“Asger’s a good boy,” she said and didn’t seem to have heard his question. “Please don’t hurt him. He didn’t mean to kill Lars…. The silly boy thought he had given his father a tapeworm. A tapeworm! He just wanted to annoy him a little, but he didn’t mean to kill him, of course he didn’t. But you don’t get a tapeworm from eating a piece of one! And you don’t get a tapeworm infection from eating its eggs, either! Stupid boy.” Her voice became shrill. “I’m a parasitologist, and my own son commits such a howler. And he’s a biologist, too.” Professor Moritzen looked mortified.
“At least you know where the 2,600 cysticerci came from,” she added, dryly. “From my silly boy. Of course, I wondered how Asger got ahold of the material, and I’ve discovered that…. There was one weekend in May when my keys went missing and I had to use my spare set. My keys reappeared and I thought nothing of it. Asger had let himself into my lab and took the tapeworm from the in-vitro supply. I honestly believed I knew precisely how many specimens I have. After all, I count them. But he had only taken one and when I checked, it seemed to add up to me.” She gestured apologetically. “I have samples in cold storage, for dissection, and I have living specimens, which are kept in artificial conditions, like the ones found in the small intestines. At least he had been smart enough to take a living specimen, but his knowledge stopped there,” she said bitterly. “That Monday he went to the department of Cell Biology and Comparative Zoology to have lunch with Professor Ewald in her office across from the senior common room. They know each other from a project when Asger was still an undergraduate. At some point, Asger went to fetch some salt, and while he was in the senior common room he opened the fridge and placed the tapeworm segment in Lars’s lunch.”
“How did he know the food belonged to Lars Helland?” Søren interjected.
Professor Moritzen sighed.
“The stupid idiot had planned it all down to the last detail. He had gone to the senior common room twice the previous week. On both occasions, he had found an empty cool bag with the initials L.H. and once when Asger passed the senior common room, he had seen Lars eat leftovers from it. He was very careful. He certainly didn’t want to infect Professor Jørgensen or Professor Ewald. Asger was angry. I told him Lars Helland was his father shortly after I was told I would be laid off. I had always told Asger he was the result of a one-night stand and that I knew nothing about his father. But I was in love with Lars and got pregnant by him during my second year as an undergraduate. Lars was already married to Birgit, and he was shocked when I confronted him. He told me he didn’t believe the child was his. But I knew it was. We reached an impasse and people started talking. Someone had seen us together, and now I was pregnant. Lars got completely paranoid and offered me money. He would have been fired on the spot had it become known that he had got an undergraduate pregnant. I accepted his offer. I moved to Århus and had Asger. Lars bought us an apartment on the condition that I signed a document stating he wasn’t Asger’s father. I listed my son’s father as ‘unknown,’ and, to be honest, I forgot all about him. I was twenty years old, I lived in Århus, and was busy with my studies and my little boy. I met other men. Do you want some tea?”
Søren nodded and Professor Moritzen disappeared into the kitchen. Shortly afterward, she returned with a small bowl with steaming contents, which she handed to Søren. She sat down on the sofa and blew carefully into her own bowl.
“After all those years why did you decide to tell Asger that Professor Helland was his father?”
Professor Moritzen heaved another sigh.
“Asger grew up without a father, but it was never a problem. When he turned nineteen, he decided he wanted to study biology. To begin with, I was dead set against it. An academic career isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s one long uphill struggle. For money, for recognition, for elbow room. I genuinely doubted if Asger was cut out for it. He’s a loner, wary and ultra-sensitive. But he was adamant. He had followed my work his whole life, and when he wanted a butterfly net for Christmas and an aquarium for his birthday that’s what he got. I don’t know why I expected anything else.” She shook her head. “In 1998 I applied for the post of professor of parasitology at the University of Copenhagen, never thinking for one minute I would get it. But halfway through the summer break, I got a phone call. The job was mine. Less than a week later Asger got a letter. He was offered a place to read biology at the University of Copenhagen. That summer we moved. I sold the apartment in Århus and bought two apartments with the money; this one and the one Asger lives in, on Glasvej.
