Christian Jungersen - You Disappear

RESEARCH. For the first time, scientists have succeeded in altering behavior among individuals of one species by giving them a gene from another species. The journal Nature reports that the gene, which was transplanted from prairie voles to meadow voles, changed the latter from polygamous loners to monogamous herd animals.

After the transplantation, researchers at Emory University in Atlanta found major changes in the behavior of male voles when they were placed with females.

While the male meadow voles had previously spent only 5 % of their time with females, they now — just like male prairie voles — spent fully half their time with females, and they took good care of their offspring as well. In addition, the males now remained with only one female each, whereas before they had mated indiscriminately.

In the experiment, only a single gene was transferred between the two species — the gene for what is known as the vasopressin receptor. Many other animals, including humans, have their own version of this gene. (KS)

“There’s something you should know.”

Helena’s on the phone, and she sounds alarmed. I’m in Nørreport Station, heading up the escalator from the metro.

“Yes?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe we should talk about it when I see you instead. It’s to do with Bernard.”

“Well now you have to tell me.”

I hear how my voice gets hard-edged and clipped. I’m not very good at this, I think. Have we been found out? By Vibeke? Frederik? Who? I’ve known the whole time that this was coming.

“All right,” Helena says. “Where are you?”

“Nørreport Station. On my way home from meeting with Frederik’s old secretary.”

“Oh, that’s right. How’d it go?”

“First tell me what’s up with Bernard.”

“Are you sitting down?”

“No, I’m walking. Stop it already — spit it out!”

“Umm …”

I’ve reached a packed throng of people in the granite-walled passage between the first and second escalator.

She hesitates. Then she says, “My friend Sissel slept with him.”

Helena says this as if it’s supposed to be some sort of sensational shock, and then the line goes completely quiet.

I let out a big sigh of relief. “I know that’s not true.”

“Sissel says he sleeps with loads of women. He’s a real lothario. He’s not at all what you think.”

“Sissel must be mistaken.”

“I just thought I should let you know.”

“All right.” A harried businessman with a big briefcase bumps into me. “You’re right to tell me, but when you meet Bernard, you’ll see that she’s definitely got the wrong man. You just have to see him for two seconds around his wife.”

“Yes, I know you’ve said …”

I put the ridiculous notion out of my thoughts, and then I ask, “Did you tell Sissel about me?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then how does she—”

“I just said a friend and a lawyer ,” she says, speaking more quickly now. “No one would be able to tell I meant the two of you, and …” Here she commences on a long, convoluted explanation.

I wouldn’t exactly say that Helena and I are about to drift apart. Yet somehow, I feel that Andrea and I are more on the same wavelength, since like me, her understanding of the world is based on a certain knowledge of neuroscience. A little while later, Helena and I hang up.

I’m still hauling around the Netto bag, with the things I bought to make my encounter with Trine look like a coincidence. I stand on the tram platform at Nørreport, surrounded by wet people who all look exhausted, going home from work to the suburbs.

Our friends at Saxtorph all thought that I tried to commit suicide. They thought I ruined their headmaster, and their school. I drove them out of paradise long before anyone knew Frederik was ill.

I call up Bernard, even though I know he’s sitting in a meeting for the next forty-five minutes, and I leave a message on his machine.

“It went swimmingly with Trine. She said that Frederik changed a lot . There’s definitely something we can use.” Then it just slips out. “Other than that, Helena just called and said you know her friend Sissel from the Energy Agency.”

Should I have kept my mouth shut? But there isn’t anything, is there. I keep talking.

“In any case, I’m going to call Frederik now and tell him about Trine. I’m sure he’ll call you a little later and tell you all about it.”

I call Frederik after boarding the tram to Farum. I sit leaning right up against the window and whisper into my handset, covering my mouth and phone with my hand.

“Did you tell people at school I tried to commit suicide?”

“No, not at all.”

“But then where’d they get that idea from?”

“I have no clue.”

“You do understand, don’t you, that it’s not especially nice to hear that old friends have been thinking that?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

There are so many faces in Farum that are familiar from the old days. I used to like the fact that it was a small town where I was always saying hi to neighbors’ friends or to parents of kids I used to have in class.

But ever since the embezzlement made headlines, I’ve stopped nodding and smiling every which way. I’ve withdrawn from the community, and people haven’t said hello to me for a long time either.

So that’s how I walk home, in my own little bubble. I wonder: how many of the people I pass have heard rumors — not just about how I was mixed up in the embezzlement, but also before that, about how I tried to kill myself four years ago, and how ever since, I’ve been a millstone around the neck of my husband and his school.

I’m definitely moving to another town. Next summer, when I get my divorce, I’m going to move. And I’ll get a job in another town too, and then I can be 100 percent Bernard’s, regardless of whether I can get him to leave Lærke or not.

Darkness falls early because of the clouds still hanging overhead, and in no time I’m walking the long paths connecting the apartment blocks of Farum Midtpunkt. As soon as I step into this ghetto of mine, my steps slow and I inhabit my body once more. Here, among the rust-clad apartment blocks, I can relax. Here there are fewer people I know my own age. Groups of young immigrant men are standing around. We’ve seen each other before, some of them years ago in the schoolyard, others just because now this is my neighborhood too. We greet each other with a glance or a small nod. Maybe they know that I’m a teacher at a nearby school, but I don’t think they realize a lot of people suspect me of embezzling. And if they did, I wouldn’t mind.

I call Bernard again, since he hasn’t returned my call. He doesn’t answer the phone. His meeting should have been over a long time ago.

Frederik’s made us dinner, and as soon as we’ve sat down and dished out the fried liver and potatoes, he tells me what Bernard thinks about my conversation with Trine.

I’m very conscious not to interrupt the arc of the bite of potato I bring to my mouth. Not too quick, and not too slow; Frederik mustn’t notice anything odd.

“So you’ve talked with Bernard?” I ask in my calmest, my most restrained voice.

“Yes.” And yet he must notice something anyway, for he asks, “What? What? Is there something wrong with that?”

“Not at all, of course not. What’d he say?”

“He thinks that what you’ve done is great. It could make a huge difference—” He stops. “What is it? Now what have I done?”

“Nothing. You haven’t done anything.”