The Boy in the Suitcase

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  THE PHONE WOKE her. It was Darius.

  “Sigita, damnit. You set the cops on me!”

  “No. Or … I went back and told them it wasn’t you. That you didn’t have him.”

  “Then kindly explain why two not very civil gentlemen from the Polizei were here a moment ago, turning over the whole place!”

  He was really mad at her, she could tell. But she was pleased. Gužas was actually doing something, she thought. Ballpoint-clicking Gužas. He had contacted the police in Düsseldorf, which was where Darius lived at the moment.

  “Darius, they have to check. When the parents are divorced, that’s the first thing they think of.”

  “We’re not divorced.”

  “Separated, then.”

  “Did you really think I would take him away from you?”

  She tried to tell him about the woman in the cotton coat and the mistaken conclusions drawn by Mrs. Mažekienė, but he was too angry to listen.

  “Honestly, Sigita. This is too fucking much!”

  Click. He was gone.

  Dizzy and disoriented, she sat on the bed for a little while. She had been asleep for less than an hour. It was still afternoon. And she still had a headache. She opened the door to the balcony, hoping it would clear the air, and more importantly, her mind.

  That seemed to be a signal Mrs. Mažekienė had been waiting for for a while. She was sitting outside on her own balcony, surrounded by a jungle of tomato plants and hydrangeas.

  “Oh, you’re home,” she said. “Any news?”

  “No.”

  “The police were here,” she said. “I had to make a statement!” She sounded proud of the fact.

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I told them about the young couple, and about the car. And … erh … they asked about you, too.”

  “I imagine they would.”

  “If there were other boyfriends, and so on. Now that you’re on your own again.”

  “And what did you tell them about that?”

  “God bless us, but I’m not one to gossip. In this building, we mind our own business, is what I told them.”

  “I think you know that I don’t have a boyfriend. Why didn’t you just say so?”

  “And how would I know such a thing, dear? It’s not as if I watch your door, or anything. I’m no Peeping Tom!”

  “No,” sighed Sigita. “Of course not.”

  Mrs. Mažekienė leaned over the railing. “I’ve made cepelinai,” she said. “Would you like some, dearie?”

  The mere thought of doughy yellow-white potato balls made nausea rise in her throat again.

  “That’s very kind of you, but no thanks.”

  “Don’t forget your stomach just because your heart is heavy,” said Mrs. Mažekienė. “That’s what my dear mother always used to say, God rest her soul.”

  My heart isn’t heavy, thought Sigita. It is black. The blackness was back inside her, and she suddenly couldn’t stand another second of Mrs. Mažekienė’s well-intentioned intrusions.

  “I’m sorry,” she said abruptly. “I have to… .”

  She fled into the flat without even pausing to close the balcony door. It wasn’t nausea that seized her, but weeping. It ripped at her gut and tore long, howling sobs from her, and she had to lean over the sink, supporting herself with her good hand, as though she were in fact about to throw up.

  Several minutes passed before she could breathe again. She knew that Mrs. Mažekienė was absorbed in the spectacle from the vantage of her own balcony, because she could still hear a soft litany of “There, there. There, there, now,” as if the old lady were trying to comfort her by remote control.

  “There is no harder thing,” said Mrs. Mažekienė, when she heard the sobbing ease a little. “Than losing a child, I mean.”

  Sigita’s head came up as if someone had taken a cattle prod to her.

  “I have not lost a child!” she said angrily, and marched over to close the balcony door with a bang that made the glass quiver.

  But the double lie cut at her like a knife.

  AUNT JOLITA WORKED at the University of Vilnius. She was a secretary with the Department of Mathematics, but in reality her job consisted mostly of assisting a certain Professor žiemys. The reason she and Sigita’s mother were no longer on speaking terms became obvious fairly quickly. Every Monday and every Thursday, the Professor came to see Jolita. On the Thursday Sigita arrived, Jolita had just kissed him goodbye by her front door. It had been his cigarettes Sigita had smelled.

