The House That Jack Built

by Jakob Melander

  He crawled up the stairs to his apartment, threw his wet clothes in the hallway. Then he turned on the shower and let the scalding water pour over him for several minutes. The headache had returned. He brushed his teeth in the shower, wrapped the towel around his waist, and went back into the hallway. A squeaking sound was coming from Maria’s room. It was rhythmic, rough. The sound of two bodies . . .

  He wanted to grab the handle, tear the door open. But just as he put his hand out, he heard her moaning. His hand dropped to his side. His hand opened and closed. then he turned, slunk off to his bedroom. Raising his head, he caught sight of his reflection in the dark window. A burnt-out, middle-aged man with loose, grey skin, bags under the eyes, and cuts on his nose and forehead. He leaned his forehead against the windowpane.

  He got dressed, slipped into the living room. Grabbed

  The Tempest from the bookcase, and let it fall open to the familiar place. He found the secret pocket in the bright-red knitted bookmark and took out the small, square sachet. He poured the white powder onto the table and used his bank card to form a line. He rolled a two-hundred-kroner note into a tube, stuffed one end into his right nostril and snorted, pressing his index finger against his left. It burned inside, near the bridge of his nose and in his throat. Steel and ice. He had to sneeze but managed to hold back, licked his index finger, dragged it across the remains of the fine powder, and rubbed it into his gums. More steel. Blood.

  He returned the book to the bookcase, folded the paper and the banknote, put both into his pocket and disappeared down the stairs.

  Chapter 31

  Abeiuwa pulled the leopard-print fur tight around her shoulders, tugged at her tiny, pink, plastic skirt, and peered up and down Vesterbrogade. It was so cold in this country, even though they said it was summer. She was tired. Her whole body ached. She took a final drag on her last cigarette and threw the stub into the gutter. On her corner of the public square of Vesterbros Torv, car lights darted across her slender body and neon signs reflected on chrome trim and shiny hoods. The pedestrians she tried to forget. Most avoided her; some stared. People here were surly, angry. Not like at home in Porto-Novo. She longed to return, missed her mom and her siblings, her father who worked on the other side of the border.

  One more customer, then she would call it a night. She hoped they wouldn’t beat her when she returned with the money. But why wouldn’t they? They always did.

  A car drove through the puddle by the sidewalk. The murky water splashed the curb and Abeiuwa sidestepped the spray. She bent down, squeezed her arms against her breasts to push them up and out. It was a trick she had learned on her first night in Torino.

  The window rolled down, she smiled into the darkness.

  “Fucky fucky?” Abeiuwa winked, puckered her pink lips.

  “How much?” The voice was rusty. An old man’s. It didn’t bother her. As long as he didn’t smell.

  She smiled again, this time a little broader. “Two hundred, no condom.”

  “Too much, black whore.” The car accelerated, skidding 0n the pavement. Again a hard jet of water shot up from the puddle, this time hitting her fur.

  “Asshole.” She gave him the finger and looked down at the damage. She wouldn’t be able to wash until she got home. A little methylated spirit would get the worst off. But for the rest of the evening she would look terrible.

  Over on the other side of the street, a young couple was staring at her. People had so many opportunities here; so few needed to work the streets.

  She turned around, began to walk toward Justine who worked a corner further down Vesterbrogade. Maybe she had a smoke?

  Justine had both North State cigarettes and gum, and five minutes later Abeiuwa was back on her corner. She was already feeling better, chewing gum and blowing smoke rings into the night air. She swallowed the pill Justine had given her, dextroamphetamine. Now she could manage a couple more hours.

  An old vintage car pulled up to the curb. She repeated her routine — she bent down, squeezed her breasts together, puckered her lips, and whispered hoarsely through the window.

  “Fucky Fucky?”

  The man in the car shook his head. “Sucky sucky?” The voice was neither young nor old.

  Abeiuwa smiled, opened her mouth, let the tongue slip across her lips. “Two hundred, no condom.”

  The door opened and she got into the passenger seat.

