You Disappear: A Novel (40 page)

Christ gazes down from the cross, and Solveig’s nephew switches his iPhone to mute. For centuries, spaces like this framed Europe’s dreams and hopes and spiritual life, and now it’s all kaput. Regardless of how the chalk paintings and ancestors call to me, I know this funeral is mere show, like when Native Americans perform an ancient rain dance for tourists but no longer believe in a rain god. I’m looking around at something that’s disappeared because the fundamental delusion of God and Paradise can no longer convince us.

Is it wrong for me to be here and act as if I believe in God, now that I’ve converted to atheism? After all, that’s idolatry. Is it wrong for me to enjoy it, to let myself steep in Christendom’s seductive lies for the interval of an hour? I don’t know.

Anton sits beside his wife, and I sit next to him. Seven years ago, she was diagnosed with a tumor and required surgery in her left temporal region, which the doctors said lay on the edge of her brain’s language areas. The evening before the operation, they both knew she might never be able to speak again. In support group, he told us how she held him in their bed, looked him deep in the eye, and said, “After tomorrow, I might never be able to tell you I love you again.” They both wept. “You’re the only man who’s ever meant anything to me,” she said. “If I can never tell you that again, will you always remember that I told you tonight?”

“Yes,” he said.

And only in the group did he say that as he held her and wept, even as he knew that he’d remain with her till one of them died, he couldn’t avoid a poison droplet of suspicion that she said what she did because she might become completely dependent on him the next afternoon, and she wanted to chain him to her.

I’m turning around a little too often, looking back toward the door. I’m not sure why I’m doing this, but then Bernard and Lærke enter, and I remember.

I can’t imagine that anyone notices anything—we exchange a brief innocent glance as he walks past, and we nod our little funeral nod. Others have lowered their eyes and are leafing through their hymnals to find the right page, while I shift about restlessly on the hard wooden pew.

Bernard and Lærke sit down several rows in front of us. His short grey-white hair pokes up above the other people sitting around him, and I also catch a glimpse of Lærke’s impressive locks. I know how his hair feels against my palms, against my cheeks, my belly and breasts, my crotch. I know the feel of his chest hair, the hair on the top of his hands, the hair on his legs.

After we returned from Sweden, Bernard didn’t call me, and I felt I couldn’t let myself keep contacting him. I had to let him dissolve our relationship, since he was obviously fighting so hard to be faithful. Since he thought it’d be best for Lærke.

But then I had that experience by Lake Farum. I have no clue what happened, but the likeliest explanation has got to be an epileptic seizure in my temporal lobes. It’s been well documented that temporal lobe epilepsy can create the sensation of booming voices, blinding light, and paralysis.

Naturally, I’ve spoken to my doctor about it. But several months ago, I insisted on neurological scans for both Niklas and myself, because our personalities had changed more than I thought was reasonable to expect from a crisis. Nothing showed up on the scans, however, and since then my doctor’s refused to spend any more tax money on our brains.

If you approach it with an open mind, there is also of course the possibility that I did experience a genuine revelation—that Peter Mansfield really did reveal himself to me and initiate me into the pursuit of beauty and truth in the true atheistic life.

And the one explanation need not preclude the other. Wouldn’t it be
consistent with the spirit of atheism if such a revelation
respected
the laws of nature? If it revealed itself to initiates through something so scientifically ordinary as an epileptic fit of the temporal lobes? Researchers have posited that temporal lobe epilepsy is the source of many well-known revelations throughout history.

Regardless of what it was, I now knew that Bernard and I were predestined to meet each other and fall in love. There was nothing we could do about it.

So I called him, and I was such a compelling evangelist on the phone that we met up that very evening, and since then we’ve seen each other almost every single day.

• • •

One of the other users at braindamage.com posted a comment saying that women have a harder time than men when their spouses suffer frontal lobe injuries. She said she’d even met men who were thriving with wives who had such damage. True, a brain-damaged wife may not be able to read her husband’s feelings anymore, but she’s finally stopped nagging him when he’s messy, and she’s completely forgotten that she’s bitter about something he did in the distant past, or that she can’t stand being in a room with his sister and mother. And on some things—especially in bed—he finds she’s less inhibited and easier to get along with.

