Death Sentence

24

THE DAYS AFTER Line had left me were terrible. As I couldn’t get to talk to her by telephone or by turning up at her father’s house, I wrote to her instead. I was taken back to my school days when we’d conquered girls’ hearts with our poetry, and though I never spoke to her directly, I sensed my letters had some effect. I had never written anything so straight from the heart; never before had I bared my soul the way I did in the missives I sent to her every day.

I told her how much I missed my little family, why I had said the things I had, and what was going on in my mind and in my now very empty life.

At the same time I worked on getting my apology through via Bjarne and Anne. They spoke to Line several times and I pleaded with them to pass on my feelings to her. Even though they too thought I had messed up, they soon started feeling sorry for me. I think they made it their mission to reunite us.

My life was still turned upside down because of the book. There were interviews and events I had to attend, but I hardly touched alcohol or drugs in that period, and I made sure I was at home as much as possible in case Line called. I passed the time doing all the little jobs I had put off in the last couple of years. DIY jobs around the flat, clearing out the basement lock-up, sorting out paperwork.

The breakthrough came after ten days of silence from Line. I was invited to dinner at Bjarne and Anne’s and Line would be there too. ‘We’ll be able to enjoy the girls’ cooking, just like the old days,’ Bjarne declared. I was overcome by enormous relief, which was almost instantly replaced by anxiety. How would I make her take me back? I had been thrown a lifeline and if I didn’t make the most of it, I would never forgive myself.

In the two days before the dinner, everything revolved around preparing for seeing Line. I had my hair cut, I bought new clothes, a blazer and a blinding white shirt, and I memorized questions to ask her, neutral questions that weren’t about me, my books or what had happened, but questions about her and Ironika. I even took up running, which was rather silly as I only managed one run and nearly injured myself in the process. But it felt good. My aching body after my first run in seven years was proof of my commitment to this enterprise.

On the day itself all I did was get ready. I ironed my shirt, styled my hair and doused my body with scent. I left home in plenty of time, bought flowers on the way and tried to cycle at a sedate pace to avoid sweating. But it wasn’t the bike ride that made me sweat, it was my nerves. I took off my jacket and stood outside the stairwell for a couple of minutes to cool down.

‘Someone’s had a makeover,’ Bjarne exclaimed, grinning. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, his usual uniform, and I suddenly felt like an idiot. In my shirt and blazer I looked like a cake decoration. I quickly took off my jacket and rolled up the shirtsleeves, while Bjarne enthused about tonight’s menu.

‘The girls are in the kitchen,’ he said eventually, glancing at my bouquet.

I thanked him and walked through the living room and out into the kitchen with a dry sensation in my throat. I was met by loud laughter, and the sight of Line made me stop in the doorway. She was standing sideways, leaning against the kitchen table with a glass of wine in one hand. Her teeth showed as she laughed heartily and a small tear trickled from the corner of her eye and down her cheek. The girls carried on laughing until Anne noticed me.

‘Hallo, Frank,’ she exclaimed and raised her glass to me.

Line turned to face me. She seemed to be studying my shirt briefly, but then she smiled.

‘Oh, are they for me?’ Anne asked, reaching for the flowers.

I cleared my throat. ‘Actually, they’re for my wife,’ I stammered.

‘Really,’ Anne huffed, pretending to be offended.

Line set down her glass and came over to me. She looked at the flowers and then me.

Hallo, Frank,’ she greeted me quietly, snuggled up to me and hugged me. I held her tight and felt my eyes well up.

Anne coughed and reluctantly we let go of each other.

‘These are for you,’ I said, offering the flowers to Line. She smiled and held them while Anne found a vase. An awkward silence descended on the kitchen.

‘It’s a little hot in here, isn’t it?’ I said and we all laughed.

‘I think what you need is a glass of cold white wine,’ Bjarne said and poured me a glass that disappeared far too quickly.

