Lene Kaaberbol - Death of a Nightingale

A moment passed. Then Anna Olesen took a step back so the light fell on her hair and face.

“The nurse,” she said. “You were here the night when Natasha …”

“Yes.”

“Come in.”

THE FIRE GLOWEDbehind the glass doors of the big white brick oven between the kitchen and the living room. Anna placed a Bodum glass mug in front of Nina.

“It’s tea,” she said. “I can make coffee too. But that’ll take a few minutes.”

“Tea is fine.”

Tea, coffee … Nina didn’t care. Her gaze wandered across the neat dining room table, the stove with two bubbling pots, preparations for dinner. For one or for two?

No Rina, anyway. Not here.

“I came to ask if you had seen Rina.”

Anna wrinkled her eyebrows. “Little Katerina? A man came to ask the same thing a little while ago. But why on earth would I have?”

“She has disappeared from … the camp.” At the last minute Nina chose to simplify the explanation. “And our only clue to where she might have gone is that she called here.”

“Here? When?”

“This morning. Between nine and ten.” Between 9:40 and 9:42, to be exact, but Nina had learned that people usually looked at her oddly when she gave the time down to the minute.

“I was probably still out with the dog then.”

“Who was the man? The one who asked for her?”

“One of the policemen searching Michael’s house. A DI somebody or other, I don’t recall his name. But why would Katerina call me? I haven’t seen her in … well, since then.”

“She’s had a couple of hard days. Maybe she needed to talk with someone who would understand her.” But that person couldn’t have been Anna, Nina thought suddenly, because Rina had spoken in Ukrainian. “You haven’t seen Natasha, have you?” she asked casually.

Anna pushed her reading glasses into her hair and smiled sarcastically. “My dear, I know that Natasha is wanted by every police authority in the entire country. If I was really hiding her in my leaky hayloft, do you think I would tell you? But you’re welcome to look.”

“No, no, it doesn’t matter.” If Natasha was here, it certainly wouldn’t be in the hayloft. But Nina couldn’t really believe that she would dare to come here. Michael Vestergaard’s house lay just on the other side of the hill; it must have been swarming with police for the past twenty-four hours. No doubt Anna had been questioned as well, by people who were somewhat more professional at that kind of thing than Nina was.

“How long has Katerina been missing?”

“For almost four hours.”

“If she was really on her way here, she should have been here long ago. Unless …”

“Unless what?”

“The bus doesn’t go down Tundra Lane; its nearest stop is at Isterødvej. That’s quite a walk. And in this weather …”

“Are you saying you think she might have gotten lost?”

“Henrik cleared the road with the tractor again just before you came. You and your taxi were lucky you didn’t try an hour earlier.”

“We have to look for her. Or …” She glanced at Anna and noticed, really for the first time, that she was, in fact, talking to a fairly senior citizen. “I have to, anyway.”

“Wait,” said Anna. “I’ll come. I just need to put some proper clothes on.”

Five minutes later they were on their way out into the blizzard, armed with two powerful flashlights and, in Anna’s case, a handful of dog biscuits and a leash.

“If that stupid dog would only come when I call her, she could help us. She’s actually a trained scent hound.”

Nina had only the vaguest notion of what that meant. Something to do with finding animals hurt or killed in traffic. Or something.

Killed in traffic. She stared out into the darkness and wished those words hadn’t popped into her head.

UKRAINE, 1935

The courtroom was small and crammed with people Olga didn’t know, and she felt as if just breathing was a difficult undertaking. She couldn’t help thinking that it would have been better if she had been allowed to stay at home with the lice and the cockroaches, but there was no way around it, Semienova had said. Olga was a witness, and it was important that she repeated everything she had already told the GPU. Several times. About Uncle Grachev and Fyodor and Pjotr and Vitja. That they were kulaks, that they had attacked Oxana because she was pure of heart and fought for the Soviet state and had reported Father, who had always been a kulak and an enemy of the people. Kulaks could not tolerate that there were people like Oxana. Kulaks spread hunger and destruction so that they themselves could eat until they became fat, and Oxana had been a threat to them. She was pure of heart.

“Pure of heart, pure of heart.”

Olga formed the words silently. She knew what she was supposed to say because she had said it many times already. The truth. Everything she now knew about her Uncle Grachev and Aunt Vira and Pjotr and Vitja and Fyodor and even Grandfather and Grandmother Trofimenko, who had been jailed three months ago along with the rest of the family. They had all been a part of planning the murder of Oxana and little Kolja. It was revenge for Father, and Oxana’s punishment because she was pure of heart and the people’s nightingale. That was what Grachev had not been able to stand, coward that he was, and the GPU police had nodded and smiled kindly at her every single time she repeated it, and now—today—she carried the truth with her like a small, well-polished pearl, waiting to be presented to the judge, who had come all the way from Leningrad. There was even a great author who insisted on attending the trial, and Olga thought she had seen him among the spectators, a little man in a dark suit with sharp, pale eyes.

Olga straightened her back and glanced at Mother, who sat unmoving next to her. If she was pleased that Oxana’s murderers would soon be held accountable for their misdeeds, she didn’t show it. Her face expressed neither happiness nor sorrow, and her eyes had begun to look odd, as if they had been painted on her face in black. Her flat and lifeless gaze moved slowly around the room and seemed to focus too long on things that no one else took serious notice of. One of the judge’s boots, the heavy ceiling beams and the whitewashed wall behind the desks and judges, which was greyish and had cracks in it. Someone should have whitewashed it again, thought Olga, just as Mother whitewashed the walls at home with the straw whisk that she dipped in lime. Her hands would become red and cracked and sometimes started to bleed as she worked.

Here the picture of Uncle Stalin was allowed to hang on a shit-colored wall, and that was wrong, just like everything else. The angry mumbling from the listeners, the stiff GPU people and the author and the pioneers, who had pushed their way into one of the front rows of spectators and stared at Olga warmly and eagerly.

The truth.

It shouldn’t be so hard, but Olga’s stomach hurt, and she felt as if she was going to throw up when Uncle Grachev was led into the room, accompanied by a wave of excited talk and hushed comments.

He was wearing a clean shirt, and his dark beard was washed and trimmed, but he looked older than she remembered him, and it was as if he was squinting against a light that wasn’t there. Grachev hid his hands in his shirtsleeves, which hung loose and flapping on his thin arms. He admitted that he had killed Oxana. And he admitted that he was a kulak. And he admitted that he had hated the girl deep in his cowardly kulak soul because she was clean, and because she sang so beautifully. He said that he had murdered Oxana, but that he had done it alone. His sons were innocent and so were his parents.