The Drowned Boy

19

He walked slowly through the empty rooms and listened. Tommy’s absence was deafening. No more hiccupping laughter, no more sobbing tears. The child was dead and buried, and over time the body would decompose, disintegrate, and become dust. But the bones would remain. A fragile, tiny skeleton in the black earth.

“It’s all just empty words,” he said. “‘Until you return to the ground, for out of it were you taken.’ It’s just garbage. To be honest, I feel ashamed.”

Carmen wriggled out of the black dress, threw it down on the bed, and put on some everyday clothes. “The priest was nice, wasn’t she?” she commented. She was now wearing jeans and a T-shirt. “Should we just take his crib down now? I mean, we don’t need it anymore and it takes up quite a lot of space. We could put it in the cellar until we have another baby.”

Nicolai gasped. To be saying that now — what was she thinking?

“Jesus, you’re in a rush to get rid of any traces,” he said, upset.

She pushed past him and went out into the kitchen. She opened a cupboard, took out a glass, and turned on the faucet. She drank water in greedy gulps until she was sated. Some water trickled down over her chin and between her breasts.

“I don’t need all these reminders,” she said. “It just makes things worse, going to bed at night with the empty crib staring at us. That’s just the way I am; I want to forget it. I don’t want to be upset by memories.”

He walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa. He felt so tired, like he’d shifted down a gear. Everything that normally happened in his body was now so slow, and he felt cold, despite the late summer heat. The warmth of the sun pressed in against the windows and glittered on the surface of the vile pond with its single water lily.

“Maybe we should move,” Carmen called from the kitchen. “Get away from it all. Start again somewhere else. I can talk to Dad. Because if I want a new house, he’ll get me a new house.”

Nicolai protested. He felt they had to stay in the neighborhood, close to the church and the boy. Tommy should be within easy reach, and the grave by Møller Church was only twenty minutes away. He was up between the birch trees beside Louisa.

Carmen had come into the living room. She stood there with the glass of water in her hand. He saw her nipples stiffen under her T-shirt, despite the heat. He had never seen a girl with such small breasts as Carmen; she could almost be a boy.

“If we dismantle the crib, it will take less room,” she said. “And there’s so much junk in the cellar already.”

Junk, Nicolai thought. So she thinks Tommy’s bed is junk.

Carmen drank some more water and dried her mouth.

“I want to start working again,” she said with determination. “The days go faster. Don’t you want to start working again too?”

He nodded. She went into the kitchen again and he heard her opening a drawer.

“Do you think they’ve buried him by now?” she shouted. “Was it stupid of us not to go to the grave?”

“Yes, it was stupid. I told you it was. You could have listened. You always want your own way, but I’ve got opinions too. Opinions and wishes.”

“We can go there tomorrow, if you like,” she called, in an attempt to placate him. “To look at the grave. It’s great, isn’t it, that he got a place under the birch trees? Just like I wanted. I’m so glad.”

Tommy is dead and buried, he thought, and you stand here and say you’re glad. Jesus, you’re unbelievable. But everyone grieves differently, he reminded himself. Carmen is not someone to dwell on things. She’s impatient and wants to move on. I have to remember that, he thought. But he felt overwhelmed by her energy and will all the same.

“I’m sure we’ll have another baby, sooner or later,” she said. “Life goes on, doesn’t it? You do agree?”

He went into the kitchen and sat down at the table. He studied her narrow back at the counter.

“But that’s not what I want,” he said defiantly. “Not anymore, at least. Don’t go on about it; it just makes me depressed.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” she said, offended. “I’m just trying to hold things together. It’s hard for me too, you know.”

He looked at her with doleful eyes. I don’t think I love her anymore, he thought. He felt exhausted and helpless and sad. Everything we had is falling to pieces and too much has happened to get over it. How, he thought, will it ever pass?

“We need to eat,” Carmen said after a few seconds’ silence. “I’ll make some spaghetti and meatballs.”

He declined. No, he was sure he didn’t want any food. He wanted to punish himself by not eating to atone for Tommy’s death, for the fact that he hadn’t looked after him better and put up that damn fence. Instead he had gone down into the cellar to tinker with bikes. As if that was important. There are always moments like that, he thought. A few minutes when the child is not being watched. But then Tommy had just learned to walk, and the door was open and he had toddled off toward the glittering water. Children and water. Of course it was just waiting to happen. He followed Carmen with his eyes as she wiped the counter with a cloth. She opened a cupboard and took out a box of spaghetti.

“Whatever the priest says,” he started, “Tommy won’t go to heaven. We’re both hypocrites. We’re hypocrites because we got a priest, and I feel like shit.”

She turned around and looked at him in exasperation. “Speak for yourself. Others can believe what they like. I can’t imagine where else the soul would go. And Tommy had a soul. You agree on that, don’t you?”

Yes, he thought, that’s true. But it was extinguished with his body. No living body, no energy, and therefore no soul.

“So you think you’re going to meet Tommy again?” he sneered. “Up in heaven?”

“Don’t be so mean,” she said. “It’s just that I believe in another existence. If you want to play the atheist, that’s fine by me. But you don’t have the answer either. And there are smarter people than you who believe, so there.”

He leaned his elbows on the table and had to admit that she had a point. He watched as she worked at the counter. She was quick, Carmen, everything was fast. And he was actually very hungry. He couldn’t ignore the fact that he needed food.

“Did you see what I got from Pappa Zita?” she asked. “I got a present.”

Yes, he had, but had forgotten it in the midst of everything else. Pappa Zita had given her a package when they got back to the car after the church service was over. He guessed it was a book; it was certainly a slim, flat package. Perhaps a book about death that she could read and find comfort in. That would be so like Zita, because that was the way he thought — that everything could be said in words.

“I’m going to keep a diary,” she said contentedly. “He wants me to write about what’s happened. And about everything that’s going to happen in the future. But you’re not allowed to read it. Diaries are secret, so there.”

She opened one of the kitchen drawers and held up the book. It was beautiful and small, with a red cover. There was a label on the front where she had written her name in careful letters.

“Can I have a look?” he asked, holding his hand out. He opened it at the first page, which was still blank.

“Are you going to write in it every day?”

“Yes,” she said, determined. “I’m going to write every single day.”

“But what if nothing happens?”

“Of course something will,” she said. “Things happen all the time. Today we buried Tommy. Tomorrow we’ll go and visit his grave under the birch trees. And the day after, we’ll go to the stonemasons out by Kruttverket. We did agree to do that, didn’t we? And if nothing happens, then I can write just that,” she said, full of enthusiasm. “Today is over and nothing has happened.”

She went over to the desk and put the book away in the bottom drawer. “Hands off,” she said with a smile. Then she went back into the kitchen and put the spaghetti in the boiling water, leaving the lid off to one side. She sat down at the table and took his hands in hers and squeezed them hard.

“It’ll get easier,” she said without doubt. “Even the most painful things pass. But you can’t think of the future.”

“No,” he objected. “It will never get easier.”

“You don’t want to forget,” she said quietly.

“No, that’s right. And I can see that you do. I don’t understand how you’re made.”

“I’ve always been strong,” she said. “You know that I’m really like Dad.”