The women lose so much more. In particular, they have to live with loneliness; it’s draining when their husbands can no longer share their feelings, when they become even less emotionally nuanced than they already were.

Nevertheless, it’s usually a woman who will stay with a sick spouse and spend the rest of her life as a round-the-clock nurse, while a man with a sick wife will find a healthy woman to run off with.

There’s a wake at Solveig’s after the funeral. Lots of people come, and in the throng in front of the hors d’oeuvres, I see Lærke hanging on Bernard. I position myself on his other side. Does she know what a unique man she has? Does she realize?

Yes, you only have to catch a glimpse of them together to see that she
thinks he’s the most wonderful man in the world, thinks he’s lovelier beyond compare; that in fact he’s the
only
wonderful man there is. But that’s how I feel too. He really
is
the only one.

Lærke tugs on his sleeve. “There are those ones with lox, and those ones with something white, and then there are those with that … it’s pâté, right? Is it pâté, Bernard?”

“Yes, it’s pâté. It looks delicious, don’t you think?”

“But should I pick the one with pâté?”

“Yes, pick that one.”

She sets an hors d’oeuvre with pâté on her plate and looks around. “But the others are taking two pieces at a time, two different pieces.”

“You can do that too.”

“But what other one should I pick?”

I consider this other woman whom Bernard loves. Even before we began our relationship, he told me that Lærke had a hard time making decisions, so she needed help. For instance, her mother made a deck of index cards with different combinations of clothes and shoes, and every morning, Lærke draws a new card from the deck and puts on the clothing listed on the card. That way, she doesn’t end up wearing clothing that clashes, plus she saves a lot of mental energy that she’ll really need later in the day.

And whenever they’re at a restaurant, Bernard’s trained her to choose the first entrée on the menu. With dozens of little tricks like these, their everyday life has become more normal.

But there’s no menu here. “You could take the tuna salad,” I find myself say a little too loudly as I point across the table.

She immediately does what I suggest, without answering or looking at me. And without another word, she hands her plate to Bernard, so that she can move away from the buffet on her crutches.

What did I just do? I hold my breath, not daring to look at Bernard. Was I nice to Lærke? Was I mean? Did I cross some line?

I skirt my way around retired department heads from Justice and their wives, around Solveig’s and Torben’s family members, and around the very different sorts of friends that Solveig and Torben have acquired in recent years: brain-damaged men and their wives.

One woman, who I know is from the Danish Stroke Association, is
helping her husband sit down in a corner of the sofa; his injury must have affected his appetite regulation, for his sport coat hangs off him like a flag. Another woman, whom I’ve seen twice at the Center for Brain Injuries, holds her husband’s glass while he drinks from it.

Without Bernard, Lærke’s world would crumble. So would mine.

I go up the stairs, peer into Solveig and Torben’s large bright bedroom—the queen-size bed with a cream-colored spread, still made up for two—and continue on to the room that was once Torben’s office. The walls are lined with dark wooden bookcases, filled with books and folders on politics, economics, and law. But the books have all been shoved to the back, and in front of them on the shelves stands trash that Torben’s discovered on his walks around the pleasant residential streets of this neighborhood. On the floor squat some filthy plastic supermarket bags, filled to the brim. In one corner there’s a sundial, and on the desk a potted fern that takes up a third of the desktop and clearly doesn’t belong. And on the seat of the dark overstuffed leather sofa, he’s placed an old TV set.

There’s also an empty guestroom up here. Can the door be locked from inside? No, but I try placing a chair so the backrest blocks the handle from turning. It works. I shake and pull on the handle; the door won’t budge. Then I remove the chair, open the door, and walk back downstairs.

In the living room, Bernard is now sitting by a coffee table with Lærke, Andrea, and Ian.

As I approach, I hear Lærke say, “I never want to die. Death is so sad, don’t you think?” She’s addressing Ian’s crustacean features. “Torben, who’s dead … it’s so sad … yes, really sad, don’t you think?”