  “Go to Fisketorvet. Behind.”

  The customer was an older man. It was dark inside the car and she couldn’t see more than his shadow. Glasses, sharp nose, high forehead. Heavy breathing. The front windshield was messy. She placed her hand on his thigh, let her fingers slide upwards. He was breathing heavier now. They crossed Istedgade, turned down Halmtorvet, and out along Skelbækgade. The festival of lights from the Fisketorvet Shopping Centre twinkled at them from the other side of the train tracks. He drove down Kalvebod Brygge, into the parking lot and down among the blacked-out properties behind. He’d been here before.

  They parked in the shadow of an apartment block where the lights from Fisketorvet didn’t reach them. He turned off the headlights. Her fingers found his zipper. There was a sudden smell in the car. Piss? No, something else. Something chemical? She smiled at him so he could see the whites of her eyes and her teeth in the dark.

  Then she filled her mouth with saliva, bent over the gearshift, and took the limp, wrinkled dick in her mouth.

  He mumbled something; it sounded more or less like what they all mumbled. She assumed it was Danish; it sounded stupid at any rate. But she froze when he started stroking her hair as he stiffened in her mouth. If only he would stop. The ones who touched her tended to force her head all the way down, until she was about to choke. She was used to it now, she could manage. But not this. This terrified her. She sucked her cheeks in, moved her head more quickly, up and down. Her tongue ran in circular motions around the head of his penis. Come on. Get it over with.

  His hand stopped stroking her hair. He was doing something by the windshield. Now the hand returned; a finger caressed her right eyelid. She shivered.

  A wet and pungent cloth was pressed over her nose and she was pulled up by her hair. Then the cloth was forced over her mouth and the world dissolved.

  Abeiuwa came to, dizzy, dazed. She had no idea where she was or how much time had passed. She sat on a concrete floor that was rough against the skin of her bare buttocks. Her hands were bound behind her back. Carefully she opened first her right eye, then her left.

  Blurry shapes, shadows in the twilight. A tiny bit of light filtered in through an opening high above. The shapes accumulated into shadows, bodies. One on a chair, the other on a sofa sitting in front of a dark television. They were completely still. One body’s head was slumped against its chest; the other’s back was against the sofa, its head bent backwards.

  “Help,” she whispered. There was no reaction.

  “Help me,” she tried again, this time louder. Neither of them moved.

  For a long time, she watched their eyelids. They didn’t move: no twitching, no trembling arms. She tried lifting her head but was far too weak. The small movement made her nauseous and she threw up. Her vomit splashed down on the concrete floor between her legs and fear took hold of her.

  “Nana Buluku,” she whispered. “Mawu et Lisa.” The silent figures didn’t react. “Aide moi,” she continued, this time a little louder. Still no reaction, no answer.

  “Aide moi,” she shouted. Her voice echoed between the concrete walls.

  The sound of footsteps came from above. Then came the cutting sound of metal on metal. A bright light forced her to shut her eyes. Something creaked. Someone was on the way down — a staircase? Heavy, slowly. She opened her eyes again, blinking until she had adjusted to the light. And then she screamed.

  The two shapes were naked white women. Their skin had an oddly yellowish hue, like
the beeswax from her uncle’s village. But it was not the unnatural hue, nor the fact that they didn’t move that made her scream.

  It was their eyes. They stared blankly forward, cold and stiff, glasslike. Like doll’s eyes. Each had one green and one greyish-blue. Dead faces. Like the Vodun her grandmother had told her about.

  “Nana Buluku,” she whispered again. “Mawu et Lisa. Aide moi, aide moi.” Again and again, she rocked back and forth.

  High above, a figure emerged through a small door at the top of a steep staircase. A thickset, older man walked down the stairs, one step at a time, humming while keeping an eye on her. She screamed again, but the man continued his descent, smiled as he passed her, and walked over to a bookcase. He turned his back to her. His arms were moving; he took something from a shelf, operated a device. Music spilled out from hidden speakers. Strange, slow, creepy music. A woman sang words she didn’t recognize. Then the shape stepped toward her carrying something, shutting out the light.

