Translated from the French by Maxim Jakubowski
Anna gazed in fascination at the hand flattened against the door. It was stretched wide open like a sun, a wedding ring strangling the ring finger, a pink scar running from the thumb to the forefinger.
Anna turned her head and swallowed, as she looked into the windowless room. A man, sitting behind a table, offered her a dry, tired, reluctant smile. Collapsed into the chair, he looked as if he was about to fall asleep.
The assistant moved her weight from one foot to another and sighed heavily. Anna brushed against her sweat-drenched uniform, its buttons straining against her prominent chest. “Look, darling, are you going to step on it? I’m not holding this door open forever for you, you know!” That’s what she wanted to say to her, the woman with the scar and the malevolent expression.
The man’s voice was as weary as his smile. Lingering, like a slimy kiss on the cheek, or the lips.
Anna acknowledged him, pulling at her jacket.
He pointed to a chair facing his. Inviting her to come forward, to sit in front of him. To begin the conversation. Or, rather, his confession. It was a matter of just a few metres before deliverance. To cross the metaphorical threshold. Then it would become easy.
As it closed on itself, the door blew a gust of air in the direction of Anna’s back.
A gust of air… fresh… breathing… breath… last breath…
That’s the way she functioned: by word association. A mental game that allowed her to map out a person’s mind in just a few seconds. What would the fat scarred woman have said if they had begun to discuss her damaged hand? The scar? The sense of touch? Scratching? Soothing?
Anna wetted her dry, raspy, cracked lips.
“Should I ask them to bring you a glass of water?”
“No. No. Thank you, Inspector.”
The man ran the tip of his fingers across his clean-shaven chin without looking away from her.
Anna tried not to grimace. The contact of the nails against the hard bristle: a deafening, indecent sound.
“Could we go over what you have told my colleague again, please?”
“From the beginning?” she enquired, crossing her legs under the chair.
“From the beginning, yes.”
Anna thought of the first thing that had crossed her mind: how were they going to transport her? Her wet hair plastered against her skull, like a swimmer emerging from the water, her skin streaked with red, her arms hanging loose, the ambulance staff’s shoe soles splashing through the pool of water surrounding the bathtub. Would they lay her out on the stretcher before covering her with a sheet? No, the material would absorb all the blood and stick to the body. Would they zip her into a body bag? One of those wide black bags you saw in crime movies, which looked just the right size to carry ski equipment. They would zip it closed over her bloodless face, catching a few stray hairs between the zip, a blond and greasy clump like an unwelcome spike of corn against a lacquered head.
Lacquered… organised… clean… polished… waxy…
The inspector drew back into his seat, prompting Anna to sigh heavily and begin.
“I… She had been unstable of late. Although she hadn’t shown any previous signs of it, before.”
She loudly gritted her teeth together.
“Before what, Anna?”
He’d asked her to start again from the beginning. But the beginning had actually been set in motion a long time prior to the initial signs of uneasiness.
“Maybe I should go back further in time, before she became ill. Otherwise I won’t be able to explain things properly. All I would be doing is stating the facts. And everyone will believe she is guilty, responsible for her actions, when of course she clearly wasn’t. Do you understand, Inspector?”
He nodded in acquiescence, edging his glasses up across the bridge of his nose with a single digit. His forefinger brushed across the lens, leaving a greasy print.
“She was an accountant and worked from home. She seldom saw her clients in person. She wasn’t very sociable. Something of a loner. Like Tomas, her partner. Both were true homebodies.”
Anna’s lips sketched a smile.
“How did she meet him?”
“In high school. I would like some water, actually.”
The inspector raised his arm, like a customer hailing a waiter. Anna started and brought her hands to her face. The wide one-way glass wall reflected a terrible image: her hollowed cheeks like craters, her fringe swept to the side unveiling her lined forehead, her eyes puffy from lack of sleep. Guilt was eating her from the inside. Sorrow too.
Anna adjusted the collar of her Liberty blouse and took a first sip to wet her lips. The taste of blood flooded through her mouth.
“You were telling me about her partner.”
“Yes, sorry, Inspector.”
She shook her head to banish the memories of the bathtub. The water red and thick as gravy.
