Naja Aidt: Baboon

Suddenly we found ourselves in the middle of an astonishing landscape: luminous, white sand dunes on all sides, wind swept, small trees twisting under the vast open sky. We gasped joyfully as though coming up for air after being under water too long. We stood there looking around, our eyes blinking after staring at the gravel road in the dark forest for so long. Even the smell was different here, salty and fresh, the sea had to be close by. But we lost our bearings long ago. We were going in circles. It was hot. We had a six-year-old boy and dachshund with us. The bikes were old and rusty, the danger of getting a flat was imminent. We stood completely still and listened. The wind moved through the leaves with a faint rustling, the birds sang, and then one shrieked, hoarse and desperate, as if for its life. Sebastian looked nervously at me. "It's just a buzzard. Nothing to be afraid of."

"Come here, Seba. Do you want a cookie?" You called the boy over with excessive gentleness, and I caught myself jerking my head around with an exaggerated and timid movement to look behind us. There was the forest we had come from, dark and still as a deep lake. The path stretched before us through what looked like a little birch grove, and beyond that the dense pine forest, moss, heather, and fallen trunks, grayish black with cracked branches sticking out like spikes.

"My legs are tired," complained Sebastian. Then he broke down — his dirty hands hid his face, his shoulders shook.

You took him on your lap.

Sitting in the grass, you rocked him back and forth while he cried. You looked at me with large worried eyes. I stared back. "What?" I said. "Nothing," you answered, stroking the boy's head. "It's going to be dark in four or five hours."

"So? What do you want me to do?"

You sighed.

I lay down with my arms under my head.

* * *

Sebastian is turning seven in fourteen days. In August, he will enter the first grade. In a way, he's the same as when he was a baby. The same slightly worried look, those little knit brows. It looks like he'll have an overbite. Then we'll have to go through all that with braces and headgear. I open my eyes and you are standing over me with a look of hatred. Maybe you've been standing there for a few minutes. "Shouldn't we get going?" you ask. I get up and suddenly notice how tired I am. My arms are completely limp and there's an overwhelming feeling of weakness throughout my entire body. The water bottle is empty. The dog pants with its tongue hanging out of its mouth. You lift it up into the cardboard box on the bike rack. Sebastian bravely picks up his bike and rides ahead of us. His bell rings with every bump in the road, and the flag he was so proud of when I mounted it on the rear mudguard looks cheap and shabby now. We ride on in silence. Every time we come to an intersection, you look inquiringly at me, but I'm not the local here, and so each time you end up saying something to the effect of: "So, um, I think we turn right here. I think I remember that woodpile." Then, without a word, we turn right, until Sebastian throws himself on the ground, yelling and screaming. He's completely hysterical. He thrashes at us every time we get close. I use sour and you, sweet. In the end, I shake him hard, shouting that he should calm down or else we'll ride off without him, and then he can cry all he wants, until that buzzard comes and gets him. I regret the moment immediately and put him down. He bawls, holding onto my leg. You're sitting, leaning against a tree stump. Some ants are crawling up Sebastian's neck, dangerously close to his mouth. "What the hell?" I shout. He shrieks and throws himself to the ground. He spits and sputters and slaps himself in the face. I have to pull off all his clothes to brush off the ants. He flails and kicks. He's bit in several places. The snot runs from his nose. I pick up the naked boy and stand holding him for a while. He just whimpers now, pressing his face against my chest.

"If we're not riding in circles, we should reach Bulbjerg at some fucking point. It's impossible to ride in circles here, for Christ's sake," I say. "It's impossible in a shitty little forest like this," I hiss. "Anne!" I shout. You finally stand up, your face gray and streaked. You rub your eyes like a child. "I know the guy who owns the hotdog stand," you then say.

"What hotdog stand?" I ask irritated. "The stand near Bulbjerg," you whisper.

Sebastian breathes so close to my ear that it tickles terribly; I let him slide down to the ground. He wraps his arms around my hips.

"Seba, sit on the back of my bike," I say loud and furious.

I pull myself away from the child and fling the yellow kid's bike into the bushes. I think how it looks like evidence from a grisly crime. Someone will come across it one day. They'll find my fingerprints on the frame and Sebastian's on the handlebars. Perhaps yours as well. Maybe they'll think we murdered the child. "We'll get your bike another day," I assure Sebastian. He's sitting behind me, arms around my back, still naked, his legs dangling, and the fear that he'll get a foot caught in the wheel irritates me, the same way a mosquito waiting in the dark until you're about to fall asleep irritates.

We ride like this for nearly an hour; it's muggy, and I guess that it's almost six o'clock, but neither of us has a watch on. We left home at nine in the morning. It was supposed to be about ten miles from the summerhouse to Bulbjerg. We had wanted to see the beautiful ice-age landscape. I also wanted to show Sebastian the German bunker. We were going to have a good talk about the time of the Occupation.

* * *

When I woke up this morning, you were watching me. We were both lying on our sides, facing each other, and you were watching me. You smiled. The light fell from the skylight in a sharp diagonal line onto the white duvet. I felt like I was being spied on. Then Sebastian was standing in the doorway. He said the dog had peed on the rug in the living room. A little while later I could hear you laughing and chatting in the kitchen. We used to do it on that rug. We were here in the fall, it was cold, and in the evenings we lit the fire. I slowly peeled the clothes off her, and she looked beautiful on the red Persian rug, in the warm light from the fire. She spread her legs. She looked at me with dark, almost sorrowful eyes. Your sister has a tighter cunt than you. I wonder whether you're born that way, or if it's just because she's so young. Tine is only your half sister. Sebastian is adopted.

"No one in this goddamn family is really related," your stepfather always proclaims on Christmas and Easter when he gets up to make a toast. "Assholes!" he yells later, collapsing in his drunkenness, so that your cousins have to carry him out.

Now it's usually on the rug at home that I make love to her. That she makes love to me. When you're out and Tine babysits Sebastian. When he's sleeping. I enjoy looking at her when she's lying there, vulnerable and exposed on the cold floor, and at the same time protected by the carpet's soft pile. She's a little cold. She gives good head. Her palate is warm and hard, and she concentrates, always making it into a little performance. I miss her. I miss her thick brown hair, her warm neck, her profile when she's lost in thought with one hand under her chin, unaware that I'm standing there in the dim light watching her. I feel horny and desperate. It's come this far. I thought I could easily handle a couple of weeks' vacation up here; after all, we do have a child together.

* * *

We're riding down the hill at a good speed, and how it actually happens I have no clear recollection, but a stick gets caught in your spokes and I ram into your back wheel, the bikes flip, and the boy and the dog are thrown to the side: they both land in the ditch; Sebastian hits his head against a large rock and the sound it makes when he hits that fucking rock makes my skin burn; my throat is dry; I'm afraid he's dead. You're already over him, calling out, crying. I push you aside with all my strength, you gasp for air and fall back and away. Sebastian is unconscious. He's pale as death, and the new fine jagged front teeth have split open his bottom lip. He's bleeding.