its way in, even through her closed eyelids. Only when fatigue completely overwhelmed her could she fall asleep and evade it.
And time became interminable.
Every day when she finished eating and sat there licking her fingers clean, she stared into space and memorized the day. “Today is the twenty-seventh of July, two thousand two. I am thirty-two years and twenty-one days old. I’ve been here for one hundred and forty-seven days. My name is Merete Lynggaard, and I’m OK. My brother’s name is Uffe, and he was born on the tenth of May, nineteen seventy-three.” That was how she always started off. Sometimes she also named her parents, sometimes other people. Every single day she made herself remember their names. Along with lots of other things. She thought about the blue sky, the smell of other people, the sound of a dog barking. Thoughts that could lead to other thoughts that would allow her to slip out of the cold room.
She knew that one day she was going to go mad. This would be the way to escape the gloomy thoughts that kept whirling around in her head. But she fought hard against it. She was by no means ready for that.
And this was the reason why she kept away from the two meter-high portholes that she’d first located in the dark by running her hands over the walls. They were at eye level, and nothing from the other side was visible through the mirrored glass. After a few days when her eyes had adjusted to the light, she stood up very cautiously, afraid of being startled by her own reflection. And then, as she slowly raised her eyes, she finally came face to face with herself. The sight had pierced deep into her very soul, sending shivers through her body. What she saw made such a violent impression on her that she had to shut her eyes for a moment. It wasn’t because she looked terrible, as she’d feared. No, that wasn’t it. Her hair was matted and greasy and her skin was pale, but that wasn’t it, either.
It was the fact that she was looking at a person who was lost. A person who had been condemned to death. A stranger-completely alone in the world.
“You are Merete,” she’d said out loud, watching herself enunciate the words. “That’s me standing there,” she’d said then, wishing it weren’t true. She’d felt separated from her body, and yet that was her standing there. It was enough to make a person crazy.
Then she’d retreated from the portholes and squatted down. Tried to sing a bit, but the voice she heard seemed to be coming from a different person. So she curled up in a fetal position and prayed to God. And when she was done, she’d started praying again. Praying until her soul was lifted out of the insane trance and into another. And she’d sought refuge in dreams and memories, promising herself that she would never stand in front of that mirror to look at herself again.
As time passed, she learned to pay attention to the signals coming from her body. Her stomach told her when the food was late in being delivered, when the pressure was vacillating a bit, and when she slept best.
The intervals between the replacing of the buckets were quite regular. She had tried counting the seconds from the moment her stomach told her it was time, until the buckets arrived. There was at most a difference of half an hour in feeding times, so she had a schedule to hold on to, assuming that she continued to receive food once a day.
Knowing this was both a comfort and a curse. A comfort because it gave her a connection to the schedules and rhythms of the outside world. And a curse for the very same reason. Outside it was summer, then autumn, then winter; here inside it was nothing. She imagined the summer rain drenching her body, washing away the degradation and smell. She saw the glow of the midsummer-night bonfires and the Christmas tree in all its glory. Not a single day without its rhythms. She knew the dates and what they meant. Out there in the world.
So she sat alone on the bare floor, focusing her thoughts on life outside. It wasn’t easy. Often it almost eluded her, but she was determined. Each day had its significance.
The day when Uffe turned twenty-nine and a half, she leaned against the cold wall and imagined herself stroking his hair as she congratulated him. In her mind she decided to bake him a cake and send it to him. First she had to buy all the ingredients. She would put on her coat and defy the autumn storms. And she would do her shopping wherever she pleased. In the culinary section on the lower floor of the Magasin department store. She would buy whatever she liked. Nothing was too good for Uffe on that special day.
And Merete counted the days as she speculated on the intentions of her kidnappers and who they might be. Sometimes a faint shadow seemed to slide across one of the mirrored panes, making her shudder. She covered her body when she washed herself. Stood with her back turned when she was naked. Pulled the toilet bucket over to the space between the panes so they wouldn’t be able to see her sitting on it.
Because she knew they were there. It would be pointless if they weren’t. For a while she talked to them, but she didn’t do that very often anymore. They never answered anyway.
She had asked them for sanitary napkins but never got any. When she was menstruating heavily, there was never enough toilet paper, and she simply had to make do with what she had.
She had also asked for a toothbrush, but didn’t get that either, and this worried her. So instead, she massaged her gums with her index finger and tried to clean between her teeth by forcing air through the spaces, but it didn’t do much good. When she blew on the palm of her hand, she could smell how her breath was getting worse and worse.
One day she pulled a plastic stiffener out of the hood on her down jacket. It was a nylon stick that was suitably rigid, but too thick to use as a toothpick. So she decided to break off a piece and then started filing down the shortest section, using her front teeth. “Be careful not to get any plastic stuck in your teeth. You’ll never get it out,” she warned herself, taking her time.
When she was able to clean the spaces between her teeth for the first time in a year, she was filled with a huge sense of relief. The little stick was suddenly her dearest possession. She needed to take good care of it, along with the rest of the stiffener.
The voice spoke to her a while before she thought it would. She had awoken on her thirty-third birthday with a feeling in her stomach that told her it might still be night. She sat and stared at the mirrored panes for what seemed like hours as she tried to figure out what was going to happen next. She’d thought countless times about the question and how to answer it. Names and events and motives had passed through her mind again and again, but she still knew no more than she did a year earlier. It might have something to do with money. Maybe it was related to the Internet. Or an experiment. An insane person’s attempt to show what the human organism and psyche were capable of enduring.
But she had no intention of succumbing to such an experiment. No way.
When the voice started speaking, she wasn’t prepared. Her stomach hadn’t yet signaled that it was hungry. The voice frightened her, but this time it was more from the tension that was released than from the shock when the silence was suddenly broken.
“Happy birthday, Merete,” said the woman’s voice. “Congratulations on your thirty-third birthday. We can see that you’re doing well. You’ve been a good girl this year. The sun is shining.”
The sun! Oh God, she didn’t want to know about that.
“Have you thought about the question? Why we’re keeping you in a cage like an animal? Why you have to be put through all of this? Have you come up with a solution, Merete, or do we need to punish you again? What’s it going to be? A birthday present or a punishment?”
“Give me some clue that I can use!” she shouted.
“You haven’t understood the game, Merete. You have to work it out for yourself. We’re going to send in the buckets, and in the meantime you can think about why you’re here. There’s not much time left for you to answer the question.”
For the first time she clearly heard a human being in the voice. It was not a young woman, definitely not. There was an accent in the voice that attested to a good education obtained a long time ago. A couple of
“This isn’t a game,” Merete protested. “You’ve kidnapped me and locked me up. What do you want? Is it money? I don’t know how I can help you to get the money out of the trust fund if I’m sitting here. Can’t you understand that?”