“I… They’d been living together for eight years. He’s an estate agent.”
Anna pulled off the elastic band holding her hair back. With the tip of her fingers, she ordered the strands layered across her scalp and formed them into a ponytail.
“He… He didn’t see anything. He didn’t understand that her weariness connected with something deeper.”
Anna swept her hand across the top of the table.
“But it’s not his fault, he’s not a bad guy. Men just don’t have the emotional talent necessary to read a woman’s signs of distress. Or anyone else’s, for that matter.”
“Did it begin with him?”
“No. Why… Oh, sorry, Inspector.”
She smiled sadly at the table.
“They say that trauma and fears have their origin in childhood, don’t they? This must certainly be the case, in his case as well as hers, I mean.”
Childhood… roots… parents… transmission… unrooted…
“Are you thinking of anything in particular?”
Anna swallowed. A stabbing pain radiated from her throat all the way to her ears. She looked up at her interlocutor; he appeared to be more alert. He must have reached the limits of his weariness and was now functioning on his energy reserves. But it worked for him, he now appeared attentive and keen. On the other hand, though, under the fearful yellow light bathing the room, the stain on his lens shadowed his right eye.
Her eyes moved to the one-way mirror. Dear God, she looked a mess, as if she had just stepped out of bed. She longed to be herself again! She suddenly noticed a sort of lump deforming her front: a fold under her jacket. She’d buttoned Monday against Wednesday, as her mother would have put it.
As Mummy would have put it.
“I was thinking of my mother, Inspector. What happened to his mother?”
He remained silent, his head slightly to one side, his forearms supported by the elbow rests of his chair, as if body and face belonged to two separate entities altogether.
“His mother grew up with a handicapped sister. Mentally retarded. Truly feeble-minded. The sort of person that if you asked her to call the lift, would shout out ‘Lift!’, if you see what I mean.”
Anna interrupted herself. The man had now adjusted his sitting stance and was rubbing his fingers into his forehead.
“I’m not taking the piss, Inspector, not at all. What I told you did actually happen: she genuinely cried out ‘lift’ when she was… Anyway, his mother had to endure this painful situation and did so with much difficulty. Her parents would not allow her to do anything her sister couldn’t, which didn’t leave her with much to act on; no afternoons with girlfriends, no going out or innocent relationships with boys. She lived as a recluse until her sister drowned at the age of seventeen. You don’t get over such a trauma overnight, Inspector, and it took her years before she could feel comfortable in society. It’s a bit like her sister had retained a hold over her life, even following her death. Tragic, don’t you think?”
“It certainly is, Anna.”
He, in turn, took a sip of water.
“You can imagine the consequences. Being socially handicapped, but unable to leave the home where she had been held back, she married the first man to come along. And quickly became pregnant.”
Anna suddenly closed her eyes. A migraine had dug its claws into her temples and the brutal pain held her cranium in a vice.
“You never tried to see if she was alive? To take her pulse? Touch her? Hold her hand?”
Anna straightened in her chair. He was judging her. He’d come forward, leaning across the table, his hands held flat down on its surface, gazing at her, his eyes aligned with her forehead. Weighing her inertia.
“No, I didn’t try to. No. I stayed by the side of the bathtub, waiting. For help. Even though I knew she was dead.”
“What made you think she was?”
This time, he was looking straight into her eyes. He wasn’t judging her, he appeared to be accusing her. She jumped out of her chair, the noise of its scratching against the floor drowning his words.
“Anna, please sit down again.”
“I don’t appreciate your tone of voice, Inspector! I could have remained at home, but here I am! I’m trying to salvage her reputation! Her conscience! And here you are accusing me! You’re saying I should have… Tried… Attempted what, in truth? I called for help, the emergency services, didn’t I? I was at her place even though I shouldn’t have been! The authorities took a long time to get there, it’s not my fault if…”
“Anna, I’m not accusing you of anything. Absolutely not. And I’m grateful you came here tonight. Please, would you sit down again.”
Anna stood behind the chair, gripping its back, her eyes fixed on her own hands.