“Asger began his studies and the same week, I spotted Lars. Of course, it had crossed my mind he might still be working there, and yet I was genuinely shocked. It was nineteen years since we had last met, and there had been no contact in between. It was almost four months before we met. Odd, really, given his office was only two floors above mine. It happened just before Christmas. The strange thing was that he appeared pleased to see me. He ran up to me from behind, twirled me around, and kept saying how marvelous it was. He had no idea what had become of me, if I had even graduated. Oh yes, I replied. From the University of Århus. He never mentioned our son, as though he had truly wiped from his memory that he had gotten me pregnant. At that moment, Asger appeared and Lars shook his hand.
“‘This is Asger, my son,’ I said. ‘He’s in his first year.’ I stared at Lars, but his face gave nothing away. He simply pressed Asger’s hand and welcomed him.
“Professionally, I got very busy. The field of parasitology was growing rapidly due to a government increase in foreign aid. The focus of public attention turned to bilharziasis, and I was made responsible for three huge research projects, two of which took place in Central Africa. Asger was happy. He cruised through his studies. I was pleased for him, but also rather concerned. He had no friends, and he never went out. It was all about studying and preparing for the next exam, and when he finally had time off he would tinker with his growing number of tanks, attend conferences, read, or collect insects. I tried encouraging him, but every time he smiled his silly smile. “People don’t interest me, Mom,” he said. “I’m a scientist like you.” What troubled me the most was that he always said it with an element of complicity, as though he and I were the same. I didn’t want to be someone with no friends because my work took up all my time. But the truth was this was precisely who I was.
“One day, Asger finally made a friend. Erik Tybjerg, Anna’s external supervisor, would you believe it? Yes, you’re thinking we’re all as thick as thieves, and I suppose you’re right.” She laughed briefly. “Asger was writing his dissertation, and the two boys spent a lot of time together. Their friendship revolved around science, but all the same, it looked like a genuine friendship. Asger remained strangely content in the way he always was. Nothing upset him. If it hadn’t been for all those As he got, I would have started thinking there was something wrong with him.” She smiled. “But he’s bright and knows everything about natural history. He knows practically nothing about anything else. I consoled myself that at least he seemed happy.” She sighed, deeply, once more.
“One day I dropped by unannounced. I knew he was recovering from flu, I had bought some cakes and I wanted to surprise him. As I walked down the street, I tried to recall when I last visited him. One thing was for sure: it was too long ago, and in that moment, I felt so bad for not visiting him more often. Asger used to tease me and say ‘My biologist mom is scared of bugs’—he thought it was hilarious. Of course I wasn’t. But I didn’t like them or what they represented.”
“Which was?” Søren probed.
“Only nerds have tanks,” Hanne said, bluntly. “You don’t live with snakes and scorpions!” she scoffed. “I don’t share my home with the parasites I work with, do I?”
Søren glanced around the austere apartment and suddenly he couldn’t decide which was worse: bugs or loneliness?
“And every time I was confronted with that side of my son, I felt guilty. I desperately wanted him to have friends. Other young men he could go out with, run a half-marathon with, whatever, what do I know? And I wanted him to have a girlfriend. Live with her, so I could visit them on Sundays, and he could start a family one day. But if he managed to persuade a girl to come home with him, she would surely leave the moment she saw all his bugs and reptiles. At the time, I knew he kept a small nonpoisonous snake, four bird spiders, and some mysterious-looking, over-dimensioned stick insects. I made no attempt to disguise my disgust, but Asger merely laughed and said that was why children left home. I stopped bringing it up; we met mostly in my apartment and that’s why so much time had passed.
“He was delighted to see me. He was wearing his dressing gown over his pajamas, his hair was tousled, and he was grinning from ear to ear. Everything was fine. I entered the hall and took off my coat. The air was stuffy, but that was understandable. He had been ill for three or four days. It was also a little dark, but I presumed he had just been asleep.