The dinner was almost like old times, we told stories and silly jokes. Bjarne and I baited each other and the girls teased Bjarne. I spoke less than usual, but I could barely take my eyes off Line. She seemed even more beautiful than I remembered her only twelve days ago and my infatuated glances were reciprocated when she didn’t look away, blushing.

‘It’ll be fine,’ Bjarne said when we sat in the armchairs, each with a whisky while the girls washed up.

‘I don’t remember ever feeling so nervous,’ I confessed, glancing in the direction of the kitchen.

‘Don’t worry, the two of you will work it out, I just know it.’ Bjarne stuck out his big paw of a hand and patted me on the shoulder. ‘You two are made for each other.’

‘I nearly ruined everything.’

Bjarne shook his head. ‘Rubbish, what the two of you have can’t be wrecked just by an interview.’

I hadn’t told anyone about my one-night stand with Linda Hvilbjerg. As far as everyone else was concerned, the interview had been the tipping point, while I kept factoring in the episode with Linda in the lavatory. That was what I truly repented and Bjarne’s words failed to assuage my guilt.

‘I knew it right from the start,’ Bjarne continued. ‘The perfect couple.’

He had had a lot to drink, more than we normally did at this stage, and it showed.

‘The successful author.’ He pointed to me with his whisky glass, swirling the liquid around and nearly spilling it. ‘And the world’s loveliest dancer.’ He raised his glass in a toast and we drank. ‘Who have the most beautiful daughter in the universe.’

‘May we live happily ever after,’ I added and took another sip.

Bjarne leaned closer to me with a grave face.

‘It’s not a joke,’ he said. ‘I mean it. What the two of you have is special. Never forget that.’ He drank his whisky and pulled a face. ‘You have won life’s lottery, hit the jackpot, got a hole-in-one, struck gold, your ship has come in—’

‘I think I get it,’ I interrupted him, grinning.

‘I don’t think you do,’ he said, staring at his drink. ‘I envy you and I’m embarrassed by that. Your book is a success, you have a lovely wife and an even lovelier kid.’ He drank the rest of his whisky.

‘You have Anne,’ I pointed out. There was something in Bjarne’s voice I had never heard before, something melancholic inconsistent with his normally jovial manner.

He nodded. ‘I’m very fond of Anne,’ he said. ‘I think I love her. That’s why I want to give her what you can give Line. I want to give her a successful husband, but more importantly, I wish I could give her a child.’

We had never talked about Anne’s miscarriage, but I assumed it was one of those things and that they were still trying.

‘It’ll happen,’ I said, placing my hand on his. ‘Give it time.’

Bjarne shook his head and picked up the bottle.

‘It’s my sperm,’ he said, half filling his glass with whisky. ‘Something’s wrong with it. The little fellows are sick.’ He drank his whisky and topped up his glass. ‘Anne is perfectly healthy. That’s why she miscarried. Her body rejected the freak I had implanted in her.’

I reached for the bottle and, reluctantly, he let it go.

‘Surely you can find a donor? Or adopt?’

Bjarne made a face. ‘Somehow it just doesn’t feel right, eh?’

‘What doesn’t feel right?’ asked Anne, who had just entered the living room.

We straightened up in our chairs and exchanged looks.

‘That Frank and I get married and moved to Samsø,’ Bjarne said.

‘Now, why on earth would you want to move to Samsø?’ Line asked.

‘Precisely,’ Bjarne said, nodding. ‘Precisely.’

The conversation carried on for a couple more hours, but Bjarne grew more and more drunk and unintelligible, so in the end Line and I thanked them and left. We had also drunk quite a lot and practically stumbled down the stairs, giggling at our clumsiness. I asked if I could see her home. She would like that, she said, but only as far as the garden gate. We cycled slowly through the city. I asked about Ironika and her, all the questions I had prepared but hadn’t yet had the chance to ask. She replied that they missed me. When we reached Amager and Line’s father’s house, we ran out of things to say and we looked at each other.

I took her hand. It was cold, but she gave mine a small encouraging squeeze.

‘Won’t you come home soon, please?’ I asked.

