Christian Jungersen - You Disappear

I struggle to concentrate on the documents in front of me, deciding as I do that tonight I’ll google the combination of water, symbol , and psychoanalysis , perhaps neurology too.

Someone opens the front door of the apartment. Just a few months ago, I could distinguish between Frederik’s and Niklas’s footsteps, but lately they’ve started to sound the same.

“Niklas, is that you?”

No reply. Small steps, small heavy steps; he’s lugging something large into the apartment, my stifled unhappy son.

“Niklas?”

Frederik enters the living room. He’s bearing an enormous wooden box and smiling broadly. “See what I got from Sergei?”

“What?”

“Rabbits!”

“Rabbits?”

“Sergei and Tonya raise rabbits in their apartment. They breed them and sell them. They earn more than seven hundred crowns a month. And he’s given me five rabbits because we’ve gotten to be such good friends. So then we can also—”

“You want to breed rabbits, here in the apartment?”

“Sergei says it’s easy and fun, and I’d really like to start pulling my weight around here. Abdul and Nasira from down on the third floor, they’ve got an allotment garden and raise almost all their own vegetables. One can really save a great deal of money.”

“I don’t want you keeping rabbits here, not under any circumstances.”

“But Sergei and Tonya—”

“I don’t want it! Period! End. Of. Story. There’s no need to discuss it.”

“You can’t just—”

“It’s not going to happen!”

“You can’t just decide! I’m allowed to have rabbits if I want!”

“It doesn’t help to yell.”

“But how can you—”

“Frederik, here I was thinking that soon you could have the car keys again, and the password to go online, maybe even a credit card. But you’re certainly not as well as I was hoping.”

“I’m not—”

“Frederik.”

“Everyone else is raising something! Why can’t I? We don’t have any money!”

I let myself fall against the back of my chair and shut my eyes. “I’m just going to have to let go of this,” I say. “I really thought you’d made more progress.”

He stomps off to his room and slams the door. A few minutes later he comes out and, not saying a word, gets the box with the rabbits, hauls it into his room, and slams the door again. A little while later it’s the front door that slams, so violently the whole apartment echoes. He’s headed back to his new friends.

We’ve only been living in Farum Midtpunkt for two weeks, and already it’s as if Frederik’s lived here for years. He’s joined a bunch of people on welfare or disability who hang out on the lawns and in the other common areas all day long. Unconcerned and unself-conscious, he’s told them his whole life story and all his favorite jokes. He eats lunch with Sergei and goes fishing with him, sits at home with Abdul and Nasira or Khayyat and Sheza, drinking tea and watching Al Jazeera. Every day he comes home with new stories about our neighbors and their kids and grandkids, and already we’ve been invited to two big weddings.

Back to the pension papers. Now I can’t concentrate. I try calling Bernard, but he’s in a meeting.

• • •

Both Niklas and Frederik are eating at friends’ tonight, but it actually suits me just fine to eat alone. I’m beat. Besides everything that’s going on here with the three of us, I’ve taken a summer job working for Helena’s sister at her shop in Ordrup, spending almost every day of vacation selling fabrics and household knickknacks.

At ten thirty, Niklas lets himself into the apartment, and for the first time in eons he comes into where I am without being prompted. It’s just a couple of minutes before the killer’ll be revealed on the British crime series that I’m kicking back in front of, but I turn off the TV immediately.

There are a thousand things I want to ask him about, a thousand things I want to tell him. He looks at me a bit shyly and sits down on my in-laws’ old couch. I want to say that he doesn’t always have to act so brave about his father’s illness, that he can tell me what he’s thinking, that I won’t be nosy — I know he doesn’t like that — but will listen. And I want to say that I’m always there for him.

And as these things are running through my mind, I find myself, oddly enough, measuring the gap between our knees and the gap between our bodies — his on the couch, mine in the armchair. Why am I doing this? I’m much too conscious of the distance. Of our bodies. Is this consciousness the water that’s choking him? Am I being too much, too intense?

I cross one leg over the other, fold my hands and separate them, glance at Niklas, glance down. How can I set him at ease? Maybe I should start by saying something like I just want to tell you, I feel like you’ve done a remarkable job of dealing with your father’s illness . From there we can proceed to what’s been hardest for him, and maybe he’ll even want to share a drop of his sorrow with me.

But he beats me to the punch, and before I say anything, he asks, “Why can’t Dad have rabbits?”

“What?”

“Why can’t Dad have rabbits?”

“Did he ask you to talk to me about that?”

“No.”

“Hmm.” I’ll let it slide for now. “Niklas, we can’t just have a bunch of small animals running around everywhere. To begin with, there’s still all this clutter from moving, and then on top of that I have to take care of you and a sick husband. There’s just a lot to deal with — an incredible amount.”

“But Dad’s not really sick anymore, is he?”

“When he comes up with ideas like raising rabbits, you can bet he’s not quite right in the head.”

“I think they’re a good idea.”

“You think it’s a good idea for us to turn our new apartment into a rabbit farm?”

“Yeah.”

“And what’s so good about this idea?”

“Well, he’s at home all day long anyway. He really wants to help you earn some money, and he can’t get a job. It’s perfect — he has time, and we need the money.”

“How much has your father been talking to you about this?”

“Not much.”

He looks away, and I try to figure out if he went over to eat at Abdul’s, or if perhaps Frederik called him from Abdul’s phone.

“You probably don’t understand,” he says, “but it’s humiliating for a man when his wife earns all the money.”

“I probably don’t understand? Ha! But you do?”

“Yeah.”

I stare at him and can’t help but laugh. “Want a piece of cake?” I ask.

“Yes, please.”

So I walk into the kitchen to cut two pieces of cake and make myself a cup of coffee. Niklas isn’t allowed to drink coffee at night.

“And some black-currant juice,” he says from the living room.

“You obviously think Dad’s gotten better,” I say as I cut the cake. “Dad’s become a teenager, and you don’t realize that living with a teenager can be a little trying.”

I hear Niklas’s voice behind me. “If I were a boss somewhere, I’d definitely give him a job, now that he’s so well.”

I don’t answer. To avoid admitting how thoroughly changed Frederik is, Niklas and his grandparents have become acrobats of self-delusion. All day long, Thorkild and Vibeke try to come up with little episodes from Frederik’s boyhood to prove he isn’t sick, since their anecdotes all show that he’s always been the way he is now. Thorkild will call, totally hopped up, to tell me how once in a canoe on summer vacation in Norway in 1979, Frederik insisted on telling a certain joke over and over again, though everyone told him to stop. The next day it’ll be something else, and I can’t even tell if the stories are real or if they’re just making them up.