  “Sucky sucky?” she whispered.

  The man didn’t answer; he just kept smiling. The sharp chemical stench surrounded her again; she couldn’t stop him from forcing what he had in his hands against her mouth. It burned her eyes. The room, the man, and the two Vodun disappeared into the darkness.

  * * *

  The crude wooden bookcases, the ceiling high above her — everything was swimming as she came to. She remembered the image of the two naked female figures. Abeiuwa opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out. She couldn’t speak. Something had been stuffed into her mouth. She tried spitting it out, but the only result was something tightening around her neck.

  She was lying on a table, freezing and naked. A chemical stench penetrated the air. Something was stuck to her right eye. Above her, she could hear him mumbling, humming cheerfully to himself. The music was very loud now. She tried opening her eyes, but could only see out of the left one. Something was pressing down on her right eye.

  She couldn’t move her arms or legs. Her right eye started twitching, the pain radiating all the way from her head down to her feet. The soft tissue was stretched like one of the fish eyes she had played with as a child. The pain was a fire burning in her head. She tensed her body, arched her back. The man standing over her continued humming to the strange music but didn’t speak. And then she heard a soft pop. The pain momentarily vanished, only to return worse than ever. She managed to slip her left hand free; she fumbled over a rough surface, hit something. It fell, clattered. Abeiuwa’s hand closed around a jar and she struck, upwards and to the right with all her strength. The soft humming stopped and a large body tumbled to the floor.

  Driven half-mad by pain, she reached over, fumbled with the buckle around her right hand, then her feet. Seconds later she was free. She tried to get up, then wailed as her right eye twitched. A low table had been overturned in his fall, instruments and jars with liquids were scattered across the floor. Behind him, out of the corner of her left eye, she caught sight of the foot of the staircase. She hurried across his body to the staircase. As she raised her foot toward the first step, a hand grabbed her ankle. She kicked backwards, struck. The grip relaxed and she tumbled up the steep staircase. Now heavy steps creaked on the staircase behind her. She pushed through a small door, slammed it shut in her pursuer’s face and slumped onto the floor. Bewildered she tried to get her bearings. Another dark room, another staircase. She scrambled up the stairs on all fours, heard the door squeak behind her. He was clawing his way across the floor below her. His hand grazed her heel before she managed to pull it away. Wailing, she dragged herself up the stairs, through the door. A small bureau stood on the other side. She tore at it half blindly, managed to move it to the doorway, and pushed it down the staircase. A curse from down below, the sound of something heavy falling, the staircase creaking. She tottered down a corridor. A door. Out? She entered a room with windows on all sides, fumbled along the walls and the window frames. Gasping and half-blind she felt for the latch on one of the windows, listening for steps all the while. The window flew open and she plunged headfirst out into the cold night, somersaulted down a soft hill, hit her back against a metal object, and pulled herself up.

  A blaze of white lights burned her eyes. The right one still hung from the socket and dangled on her cheek. She turned, looked back toward the house and the pale outline of a Vodun in the open window.

  She let out a long scream and ran into the nearest thicket, away.

  Friday

  June 20

  Chapter 32

  The duty officer called Sanne at 3:37 a.m. Martin was furious at being woken up; he slammed the phone against the wall. Sanne didn’t have the energy to explain. She apologized on the phone. Her boyfriend had accidentally knocked the phone off the nightstand; no, there was nothing wrong.

  The officer didn’t buy it, but what was he going to say? He gave her the address and signed off with a “Have fun.”

  Now she was sitting in a room at Gentofte Hospital. A young African woman was lying in bed, staring into space. The terror in the woman’s healthy eye didn’t disappear when she introduced herself. The woman had no papers and wouldn’t declare an address. She spoke limited English.

  The woman had a patch over her right eye. The duty nurse told them that when she had been brought in an hour earlier, her eye had been dangling on her cheek, attached only by the optic nerve and something-or-other that Sanne couldn’t remember the name of. They had now more or less managed to get it in place, but they doubted they would be able to save her sight.