Line looked straight into my eyes and nodded. ‘We’ll come home tomorrow.’

She leaned towards me and kissed my lips. I closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again, she had got off her bicycle and was wheeling it up the garden path.

‘I had a lovely time,’ she said as she disappeared around the corner of the house.

‘Me too!’ I called out and my voice echoed between the buildings. I could hear her giggling. Then I stepped on the pedals and cycled home to the flat.

In the months that followed it was like our relationship had been reborn. We were together all the time. We talked about everything, laughed a lot and flirted at every opportunity. We rediscovered sex. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other and it happened more than once that we were late for appointments because there was ‘something’ we just had to take care of before we could leave the flat.

Ironika enjoyed having a father again and I realized how much I had missed her small secretive smile. Fortunately she was oblivious that she had been the subject of our crisis.

It was also during this period that I developed the idea for Join the Club, which I believed would be my next project, a ‘proper’ novel, the one I would be remembered and admired for. Line was in favour. She supported and encouraged me almost to the point of excess. I suspected that some of her enthusiasm was sheer relief that I would be writing something far removed from Outer Demons.

Join the Club would be my effort at the great contemporary novel I had always imagined I was destined to write one day. The book would capture the age and the world we inhabited, a kaleidoscope of scenes from the everyday lives of a dozen different Danes and their experiences alone, in company and with each other. The stories would unfold with clockwork precision and eventually converge with pinpoint accuracy, although the reader wouldn’t realize this until the final page. Join the Club centred on our common need to belong: the immigrant trying to access the Danish community, the workman who wants to write books, the gay man seeking acceptance from his family, the nerd who desperately wants a girlfriend, the engineer who would rather run a bar than build bridges, the disabled person who wants to be noticed, the model who wants to be admired for more than her looks, and so on. No one was mutilated or tortured to death, no one would be murdered by psychopathic killers or perverted kidnappers. It would be a book everyone could identify with, a book its readers could admit to having read; the book that would be my epitaph.

Ironika didn’t like the idea. She had been there while I worked on Outer Demons, guiding me with smiles and grunts, but she cared little for Join the Club. Every time I whispered the story to her or read her samples, she burst into tears. This worried me a little, but I brushed it aside. After all, it was very early in the creative process.

Meanwhile, the momentum of Outer Demons was unstoppable. All the Nordic countries and most European ones bought it, the film rights went to a British company at an auction, but the really big prize was when we sold the book to the US market. The advance alone enabled us to buy a house in Kartoffelrækkerne and the subsequent royalties financed our holiday cottage in Rågeleje. Property prices were much lower back then, but the houses still represented considerable investments and for the first time I sensed that my parents believed I might actually be able to provide for their grandchild.

I let myself be dazzled by the money that poured in, and when Finn talked me out of writing Join the Club, the loss of potential earnings was a major argument. A contemporary Danish novel would never achieve the same sales figures as my breakthrough book, he claimed, and foreign sales were more or less out of the question. We discussed it on the plane to New York where I was meeting the American publisher, a small round man by the name of Trevor, who had an eye for European culture, especially literature and music. The music was mainly a hobby, but we always discussed music rather than books when we were together. It was on the way to meeting him for the first time that Finn buried Join the Club. During our eight-hour flight he convinced me it would be in my best interests to carry on writing horror stories. In his view, it was important to give the public what they wanted, and when they bought a Føns, they wanted to be scared. They expected to be shocked, outraged and possibly repulsed, but if an author didn’t meet their expectations, his readers would turn their backs on him.

I was angry as well as disappointed when we reached New York, but our stay there changed my mind. We were treated like royalty. Trevor took us to all the right places and parties, got hold of the best tickets for the hottest shows and supplied us with everything we could eat, drink and snort. Our trip to New York was one big party, and after such treatment I was easily persuaded to carry on the party, even though it would require me to write another thriller.