When she discovers me, she tries to wave me over to one of the seats.

I stand behind Bernard and say that I’ll be back later, there’s someone I need to talk to from the Brain Injury Association. I walk away, and as I pass behind Bernard, I let my right index finger slide along one shoulder, across his nape, and out along the other shoulder.

Then I go back up to the guestroom without a backward glance.

A short while later he’s standing in the doorway.

I hurry over to him, close the door behind him, and kiss him while holding it shut with my foot.

The chair underneath the handle, depress it a couple of times and yes, the chair jams the door fast and then we’re onto the bed. A few minutes;
the others outside. Panties off, dress up. Two in the morning and we’re in the toilet together in the rear of some small dark dive. Together in broad daylight behind a hedge at Farum Tennis Club.

We can do anything. Anything, anything, anything. We can start our own family and none of our kids will ever become like the people here. We stand with our beautiful children in our sun-drenched yard in Brede, the lawn sloping gently down toward the woods, the skies stretching wide above us, the inevitability of Nature blessing us.

Someone pulls at the door, but the chair keeps them out. It’s secure. No, it falls, landing with a quick hard bang. The door opens; a face. It shuts again.

“Shit!”

“Who was that?”

“I don’t know!”

“No, no, no!”

Someone’s feet clatter rapidly down the stairs. If Lærke hears about this … My panties on the floor. Bernard’s jacket on a chair.

We rush around the room getting our clothes back on, and as we do we can hear the conversation at the wake stop dead in the living room beneath us.

“Where are you running?” someone asks loudly in the silence. “What’s the matter?”

It remains quiet. Everyone must be looking at whoever’s rushed down the stairs. “There are two upstairs who are running!” a man shouts.

“They’re running?”

“Yes … no. They’re running! Oh … no, no!”

“They’re not running?”

“No.”

“So what are they doing?”

“They’re running! No, no! They aren’t. Running … running. That’s what they’re doing! Oh yes! They’re running! … No, no, they’re not running.”

“Who?” asks another voice.

“I don’t know. I haven’t run them before.”

“You don’t know?”

Someone asks, “Is it Rikke?”

“No, it’s not Rikke. It’s her that’s running and is Rikke, and he’s running Rikke. They’re running together!”

The man’s getting more and more worked up because no one understands him.

“Upstairs! Rikke—running!” he shouts. “No, not running. Not Rikke. They’re running! They’re not running!”

A woman’s gentle voice says, “You end up repeating the words we say, don’t you?”

“Don’t, don’t. I end up repeating them. Don’t. Running. I want to say running. No, not running. Oh, oh. Not running they’re running.”

By now, Bernard and I are out of the guestroom, but soon the man will find his way to the right words. We hear another woman’s voice; it must be his wife.

“We just have to be quiet for a bit. Then he won’t have any words to repeat, and then he’ll find the right words himself.”

And the man yells, “Upstairs they’re repeating! They’re repeating words! Rikke! Oh oh! They’re lying down and repeating words!”

It’s been three weeks since Torben’s wake, and I’m starting to think that Frederik might stand a chance in court after all.

The papers say that a jury’s sentenced a father who murdered his two children to psychiatric treatment instead of life in prison. In doing so, the jury went against the recommendation of the Medico-Legal Council. If it can happen to a child-murderer, it can happen to Frederik as well.

Bernard and Frederik have always thought such a verdict possible, and now I’m beginning to think so too. From the police, Bernard’s obtained logs of all Frederik’s phone calls from the past four years. He’s had an assistant enter the numbers and call times into several enormous spreadsheets to demonstrate statistical changes in who Frederik called, when he called them, and how long they spoke. The numbers should provide some objective proof that Frederik became a completely different person during these years, whose telephone habits changed radically.

The preliminary data’s quite reassuring. In the years leading up to his diagnosis, Frederik made a gradually increasing number of calls, but their average length became shorter each year. One interpretation is that he developed a greater need to call and talk to all and sundry—while at the same time his deteriorating sense of situation made people try to get off the phone more quickly when he called.