The Drowned Boy

8

More than anything, he wanted to keep her in his shirt pocket, close to his heart. He wanted to take her everywhere with him and protect her from all fear and suffering, protect her from all danger. Because he loved Carmen Cesilie more than anything in the world, this slip of a blond thing who was his daughter. He had a father’s unstinting patience. He held her to him tight, bursting with love. She disappeared into his embrace and stayed there for a long time. Marian Zita was big and heavy, with a sturdy barrel-shaped body, thin legs, and broad duck’s feet. He had thick, curly black hair peppered with gray, and huge worn hands that were used to hard work. In private, Zita had cursed God and the Virgin, all the deities who had betrayed him, raging with sorrow and despair. Carmen cried against his chest, inconsolable. Her father had always been her loyal ally; he stood by her through thick and thin no matter what. And over the years there had been a number of times when she needed his help. Like the time when the boyfriend she had before Nicolai had hit her. And when she became pregnant with Tommy at seventeen. But this was a crisis. Her mother looked around the yard, then further down toward the water, where she saw Nicolai sitting at the end of the jetty.

“How do you think he feels? Shall we go and comfort him?”

“No,” Carmen said. “He doesn’t want it. He just wants to be left alone. He says he’s going to sit there all night. He’s not very good at expressing his emotions — he clams up completely. And then there’s nothing you can do. He just says no. Come on; let’s go in. Maybe he’ll come later. Maybe he’ll change his mind.”

Her parents followed her into the house. When her mother saw Tommy’s play blanket on the floor, she started to cry.

“Why didn’t we manage to get the fence sorted?” Zita said wearily. “It will haunt me until my dying day. We could have hired a carpenter; it would have been done in no time.”

Carmen pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table.

“We need to eat something,” she said, determined. “When I said that to Nicolai, that we needed food, he got mad at me. I mean, making sure we get sustenance is not exactly being disloyal to Tommy, is it?”

She caught her father’s eye, seeking the comfort she always got. A right that she had taken for granted all her life.

“Is it, Dad?” she begged. “I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten all day. It isn’t being disloyal to Tommy if we eat.”

Her father shook his head. “No, sweetheart, of course not. And no matter what Nicolai says, I’m going down to see him.”

Carmen grabbed his arm. “He says it’s my fault,” she said. “That I should have closed the door and kept an eye on him.”

Her father waved his hands around in exasperation. He almost lost his balance. “What has happened is terrible, but it was an accident,” he said. “And no one at all is to blame, especially not you. He just said that in despair. He doesn’t know what he’s saying and he’ll regret it later. I know how it is in the heat of the moment. Don’t forget your sister, Louisa,” he added with feeling. “I know what I’m talking about.”

He stroked her cheek.

“And you know, that’s the thing about grief,” he continued. “We’re no longer rational and it’s hard to think straight. Words just pop out of our mouths that we later live to regret.”

He went out, crossed the yard, and lumbered down to the jetty. The dark planks creaked under his considerable weight.

“How are things?” he asked in a friendly voice. “How are you?”

Nicolai shrugged and kept his eyes focused on the only water lily in the pond. He felt Zita’s large hand on his neck. It was a strong, patriarchal hand that spoke of authority.

“Not good,” he said with a sigh. “I’m not managing this at all. I’m just sitting here, and I don’t intend to move.”

Zita stood without saying anything for a while. He understood Nicolai’s bleak thoughts about the future only too well. Life had not been good to him.

“I don’t know what to do,” Zita said eventually. “I don’t know how to comfort you; there is no comfort. There is nothing I can say.”

He tried to catch his son-in-law’s eye and sat down beside him with his feet dangling over the edge.

“All it takes is a few moments when you’re not paying attention,” he continued. “Everything happens so fast. You have my full sympathy. We’ll support you in every way, you know that. You can count on us.” He raised his voice when he said this and sounded more determined.

“You’ll have all the time you need to grieve. No one can deny you the right to give up. To cry and rage and curse fate. But let me just say one thing.” Zita took a deep breath and said loudly: “I will not allow you ever to blame my daughter.”

Nicolai didn’t say anything for a while. He turned away from the water lily and looked at his father-in-law with melancholy eyes.

“There’s a lot you don’t know,” he said.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Zita asked promptly. “Explain yourself.”

“It’s not always easy to put a finger on it,” Nicolai tried. “Put it that way.”

Zita felt uneasy. He didn’t like the implication and couldn’t understand the cryptic message.

“Don’t make things difficult,” he said sternly. “Tell me what’s on your mind; I don’t like these insinuations. Come on; let’s go up to the house. We’ve got a lot to talk about. And forgive me for saying so, but you’re not the only one who’s grieving. This is a terrible blow for all of us.”

Nicolai did not want to talk, as he had little belief in the ability of words to heal and soothe. And yet he stood up, somewhat reluctantly, and walked back toward the house. He stopped on the lawn and looked around with set lips. Everything seemed different and new, not the well-loved, familiar landscape he was used to being a part of. We should have put up a fence, he thought, as he watched Pappa Zita roll up to the house. A fence around the whole house with a latched gate. A simple solution that could have saved Tommy’s life, but it was too late now. He followed Zita into the house and let his mother-in-law, Elsa, embrace him. She had always been shy, but she was unable to contain herself and held him as tight as she could while her tears flowed. He pulled himself free and went into the living room. He turned on the TV, sat in a chair, and watched the news without moving. He stared almost blindly at the flickering images. There’s always someone who’s got it worse, he thought, but that’s cold comfort. He got up wearily and went back into the kitchen.

“We have to choose an undertaker,” Pappa Zita said. “Not the biggest or most expensive; let’s use a smaller one. Sentrum,” he suggested, “I hear they’re very good, even though there are only two of them. When will we get Tommy back from the coroner?”

Carmen and Nicolai looked at each other. Neither of them could answer, because they had forgotten to ask.

“Well, I guess they have set procedures,” Zita said. “I’m sure it won’t take too long, and they know that we’re waiting. Has either of you thought about the funeral?”

“He was our child,” Nicolai burst out. His voice was breaking up.

“I’m sorry,” Zita said hastily. “I was only trying to help. I just thought we should make some decisions. And I thought that you might need someone to do that for you, as you have more than enough to deal with. How did the police treat you? Were they understanding? Did they treat you with respect?”

“They poked around and asked lots of questions about all sorts of things,” Carmen said. “And Nicolai and I were kept in separate rooms, which I thought was horrible.”

“But that’s just procedure,” Zita reassured her. “Rules that they have to follow in the event of sudden death and accidents. To find out exactly what happened.”

“But we’d explained to them,” Carmen said sulkily. “In detail. And still they said that we might have to go in again. To answer more questions after the autopsy. But they won’t find anything. He was fit and healthy. He had that ear infection once but got over it quick enough. I told them that Tommy was healthy.”

They sat in silence while eating Elsa’s food. Nicolai was hungry, but he let it gnaw at him and only took a couple of mouthfuls. Afterward Zita went out into the yard and wandered around aimlessly, not knowing what to do. If there was anything, anything at all that could soothe the pain, he thought. Again and again he berated himself for not having built a fence.

Nicolai wanted them to leave, because he wanted to be alone. He wanted to grieve without onlookers. He left the house again around midnight and went back down to the pond. He sat at the end of the jetty and wept. He could barely resist the lure of the black water.