  At first, Sigita couldn’t understand why this should shock her so. Jolita wasn’t married and could do what she wanted. This was not Tauragė. The Professor did have a wife, but surely that was his business.

  In the end she came to the conclusion that the shocking thing was that it was all so petty. She had always known Jolita had done something awful, something Sigita’s mother could not condone in the depth of her Catholic heart. Jolita had sinned, but no one had been willing to explain to Sigita precisely how and why. As a child, she had vaguely imagined something to do with dancing on a table while drunken men looked on. She had no idea where that peculiar vision had come from. Probably some film or other.

  And now, the reality had proved to be so mundane and regulated. Every Monday, every Thursday. A bearded, stooping man more than fifteen years her senior, who always forgot at least one pair of glasses if Jolita did not remind him. She might as well have been married, or nearly so. It might all have been youthful and passionate once, but if so, that was a very long time ago.

  Sigita had fled to Vilnius to escape Tauragė’s judgment. To be free of prying and gossip, of moralizing parochial prejudice. Of everything provincial. Since she was nine or ten, she had been a highly secret admirer of Jolita’s courage; she imagined that her aunt had done everything she herself dreamed of: that she had broken free and made a life for herself on her own terms, up there in the impossibly distant big city. This was why Sigita had sought her out. Jolita would understand. She would be able to see they had kindred souls, rebellious and free. And when Jolita had embraced her and let her move in with no questions asked, it had seemed an affirmation of everything she had dreamed.

  But on Mondays and Thursdays, Jolita became anxious. She cleaned the flat. She bought wine. She awkwardly told Sigita she couldn’t stay in the flat, but must keep away from five in the afternoon until midnight at the earliest. Highly embarrassing, it would seem, if the Professor were to meet Jolita’s uncouth country niece, who had been so stupid as to get herself knocked up at age fifteen. If Sigita didn’t leave quickly enough, Jolita’s gestures became increasingly jerky and hectic. She would press money on Sigita, so she could buy herself a meal somewhere, go out on the town, see a film, that would be nice, darling, wouldn’t it? Damp, crumpled notes would be pushed into Sigita’s hands as Jolita damn near forced her out the door. Sigita saw a lot of films that winter.

  It occurred to her that Jolita was not free or independent at all. She hadn’t acquired her job by sleeping with the Professor—the job came first, and the Professor later—but that was seventeen years ago, and no one remembered that now. If the Professor were to lose his position, Jolita would be sacked as a matter of course. For the university, as for many others, the Independence hadn’t been all sweetness and light and patriotic hymns. Funds were at a minimum, and everyone fought like hyenas for the pitiful scraps and jobs that there were. Jolita’s whole life dangled by the thinnest of cobweb threads. Her position, her salary, her flat, her entire way of life … everything depended on him. Mondays and Thursdays.

  Jolita didn’t think Sigita should go to school.

  “You can do that next year, darling, when this is all over and done with,” she said, jiggling the coffee pot to try to gauge its contents. “Another cup?”

  “No, thank you,” said Sigita distractedly. She was seated on one of the ramshackle wooden chairs in the kitchen; she had to sit with her legs apart to accomodate her belly. “But Jolita. There wi
ll be a baby, then.”

  Jolita froze for a minute, with the coffee pot raised in front of her as though it was an offensive weapon. She looked at Sigita seriously.

  “Little darling,” she said. “You’re an intelligent girl. Surely you don’t imagine that you’ll be able to keep it?”

  THE CLINIC HAD recently been established in a big old villa in the Žvėrynas Quarter. There was a smell of fresh paint and new linoleum, and the chairs in the waiting room were so new that some of them still sported their plastic covers. Sigita sat heavily on one of them, squatting like a constipated cow. Sweat trickled down her back, soaking into the awful, bright yellow maternity dress Jolita had acquired through a friend at the University. For the past four weeks, this had been the only garment that would fit Sigita’s bloated body, and she hated it with a will.

