Christian Jungersen - You Disappear

Walking along Lake Farum: Frederik and me in the sun. He wraps a strong arm around my waist. We meet the parents of some—

“Mia?”

I hear a knock on the door, and Bernard’s voice.

“Mia?”

I open the door. He stands close, right outside the door. Now I feel it. He comes even closer. The exchange. Our breath, our pupils.

I grab him, pull him into the bathroom, close the door, and kiss him. He kisses me. He presses me to him, so that for a moment I can’t breathe. Our tongues, our lips, our skin and spittle. I encircle his shoulders. Our eyes and noses, bellies and groins. It’ll never stop, we’ll keep on and on. So it was true. So there were signals from him. It’ll go on forever. So it’ll be the two of us now.

He gasps for breath, and I pull my face back a little so I can smile at him.

But now he’s gasping too much for breath. He tears himself free and stands doubled over, his hands on his knees as if he’s going to throw up.

I’ve been in a state of alert for months and I don’t even think, I just shout for the realtor before I know what I’m doing. “Call an ambulance! Damn it! Damn it! Call an ambulance!”

The husbands of my friends in support group keep having strokes. Strokes right and left. The men drop dead. The real estate agent’s steps sound on the far side of the bathroom door. He knocks over something with a crash and swears under his breath.

I’m not sure if I should reach out to touch Bernard. May I hold him?

“Bernard? Can you say something?”

“I’m not ill,” he says. “Or rather yes, I am ill, but I’m not … He shouldn’t call for an ambulance.”

I drop to a knee so that I can see his face. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

It takes time to get such wet cheeks; he must have been crying while we kissed.

“Bernard? What’s wrong?”

The realtor enters the bathroom with his phone to his ear. “They’re asking what happened. What’s wrong? What should I tell them?”

We both look at Bernard, who doesn’t answer.

“Bernard?”

“It’s nothing. Just hang up. We don’t need an ambulance.”

But he’s speaking with Frederik’s voice. The toneless voice from the weeks after the operation. My friends’ husbands. My husband.

I find myself shouting. “He himself doesn’t know! That’s one of the symptoms — apoplexy! His brain!”

Now Bernard is weeping — again, almost like Frederik. “It isn’t apoplexy. I’m sorry!”

I know what the eyes of a stroke victim look like.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he repeats.

“There’s no reason to … can you move your right side? Can you say your name? Do you know where we are?”

“I have to go now,” he says.

He straightens up and heads for the door.

“You can’t go now!”

“I’ve got to.”

I run after him down the narrow stairs.

“But you can’t drive a car,” I say.

“Yes. I can drive just fine.”

He’s walking quickly, so I have to run around the parked cars and back onto the sidewalk, where I plant myself in front of the station wagon door. “You aren’t allowed to get in. This is for your own good.”

“Mia, stop it now.”

And now he’s speaking in his own voice again.

Maybe it’s me who’s sick. He isn’t, in any case. Maybe I just can’t deal with kissing another man. I step aside, and he gets behind the wheel.

“I’m really sorry,” he says. “I’m really, really sorry.”

I want to go closer. Lean into the car. But something tells me I shouldn’t. And then he drives away.

The real estate agent and I are left standing there.

The agent leads me back to the apartment, and now it’s myself I don’t dare to let drive. With solicitude, he guides me over to an armchair in the middle room, the room we wanted to open up into the kitchen. And then he gets me a glass of water in what might be Frederik’s and my new home.

Soon we won’t be living here anymore. I look at my white house. The black-stained timbers, the light shadows on the wall where I scrubbed away the graffiti. I take it in as if I’m not looking at a real house, just paging through an old photo album.

Someday, years from now, I’ll point to this page and say, We used to live here .

It looks so charming, so homey , a future acquaintance will say, sitting beside me on the cheap ugly couch I’ll have then.

Yes. We were happy living there .

And then a stillness will descend between us. She won’t say, That must have been before it all went south —and really, what else could she say? And I won’t say, That was when I kissed another man . What else would there be for me to say?

The house back then, the photo poster you can faintly make out through Niklas’s window, the wicker enclosure I built around the garbage cans with my own hands.

I continue to leaf through the album as I walk down the flagstones to the front door. Yes; we were happy living here.

Before I pass the FOR SALE sign, I wipe my lips off on my sleeve one more time. Bernard also wanted to, didn’t he? Should I call him, text him? Have I done something awful? Have I wrecked the good working relationship we have with our lawyer?

In the living room, Eurosport is on with the sound turned down. I switch it off. On the floor lie three books, two of them open. I leave them lying there but pick up the plate with the jam sandwich, one-fourth eaten.

I place it in the kitchen, where I find another plate with bread and jam, this one half eaten. I yell up to Frederik, who’s in his workshop, no doubt. “I’m home now! It was a lovely apartment — just the thing for us!”

He doesn’t answer.

Our folding clotheshorse is also in the kitchen. For once, Frederik’s remembered to hang up the clothes that don’t get tumble-dried, just like I’ve asked him to.

“It’s great that you’ve hung up the laundry!” I shout. “I really appreciate it!”

Back in the living room, I see some circulars spread out on the dinner table. A plate protrudes from the top bookshelf, and when I take it down I discover a jam sandwich that looks like it’s been there a couple of days without me spotting it.

Then I notice that one of the papers on the table is damp. I lift it up and see my cream-colored Odd Molly blouse lying beneath it. Frederik must have gotten distracted when he was about to hang it up. I walk back into the kitchen and hang it on the clotheshorse. Some of the printing ink has rubbed off on it, so it’ll have to be washed again. Perhaps it can still be salvaged.

“Niklas?” I call out.

There’s no answer.

Upstairs, I knock on his door. I look inside, but he’s out. Of course.

So I go into Frederik’s workshop, but he’s gone too. On the floor is a rolled-up poster that used to lie in my closet. Frederik must have been meaning to hang it up, which would also explain the hammer I saw in the kitchen.

I find him in our room. He’s lying in bed with his clothes on. I’ve found him here often enough, but today he’s pulled the comforter up over himself and drawn the curtains.

“How are you?” I ask.

He doesn’t say anything, just stares at a spot on the wall. He’s different, I can tell right away.

I sit down on my side of the bed and wait.

At last he says, “Mia, there’s something I’ve been thinking about.”

“Yes?”

“Something I’d like to ask you.”

“Yes.”

Another long pause. The curtains in here are pale, with a rather loose weave; they don’t do a very good job of keeping out the light. One of them trembles slightly. The light in Majorca, I think, early one morning.