ANNA, 1994
Ring . . . ring.
Anna looked up at the clock even though it wasn’t necessary. It was seven o’clock, just like yesterday, and the day before. Whoever was calling her, was as regular as clockwork.
Anna dried her hands in her apron and slowly approached the phone. Ella was up in her room and Helgi wasn’t home yet. She lifted the receiver and listened to the faint rush on the other end of the line.
“Anna?”
The voice was soft, her name sounded more like a sigh than a word, but she gripped the receiver firmly. Today she would say something.
“Leave us alone,” she said. “I don’t have anything to do with you—any of you—anymore.”
There was nothing but silence on the line, silence and a rapid intake of breath that sounded like suppressed laughter. Anna tried to imagine Birgit as she had been when she was twenty years old and Anna’s world, as she knew it, came apart at the seams. Her sister, perfect as always, sitting at the dinner table with her fiancé, Torben. They were holding hands—above the table, of course, never below. Every now and again Torben caressed Birgit’s hand. They were talking about the house they wanted to buy just outside Thisted. Talk of that house was endless; the floors were to be sanded and oiled-treated, the attic renovated for later, when the children were born. Their enthusiasm and faith in the future was impressive, especially considering the immanent destruction of the world, and the fifteen-year-old Anna sat writhing uncomfortably in her seat. Wanted to protest and deny their obvious deceit. Neither of them actually believed what was said in church. Not really. For if they did, they wouldn’t be talking about houses and children and holidays in Austria—not to mention the color of their couch; if the world was really on the brink of destruction, they wouldn’t care what color that couch should be. They would just take a seat, wait for the horror, and go mad in the process.
But Anna didn’t say anything. Just sat there, dead still, picking at her potato salad while Birgit’s eyes weighed heavily upon her. It was a cold, contemptuous, and triumphant gaze. Birgit had known all along that she would get everything right and that Anna would get everything wrong. And Anna could feel an all too familiar chill through the receiver.
It was summertime, but at any moment the meteor could hit the earth and suck all oxygen from the universe; in a moment, everything and everyone could be gone. Anna clenched her fists, tried to block the surge of childhood fears. She didn’t believe any of it. Not anymore.
“Just die.”
The person on the other end of the line sounded angry and impatient, she thought. The voice was slurred, reaching out to her through a layer of thick, glittering silk. Then the line went dead.
She stretched her limbs, kneaded her muscles in an attempt to expel the unease from her body, but the barb had stuck, propelling her into motion. She went up the stairs to the first floor, where she could hear Ella listening to music in her room at the end of the corridor. The Animals of Hillbilly Wood, “The Mouse That Sang for Mikkel the Fox,”, and Ella was humming the tune. Anna knew Ella would be lying on the floor, drawing, her pencils spread out in a fan about her. Right now, she was caught up in her princesses and horses. It helped to think of Ella’s drawings; something so completely ordinary, something to remind her that she didn’t have to feel so alone.
Up here she wouldn’t hear the phone if it rang again.
Anna turned into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Helgi’s overalls were dumped on the floor. They smelled of wind and sawdust and metal, only faintly of Helgi himself. A comforting smell, which never changed.
She emptied his trouser pockets.
The usual tidbits. A couple of receipts from a diner in Thisted, a few loose twenty-kroner coins, his favorite pencil-stub. But in one of his back pockets she found a brochure for an art exhibition in Thisted. The Light of Skagen. The brochure was doubled over twice in the middle, its glazed paper surface worn so thin that she had difficulty unfolding and reading it at all. The exhibition had been running since the middle of May; there had been a single painting by Hammershøi, one by Anna Ancher, and a selection of correspondence between the artists from the Skagen Period.
Helgi slammed the front door behind him in the entrance and Anna hurriedly refolded the brochure in a wash of scattered panic, suddenly feeling as if she’d been snooping around in his things.
“Anna!”
He called up the staircase, and as she opened the door she smelled the pall of charred sauce downstairs. Helgi was banging with the pots on the stove, whistling under his breath.
He was happy when she wasn’t nearby, she couldn’t help but notice. Much happier than he had been in years. He played with Ella more wildly than ever, threw her up in the air, swung her round till they were both dizzy and his legs got all wobbly. He was also better looking physically. He’d lost some weight and bought new shirts, jeans in a stylish cut, and a pile of boxer shorts.
Around her, he was silent and morose, and he hadn’t touched her in months. Not even to put his arms around her in bed, half asleep—this much he had always done.
He was going to leave her. He had already left her. The certainty punched her like a blow to the stomach. She had been a fool for too long.
At night she dreamt she was standing in an annihilated village by the sea. There were other people milling around her, a small group that had survived by fishing and collecting saplings they had found in the slowly rotting fields.
But something evil was near.
This they could tell from the dead animals being washed onto shore; enormous sperm whales and turtles shrunken into their shells. Evil was lurking somewhere out there, where the water met the end of sky. But there was more. When they ventured deeper inland all sound disappeared, and darkness fell. A pale, doll-like girl appeared out of the dark. The doll dug her long, needle-like nails into Anna’s chest. Anna knew who the child was, and she knew what to do. Gathering her strength, Anna pushed the girl down into the ground, finally kissing her porcelain-white forehead.
“You’re an angel,” Anna whispered, and the child closed her black eyes, and let go.