“I just stood there, Inspector. Watching her body in the water. Listening to the silence. That silence was truly terrifying. As if I were the one inside the bathtub. Right then, all I could think of was of that mother who had spoken so eloquently on the radio about the death of her son. She’d stated that the silence was the worst part of it. No more small footsteps rushing down the stairs, no more crystal laughter, or sounds mimicking fire engine horns or the triumphant victory roar of pirates, no more loud TV or tears, toys colliding or plates shattering down on the floor, or bath water splashing. No more sounds of life.”
She stepped around the chair and sat down again.
“They laid her out on the stretcher. Here and there, her skin was covered by a brown film, not unlike the deposit at the bottom of a bottle of wine. When they folded her arms across her body, one of her hands fell onto her thigh, as if attempting to conceal her nakedness. Could I have some water?”
He raised his hand.
“What did you do next?”
“What I did? What do you mean?”
“You went to the police? You went home?”
“I went back home.”
This time around, it was a young man who brought in the water. No longer two plastic glasses, but two small bottles. Anna unscrewed one of them and began sipping from the top of the bottle.
“Maybe I should continue with his mother’s story, no?” she suggested, setting the bottle down.
“If you wish to do so, Anna.”
“You’re not interested in the story?”
“Of course, it helps me understand what happened. But I also realise you must be tired and might prefer continuing later.”
She opened her mouth and promptly closed it again.
“Yes, Anna?”
She peered at him with a look of discomfort.
“Maybe you’re the one who is tired?”
He smiled back at her. Wrinkles stood out in the corners of his eyes. He took his spectacles off, picked a handkerchief from his pocket and negligently cleaned his lenses.
“It’s true, I am tired. Night work doesn’t agree with me. I’ve never been able to get used to it, I must confess. But I’m here until seven tomorrow morning and I’m happy to listen to the story of Marta’s mother. Her name was Linn, wasn’t it?”
Anna nodded, agreeing.
“Do you want something to nibble on before you begin? I’m sorry, but I haven’t had anything to eat and I’m starving.”
“No, thank you, Inspector.”
“Do you mind awfully if I do eat something?”
“Not at all, please do.”
He never even had to raise his arm. The young man almost immediately walked into the room, with a couple of slices of polar bread with cheese and a cup of coffee on a tray.
“You’re sure you don’t want anything, Anna?”
“No, thank you.”
“Not even a coffee?”
“No, I’m fine, thanks.”
He quickly ate the first slice of bread and tentatively sipped his coffee.
“Can I begin, Inspector?”
“Yes, please go ahead, Anna. You were telling me that Linn married the first man to come around and quickly became pregnant.”
Anna’s lips broadened into a grateful smile.
“Indeed.”
“What happened afterwards?” he asked, biting into the second slice of bread and cheese.
“The pregnancy was dreadful. Like a descent into hell. Linn was certain she was about to give birth to a handicapped child, just like her sister. She was convinced that the nightmare she had endured all the way through to adulthood was about to repeat itself. That yet again, she would become alienated. That someone was about to destroy her life, as her sister had. She even… She even thought of interrupting her pregnancy. Aborting.”
“But she didn’t?”
“No. She couldn’t summon the inner strength… To rid herself of it.”
“Was it a boy or a girl?”
“I was just referring to the baby. ‘It’ for the baby.”
“Was the baby born handicapped?”
“Not at all, no. It was in perfect health.”
“And this child was Marta?”
“Yes, Inspector, it was Marta.”
He sat back in the chair, which leaned backwards, and he balanced the coffee cup over his knee.
“Anna, who told you about Linn’s life? Was it Linn herself? Marta? Or maybe Tomas?”
“Linn.”
Anna’s gaze moved from his hands to the one-way mirror.
“Were we close? I’d say so, yes, for her to be able to tell me something of such an intimate and disturbing nature. We must certainly have been. To be capable of confessing to someone you were planning to get rid of an unborn baby, it requires a measure of trust, I reckon.”
“How did Marta’s childhood unfold?”
Anna shook her head.
“It’s difficult to say. I’m not sure I’m in a position to properly answer your question. All I know is that Linn lived in constant terror that anything could happen to her child. She was a very protective mother, suffocating even. What’s ironic about it is that she was repeating with her children the exact same process her own parents made her go through: the feeling of being locked up, the depersonalisation, that sensation of giving up on life. Somewhere inside her, she was conjuring all those factors, for different reasons altogether, but recreating them nonetheless.”
