You Disappear: A Novel

by Jungersen, Christian

  Niklas and I remain standing. “Bernard, thank you again. I know that they would have kept him in custody for months if you hadn’t made some sort of special effort.”

  He smiles, and I can see I’m right.

  “But you can’t tell us what you did,” I say.

  “No.”

  In a few months, Frederik might be better—nobody knows, but the doctors say it’s possible. Yet the legal case is another matter entirely; we’ll be stuck with it till we die. None of us will ever be able to make great strides or rehabilitate our way out of it.

  I try again to get Bernard to say just a little bit about what happened, but he deflects my attempts in friendly fashion by talking instead about general case law pertaining to financial fraud—and in this way he manages to tell us about Frederik’s case indirectly, without violating confidentiality.

  He does so skillfully, thoughtfully, pedagogically. Maybe it’s just because he’s a seasoned lawyer, but it feels more like his personality, like he’s genuinely concerned for Niklas and me.

  As Bernard talks, I look around the living room and think about how it must look to an outsider. The speaker drivers have all been unscrewed from the cabinets, leaving behind gaping black holes. Frederik doesn’t think our stereo system sounds good enough and wants to repair it, but now the drivers, along with various snipped cords and small brightly colored electronic components, have lain on the carpet for a week. Two posters also lie on the floor because he’s been wanting to hang them up but can’t decide where, while the shelves with all his classical LPs have been pushed out from the wall because he was going to do something or other with the electrical socket behind them.

  “You’ll have to excuse the mess,” I say.

  “I like it; it’s homey. And you have remarkable taste in furniture.”

  “Thank you. What can I offer you? You must be famished after such a day.”

  “Well … yes.”

  “A sandwich, rolls? Cheese, ham, pâté, jam? Coffee, tea, beer?”

  He smiles. “It all sounds great.”

  I set out rolls and various fixings on the dinner table, along with beer and water. Niklas sets out three plates without asking, but I know I won’t be able to eat a thing.

  Our lawyer eats in a controlled, almost dainty manner, despite the evident hunger in his eyes. Perhaps he had a strict conservative upbringing in France. After he’s eaten the first half of a roll, he carefully finishes chewing and wipes his mouth with a napkin before speaking. “Of course, now you’re both completely confused, and you have no idea what’s going to happen to Frederik—or to you either.”

  “Exactly.”

  “First you need to collect yourselves. In cases involving financial fraud, it takes the police months to get a general overview of all the accounts and set a court date. In the meantime, Frederik has plenty of time to decide on a lawyer.”

  “But I thought we had you!” My voice rises to the point of shrillness. I glance quickly at Niklas, but apparently he doesn’t find me embarrassing today.

  Bernard’s voice remains calm. “Frederik has to choose his own lawyer. That’s critical, even though he’s ill. And although I was with him at the hearing today, he might very well choose someone else.”

  “But you understand brain injuries, and you have experience with such cases, don’t you?”

  “That’s something Frederik will have to judge for himself.”

  It gives me a brief moment of calm to discuss something so obviously nonsensical. All Frederik’s decisions are made by me now. Having him sign his name to anything is just a matter of form.

  As he chews, Bernard’s jaw muscles move distinctly beneath his skin. It’s amazing that his body’s so lean and athletic, given his age—but then again, Gerda said he’s actually my age, something I keep forgetting.

  “Meningiomas grow very slowly,” he says. “So Frederik’s was definitely present already when the embezzlement started. It may have affected his actions in a way that he couldn’t help.”

  “Of course it was the disease! Everybody knows that he could never have come up with something like this!”

  Still the same easy voice. “The question is whether it affected him enough that you can say it was the disease making his decisions. In cases involving neurological damage, there is one question that determines everything, a question that family members need to consider right away. Did the personality of the accused change markedly in the period leading up to the crime—whether or not anyone thought it might be due to illness?”

  I find myself shouting with relief. “Oh but yes, three years ago he changed radically!”

  For the first time, Bernard’s composure breaks. “Fantastic! That’s utterly crucial! Congratulations!”

  “For the first time, Frederik was coming home from work at normal times, for the first time he took the time to—”

  I grasp the arms of my chair. Squeeze them tightly and fall silent. And then run from the room.

  In the kitchen I stop and lean over the counter, gasping for air, slumped over the outstretched arms that are propping me up. I don’t want to cry while Niklas is sitting in the living room with a guest. But I can’t help myself.

  The best years we’ve had together. Years that were going to sustain me the rest of my life. Were they just a by-product of a tumor?

  Frederik and I walking down the narrow wooded path along Lake Farum, remodeling the house together, cuddling in the yard and sitting up late in the hanging sofa. His high spirits, regardless of what we had to deal with in our respective jobs; his impulsiveness, which was so life-giving after all those years of sense and discipline; the way he horsed around, the way he suddenly relaxed about work obligations. Where’d it all come from?

  In the living room, I hear Niklas assume his most adult voice. “It can get to be a little too much for her. It’s hard for everyone.”

  He clearly doesn’t understand what I understand. Because our three good years also gave Niklas his father back.

