Lene Kaaberbol - Death of a Nightingale

She got up, went over to them. Attempted to smile.

“Is Nina home?” she asked in her best Danish. After more than two years, she understood most things, but Danish words still felt like slippery stones in her mouth—foreign objects that didn’t belong.

“Why?” The man gave her a cool, measuring look.

Maybe Nina had asked him to be on guard. Maybe she had said he should keep his mouth shut and not reveal where Katerina was.

“Katerina,” she said anyway and stood her ground, blocking their way on the sidewalk. “Tell me where my daughter is, please,” she said in English.

The boy with the big black mustache stopped abruptly and looked questioningly at his father.

“What is she saying?” he said. “Dad, come on. We’re going to be late.”

Nina’s husband definitely looked unfriendly now. He stepped into the road to get by her, with the boy and the scowling teenage girl right behind him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Nina doesn’t live here anymore, and I don’t know where your daughter is.”

They couldn’t leave. She had waited for hours; they couldn’t leave. Natasha grabbed the boy’s sleeve and held on. “Have you seen Katerina? My girl? Is she at your house?”

The boy attempted to pull away, but she had a good grip on the soft down jacket and held him back. Grabbed hold with her other hand as well, on the collar under the boy’s chin. His skin felt burning hot against her stiff, cold fingers. His eyes were wide open in surprise.

Then Nina’s husband shoved her hard, forcing her to take a step back. Natasha’s eyes slid from the boy and back to the man. She could see he was surprised, but he was also angry now. His eyes were dark, narrow slits in his winter-pale face.

For a moment she was sure he would hit her. Punish her, like Michael would have done. Pavel had never touched her, of course he hadn’t—he had been too busy constructing pink castles in the air where violence would have clashed with the stage sets. Michael had had different ideas, and maybe Nina’s husband wasn’t as unlike him as she had first thought.

Natasha let go of the boy’s jacket and took a step backward. “Please, tell me. I need to see Nina. She know where is my daughter. I have to talk to her,” she said in her best English.

Nina’s husband was walking away, shielding the children from her with his body. “Welcome to the club,” he said over his shoulder. “The rest of this family has tried to make contact with her for the last fifteen years. So good luck with that. I have no idea where she is, and I don’t care.”

Natasha touched the knife in her pocket. But he was already on his way with both children ahead of him as if they were chickens he was shooing into a henhouse. Only the girl looked back.

The gym smelled of apple fritters and coffee and faintly of sour gym sneakers. Nina’s gaze moved like a radar shadow across everything that was shorter than a four and a half feet: Spider-Men, musketeers, carrots with legs, Tiggers, pirates, a slightly dated Ninja Turtle, a pumpkin—recycled from Halloween?—and a couple of witches, a Darth Vader and a knight in a silver helmet and a homemade coat of chain mail. My God, Nina thought, how many hours had it taken to sew all those key rings onto the leather vest—and what did it weigh?

She had to check the knight and Vader twice, but then she was certain.

It was 11:02, and Anton wasn’t there.

The noise was earsplitting. Excited children’s voices climbed to a register that would make any soprano envious, and the parents’ attempts at chatting had begun building in a slow but relentless crescendo in order to be heard above the children and themselves.

“Coffee?” yelled a mother from Anton’s class and handed her a mug without waiting for an answer. “Where is Anton?”

“He’s coming with Morten,” Nina yelled back and saw the mother’s expression change because she suddenly remembered the divorce.

“Oh, right,” the mother said. “But how nice that you can do this together.”

“Yes.” Nina smiled mechanically. 11:06, and still no Anton. Morten was usually early for these kinds of things.

“There’s Minna,” said the mother and pointed. “She wanted to be a shower stall this year. Isn’t it amazing how creative children can be?”

Minna. Yes, that was her name. A highly energetic and slightly trying little red-haired girl whose freckled face right now was sticking out of a box affixed with a flapping plastic curtain, real faucets, a soap dish and a little steel basket with shampoo and a sponge. The red hair was, of course, crammed into a flowered bathing cap.

“We got most of it for next to nothing at IKEA,” said Minna’s mother happily. “She even has a spray bottle, so she can squirt people if they want a real bath experience.”

“Fantastic,” said Nina. 11:14. The teachers had already begun to herd the children toward one end of the room, where they were lining up. Two barrels hung from the rafters on blue nylon ropes, waiting to be beaten to a pulp in time-honored Danish carnival tradition. At least there were no longer live cats inside them, thought Nina with an involuntary shudder, looking at the grinning black paper cats that adorned the outside of the barrels.

“Little ones to the right and bigger ones to the left,” shouted one of the phys ed teachers, a tall man from southern Jutland called Niels, who was currently dressed in a Robin Hood cape and a green crepe paper hat with a pheasant feather.

“Am I little or big?” peeped a Tigger who was definitely no more than four.

“You are little.”

“What about meee?” hollered a brawny nine-year-old, a Frankenstein’s monster rubber mask his only nod to dressing up.

“What do you think, Marcus? Back in line you go. You were behind Selma.”

There he was. There they were, all three of them, Morten and Ida and Anton. Ida had not stooped to fancy dress, but the fact that she was here at all was a major concession. Anton was wearing a pair of blue overalls with extra big yellow buttons sewed on, a red shirt, white gloves and a red cap with a white M on the front. His eyebrows had been drawn on with a thick makeup pencil so they looked like black slugs, and a bushy black mustache decorated his eight-year-old upper lip.

Nina’s heart flickered in her chest.

“Mom,” he yelled and came racing through the crowd. “Look! I’m Super Mario!”

“Yes, you definitely are,” she said. She couldn’t stop her hands, which, entirely following their own agenda, tugged at the blue suspenders, touched his warm cheek, rested against his soft neck under the pretext of straightening his cap. He didn’t want a hug, she knew that, not here, not now, while all his friends were watching. But her hungry hands couldn’t quite let him be.

She could tell by Morten’s tight shoulders that something was wrong, but she didn’t know if it was simply because she was here. Should she have asked? No, damn it. She had a right to come see her son hit the carnival barrel without asking him first.

“Hi, Mom,” said Ida.

A year ago it had been “Nina.” Now she was Mom again. Ida also looked a little less like a caricature than usual—not so much doomsday mascara and a T-shirt that wasn’t actually black.

“Hi, sweetie. It was nice of you to come.”

Ida shrugged. “I’ve promised to cheer for the little maggot if he gets to be the Cat King,” she said, referring to the honor bestowed on the child whose blow finally cracked the barrel. “Plus I made the cap.”

“He looks totally cool,” said Nina and, to her horror, felt a burning flood of tears well up. She had to control herself! Ida would never forgive her if she suddenly started blubbering in front of most of the school.