“What sort of impact did this have on Marta?”
“She inherited all those seeds sown by her grandmother. She kept on deliberately destabilising herself.”
“But you were telling me earlier that her instability was a more recent factor and that she had previously displayed no signs of it?”
“That’s correct. What was subconsciously happening inside her was not visible to her or anyone in her close circle of acquaintances. Tomas didn’t see it coming. Nor Linn.”
“What about you, Anna?”
She swept the flat of her hand across the tabletop, as if wiping off dust.
“Neither did I. I too didn’t catch the signs that might have set off an alarm. You know, it’s a bit like when you have debilitating migraines and the doctor tells you that your headaches are due to stress; he advises you to take up sport, or meditation, and six months later they discover you have a brain tumour the size of a peach. Initially, I thought her tired, then later tense and worried. It’s when she began to show signs of depression that I realised something was radically wrong. Something was off. But it was already too late.”
“Why?”
Anna moved her head from side to side to blow aside the strands obscuring her eyes.
“Because she was already pregnant. Four months in.”
She pulled on the flap of her jacket, which was bunching up around her waist.
“She hadn’t realised she was. Her periods had always been irregular and no specific symptoms had manifested themselves.”
“You said it was too late? I don’t understand why you say that.”
Anna appeared surprised.
“Because it’s too late to have an abortion when you’re four months down the line.”
“So it was her state of pregnancy that was causing her general distress?”
“Yes, her pregnancy reopened all the family scars inhabiting her. She had no wish to be colonised by something that was going to consume her from the inside. She came to that understanding when she learned she was pregnant; she had never thought that carrying a child would generate such feelings, or she would have avoided falling pregnant.”
“How did she convey this to you?”
“I’m the one who brought it up. I had…”
Anna bit her upper lip.
“It was the way she was assuming her pregnancy. She felt she was harbouring a parasite eating her out from the inside, like a tumour.”
“Did she use those specific words? Parasite, tumour?”
Anna nodded in agreement, her eyes fixed on her hands that lay across her thighs.
“She felt a foreign body had taken control of hers. She felt deformed. She even confessed to me that she had looked up how to generate an abortion on the Internet.”
“What was your answer to her?”
“I wanted to warn Linn and Tomas, but she begged me to keep silent, that it would alarm them unnecessarily. She assured me that her dark thoughts were merely due to hormonal imbalance, and that given time matters would revert to normal.”
“What did you do?”
“What I shouldn’t have done: believe her. One week later, she cut her stomach open in her bathroom.”
The memory of Marta spread out in the slimy bath water returned, clear as daylight: every single detail in terrible focus. Until now, her brain had occluded the more painful details, polished the uglier ones away, those that gnawed at her soul.
Anna’s eyes were full of horror.
“Anna, are you OK? What’s the matter?”
She opened her mouth wide, searching for words appropriate to describe what she had seen, but it all died in her throat.
“Anna?”
She closed her eyes, tightening her eyelids, then opened them again. She seized the water bottle and drank it dry. She only stopped when the plastic neck crinkled between her lips under the pressure of her suction.
“Anna?”
“I’m fine… I’m fine…” she reassured him breathlessly, setting the bottle down. “I’m sorry, Inspector.”
“What happened?”
“I think I… I’d hidden away some of the memories of the day I discovered Marta. There were three razor blades on the floor by the bathtub. In a pool of blood…”
She swept the tears from her cheek.
“I thought I… I could picture the scene again and I was almost certain the bath water was almost opaque and that I couldn’t see Marta’s body inside it. But… That wasn’t the case, Inspector.”
A sob took shape in her throat. She swallowed hard to chase it away.
“It’s not the case! The bath water was not cloudy at all: I could see Marta’s body, Inspector! Her mutilated stomach! She’d slashed away, all the way to her sex! Her round stomach… Her round stomach…”
She leaned her elbows on the table and vigorously massaged her temples.
“How could I have forgotten that, Inspector?”
She looked up at him, imploringly.
