determined her route and speed.

  And when someone becomes removed from reality in this way, the slightest little thing will often be enough to trigger catastrophe.

  A nut loosening from the wing of an airplane. A drop of water short-circuiting the relay of a respirator.

  He saw the pigeon settle in the tree above his wife and son as they were about to cross the road, and he noted its excrement splattering into ghostly fingers on the pavement. He saw his son point to it and his wife look down. And at the very moment they stepped out into the road, a car turned the corner and seemed almost to target them.

  He could have shouted out. He could have yelled or whistled to warn them. But he did nothing. It wasn’t the moment. Emotion didn’t kick in.

  The brakes of the car squealed, the driver behind the windscreen yanked at the steering wheel, and the world stood still.

  He saw the frightened faces of his child and his wife turn in slow motion. The vehicle skidded and careered to the side, leaving tire marks on the road behind it like charcoal on drawing paper. And then it straightened out, the rear end found purchase again, and it was over.

  His wife remained transfixed in the gutter as the car hurtled past, and he himself stood as though paralyzed, arms hanging limply at his side. Feelings of tenderness struggled against an odd rush of excitement inside him. He recognized it from the first time he had killed a person. It was a feeling he did not welcome.

  He allowed the air compressed inside his lungs to escape and felt a warmth spread through his body. And he remained standing there just a moment too long, because Benjamin caught sight of him as he turned his head and clutched at his mother. He had clearly been given a fright by her reaction. But the sight of his father put him at ease again: he waved his arms and chuckled.

  And then she turned around and saw him, and the look of terror from seconds before became fixed.

  Five minutes later, she was sitting in front of him in the living room, her head turned away. “You’re coming home now without a fight,” he had said. “Because if you don’t, you’ll never see our son again.”

  And now her eyes were full of hatred and recalcitrance.

  If he wanted to know where she had been going, he would have to force it out of her.

  These were rare and joyful moments he and his sister spent together.

  If he started in the right place in the bedroom, he could walk ten short paces before reaching the mirror. His feet splayed out, his head rocking from side to side, the cane twirling in his hand. Ten paces, and he was someone else in the world of the mirror. No longer the boy without a friend. No longer the son of the man the people of that small community held in such esteem. No longer the chosen one of the flock who was to carry the weight of the word of God and turn it like a thunderbolt upon the people. He was the little tramp who made everyone laugh, not least himself.

  “I’m Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin,” he said, and wriggled his lip beneath the imaginary mustache, and Eva almost fell off their parents’ bed laughing. She had reacted in exactly the same way the other times he had put on his act, but this time would be the last.

  After that, she never laughed again.

  A second later, he felt the prod on his shoulder. The touch of an index finger was all it took for his breathing to cease and his mouth to turn dry. As he turned, his father’s fist was already on its way toward his abdomen. His eyes were wild with anger beneath bushy eyebrows. There was no sound but the sound of the blow and the ones that followed.

  He felt a burning sensation in his colon as gastric acid welled in his throat. He staggered backward, then stood still and looked his father defiantly in the eye.

  “So the name’s Chaplin, is it?” his father spat, glaring at him with the same look he employed on Good Friday when recounting the weary path of the Lord Jesus on his way to Calvary. All the grief and suffering of the world lay upon his willing shoulders. Of that there was no doubt, not even for a child.

  And then he struck again. This time a lunging haymaker of a punch, for otherwise he would not have been able to reach, and no defiant child would ever have the pleasure of forcing him to step forward so that he might deliver his punishment.

  “Who put such ungodliness into your head?”

  He looked down at his father’s feet. From now on, he would answer questions only when it suited him. His father could beat him as often as he wished, but he would not answer.

  “Answer me, or I shall be forced to punish you!”

  He was dragged by the ear back into his own room and hurled onto the bed. “You stay here until we come for you, do you understand?”

  This question, too, he ignored. His father stood for a moment with a look of puzzlement in his eyes, his lips parted as though this child’s defiance marked Judgment Day itself and the coming of the all-consuming Flood. And then he composed himself.

  “Gather your things together and put them outside,” he commanded.

  At first he didn’t grasp what his father meant, though his intention would soon become plain.

  “Leave your clothes, your shoes, and your beddi
ng. Put everything else outside.”

  He removed the child from his wife’s gaze and left her sitting alone with the slats of pale light the Venetian blinds laid across her face.

  Without the child, she would be going nowhere. He knew that.

  “He’s asleep now,” he said when he returned from upstairs. “Now tell me, what’s going on?”

  “You want to know what’s going on?” She turned her head deliberately. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking that question?” she replied with darkness in her eyes. “What do you do for a living, exactly? Where do you get all that money from? Is it crime? Do you blackmail people?”

  “Blackmail? What makes you think that?”

  She turned away from him again. “It makes no difference. I want you to let me and Benjamin go. I don’t want to stay here any longer.”

  He frowned. She was asking questions. She was making demands. Was there something he had overlooked in all this?

  “I’m asking you, what makes you think that?”

  She gave a shrug. “What doesn’t? You’re always away. You never tell me anything. You’ve got boxes piled up in a room like a shrine. You lie about your family. You…”

  It wasn’t because he interrupted her. She stopped of her own accord. Stared down at the floor, unable to retrieve the words that should never have passed her lips. Scuppered by her own overweening confidence.

  “So you’ve been through my boxes?” he asked calmly, though the realization seared his flesh as though he were on fire.

  She knew things about him, things she wasn’t supposed to know.

  If he didn’t get rid of her now, he would be done for.

  His father looked on as he gathered his belongings in a pile outside his room. Old toys, books by Ingvald Lieberkind with animal pictures in them, odds and ends he had collected. A good stick to scratch his back with, a jar full of crab’s claws, fossilized sea urchins and belemnites. He put everything into the pile. And when he had finished, his father pulled his bed away from the wall and tipped it onto its side. And there lay all his secrets beneath the moth-eaten mounted weasel. The weeklies, the comic books, and all his hours of carefree pleasure.