Hakan Nesser - The Weeping Girl

But her mother had simply shaken her head.

But you must understand that you have to say B once you’ve said A, Mikaela had insisted. That’s what her mother always used to tell her. I have a right to know.

More head-shaking, more firmly than ever. Then that harangue.

Yes, you have a right to know who your father is, Mikaela, and I’ve told you that now. But it wouldn’t help you at all to know exactly what happened, why I left him. Believe me, Mikaela. I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t necessary, surely you can understand that?

I’ll find out anyway.

That’s up to you. You’re eighteen now. But I’m just thinking what’s best for you.

That’s as far as they’d got, even though they’d been sitting there in the kitchen for half an hour. Mikaela had begged and pleaded. Nagged and cursed and wept, but her mother wouldn’t budge.

As sometimes happened. Mikaela had beaten her head against the wall before. She knew what usually happened, and what it felt like. But the distance between them never used to be as wide as this. It was quite remarkable.

Auntie Vanja was the answer: that had also happened before. Mikaela shut herself away in her room and telephoned her immediately after the conversation in the kitchen. Explained the situation with no beating about the bush, and after a lot of intensive persuasion, she succeeded. Just when she’d been on the point of giving up. Auntie Vanja had told her. Not a lot, it’s true, but a little bit. . Opened the curtain slightly, as the saying goes.

He killed somebody, your dad did. A young girl. . Well, it was never actually proved that he did it.

Pause.

But it’s obvious it was him.

Pause.

And then he couldn’t cope with what he’d done. He fell to pieces — it’s best not to dig around into it any more, I’ve said too much already.

Who?

Who had he killed? Why?

But Auntie Vanja had refused to go into that. The curtain was now closed again, it wasn’t any business of hers and she’d already said too much. He was presumably still in that home near Lejnice, she thought so at least. He’d gone there more or less straight away. But it’s best to forget all about it. Forget and move on.

Mikaela knew that already. That he was in that home — her mother had told her as much. I wonder why, Mikaela thought when she had thanked her aunt and hung up. Why had her mother told her that? If she didn’t want her daughter to start rooting around and finding out things, surely it would have been better not to give her that piece of information?

Or to say nothing at all?

I have to, she had explained. I’m obliged to tell you your father’s name and I’m obliged to tell you where he is. But I hope. . I hope with all my heart that you don’t go and visit him.

With all my heart? Mikaela thought. That sounded rather pathetic. And incomprehensible. Both yesterday and today. Just as incomprehensible as her mother’s actions were now and then. And to be honest, she was less surprised than she ought to have been. Less surprised than other eighteen-year-olds would have been in her situation.

I’m used to living on a knife-edge, she’d thought. For better or worse. I’m prepared for almost anything.

Perhaps that was why she’d chosen to tell the woman on the train not quite everything? Because she was ashamed of her crackpot family, just as she’d said!

Killed somebody? Good God, no, that was a step too far.

She came to the bridge. Crossed over and turned right. The overgrown ditch was dried out more or less completely: only a narrow, sticky string of mud down at the very bottom betrayed the fact that this was normally where the waters of the River Muur flowed. When the climate was rather different from what it was now. A large sign on a pole imparted this information, and also that the Sidonis Foundation was a mere couple of hundred metres further on.

Two hundred metres, Mikaela thought, and took a drink of water. After eighteen years — or sixteen, to be precise — I’m a mere two hundred metres away from my father.

The buildings were pale yellow in colour and surrounded by park-like grounds inside a low stone wall and a strip of deciduous trees. Elms or maples, she wasn’t sure which. Perhaps both, some seemed to be a bit different. Three buildings in fact: quite a large four-storey one, and two smaller ones two storeys high, forming two wings. A small asphalted car park with about ten vehicles. A black dog tethered outside an outbuilding, barking. No trace of any people. She followed the signs up the stairs in the main building, and stopped at an information desk. Two elderly women were deep in conversation with their backs towards her, and it was some time before she managed to attract their attention.

She explained why she was there, and was invited to take a seat.

After a few minutes a young man with a beard and wearing glasses appeared from out of a corridor, and asked if she was Mikaela Lijphart. She said that she was. He shook hands, and bade her welcome. Said his name was Erich, and that it was lovely weather. Then he beckoned her to follow him. He led her along two green corridors and up two blue staircases; she stayed a couple of paces behind him, and felt that she needed to go to the toilet. The water, of course. She had drunk the whole bottle while walking to the home.

They came to some kind of sitting room with a few sofa groups and a television set. There was still no sign of any people, and she wondered whether everybody had gone for a walk in view of the weather. For there must surely be other patients as well as her dad? Other psychiatric cases. She noticed a toilet door and asked Eric to wait for a moment.

Good Lord, she thought when she had finished and was washing away the worst of the summer heat. I want to go home. If he’s gone when I come out of here, I’ll do a runner.

But he was standing there, waiting.

‘Arnold Maager is your father, is that right?’

She nodded, and tried to swallow.

‘You’ve never met him before?’

‘No. Unless. . No. This will be the first time.’

He smiled, and she assumed he was trying to look benevolent. He couldn’t be more than two or three years older than she was, she thought. Twenty-one, twenty-two perhaps. She took a deep breath, and realized that she was shaking slightly.

‘Nervous?’

She sighed.

‘It’s a bit nerve-racking.’

He scratched at his beard and seemed to be thinking.

‘He’s not all that talkative, your dad. Not normally, at least. But you don’t need to worry. Do you want to be alone with him?’

‘Of course. Why?. . Is there something. .?

He shrugged.

‘No, not at all. I’ll take you to his room. If you want to sit there, that’s no problem. Or you could go for a walk in the grounds — he likes to wander about. . There’s tea and coffee in the kitchen as well.’

‘Thank you.’

He pointed the way to a new, short corridor. Let her go first.

‘Here we are. Number 16. I’ll be down in the office if there’s anything you want.’

He knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for a response. She closed her eyes and counted to five. Then she stepped inside.

The man sitting in the armchair by the open window reminded her of a bird.

That was her first thought, and somehow it stayed with her.

My dad’s a bird.

He was small and thin. Dressed in worn and shabby corduroy trousers far too big for him, and a blue shirt hanging loose over his hunched shoulders. The head on his skinny neck was long and narrow, his eyes dark and sunken, and his nose sharp and slightly curved. Thick hair, cut short. Mousy in colour. And stubble a few days old that was a shade darker.