them over. I could use some extra input, you know? I don’t give a flying fuck about any of it, but if you help me out, then at least we’ll have something to laugh about together.”
“You want me to laugh, Carl?” said Hardy, turning his head away.
All in all, it had been a really shitty day.
16
All sense of time vanished in the darkness, and with it the rhythms of her body. Day and night merged like Siamese twins. There was only one fixed point in the day for Merete, and that was the click from the retractable hatch in the arched door.
The first time she heard the distorted voice on the loudspeaker, the shock was so explosive that she was still trembling when she lay down to sleep.
But if she hadn’t heard the voice, she would have been dead of thirst and hunger; she knew that. The question was whether that might have been a better alternative.
She had noticed the thirst and dryness in her mouth disappearing. She’d noticed the fatigue dulling her hunger, the fear being replaced by sorrow, and the sorrow by an almost comforting acknowledgment that death was approaching. And that was why she lay there calmly, waiting for her body to give up, when a grating voice revealed that she was not alone and that she ultimately was going to have to surrender to someone else’s will.
“Merete,” said the woman’s voice without warning. “We’re sending in a plastic container. In a moment you’ll hear a clicking sound and a hatch will open over in the corner. We’ve seen that you’ve already found it.”
Maybe she’d imagined that a light was turned on, because she pressed her eyes closed and tried to gain control over the shock waves that were flashing along her nerve endings. But there was no light in the room.
“Can you hear me?” shouted the voice.
She nodded, breathing hard. Now Merete noticed how cold she was. How the lack of sustenance had sucked all the fat out of her body. How vulnerable she was.
“Answer me!”
“Yes. Yes, I hear you. Who are you?” She stared into the darkness.
“When you hear the click, go over to the hatch at once. Don’t try to crawl inside. You won’t be able to do it. After you take out the first container, there will be another. One of them is a bucket that you can use as a toilet to relieve yourself. The other bucket holds water and food. Each day we’ll open the hatch, and then we’ll exchange the old containers with new ones. Do you understand?”
“What is this all about?” She listened to the echo of her own voice. “Have I been kidnapped? Is it money you want?”
“Here comes the first one.”
There was a scraping in the corner, and a slight whistling sound. Merete moved toward that sound and noticed that the bottom of the arched door set into the wall opened to deliver a hard container the size of a wastebasket. When she pulled it out and set it on the floor, the hatch closed for ten seconds and then reopened, this time revealing a slightly taller bucket that was presumably supposed to serve as a dry toilet.
Her heart was pounding. If the containers could be exchanged so swiftly, that meant someone had to be standing on the other side of the door. Another human being very close.
“Won’t you please tell me where I am?” She crawled forward on her knees until she was sitting right under the place where she thought the loudspeaker was located. “How long have I been here?” She raised her voice a bit. “What do you want from me?”
“There’s a roll of toilet paper in the food box. You’ll get another one each week. When you need to wash, use water from the container that’s inside the toilet bucket. Remember to take it out before using the toilet. There’s no drain in the room, so be sure to lean over the bucket to wash.”
The sinews in her neck were stretched taut. A shadow of anger fought with the tears, and her lips quivered. Snot ran from her nose. “Am I supposed to sit here in the dark… the whole time?” she sobbed. “Can’t you turn on a light? Just for a moment? Please!”
Again the clicking sound and a little whistle, and the hatch shut.
After that came many, many days when she heard only the fan, turned on weekly for ventilation, and the daily clattering and whistling of the hatch door. At times the intervals in between seemed interminable; at other times it felt as if she’d just lain down after a meal when the next buckets arrived. The food was the only physical bright spot for her, even though it was a monotonous diet without any real flavor. A few potatoes and overcooked vegetables along with a scrap of meat. The same every day. As if there were a bottomless pot of stew, always simmering out there in the light, in the world on the other side of the impenetrable wall.
She had thought that at some point she would get so used to the dark that the details of the room would emerge, but that didn’t happen. The darkness was irrevocable, as if she were blind. Only her thoughts could send any light into her existence, and that wasn’t easy.
For a long time she was truly afraid of going mad. Afraid of the day when all control slipped out of her hands. She made up images of the world and the light and the life outside. She took refuge in all the nooks and crannies of her brain-those areas that usually become silted up with the ambitions and trivialities of life. And memories of the past slowly surfaced. Tiny moments with hands that held her. Words that caressed and comforted. But also memories of loneliness and yearning and tireless striving.
Then she fell into a rhythm in which day and night consisted of long periods of sleep, eating, meditation, and running in place. She would run until the slamming of her feet on the floor began to hurt her ears, or until she fell over with fatigue.
Every fifth day she received new underwear and tossed the used ones into the dry toilet. It was disgusting to think that strangers were handling the garments. But they never replaced the other clothing she wore, so she took good care of it. Took care when she sat down on the bucket or lay down carefully on the floor to sleep. Cautiously smoothed out her clothes when she changed her underwear, and rinsed with water any pieces of the fabric that she could feel were getting dirty. She was glad that she’d had such good-quality clothes on the day they took her. A down jacket, scarf, blouse, underwear, trousers, and thick socks. But as the days passed, her trousers hung looser and looser, and the soles of her shoes began to feel thin. I need to run in my bare feet, she thought, and she yelled into the darkness: “Couldn’t you turn up the heat a little? Please?” But the ventilator in the ceiling hadn’t produced a sound for a long time now.
The light in the room was switched on after the buckets had been changed one hundred and nineteen times. An explosion of white suns blasted down on her, making her topple over backward with her eyes closed tight and tears trickling out of their corners. It felt as if the light were bombarding her retinas, sending waves of pain up into her brain. All she could do was sink down into a squatting position and hold her hands over her eyes.
As the hours passed, she slowly moved her hands from her face and opened her eyes ever so slightly. The light was still overwhelming. She was held back by the fear that she’d already lost her sight, or that she would now lose it if she moved too quickly. And that was how she was sitting when the loudspeaker with the woman’s voice hammered shock waves through her body for the second time. She reacted to the sound like a gauge that jumps too quickly. Each word sent a stab right through her. And the words were terrifying.
“Happy birthday, Merete Lynggaard. Congratulations on reaching the age of thirty-two. Yes, today is July sixth. You’ve been sitting here for one hundred and twenty-six days, and our birthday present to you is that we won’t be turning off the light for a year.”
“Oh God, no. You can’t do this to me,” she moaned. “Why are you doing this?” She stood up, holding her hands over her eyes. “If you want to torture me to death, then just do it!” she screamed.
The woman’s voice was ice cold, a bit deeper than the last time. “Take it easy, Merete. We don’t want to