“Asger took my coat, put it on a hanger, and opened a built-in closet to put it away, when something fell out and hit his head. It was a bundle held together with string, and it appeared to contain clothing and shoes. Asger asked me to hold the hanger while he struggled to push the bundle back in the cupboard. When he managed to close it, he hung my jacket on a door handle instead and went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. I stayed in the hall and called out to ask him why it was so dark, but the water was running and if he replied, I didn’t hear him. I switched on the hall light, and as the door to his bedroom was wide open, I entered and turned on the light.
“It took five seconds before I realized what I was looking at. He had three tanks. I was almost relieved, three isn’t excessive and, at first glance, they appeared to be empty. Then the shock came: there were bundles of clothes everywhere. The first bundle had merely seemed strange, but this obsession with bundles worried me.” Professor Moritzen looked hesitantly at Søren. He forgot to drink his tea. “His comforter, his pillow, and sheets were rolled into a bundle on his bed, and the bundle was held together with,” she gulped, “the cord from my dressing gown I had been looking for for ages. Along the wall facing the street were another three bundles, one with books, two apparently stuffed with Asger’s clothes—one was slightly open and over the buckle of a belt I could see the pair of expensive Fjällräven trousers I had given him for Christmas. Shoved under the bed was a bundle with what looked like a bathroom scale I had given him, and on a small desk in the corner, to the right of the window, was a bundle that appeared to contain an open laptop and next to it, smaller bundles. I was staring at them when I suddenly became convinced there was someone behind me. I could hear Asger whistle in the kitchen, hear cups clattering, so I knew it wasn’t him. I spun around and, on the wall in front of me, Asger had mounted three shelves, as wide as floorboards, and they were filled with jars of insects in ethanol, small tanks with live bugs, Styrofoam sheets with skewered insects and butterflies, and numerous reference books on the anatomy and physiology of insects.
“I left the bedroom and went into the living room, which was pitch black. I sensed the window must be covered with a heavy curtain, and I hoped desperately it was because he had been napping. I yanked the curtain open, but the room stayed dark. That was when it dawned on me that the room was alive: Asger had transformed his living room into a terrarium.
“‘I painted the window black recently,’ he casually told me when he returned with the tea. ‘The plumber came and he opened the curtains though I had expressly told him not to. My South Chilean tarantula was about to lay her eggs, and she can’t tolerate daylight when she does that. Not at all. In their natural habitat, the female buries herself in the ground so the eggs are exposed only to moisture, cold, and darkness. That plumber ruined it.’ He was angry. ‘I haven’t been able to make her lay eggs since.’ He put the teapot and the cakes on a coffee table that I could only just detect the outlines of.
“‘But I can switch on the light, if you want me to,’ he said, and before I had time to reply he flicked the switch. He explained it was a special light that filtered out all the red beams. You can’t read in it, but you can find your way around. He asked me if it was all right or whether I would rather sit in the kitchen.
“The living room now looked as if it was lit by twilight. The walls were covered with tanks from floor to ceiling.
“‘Spiders?’ I whispered.
“It turned out that he had seventy-two spiders, of which thirty-four were lethal, thirty-nine scorpions, all lethal, four venomous snakes, as well as cockroaches, mice, and crickets for food. He explained it all very cheerfully. Along the wall to the left were more bundles. Books, binders, science journals, and CDs would be my guess.
“I asked him why he kept his possessions like this, and he replied it was nature’s way of storing her possessions. Eggs and food, always packed in clusters, piles, and heaps. He was merely emulating nature.
“He told me it was just an experiment and it was just for fun, but he hesitated.” Professor Moritzen stopped and stared at Søren.
“I don’t really know why I’m telling you all this.”
Søren cleared his throat.
“Please go on. It’s important.” Søren gazed straight at Professor Moritzen who briefly looked as if she had lost the thread.
“I don’t know… I left…” she shuddered. “And I was sad… but also angry with myself. It’s not like I had found child porn or funding. I wondered what was troubling him, but I didn’t know him very well anymore. I concluded his usual invincibility had vanished or was weakened, and I spotted an opportunity to stick the knife in.” Professor Moritzen looked straight at Søren. “After the meeting I caught up with him. I told him I had decided it was time to tell Asger the truth. He replied he had no idea what I was talking about.