It was weeks before I told Line that our shared project would have to wait due to image and financial considerations. She wasn’t happy at all. In fact, she was so upset that she was willing to give up both the holiday cottage and the new house if necessary. I assured her it would only be for a short period, that the sacrifice would enable us to determine our own future. The words coming out of my mouth were Finn’s. They were the very arguments he had used on me. I couldn’t help feeling a touch of sadness when Line finally gave in and agreed that Outer Demons would be followed by two more books of the same genre. But after that no more splatter stories, as she referred to them.

When everyone had sworn to accept the plan, all I had to do was sit down and write. Only it wasn’t as straightforward as that. I felt like a cow that had been allowed to graze outside for some months, but had now been herded back to the darkness of the cowshed for the foreseeable future.

Moreover, there were plenty of other distractions. I was still invited to take part in interviews and talk shows. I had become the guy they called whenever there was a discussion of violence in literature, on television, in films or in computer games. I agreed to participate in anything from Saturday evening entertainment to writing columns in the local paper. The interruptions were welcome. They provided me with an excuse for not writing, because I had nothing to write. Every time I sat in front of the computer, the ability to express myself coherently deserted me. I was incapable of thinking of plots or structures. As my frustration rose, I invented more and more displacement activities. I always found time to go out with Bjarne, carry out domestic duties or simply let myself be swallowed up in the bosom of my family with Line and my daughter.

I opened up socially, but I shut down in terms of work. I told no one, not even Line, that I wasn’t producing anything at all. She had sufficient delicacy not to ask too many questions and I sensed her tacit acceptance that I would complete the splatter trilogy without her, as long as I was present in the family. And present I was. I was the superdaddy who always had time to play with his daughter and I was the attentive husband who supported his wife in her career as a dancer.

All the things I failed to do as a writer, I achieved as a father, and fathers make babies, so when Line told me she was pregnant again, I was overwhelmed not only with joy, but also relief. Now I had yet another reason for not working, a project that no one would ever blame me for investing all my energy in. The best excuse in the world.

I’m fascinated by how the subconscious works. Sometimes I think there is a tug of war between the two halves of the brain, a battle between will and intuition. If one lets go, the other wins. When I tried to force myself to write or plot a story nothing happened, but when I adjusted to being a full-time father and postponed my writing, the story appeared effortlessly.

The idea for Inner Demons came shortly after Line got pregnant with our second daughter. We lay in bed, naked and sweaty after making love, and I rested my head in her lap while she ran her fingers through my hair. She wasn’t showing very much yet, but her breasts had grown and were a little tender – to my great irritation, because she was quite hysterical when I handled them and I, in turn, couldn’t get enough of them. Line’s breasts weren’t large, but when she was pregnant they grew to the size of a good handful and they hung perfectly.

I don’t know how we got on to the subject, but we started talking about childbirth in earlier times, how tough it must have been without anaesthetic and how many maternal and infant deaths must have occurred. How would it affect a child to have been subjected to a traumatic birth where its mother had died, and the child had to live its life knowing it had caused its mother’s death? It was this idea that started fermenting inside me and it would later form the premise for Inner Demons.

Line stopped dancing, but maintained her contacts to the profession through her job as an assistant at the Bellevue Theatre. This meant that I was alone with Ironika during the day and could focus on writing and looking after my daughter. It was almost like when I wrote Outer Demons, a father–daughter collaboration that brought us closer together.

Perhaps Line felt marginalized? One day she claimed I was shutting her out and she was scared I was becoming too involved with my work. She didn’t know precisely what I wrote, that was between me and Ironika, but she was aware that it was affecting me. I didn’t share her view and couldn’t understand her concern at all. The script grew day by day and with it my self-esteem as a writer returned. I had forgotten my ambitions with Join The Club and got a kick out of seeing the number of pages for Inner Demons increase, so perhaps she was right, I might have seemed a little distant and tired when I had written that day’s quota of words. She considered taking early maternity leave, but I persuaded her to carry on for the benefit of her own career. Not because I couldn’t work when she was at home, but I treasured the fixed routine of taking Ironika to and from nursery, and the pleasure of playing with her when she couldn’t entertain herself. Line probably envied our closeness. It was as if Ironika and I shared a secret. We’d exchange private glances during dinner that went completely over Line’s head. I felt a bit sorry for her, but we enjoyed our little game and I attached no further importance to its effect on Line.

