Christian Jungersen - You Disappear

“Yes.”

He looks at me only very briefly before turning his attention back to Frederik. “If the truth is on our side and you did undergo a transformation in the period leading up to the crime, it may be that some of your former staff members will acknowledge it.”

In the moment he finally met my gaze, I saw how capable he is of shutting me out of his life. How he’s a noble person who puts his sick wife before anything else.

We do not flirt. I do not try at all to be charming, and he doesn’t try to look good in front of me either. That’s it. It’s over.

“Is there anyone you worked closely with, who you think we could interview?” he asks Frederik.

“There were three secretaries in the office. If we’re going to ask any of them, we should begin with Trine.”

• • •

No longer can any of us — Niklas, Thorkild, Vibeke, and me — avoid understanding what’s happened. Niklas is always out with Emilie and his friends, while the rest of us lie around in our beds or in front of the TV, sprawling like mournful dogs anywhere there’s a little warmth and space.

Since the auction house has taken my most expensive prints and pieces of furniture, I move around our home bumping repeatedly into big patches of empty space — places where there used to be something I was fond of, where now it’s utterly bare. In a way this feels more real. Frederik’s soul has disappeared, and now everyone can finally see what we’ve known for so long: that the contents of our lives have been torn away.

But we need to get hold of at least a couch and a dining table and chairs, so on Sunday afternoon Frederik and I drive the trailer over to Thorkild and Vibeke’s to get some surplus furniture from their basement.

In the old days, Vibeke would have baked a nice cake for our visit, but she’s been lying sick in bed this past week. In the old days, I would have then baked a cake to take along, but I don’t feel up to it either, so I buy one at the bakery.

When we sit down to afternoon tea, Vibeke sets out my cake with one she bought. Hers is much more expensive.

“But you knew that I would buy a cake,” I say.

“Yes, but I fell for this one, it looked so tempting. So we have two.”

Fortunately, my inhibitory mechanism is robust enough that I can behave as if nothing’s wrong. But is this the way it’s going to be now? Am I going to be humiliated the rest of my life just because her son ruined me and not her? We’ve only been in their house five minutes, and already I feel the need for a few moments to myself.

“I’m just going to run down to the basement and look at the dining table,” I say.

Seconds later I’m halfway out of the living room, but in the doorway I hear Frederik behind me. “Shouldn’t we all go down there together?”

I curse his obliterated capacity for empathy as they all troop down behind me.

Easy now. Easy. Easy.

I’m playing tennis, the balls on the clay court, the low sun. I want to enter my daydream. I’m sitting in the hanging sofa, it’s evening and we’ve come from the neighbor’s garden party. We’re happy, me and Healthy Frederik. That’s key. It’s Healthy Frederik I want to be alone with. We go on a walk around the lake. And it’s Healthy Frederik.

But the fantasies no longer open up for me. They don’t invite me in — not with Frederik beside me in the hanging sofa, not with Bernard.

In one of the basement rooms, Thorkild and Vibeke have piled up all their old junk. Someplace in the very back are buried a dining table and chairs.

“It’s great that you can use them,” Vibeke says to Frederik. “It’s a good thing we saved them. They aren’t anything special, but it’s the first table your father and I owned as a couple.”

Was I crazy when I accepted this offer? It must be possible to borrow furniture somewhere else. I sure as hell don’t want their furniture in my house after all. It’ll be torture.

The table is hidden behind so much clutter as to be invisible. Frederik brings out some chairs that stand right behind the door. Then he grabs hold of two large moving boxes that also go into the hall, then two suitcases and a food mixer.

Vibeke says, “Stop, stop. We were just going to come down here to look. The tea’s hot upstairs.”

There’s a restless energy in Frederik’s eyes. “But aren’t we going to look at the table? That’s what we came down here for.”

He starts struggling with an armchair. Then a freezer chest.

“Come, we’re going upstairs,” Vibeke says. “Frederik, come along.”

He doesn’t answer, just continues to heave on the freezer.

“ Now , Frederik. Come upstairs!”

But he doesn’t join us, and so I have to sit alone with Thorkild and Vibeke.

“Your cake looks delicious,” Vibeke says after we’ve sat down.

“Not as delicious as yours,” I say. “Anyone can see that.”

None of us believes in Bernard’s plan for saving Frederik. Prison awaits, and then the dole. The only one who puts any stock in the plan is Frederik. Then again, it’s impossible to know what’s really what in his inner mire of depression and antidepressants, lack of empathy and ill-timed elation.

My gaze drifts out of the dining room and into the living room, where two of the walls are covered with dark wooden shelves. I’ve paged through some of Thorkild’s books on past visits, when I was trying to disappear from these rooms. A large part of them are history books, with a focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Denmark. Despite a brilliant career as an educator, Thorkild sometimes upbraids himself for not pursuing a university career as a historian.

“Wouldn’t you like to try this other cake too?” Vibeke has the cake knife in hand, ready to put a slice of her cake on my plate.

“No thanks, I’m not that keen on raspberry these days.”

Again silence, broken only by the faint sounds of Frederik pottering about in the basement. He and I haven’t left home on this Sunday outing; we’ve brought the mood of our home with us.

Thorkild’s spoon clinks against his plate. His voice is breezy. “You know who your best friends are by the fact that you can be silent together.”

Vibeke doesn’t give up. “I could cut the raspberries off—”

“No!” I say it with too much emphasis, I know.

Then Frederik’s back, and he places on the table a book, on the history of European philosophy. “I found this.”

Vibeke’s already putting food on his plate. “I’m sure you can eat two big pieces.”

Frederik looks at his father and says, “Mia leaves neurophilosophy articles lying around at home, spread out everywhere. So I need something to read as a bit of an antidote.”

“ I leave things lying around? Am I the one who makes such a mess? How many times have I had to take your speaker boards and—” I stop mid-sentence, despite my fury; it all seems so pointless.

But Frederik continues unabated. “She’s convinced that new brain research is going to invalidate twenty-five hundred years of philosophy. But the question of free will was the same back then as it is today. Nothing’s new. Nothing at all in twenty-five hundred years.”

Thorkild reaches for the book and grips it firmly, regarding it with fondness.

“If you’re interested, I’ve got some others you can borrow as well. How on earth did it end up in the basement? It really shouldn’t be down there.” He gently strokes the dust jacket, and it occurs to me that I’ve never seen him touch Vibeke that way. He leafs through it and leans over, suddenly engrossed.

Vibeke sets Frederik’s plate before him. “Well, what do you think, Frederik? Do human beings have free will?”