“It’s a frequent mechanism of self-protection, Anna: your brain blanked it out, as you were unable to cope with the emotional violence of the situation. It was protecting you, filing those terrible images out of sight, until you’d reached the stage when you could finally live with their brutality and face the trauma. It’s not your fault, Anna.”
“It’s not my fault…”
“No, it’s not your fault. Anyone would have reacted the same as you did.”
“Anyone, I know. But the two of us were so close.”
In turn he settled his elbows on the table.
“Anna, could you tell me a little about your relationship with Marta?”
Anna immediately frowned.
“My relationship with Marta?”
“Yes, your relationship. You said you were very close.”
“We were.”
“How long had you known each other?”
Anna had a tired smile.
“Forever. That’s the way it felt to us, at any rate.”
“You didn’t have a specific reason to visit Marta that morning, did you? She wasn’t expecting you, but nonetheless you woke up with an urgent compulsion to go and see her.”
“Indeed.”
“How can you explain that?”
“The bond between us was very powerful.”
“So it seems. You told me earlier that you woke up with such a strong inner feeling circling your thoughts. An uncontrollable impulse, a sense of urgency, so acute that—I quote you—you felt you had ‘written it down in capital letters in a notebook’. You desperately had to see her. How can you explain that feeling to me, Anna? That imperious need to go visit Marta?”
Anna shook her head from side to side, her lips puckering.
“I don’t know.”
“Anna, earlier you were telling me about Linn and the problems she had experienced about her pregnancy and her impending motherhood.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I’m wrong, but I get the feeling you were resentful of her, as if you thought that she wasn’t supporting her daughter as a mother properly should.”
Linn’s features stood invisibly between them, her wrinkled cheeks, the permanent state of anxiety that lent a form of sadness to her eyes, the way she had of clenching her lips to express her disagreement, putting forward her own version of events, always bathed in pessimism; her hand holding on to Marta’s shoulder in an attempt to comfort her but only serving to reinforce her disapproval, tormenting her even further.
“You’re not wrong, Inspector.”
Anna looked him straight in the eyes.
His head shifted to the side, as if in readiness to acknowledge what she was about to say, or maybe avoid it.
“She’s the one who dug her grandson’s grave.”
His right arm stretched towards the tabletop, palm set upwards, like an invitation. Like a supplicant’s hand, Anna thought. She imagined it full of water, like a cup, her lips resting across the callous flesh, slowly sucking up the liquid. The freshness of the water reviving her face all the way from her throat to her ears and causing her to smile.
She set her own hand down in the hollow of his. He closed his fingers, catching her in his grip. This was no sexual moistness, no lubricious caress. Just a reassuring form of contact, as if this hand embodied the essence of succour of a parent.
“Anna, earlier you referred to Linn’s children; you said ‘her children’.”
“Yes.”
“Her children. Plural.”
A tremor ran across Anna’s face.
“I know, yes, I know. It’s just that it’s so difficult to talk of the others.”
“The others.”
“The others, yes. I was one of them, I know.”
“Yes, Anna. Linn is your mother, you too.”
“Yes.”
Linn had cast a seed of doubt above Marta’s shoulders, as she had done to herself; she had maintained that heavy brass blanket above their heads until both had been crushed by it. Anna had attempted to set aside her mother’s toxicity. That acid bath which gnawed away at all feelings and joy. She pretended to be a mother, but she clearly wasn’t. Giving birth doesn’t necessarily make you a mother. And neither does motherhood come into life with the child: it grows alongside it. It’s a learning curve; the art of abnegation, or rather the capacity to be able to conquer your fears, your anxieties and your doubts so they are not passed on to the child; the talent to protect them without suffocating them, to love with no holding back.
“And Marta?”
“Marta is my sister. My twin sister.”
“Yes, she is, Anna. Marta is your sister.”
“Marta is my other half.”
They had just celebrated Linn’s birthday. That particular year, Anna and her sister had prepared things in a rush; between the end of year exams and organising the celebrations for the Studenten, they just about had time enough to devote to their mother. Throughout the meal, Linn’s face had been drawn, tentatively blowing on the candles with pursed lips, barely eating any of the cake. She’d begun to open her first present when she interrupted herself. She’d crossed her arms with slow deliberation, gazing firmly at each of her daughters in turn, and then had told them the story of her own hellish pregnancy. How distressed she had been to become a mother. Her wish to have an abortion, to rid herself of the twins. And then she continued to unwrap her presents. Mother Linn. Linn.