Meanwhile Line’s stomach grew and I followed her body’s development closely. When Line had been pregnant with Ironika, I had been too busy with the various jobs I needed to do to pay the rent, but this time I had front-row seats. Apart from the fascinating study of how the female body changes, I had a secondary motive: it was of the utmost importance that every detail about pregnancy and birth was correct in the book. It’s possible I may have been a little too curious. One evening when I was exploring her stomach and groin as usual, she pointed out that it would be nice if I could talk to her face rather than to her genitals for once.

A few days later something happened for which Line never forgave me.

Ironika had been in a sulk all morning and refused to go to nursery. This irritated me. I had hoped to be able to write four or five pages that day, but my daughter had now reached an age where she demanded constant attention. I tried to strike a deal with her. She would be allowed to stay at home if she could look after herself. I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the computer to work. The agreement with my daughter lasted ten minutes, then she appeared in the doorway with her plastic kitchen equipment and insisted we bake a cake. I tried very hard to control myself, but eventually I got rather angry. In a stern voice I told my daughter to go downstairs to the living room, play on her own and be quiet. If she didn’t do that, I would take her to nursery and leave her there until the next day. It was an empty threat, of course, but it worked, and a crestfallen Ironika left my study and padded downstairs.

Not long after there was a crash from the kitchen followed by clattering sounds and a scream from my daughter.

I leapt up, ran downstairs and into the kitchen. Ironika was lying on the floor, sobbing. She was surrounded by knives, forks and other cutlery. She must have decided to bake a cake on her own and could just about reach the kitchen drawer, which she had pulled out, causing the utensils to rain down on her. To my horror, I saw a dark puddle of blood under her thigh and it was spreading with alarming speed. I lifted her up on the table, pulled down her trousers and spotted a deep cut to her inner thigh. It was a clear cut from one of the carving knives and the sight of blood pouring from it made me dizzy. I got hold of some tea towels and tied one around her thigh and closed the cut itself with another. Ironika was still howling, but she was also turning disturbingly pale.

I took her in my arms and ran out of the house. If necessary, I would run the two kilometres from Kartoffelrækkerne to the Central Hospital, but our neighbour, Kaj, had a car and was usually at home. Fortunately, he was in and took us to the hospital in the back of his old Saab. All the way I could see Ironika grow whiter and whiter, though I pressed against her cut as hard as I could. Her screaming had been reduced to a whimper and she could barely keep her eyes open.

The only thought I remember was: what have I done?

We were seen immediately when we arrived at A & E. Ironika was taken from me by people in white coats and moved directly to theatre. I called Line at work and told her what had happened. There was complete silence from the other end. I couldn’t even hear her breathing. When she finally spoke, her voice was shaking and she announced she was on her way.

Even though it probably only took half an hour, it felt like days before they rolled Ironika out of theatre. They assured me that everything had gone well. She had received a blood transfusion and they had sutured the veins.

Line hadn’t had turned up yet so I sat alone at Ironika’s side while she slept. It was horrible to see her tiny body in the huge hospital bed, but she also looked so peaceful lying there, completely unaffected by the mayhem around her. When Line arrived she barely looked at me, but headed straight for the bed and took Ironika’s hand. She cried very quietly, interrupted only by a sniff. I handed her a tissue and she blew her nose without looking at me.

When she finally spoke, it was in anger.

‘Where were you? Why weren’t you looking after her? Why wasn’t she at nursery?’

The questions came one after the other, far too quickly for me to reply when a yes or a no wouldn’t suffice. I took her in my arms and pulled her towards me. She resisted to begin with, but slowly relaxed and, at last, she embraced me and sobbed. I cried a little myself.