  At least it will soon be over, thought Sigita. And clung to that thought as the next spasm gripped her. A deep grunting sound escaped her, and she felt like an animal. A cow, a whale, an elephant. How the hell had it come to this? She gripped the edge of the table and tried to inhale and exhale, all the way, all the way, as she had been taught, but it made not the slightest bit of difference.

  “Aaaaah. Aaaaaah. Aaaaaah.”

  I don’t want to be an animal, she thought. I want to be Sigita again!

  Jolita came back, accompanied by a slight, redhaired woman in a pale green uniform. Why not white? Perhaps it was meant to match the new mint green paint on the walls.

  “I’m Julija,” she said, holding out her hand. Sigita couldn’t release her grip on the table, so the woman’s gesture transformed itself into a small pat on the shoulder, presumably meant to be soothing. “We have a room ready for you. If you can walk, that will probably be the most comfortable for you.”

  “I. Can. Walk.” Sigita hauled herself upright without letting go of the table. She began to waddle after the woman whose name was the same as Granny Julija’s. Then she discovered that Jolita wasn’t following. Sigita stopped.

  Jolita was wringing her hands. Literally. One slim-fingered hand kept stroking the other, as though it were a glass she was polishing.

  “You’ll be fine, darling,” she said. “And I’m coming back later.”

  Sigita stood utterly paralyzed. She couldn’t mean … surely, she couldn’t expect Sigita to go through this alone? Unthinkingly, she reached for her aunt with a begging gesture she regretted seconds later. Jolita backed away, staying out of reach.

  “I’ll bring you some chocolate,” she said, smiling with unnatural brightness. “And some cola. It’s good for when you’re feeling poorly.” And then she left, walking so quickly she was nearly sprinting. And Sigita suddenly realized why.

  It was Thursday.

  NINA PARKED THE Fiat in the narrow, cobblestoned part of Reventlowsgade, squeezed in between a row of classic Vesterbro tenements on one side and the Tietgensgade embankment on the other. On top of the embankment, the traffic moved past in uneven, noisy jerks.

  The boy wriggled as she pulled the shorts up around his skinny waist, but he was apparently pleased with the slightly over-sized sandals. He picked at the velcro straps with his short, soft fingers, and Nina cautiously stroked his hair. She found the water bottles, unscrewed the cap of one of them, and held it out to him.

  “Atju.”

  The boy accepted the bottle earnestly, and drank with clumsy greed. Some of the water sloshed onto his chin and the new T-shirt, and he silently wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  The motion was so familiar that for a split second, Nina felt as if she might be sitting in a car with an ordinary child on their way home from a long day at the kindergarten. Slowly, she repeated the word to herself. Atju. Wasn’t that the same thing he had said when she gave him the ice cream earlier?

  It had to mean thank you.

  Nina recognized the slight nod and lowered eyes that most children learn to produce as an automatic reaction. “Thank you” was the first phrase taught by any parents with the slightest ambition to raise a polite child. It couldn’t be a coincidence, thought Nina. Both times, she had been giving him something. The word was clearly designed for such situations. So, thank you. It made her task a little easier, as “Mama” was probably a too universal to be much use.

  Nina opened the door and got out of the car. Heat still clung to the pavement and brick walls, and the heavy diesel fumes rising from the central railway station stung her nostrils with every breath. A faint puff of wind whirled a scrunched-up cigarette pack along the curb, until it came to rest against a tuft of yellow grass poking up between the paving stones.

  The boy permitted her to lift him from the car only with reluctance, and once out, insisted on walking himself. He became tense and unmanagable in her arms, arching his spine and throwing back his head in silent protest, and when she gave in and let him slide to the sidewalk, she thought she had caught a glint of triumph in his tired eyes. He landed neatly, his new sandals meeting the pavement with a crisp and satisfied smack. Then he reached for her hand as though that was the most natural thing in the world. He was used to walking this way, thought Nina. He was used to holding someone’s hand.