“Two days later I was officially informed that more than three quarters of the grant had been awarded to my department, specifically to two of my projects. I arrived at my office to find champagne corks popping. My younger colleague, who had attended the meeting with me, beamed and said that whatever I had said to Helland, it had worked. And he congratulated me. He hugged me. I was speechless, and for five naive minutes exactly I thought we had been given the money on merit. Then I understood. Helland had bought my silence.
“In the weeks that followed, I was torn. Morale in the department was sky-high, and we held one ambitious strategy meeting after another. We could afford a new electron microscope, we could invite three postgraduates on a planned trip to our overseas projects, and we could afford to participate in two upcoming symposia in Asia and America. The atmosphere was euphoric. I saw Helland several times, but still he never once looked through my window, even though I’m certain he knew I was in my office. I also saw Asger several times. He was radiant, having been offered a fellowship at the department. I had never seen him so happy. It was more food for thought. Should I let Helland get away with buying my silence?
“I made up my mind one afternoon when I saw Asger with Erik Tybjerg. They walked right past my window, laughing out loud at something, so Asger completely forgot to wave. The next day, I informed Helland that his blatant bribe had been accepted on one condition. He would put himself forward for the next election to the Faculty Council, and when he was voted in he was to make sure my department would never be short of funds again. I tried to gauge how badly he wanted Asger to remain a secret. It was clearly of the utmost importance, because he consented. Asger remained fatherless, I became a blackmailer, and Professor Helland kept his job. I lost no sleep over this. Our parasite research saved lives in the Third World, and my son was spared a father who didn’t want him. It went on for years.” Professor Moritzen blinked. “Lars was good at securing grants, exceptional, even. Once the grants were awarded, he got creative. The money was allocated across the system and when it reached individual budgets, it was disguised and moved along so that when it finally came to us, no one was keeping an eye on it anymore; no one asked questions.”
“So what happened?” Søren wanted to know.
“There was an election, and the new government had other plans,” Professor Moritzen said bitterly. “It slammed the money box shut and threw away the key. From now on, every unit within the institute had to submit a half-yearly report explaining how grants had been spent, along with research results. Every kroner had to be accounted for. The new government was highly mistrustful, and it soon became clear it cared nothing for our work unless it was profitable. There was a major management shuffle, and Professor Ravn was appointed as the new head of the institute. In consultation with the Faculty Council, he decided to close Coleoptera Taxonomy—”
“What’s that?”
“A small unit, specializing in beetle systematics. It had a staff of two: one was an older professor of taxonomy on the verge of retirement and the other was a young, upcoming invertebrate morphologist…” Professor Moritzen looked at Søren with tears in her eyes.
“Asger.”
She looked away.
“Asger had spent the summer in Borneo collecting samples and returned the day before the start of the new academic year. He was tanned, and I had never seen him looking so relaxed and contented. The institute claimed they had sent a letter and an e-mail, that they had tried hard to contact him, but whether it was Asger’s fault or they were lying, he showed up, unsuspecting, and found his department closed. There was a photocopier, still in its bubble wrap, waiting outside the door for Asger to clear out his things, so his office could be turned into a photocopying room. Not long after I said hello to him I saw him storm out. He had arrived with his buckets and specimen jars, wearing a too-warm jacket, smiling from ear to ear, his backpack tucked under his arm, and now I saw him head for the parking lot without his things and in a T-shirt. I worried and waited for him to come back. After half an hour, I knew something was wrong. I called Asger’s former colleague, but calls to that line were forwarded to his secretary. She gave me his home number. When I called him, my hands were shaking. Afterward I called Lars. It was a very unpleasant conversation. ‘There was nothing I could do,’ he said, over and over. ‘It was the smallest unit at the institute. There was nothing I could do.’ I wanted to kill him, even if he was telling me the truth. Lars assured me he had done everything he could, but he had been the only one to vote against it. ‘Did I know what a majority vote meant, had I heard about democracy?’ The department was closed immediately. The older professor retired, and Asger was… let go.” Professor Moritzen looked out of the window, at the building across the road. It had grown dark.