Line stayed with Ironika while I went back to the house, which we had left with no thought of locking the door or closing the windows. Adrenaline was pumping around my body. I couldn’t help imagining how much worse it might have been; I was probably the luckiest man alive. In attempt to calm my nerves, I carried out all the housework I had planned to do that day. I washed clothes, tidied up the kitchen, carefully scrubbed the bloodstains off the kitchen floor and washed the cutlery and put it back in the drawer. I binned Ironika’s bloodstained trousers. I didn’t want them reminding me or others about the incident so I carried them all the way out to the bin in the street. When I had finished, the only trace of the accident was a dent in the kitchen floor where the knife had embedded itself after cutting my daughter’s inner thigh.

When there were no more practical tasks to occupy my thoughts, I returned to the hospital to give Line a break.

I could see that she had spent the time thinking and she sent me a searching look when I arrived. I had to tell her the whole story again, where I had been when it happened, what had taken place in the moments leading up to the accident and how we had got to the hospital. Eventually she ran out of questions, but I could see that something was nagging her – a thought she couldn’t or didn’t dare to voice.

Ironika woke up and felt fine. Her vocabulary was still limited, but we understood that she had little recollection of what had happened. With some help from me she could remember being in the kitchen, but not the reason why she was now in hospital. However, she soon adjusted. We spoiled her with sweets and stories and made sure one of us was by her side constantly.

The next day all three of us came home.

Ironika was excited to see her room again and insisted on having a nap before we had even taken her coat off. Line and I stayed by her bed, watching her until she fell asleep. When we tiptoed downstairs, Line asked me to show her where precisely it had happened. I suppose I grew a little irritated. We had already talked about it and I thought it was over and done with, but Line insisted and I showed her the drawer and the mark in the floor from the knife. She thought it was strange that I had thrown away Ironika’s trousers. They could easily have been mended and perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea to be reminded of the incident every now and again. I felt I was being attacked, forced to explain a simple accident as if it were the plot of a novel.

Finally I’d had enough. I stormed out to the bin to fetch Ironika’s trousers. It had started raining, naturally, and I had to rummage through the rubbish for a long time getting soaked in the process before I gave up looking for them. The trousers weren’t there. Litter lay scattered around me on the pavement and I was aware of our neighbours’ curtains twitching. Either the bin had been emptied or someone had taken the trousers. I started clearing up while I cursed myself for having thrown away the ‘evidence’. Wet and filthy, I returned to the house, where I tried to account for the missing trousers. Line followed me into the bathroom, where I took off my smelly clothes and showered. When she wasn’t asking questions, she would scrutinize me, and when I went to embrace her after my shower, she wriggled free. She didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day, but the following day she was her usual gentle self. It was as if nothing had happened. I breathed a sigh of relief.

That same day Line took early maternity leave from her job to be at home. I didn’t think it was necessary, but she insisted, and we could afford it so there was little to discuss. It meant I could focus on my writing, but my partnership with Ironika changed. Now it was the girls who had secrets and me who didn’t understand their private exchanges.

Slowly we grew accustomed to the new rhythm. I worked more and more in isolation and Line and Ironika looked after each other while Line’s stomach grew. We never discussed the knife incident again, but I was aware of an increased vigilance in Line every time I played rough and tumble with Ironika. She tried not to let her daughter out of her sight, and her lack of trust exasperated me.

As I was also struggling with the pivotal chapters of Inner Demons, I might have been rather prickly in the weeks leading up to its completion. We had a couple of minor arguments, nothing serious, but enough to oppress the mood in the house. When it got too bad, I would shut myself away in my study.

The book was finished around the time Line gave birth to our second daughter, Mathilde. The birth went without a hitch. Line came home only two days later and in the meantime her father looked after Ironika. When we were all home again, it was as if the air had been cleared. We were a family once more. I had submitted Inner Demons for editing and could devote myself to my girls, and Line had nine months more leave, during which we could have a nice time together.

Everyone was happy and content, until the book was published.