  Sanne leaned closer. “What happened? Who did this to you?”

  The woman shook her head. She tried to speak but nothing came out.

  “Where are you from?” Sanne tried again. This time the woman lit up.

  “Benin,” she answered. “Dahomey.”

  The ambulance had picked her up on Brogårdsvej, by the roundabout. Several local residents had called and complained; one had shouted that a black whore was standing in the middle of the road screaming. That was more or less how the words had come out. By and large this was the sum of what the police knew. But Sanne had no doubt why the duty officer had called her. A prostitute with eye damage, likely done forcibly. A victim that had succeeded in getting away? Was this the mistake they’d been waiting for?

  Benin. Sanne got up, smiled at the woman, and hurried out to the corridor. She called the duty officer on her cell.

  “I’m going to need an interpreter. Yes, for whatever it is they speak in Benin. Yes, Africa. Thank you.”

  Half an hour passed before a patrol car arrived with the interpreter. A large man with a gentle face introduced himself as Samuel. He started talking with the woman, but after a couple of sentences he turned around.

  “We don’t speak the same language.”

  “But I asked for an interpreter from Benin?”

  Samuel smiled. “We speak many languages in Benin. I speak Yoruba, she speak Fon Gbè. I can hardly understand. She speaks only a little French. I think she comes from the slum in one of the large cities in the south. Cotonou or Porto-Novo.”

  Sanne nodded. They weren’t going to be that lucky after all.

  “Could you try anyway?” she asked. “Don’t you understand any of it?”

  Samuel shrugged. “I understand a little but it’s difficult. I’m not sure it’s correct.”

  “Let’s try anyway. Ask her what her name is.”

  Slowly, over the next half hour, Samuel managed to draw out the woman’s story. Her name was Abeiuwa and she was nineteen years old, from Benin, and, as Samuel had guessed, from the slum in Porto-Novo. She had been lured to Europe with the promise of a well-paid job — the classic story. She had arrived by plane from Nigeria to Torino, where she had been given her first rough introduction to her new profession. After several months in Torino she was sold again, this time to Rotterdam. Next stop was Copenhagen. She had bee
n here for two months now. Sanne went cold inside, as she saw the realization in Abeiuwa’s face. She would soon be sold off to another city, other men. The young woman knew it; she had long since accepted that this was what life had to offer her.

  Her last client had picked her up on the corner of Vesterbrogade and Gasværksvej. Sanne tried getting a description, but all Abeiuwa was able to tell her was that he was old, wore glasses, and had a strange, strong smell.

  Abeiuwa was about to perform oral sex on the customer when he drugged her with a cloth. When she woke up, she found herself in a dark room on a concrete floor filled with wooden boxes.

  “And the dead were sitting there, on a chair and a sofa,” Samuel translated, furrowing his brow. “They had dead eyes.” Samuel pointed at his eyes. Abeiuwa started, pulled the comforter over her eyes.

  “Botono,” she whispered, terror stricken.

  Sanne tried reassuring her with a smile. “What did she say?”

  “Botono. It’s Vodun.”

  Sanne sat back in the chair.

  “Vodun? I think you’ll have to explain that.”

  “You call it voodoo but really it’s Vodun. Vodun is one of our old religions. In Vodun, there is a creator, Nana Buluku, and there are many spirits, good and evil, who we call Vodun. And witches. Botono. They invoke bad spirits. She say the dead were Botono, or that the man who took her is a Botono and has invoked the dead who then are bad Vodun.”

  Sanne nodded, pretending to understand. “What happened next?”

  “This Botono drugged her again. When she wake up, he’s removing her eye. She get away . . . I can’t quite understand how.” Samuel shrugged. “She came out on the street. The lights hurt her eyes — her eye. She thought the lights were evil Vodun too, so she ran the other way. There was a lake. Suddenly she was standing on the road and the ambulance was there.”