“Marta is my sister, yes.”
“That’s why the pain she endured became yours.”
Anna lowered her head towards the desk, pressing her cheek against the lukewarm surface.
“What about the baby, Anna? Could we talk about the baby?”
“Marta’s baby. He was inside her tummy when she lacerated herself with the razor blades. Three blades.”
“Did the child have a name?”
Anna freed her hand and straightened up.
“Could one even call it a ‘child’ at that stage?”
“Some babies are born at only seven months, Anna.”
“No, he had no name.”
No name. No room. This ‘child’ who only existed so far when it moved inside its mother’s womb. Marta was submerged in her anxieties. Tomas was insistent they prepare for the baby’s coming. As for Anna, she was trying to lighten her sister’s mood, bringing her home decoration magazines and humorous books on the subject of pregnancy, but Marta kept on saying they still had enough time, that it was tempting fate to organise everything in advance. If anything did go wrong, the ensuing fall would just prove more painful. So Tomas and her had retreated back. After all, she was the one who was carrying this ‘child’.
“So, what was inscribed on the gravestone then, Anna?”
Her mouth went dry.
“I don’t know. It’s Tomas who dealt with it.”
Tomas had selected the tiny coffin, the gravestone, the lines from the Bible the pastor had read out. She’d never thought to ask what he had had carved into the stone. She had not found herself capable of taking her eyes away from the coffin, thinking how the baby had just been moved from one form of container to another, from the womb to this box. From one dark coffin to another.
“What would you have called it, Anna?”
“Marta and I had prepared a list of names. Or rather I’d made a list for her.”
“What was your favourite? And hers?”
“Oscar. We both liked Oscar.”
“Do you think that’s what Tomas had carved on the gravestone? Oscar Hellenström?”
“Oscar Ljung.”
“Ljung?”
“That was Tomas’s family name.”
Her head slumped over her shoulders.
“Anna?”
“I was thinking of the burial. The baby’s burial, Inspector.”
He leaned towards her, his hand reaching the tabletop.
“Do you want to talk to me about it, Anna?” he asked her, looking straight into her eyes, trying to connect.
She could recall the smell of the damp earth that lingered in the air, similar to the smell emanating from fallen tree branches and bark debris after a storm; the heavy barrier of clouds suspended above their heads; the smoothness of silk on skin; the hands intermittently gripping her naked shoulders; the pain chewing through her stomach; the unpleasant tone of the pastor’s voice; her mother’s smothered sobbing.
“All four of us were there.”
“All four?”
“Yes, that’s what I just said, Inspector, all four. Tomas, Linn, Marta and me.”
“Marta too?”
“Yes, Ma—”
Anna jumped up, throwing the chair back. With a trembling hand, she pulled her skirt up all the way to her navel. Scars streaked across her stomach down to her pubis. Pink and blistered, they covered the whole surface of her abdomen. Even her navel seemed stretched into an abominable smile.
She emitted an animal shriek. It died inside her throat and tears took over. Shaking her like an earthquake, turning her into a bush caught in a violent storm. She swung from front to back, her dishevelled skirt still gripped by her hand.
“It will be OK, Anna. It will be OK.”
He stood right by her. She hadn’t noticed he had moved alongside her. She buried her face in his chest and kept on crying. One of his hands settled on her shoulder blade while the other stroked the top of her head. He waited for the flow of tears to come to an end and her breath to settle down before assisting her back onto the chair.
She sat, wiped away the tears and snot running across her face, and looked over to him, lost.
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand. Is it me, Inspector?”
He moved his chair to face her again and sat himself down.
“Your name is Anna Hellenström. You’re thirty-two. You’re an accountant. You live with Tomas Ljung. You’ve known him for a long time, since…”
“Since high school,” she continued, her voice like a rasp.
He looked at her sympathetically.
“Exactly, Anna. Do you remember your address?”
“Bokvägen 37, in Kållered.”