  THEY WALKED UP Stampesgade and turned right along Colbjørnsensgade, and then on to Istedgade. The boy’s hand rested in hers, lightly as a butterfly, as they slowly moved past Kakadu Bar and Saga Hotel. There were still quite a few people about in the warm, dark night; outside the cafés, the guests were sipping beers and lattes and colas, barefooted in sandals, and still dressed only in light summer dresses or shorts.

  The first prostitutes Nina saw were African. Two of them, both of them rather solidly built, and dressed in high boots and brightly colored skirts stretched tightly over muscular, firm thighs. The women stood less than five yards from each other, yet they didn’t talk. One had propped herself against a wall with a cigarette between pursed lips, and rummaged hectically through her bag at regular intervals. The other did nothing at all except stand there, watching every car that turned the corner.

  No one took any notice of Nina and the boy, and it struck her that they must look relatively normal, walking together like this. A little late to be out and about, certainly, considering the usual bedtime of children his age, but nothing that would raise eyebrows. Vesterbro might contain Copenhagen’s red light district, but it was also a neighborhood full of ordinary families, some of them with young children. Vesterbro was becoming hip, and fashionable cafés had sprung up among the topless bars and porn shops.

  The boy dragged his feet a little, but she still felt no resistance in the hand resting confidently in hers. In a doorway a little further down the street, two women argued heatedly. They were both blond, with skinny legs and remarkably similar emaciated faces. The argument stopped abruptly, as suddenly as it has begun, and one of them reached into her handbag and handed a can of beer to the other.

  Nina paused, and the boy stood obediently quiet at her side while she tried to obtain eye contact with one of the women, the one now holding the beer can. She, in her turn, ignored Nina and looked at the boy instead.

  “Hi there, sweetheart.”

  Her voice was blurred and bubbly, as though she were talking to them from the bottom of a well. When the boy didn’t react and Nina kept standing there, she finally raised her eyes to Nina’s, with a grimace of confusion on her face.

  “Yes?”

  Nina took a deep breath. “I’m looking for… .” Nina hesitated, fumbling for the right words. The woman’s gaze was already wandering again. “The Eastern European girls, where are they? Do you know?”

  The woman’s pale blue eyes widened in astonishment and distrust. Her pupils moved in tiny rapid jerks, and her mouth tightened. Nina realized she must look like the enemy, that the woman might consider her world to be under attack from the semidetached, permanent-income, husband-toting kind of person who would condescend to and disapprove of people like her. She might suspect Nina of being a journalist, or an outraged wife, or even a touris
t vicariously fascinated by the prospect of sleaze and degradation. In any case, the woman clearly did not relish the role of practical guide to Vesterbro’s night life. Her eyes glinted aggressively.

  “Why the hell are you asking?”

  She moved half a step closer, and Nina felt the heaviness of her breath waver in the air between them.

  Truth, she thought. I’ll give her the truth, or a small part of it, at any rate.

  “The boy needs his mother,” she said, pulling the child onto her arm. “I have to find her.”

  For a few wobbly seconds, the woman maintained her stance, chest pushed forward and eyes glinting. Then the appeal to the maternal instinct had its effect. She slumped, taking another sip of her lager, and studied the boy with renewed interest.

  “Poor litte dear,” she said, reaching out to touch his cheek with a bony finger.

  He jerked his head out of reach and hid his face against Nina’s shoulder, which made the beer-can woman scowl. She teetered off, pulling her friend with her. But she did answer the question as she went.

  “They’re everywhere at the moment,” she said. “Some in Skelbæksgade, some at Halmtorvet. There are probably some in Helgolandsgade, too. They’re bloody everywhere, and you have a long night ahead of you if you don’t know her usual spot.”

  “Where do they come from, do you know?”

  Nina wasn’t sure the woman heard her, but just before they turned the corner, her friend twisted to look at Nina.

  “Most of the white girls are from Russia,” she said. “But there are others, too. Prices are way down because of them. The stupid little tarts ruin it for everyone else.”