  I hear Bernard reply, “That’s something we’re all allowed to do. After my wife became brain-damaged, I can assure you I had to leave my share of rooms too.”

  It’s strange to hear a sensible adult male talking to Niklas. The calm deep voice and words of wisdom, in contrast with Frederik’s prattle. And to hear how Niklas listens. How good for him to be with a healthy man. It seems so long ago that our home was ever like this.

  • • •

  I have to lie down. And I can’t go into our bedroom, where Frederik is. The only place I can be is Niklas’s room. I lie down in his bed with my clothes on, even though maybe that’s wrong of me. Pull the comforter up to my nose.

  I mull over details from the best years of our marriage. Frederik coming in from the yard barefoot one Sunday morning, he chases me around to tickle me, I run away, both of us laughing until we tumble onto the sofa together. Frederik arriving home from work jubilant after he bought that expensive camera for Niklas on the spur of the moment. They were my memories of the best we’ve had. What are they now?

  Bernard drives away without me going back down and saying goodbye.

  A little while later I hear Niklas open the door to the room. My eyes are still closed.

  He must be surprised to see me, yet he just comes over to the bed, as if to look down at me. Then in a concerned voice, he asks, “How are you doing?”

  I remain prone, eyes closed, in the same position. “I’m sorry, Niklas. I can’t go into our room right now.”

  “I understand.”

  “You were really great down there. With the lawyer.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Is it okay if I lie here for a little while?”

  “Of course.”

  When Niklas wakes me, this time I open my eyes. I can see from the light that I must have slept several hours. He’s standing again by the side of the bed. He asks, “Do you think I should stay home tonight?”

  “That might be a really good idea. We don’t know wh
at’s happening. Or what could—”

  “It’s just that Mathias and I were going to meet at his house about our show. It’s actually really important.”

  I can recall bits and pieces of something I must have dreamt; Frederik riding a dinosaur.

  “But of course,” I say. “That’s what you should do then.”

  The inside of my mouth feels sticky. I need something to drink, and as soon as I can I need to text the parents of my fourth graders to say our parent meeting tonight is canceled. I should really call our friends too before they hear about Frederik on TV. And we don’t have any food in the house.

  I don’t have the energy to call anyone, but I’m just going to have to slip out to the mini-mart to buy something for supper.

  I get up out of bed and check to see that Frederik’s still asleep. As I walk from our yard out to the street, wrapped in more clothing than I perhaps need, I discover Niklas’s friend Sara. She’s standing a few yards from me, almost hidden beside the neighbor’s hedge, busy peering at something on her cell phone.

  I’m exhausted, but I pull myself together for a smile.

  “Hi,” I say. “Do you want to come in? He’s home.”

  She looks almost alarmed. “I was actually … I’ll just wait out here.”

  “Well, he’s heading over to Mathias’s.”

  “Yeah, I’m going over there too.”

  “So you make photo and sound shows too?” I ask.

  “Nah, we’re just going to hang out.”

  Niklas calls out from his window, behind me. “Stay right there! I’m coming down!”

  I call back up to the window. “Niklas, you’re welcome to invite Sara up to your room!”

  Immediately she loses all interest in her phone. “Sara? You thought I was Sara?”

  “What? No, not at all! I don’t even know who Sara is!”

  “Has Sara been here?”

  “No! Nobody’s been here.”

  I wince under the weight of her probing gaze, as if I were the teenage girl and she the grown-up. “There hasn’t been anyone called Sara,” I say a little too quickly, feeling as though I’m still waking up. I add, “You can go inside if you like. Until he’s ready.”

  “We actually agreed … I think instead, I should …”

  The front door opens and Frederik comes out. He looks fresh and cheerful again. Fresh and cheerful, as he pretty much always is, regardless of whatever he may have left in ruins around him. He looks like a man who’s just gotten a big raise.

  “This is Niklas’s friend,” I say.

  Frederik smiles happily. “Damn you look good. To think that you’re Niklas’s friend. I’ve got to hand it to him!”

  “We’re on the social committee together.”

  He reaches out to touch her arm. “I’d really like to get inside your pussy!”

  I slap his hand away. “Frederik!”

  He snaps at me. “But it’s something she should be proud and happy to hear—that men want to get inside her pussy.”

  “Stop it! Just stop it!”

  Niklas comes storming out of the house and immediately sees his friend’s face. “What’s going on here?”

  “I think you two should leave,” I say. “Go now, and I’ll get him inside.”

  Niklas and the girl who isn’t Sara hurry off. Frederik and I yell at each other. Then I run into the house, and he follows me in so he can keep arguing with me.

  Once we’re inside, and the neighbors can no longer see us, I throw him facedown to the living room floor, where I straddle his lower back and pin his arms.

  “You big piece of shit!” he shouts again and again. “Big piece of shit!”

  He thrashes around so much that he bangs his shinbones against the doorframe and knocks over a lamp, and I can see blood soaking through one of his trouser legs.

  “Shut up, God damn it!” I shout, struggling to hold him down on the floor.

  He succeeds in twisting a hand free, which allows him to pinch me hard on the thigh. I grab the little stainless-steel bowl standing on the coffee table and hammer it down on his back so that he roars in pain.

