Christian Jungersen - You Disappear

When we turn the corner and see the sky, we can hardly move. Never have I seen the like: red flames tower up from the horizon and have driven the violet back. Toward the west there are no clouds, so that the sinking sun is colossal, bright and blazing crimson. And above us the clouds are lit from below, by all the red. The beauty is paralyzing. And I see from Frederik, who’s standing still, that he can appreciate beauty again.

Our hanging sofa hangs where it always has. The grass is overgrown, though perhaps that’s just because the owners are on vacation. Frederik places the cushions on the sofa and sits down.

“Come.”

I seat myself at his side. The way we often sat during the good years.

Above us there’s a maze of grey and white folds, splashed with red. There lies the sense of smell, and there visual processing. There lies muscular control of the speech organs, and there short-term memory.

The soot from the burning factory and its dead workers has filtered out so much of the sun’s rays that we can gaze directly into its disk. The immense red sun. The unnatural sun. We can stare at it in silence: the beauty, this place, our life together. Here we sat once, and this was our world. We left the neighbor’s party because it felt better to be just the two of us alone. We made love, we set the crooked row of tiles in the bathroom upstairs. We argued about Niklas’s camera, and we shouted with joy when he showed us his tennis medal.

The hanging sofa rocks beneath us and that in itself is enough to make me smile.

Who shall I hold now as we gaze at our son? Who shall I smile at because we have made him? Who shall look at old vacation pictures with me? Or should those pictures just be thrown out? Should everything? And who should break into the yard with me and sit in this hanging sofa?

Finally, Frederik speaks. “Mia, I’m a real man. I pass gas under the covers and sometimes I talk too loud; sometimes I run my mouth off at the wrong time, or I forget to ask how you’re doing. And there were those times, years ago, with Dorte and Gitte. I know all that. And yet I still believe that you and I are the ones who belong together. That it’s you and I who are each other’s mate, and the love of each other’s life. Aren’t we?”

I want to ask him not to start in on all this again, but I hesitate a moment, and he must be able to see that.

He rises from the sofa and goes down on one knee in the grass, looking up at me.

I want to get up. “No, Frederik, I—”

“Won’t you please remain seated?”

“No!”

He rests a hand on my knee and I stay where I am, despite myself.

His voice is deep and a trace husky. “I know we’re already married, so I can’t propose to you.”

“Frederik, I’m with Bernard now. He’s my partner.”

But he keeps going anyway. “Mia, over the course of the past year you’ve become someone else. Everything you’ve been through, along with all you’ve read about the brain, have made you a changed person — more changed than I am right now. The old Mia’s disappeared. So I beg you: won’t you please try to be warm again? Won’t you please let me back in your good graces?”

The hanging sofa sways beneath me. I say, “When you wrote me, you said all the reading about brain damage had made me cold.”

“But that doesn’t really matter. I love you. You’re the one I belong with.”

“But why do you want to have me back then?”

“Because we do belong together! Because it’s the two of us, you and me! I implore you: won’t you please let yourself see that we’re well matched? In our own way? That you and I belong together?”

I sigh deeply. Several times.

“Mia?”

“Yes?”

“Mia, will you stay with me?”

The sky has never been lovelier. The clouds spill across it like blood flung against a white wall.

But it’s growing cold here. I’m getting the shivers as darkness pools under the trees and bushes that once were ours. Fall is beginning to take hold, and soon it’ll be one year ago that we were on holiday in Majorca.

“I’m sorry, Frederik. I can’t.”

Thanks to the staff and patients of the Department of Neurology at Glostrup Hospital, especially Hysse Forchhammer, chief neuropsychologist; Allan Andersen, chief attending physician and department head; and Jens Feilberg, neurologist.

To the many others who’ve taught me about brain injuries, especially Anders Gade, associate professor, Institute of Psychology, Copenhagen University; Louise Brückner Wiwe, neuropsychologist; Julie Lindegaard, founder, hjerneskadet.dk; Susan Søgaard, project manager, Center for Rehabilitation of Brain Injury; Kåre Fugleholm, attending physician, Department of Neurosurgery, Rigshospitalet; Britta Skovgaard; Svend-Erik Andreasen, director, Danish Brain Injury Association; and Jakob Ravn, physician.

To my discussion partners in the field of neurophilosophy, especially Lone Frank, neurobiologist and author; Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, professor, Department of Political Science and Government, Aarhus University; Adina Roskies, associate professor, Department of Philosophy, Dartmouth College; and Patricia Churchland, professor, University of California, San Diego.

Also toDorte Sestoft, head, Clinic of Forensic Psychiatry; Peter Kramp, former head, Clinic of Forensic Psychiatry; Knud Meden, defense lawyer; Niels Pontoppidan, former president, Supreme Court of Denmark; Benedicte Ejlers, Center for Ludomania; Jeanette Melchior, senior deputy judge, Probate Court; Benny Rastemand, accountant; and Margit Kibsgaard, former head, Department of Adult Disabilities, Municipality of Furesø.

And from the field of primary education toHans Kristensen, headmaster, Kildegård Private School; Per Toni Hansen, headmaster, Kvikmarkens Private School; Annette Parlo, teacher, Kildegård Private School; Helene Bundgaard, teacher, Nivå Central Elementary School; Sanne Rud, teacher, Trørød Elementary School; and Irene Jacobsen, teacher, Stavnsholt Elementary School.

To friends, colleagues, and others who have inspired the writing of this book, and who read and discussed the manuscript:Naja Marie Aidt, Trine Andersen, Ida Auken, Christina Englund, Sulaima Hind, Misha Hoekstra, Kirsten Jungersen, Dorte Klokker, Poul Lange, Karen Lumholt, Hanne Meden, Daniel Meyer, Channe Nussbaum, Simon Pasternak, Martin Tromp Permin, Johannes Riis, Bent Meier Sørensen, Christoffer Lumholt Stahlschmidt, Nan A. Talese, and Charlotte Weitze.

And most of all (of course) to Mette.

Christian Jungersen’s first novel, Undergrowth , won the Best First Novel award in Denmark in 1999 and became a bestseller. His second novel, The Exception , won two of Denmark’s highest literary awards, remained on the country’s top-ten bestseller list for an unprecedented eighteen months, and has been published in more than twenty countries. Jungersen lives on the island of Malta in the Mediterranean.