“Perfect.”
“My mother’s name is Linn Hellenström. My sister is Marta Hellenström. She is my twin sister. They also live in Kållered.”
“That’s it,” he answered, smiling. “That’s very good, Anna.”
Anna’s eyes moved swiftly from left to right as if she was following a tennis match.
“Shall we have a rest?”
“No, no, I want to continue. I’m fine. I can see it all now. I wish to continue.”
She sighed heavily and then spoke again.
“That morning, I woke up after Tomas had left for work. I had my only coffee for the day while listening to the news on the radio. I remember hearing a mother speaking about the death of her two-year-old son. The terrible emptiness it left behind. I envied her that sense of emptiness. The baby wasn’t born but was already taking over so much space in my life. Too much space. When I rose to clean up the kitchen table, the baby moved. He was wedged against one of my ribs and my breath was briefly obstructed. It felt like having a snake in my stomach. A snake who was kicking against me in an attempt to burst out. And, as if he could read my thoughts, he began moving even faster. Trying to make me understand my own body no longer belonged fully to me: he inhabited it and was in charge. I was no longer the captain of my own ship. He would decide what I was allowed to eat, how long I would sleep, how much strength I was allowed and how heavy my breasts would feel. He stretched the skin of my stomach like a drum and turned all attempts to make love into a laborious and insipid parody. He was preventing me from being a woman and turning me into a mother.”
Pregnancy… baby… fish… toxic…
Anna’s lips twisted in a show of disdain.
“I decided I should take a warm bath to sooth the pain and calm down. I had no alternative but to accept the child’s reality; I had become aware of it too late to arrange a termination. I had to live with it. With him. Or her. I walked over to the bathroom next to the spare room as our bedroom only had a shower stall. I was wearing my nightshirt with the thin straps; it was white with pink dots, and four buttons down my chest and a silk bow. One of those awful garments I’d had to purchase to accommodate my growing stomach and my misshapen breasts.”
She looked up to the ceiling as if profoundly exasperated by this forced dereliction of her fashion sense.
“I ran the bath. Or, more precisely, I ran our bath. When I lay down in the bathtub, I reflected on how much the baby was already interfering with my lifestyle, my tastes, my desires. I hate taking baths. Which is why there was no bathtub in our own bathroom. It’s a waste of time. It’s only Tomas who uses the bathtub when he has to shave his chest or pubes, because it annoys me intensely to find hair in the shower stall. So, anyway, I settled inside the damn bathtub. With my enormous breasts and stomach emerging provocatively from the water. It began to move inside me, forcing an elbow or a knee from inside against the skin just above my navel, creating yet another deformity. It had to stop. That’s what I told myself as I gazed at my absurdly shaped belly. I no longer wanted a parasite to harbour inside me. I could no longer stand this tumour eating me out from the inside. After all, it was my body. My body.”
With one hand she straightened the folds of her skirt.
“I took hold of the glass where Tomas kept his razor and blades. There were three blades left. I placed them on the edge of the bathtub. I unwrapped them, then began to cut into the taut flesh of my stomach, as it signified to it that it still belonged to me alone. I continued until I fainted, I suppose, because when I woke up I was already at the hospital and Marta was by my bedside. She explained how she had found me. She wanted to know if I had been assaulted, but I could see in her eyes she had no belief in that having happened. She knew I had slashed my own stomach. That I was the one who had killed my baby. Because I knew it was dead. Everything was returning to normal inside me. I could feel it. The parasite had finally been chased away.”
“How do you feel now?” the man asked, following a moment’s silence.
She looked back at him with serenity.
“Much better, Inspector. My mind is clear. I’m relaxed.”
“Good, very good, Anna.”
“I don’t know why I repressed it all. Why it all became jumbled up. Why I thought Marta was dead. My wonderful Marta. I am so sorry.”
There was tenderness in her thin smile.
“Did you know that after we were born, we were quite unable to sleep separately? The only thing that could soothe us was being physically close to each other: my head cushioned against her neck or my arms threaded through hers.”
“You talk of Marta: do you miss her?”
“A lot.”
Anna frowned. Her forehead wrinkled.
“Yes, Anna?”