  Who the hell is he, this strange man who’s broken into my house? Who’s invaded my husband’s body, his head?

  Once I strike him I can’t stop. I bang the bowl down on his back again and again while he writhes and yells that it hurts, that I’m a piece of shit.

  I stop to catch my breath. I cannot live with a man like this, I think, waiting for him to settle down. There’s no way anyone can expect me to. There’s just no way.

  Beneath me, his body grows tired and limp. I’ve still got him pinioned down when he begins to speak, in a sad voice that I haven’t heard since he became sick.

  “The words just rushed out,” he says. “I knew I shouldn’t say something like that to her. I can’t understand why I did.”

  I let go immediately. For he sounds like the real Frederik. The “voice” is gone. I want to help my poor husband, I want to lift him up. Who is he now? Has he been set free?

  We stand in the middle of the floor. The room grows bright, and it feels as if all the anger was flushed from my body after I hit him. I’m appalled that I could have done that. A sick man. A poor sick man.

  I can’t stand to look him in the eye. Instead I glance around, trying to find the best place to sit him down.

  “Well, it’s certainly good that you know it’s wrong,” I say.

  “I do know. It’s utterly, utterly wrong!”

  His eyes are desperate, and opened wide. As if he’s just this moment discovering who he’s become, and everything he’s done these past months.

  “It’s utterly, utterly wrong! Utterly, utterly, utterly!” Suddenly he’s shouting. “It’s awful! Why do I say such things?” And he’s crying at the same time, so that tears or snot gets caught in his windpipe and he starts coughing as he shouts. “Why do I do it?”

  In seconds his cheeks are sopping wet. He’s no longer a human being; more like some animal that bellows. A long-limbed, bony animal. He’s a moose, standing alone in the forest and bellowing its grief.

  “Too awful! Too awful! I don’t know why I say those things!”

  “No, you don’t know why.”

  “I don’t want … I don’t … I … too awful!”

  And then something new happens: the tears grow less animal. Without thinking I reach out my hand to stroke his cheek, and he doesn’t push it away. It’s the first time he’s let me touch his face while he’s crying.

  Immediately I start weeping too. It’s such a change—that I may touch him when he’s sad. I press myself against him, and he lets me do that too.

  “Frederik, I know that you think everything’s awful.”

  “It is awful!”

  “But you’re making progress.”

  “No, no, no!”

  “You are. You’re beginning to get better.”

  “No, it’s just too too awful!”

  “Yes, you shouldn’t say things like that to Niklas’s friends, but now you know that. Now you know when you’re doing something wrong.”

  “No I don’t!”

  “Yes you do. And I’m also allowed to hold you and touch you. That makes me very happy.”

  “You are allowed to! I’m so wretched!”

  “Yes, you’re wretched. But it’s good that you know you’re sick. That’s a very good thing. And it’s good you get unhappy when you’ve done something wrong. That’s very good too.”

  “No, no, no!”

  Fifteen minutes later, his sobbing suddenly ceases. We sit down on the sofa, and from other times I know just what he needs. I go out into the kitchen and spread jam on four pieces of bread, which he then bolts one after the other.

  To think that I struck him, just a short while ago. I don’t understand. I’m an awful person. I’ve just struck my sick husband. Battered him. With a small stainless-steel bowl. And I don’t have any brain damage to blame.

  The telephone rings. Then the ce
ll rings, and then I hear a text come in, and then the phones ring again. I don’t answer them. I know what they’ve all heard. The news. Something on TV about the charges. I turn off the phones.

  Later, another kind of peace falls over him.

  “So maybe I’m sicker than we thought?” he says.

  “Yes, maybe you are.”

  “But I was really looking forward to going back and working at the school. Do you think I’ll have to wait a couple more weeks?”

  “Yeah, I think that’d be a good idea. You should wait a little while.”

  We rest our heads against each other, and I drape an arm over his shoulder. That’s how we sat in the old days. That’s how we sat during our three good years together.

  Mia Halling

  From: Else Vangkær, Farum Church

  To: Mia Halling

  Date: Tue, March 1st, 2011, 8:52 pm

  Subject: Re: Does the soul reside in the brain?

  Dear Mia,

  Everyone is welcome in church! That applies equally to people who usually only come for “weddings, confirmations, and funerals,” as you wrote.

  I understand how difficult it must be for you to write that you feel as if your beloved husband is already dead—that his soul is dead. You have promised to stay with him “till death do you part.” But what if his real self is already dead, and only his body remains behind?

  Your question has a philosophical history that goes back several thousand years, and there are different views on the soul’s relationship to the body in the New and the Old Testaments. There are also differences between Catholic and Protestant beliefs.

  It is hard to discuss such serious matters via e-mail, so I sincerely hope you will come by for a chat sometime during the week. I can see that you wrote to me at 2 in the morning. If you are too busy to meet during the day, I’m sure we can arrange another time.

  It is clear that, during a time like this, you must be feeling profound grief and great loss, and perhaps that is something you would like to talk about as well.

  You’re also very welcome to call me at 70 27 25 95.

  Best regards,

  Else

  Else Vangkær

  Pastor

  Farum Church