“Obviously I went straight to Asger’s. He didn’t open the door. I called out through the mail slot. I should have known it all along. His joy, his optimism, Borneo, his glowing skin, which almost made him look normal. It was an illusion. Underneath it Asger was what he always had been: a misfit. Someone who couldn’t cope with the world, and it was all my fault. I had worked too much, and he didn’t have a father. In the end, I called a locksmith and broke in. Asger lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. I sat beside him, stroking his arm.” Professor Moritzen looked at Søren.
“I promised him it would be all right. I said I would make sure he didn’t become unemployed. Thanks to Helland, my department had enough money, and I hired Asger as an assistant in the Department of Parasitology. I twisted Lars’s arm further—I told him to get a grant for Asger for two annual trips to southeast Asia to collect samples, and offer him three lectures a year in Lecture Hall A. To a full house. Or I would start talking.
“Needless to say, Asger was far from content. He languished. His life had changed for the worse. He traveled regularly to southeast Asia, he classified animals, wrote papers, and helped out in my department. But it wasn’t what he really wanted to do. He didn’t want to be a gofer at the University of Copenhagen. He wanted tenure, his own office, to teach, to contribute to growth and debate in the world of research. He didn’t want to be an ultimately insignificant freelancer. I asked him if he still saw Erik Tybjerg, though I knew he didn’t.
“In the end I hated Lars Helland.” Professor Moritzen suddenly looked straight at Søren. “Hated him because…”
“He refused to be Asger’s father,” Søren said.
“He was Asger’s father,” Professor Moritzen said, defiantly. “And I hated him for not acknowledging it. But the person I truly despised was myself. Research grants are to us what steroids are to athletes. Whoever gets the most, gets the furthest. And I made sure I got plenty for myself.” She gave Søren a remorseful look.
“Last April I was made redundant and given three years to conclude my research. The Department of Parasitology at the University of Copenhagen will be shut, and the Serum Institute will take over our work. It happened during the Easter break. In contrast to Asger, I received a letter and a telephone call from the head of the institute. He apologized profusely. They had to make cuts. The government had the knife to the institute’s throat. When I returned after the break, I went looking for Lars. He seemed to have vanished, and his door was locked. I called, I e-mailed, but he didn’t reply. Finally, I called him at home and his daughter answered the telephone. Her voice was bright and happy. She was Asger’s sister, they shared genes, how could she sound so happy? My dad’s abroad, she said. At a dig. He wouldn’t be back for another ten days. That weekend I told Asger. After years of deliberation, when I had sworn to myself I would never tell him in anger, I told Asger that Lars was his father. Because I was hurting. Because I had been laid off. Because the money had run out. Because it would no longer trickle down to Asger. Because I was bitter that Lars’s daughter sounded so happy. For all the wrong reasons,” she said, wearily. She fell silent and stared at her hands.
“Why didn’t Anna know you had a son?”
Professor Moritzen looked up.
“She asked me the same question a few hours ago.” She smiled weakly and fidgeted with her clothes. “She was angry with me because I had kept it a secret. She shouted at me, in fact.” Another feeble smile. “But we didn’t see each other outside work. We met at a summer course where I taught terrestrial ecology. We started talking, and I was fascinated by her. She was so different from Asger, from my own child, and she reminded me of me, when I was a young biologist and a single parent. We had lunch together, maybe five times. It was lovely sitting in the cafeteria with her. It made sense. Anna’s life isn’t easy, is it? Living on a student grant with a young child. She never told me her story outright, but today she admitted she felt ashamed because her boyfriend had left them. And do you know something?” She looked up at Søren. “I, too, felt ashamed. I was ashamed of Asger.”
Søren tried to get his thoughts in order. “And then, last Thursday, Asger told you he had infected Professor Helland with parasites?”