Her head moved to one side, she rose and slowly stepped towards the mirror. She watched her own reflection and then, suddenly, her heart filled with joy. She could recognise those hollow cheeks, the fringe of hair swept to the side to reveal the ever-wrinkled forehead, the eyes puffy and tired. She recognised the tender, anxious, full-of-loving smile. The maternal smile. She flattened her hands against the glass, on either side of her face.
“Marta,” she whispered.
“Yes, Anna, it’s Marta, on the other side of that pane of glass.”
Tears began running down her tired cheeks.
“I thought it was me. I thought I could see my reflection in the mirror.”
“Do you want to see her, Anna? Do you want to see your sister?”
Anna impatiently nodded, her eyes full of innocent and joyful expectancy.
He made a sign to Marta, who pointed with one finger at the room where Anna stood. Anna ran to the door, opened it and fell into her sister’s arms. She buried her nose in Marta’s neck, pleasurably closing her eyes as fingers combed through her hair.
“Hej min älskling. My little darling. My Annita,” Marta whispered, punctuating each word in turn with a kiss.
She placed her hands across Anna’s cheeks, their noses almost touching.
“I missed you, little darling. God, how I missed you.”
“I’m sorry, Marta, so sorry. I just don’t know why I thought you were dead. I don’t know. Sorry,” Anna muttered, her voice unsteady.
“By endangering your life, you buried, altogether forgot a part of you, and that part was me. You just needed the time to find your way back to yourself, min älskling. And, look, now you’ve managed it.”
“You’re not angry at me because of Oscar?”
With the back of her hand, Marta swept her tears away.
“No, of course not.”
“I’m so sorry, Marta. I couldn’t… carry him inside me…”
“Don’t worry. How do you feel?”
“It’s strange. I’m not sure. I just don’t understand how I could forget, mix things up, be so wrong. What about Tomas?”
Marta’s eyes peered deep into her sister’s.
“He’s left, hasn’t he?”
Her delicate fingers drew a line from Anna’s forehead to her cheek.
“Yes, he’s left, älskling.”
Anna briefly closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were shining with childish exuberance.
“Do you want us to go and have something to eat?”
“I’d love to, but it’s too late, darling. I’ll return and come see you tomorrow, before I go to work, OK? You should get some sleep too, no?”
“OK. I can’t wait for tomorrow. Will you walk me to the door?”
The man approached the two women.
“I have to speak to your sister, Anna. I’ll have someone walk you back, is that OK?”
“Yes, thank you, Inspector.”
The young man who had earlier brought in the bottles of water was standing by the door.
“Would you accompany Anna home, please, Peter?”
“Of course, would you like to come with me, Anna?”
Anna nodded, cuddled her sister and disappeared down the corridor.
Marta collapsed onto the chair.
“Is it OK? She’s not about to start screaming and assaulting the nurse when she realises she’s being taken to her room and not her ‘home’?”
“Her room is her home for now and Peter will explain things to her. It will be fine, Marta, don’t worry.”
“The scar she left on that poor other nurse’s hand doesn’t help reassure me.”
“Anna is now well past the violent phase. There have been no incidents of that kind for over two months now.”
“Anyway, she appears to have taken great steps forward from what I’ve witnessed this evening, don’t you think, doctor? Or am I celebrating too early?”
“Yes, it’s a good sign, truly. Much will depend on how tomorrow’s session unfolds. It’s quite possible she will act out again the police station scenario as she did tonight, or call herself Marta, like in the early weeks of her confinement. But tonight, she has made a journey back from her fantasies towards reality. It’s great progress, even if she still lacks any form of empathy for her son.”
Her son…
Anna, if only you could see the delightful mischief in his eyes when he readies to spit out his evening food; his tiny shoulders shaking like a grown-up’s when he bursts out with laughter; how his thumb slips past his lips when he sleeps and bunches his fist. If only you could experience his wet kisses on your hollow cheeks, Anna, the silkiness of his blond strands of hair, his innocent smell, of spring, of eternity. If only you could, my Anna, that child would mend you forever…
Our little Oscar, already sixteen months old, she pondered as she closed the door of the psychiatric hospital behind her.
Your son. Our son.
MY son.