“Yes.” She looked wretched. “But it’s my fault. I should never have told him Helland was his father. But I did. The night I told him, he reacted with surprising equanimity. He seemed puzzled more than anything. He kept saying: I thought you didn’t know who my dad was? As if it wouldn’t sink in that I had lied. Afterward, we shared takeout and watched a movie. When he went home, he seemed pensive rather than angry. Three days later, he called to say he didn’t want to see me for awhile. Then he hung up. Asger had never rebelled, not even as a teenager. He has always been my sweet little boy. I was shocked when he hung up on me. I called him back, but he didn’t answer. I went to bed. I wanted to sleep on it, not compound the damage by acting in haste. After three weeks, I called him. Yes, he was fine. What day was it? Really? He sounded surprised. He responded to everything I said as though he had had a lobotomy. I invited him to dinner; I asked if we should go away for Easter break but he said no, we wouldn’t be seeing each other. Good-bye. I told myself everything was all right. He was twenty-seven years old and he had the right to create some space between himself and his mother. Only I desperately wanted to talk to him, to explain to him once more why I had kept Lars a secret. I wrote him a long letter, begging for his forgiveness. I wrote I had been nineteen years old when I had slept with my tutor; I knew nothing, and today I would never have made the choices I had made then. I heard nothing, not even on my birthday in July, which Asger always used to make a big deal of. Not so much as a postcard.” The tears rolled down Professor Moritzen’s cheeks.
“He didn’t respond to anything. To my letters or my calls. He had quite simply dropped me. Last August I started therapy. It was mainly about my relationship with Asger, about my role in his life. My therapist told me to write another letter to Asger, that he definitely read them and they made a difference even if he didn’t respond. In the letter I was to assure him I would be there when he was ready, and I was to tell him I loved him and I looked forward to seeing him again. But not until he was ready. That was important, the therapist stressed. He had begun an emancipation process, she said, and I was to leave him alone. Respect him. The therapist insisted it was about time, too.” She looked embarrassed. “So that’s what I did. Wrote a letter, which the therapist read and approved before I sent it to Asger. Then I waited. I heard nothing, but the therapist comforted me. It was quite normal. The longer the period after puberty when emancipation ought to have taken place, the harder it was. She said it might take years. So I was so happy when he suddenly called last Thursday.” Professor Moritzen looked earnestly at Søren. “I swear it never occurred to me that Asger might be implicated in Lars’s death. I had speculated like crazy whether the parasite might have come from our stock, but in consultation with my colleagues, I concluded it couldn’t possibly be one of ours. We hadn’t been broken into, nothing had been touched, nothing had been taken. Last Thursday, Asger told me he had watched me through my office window. His plan was to make it look like I had infected Helland with tapeworm. We should both be punished, he said. He even found the prospect amusing. He knew tapeworms weren’t dangerous, but they frequently aren’t discovered until they’re several feet long and fill most of the intestines. He thought his plan was brilliantly disgusting. He imagined how the tapeworm would grow and take up more and more space, just like Helland and I had gradually taken over his life.
“He also told me he had threatened Helland. Sent him some e-mails in English from an untraceable address. Helland was completely indifferent; he didn’t even take them seriously. He had replied to a couple of them, Asger told me, though he obviously didn’t know to whom he was replying, and he seemed to find the threats amusing. Asger was crushed,” she said softly.
“Asger heard about Helland’s death on the radio and got very scared. Last Wednesday he visited the institute. It took less than fifteen minutes to catch up on all the gossip. Helland had been riddled with cysticerci. Asger panicked and went home where he spent the next twenty-four hours thinking it over. He couldn’t make sense of it. He called me Thursday night. His voice was small and timid. At first, I couldn’t understand why, after months of silence, he’d called me to talk about the life cycle of parasites. Surely he could look it up in his own reference books? But he insisted. Slowly, the pieces began to fall into place and, in the end, I asked him outright: Are you involved in Helland’s death? He thought so, he whispered. Then he told me everything, though he still didn’t fully understand what had happened, all he had wanted to do was give his loser dad tapeworm. I connected the dots myself.”