Christiansborg?”
“This man? I’ve never seen him before in my life.”
26
When she turned thirty-five, the sea of light from the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling returned, thus causing the faces behind the mirrored panes to vanish.
This time not all of the tubes in the reinforced-glass fixtures went on. One day they’re going to have to come in and change them or the room will end up in eternal darkness, she thought. They’re still standing there, spying on me, and they don’t want to have to stop. One day they’ll come inside and change the tubes. They’ll bleed off the pressure ever so slowly, and then I’ll be waiting for them.
They’d increased the pressure again on her last birthday, but that no longer worried her. If she could handle four atmospheres, she could also handle five. She didn’t know what the limit was, but they hadn’t come anywhere near it yet. Just like the previous year, she had hallucinations for a couple of days. It felt as if the background of the room was spinning around while the rest remained in sharp focus. She had sung and felt lighthearted; reality had become meaningless. This time everything returned to normal after only a couple of days. Then she began noticing a howling sound in her ears. At first it was very faint, so she yawned and tried to equalize the pressure as best she could, but after two weeks the sound became permanent. An utterly clear tone, like the one accompanying the test pattern on TV. Higher in register, purer, and a hundred times more enervating. It’ll go away, Merete, you’ll get used to the pressure. Just wait, one morning it’ll be gone when you wake up. It’ll be gone, it’ll be gone, she promised herself. But promises based on ignorance always prove disappointing. When the high- pitched tone had lasted for three months and she was about to go crazy from lack of sleep and the constant reminder that she was living in a death chamber at the mercy of her executioner, she began working out in her mind how she would take her own life.
She knew now that it would all end with her dying anyway. The woman’s face had not displayed the slightest grounds for hope. Those piercing eyes were a clear indication they would not allow her to escape. Not ever. So it would be better to die by her own hand. To decide for herself how it would happen.
The room was completely empty aside from the toilet bucket and the food bucket, the flashlight, the two plastic stiffeners from her down jacket-one of which she’d made into a toothpick-a couple of rolls of toilet paper, and the clothes she was wearing. The walls were smooth. There was nothing to which she could tie the sleeves of her jacket, nothing from which her body could dangle until it was delivered from this life. The only possibility left to her was to starve herself to death. Refuse to eat the monotonous diet, refuse to drink the small amount of water they allowed her. Maybe that was what they were waiting for. Maybe she was part of some sick wager. Since time immemorial, human beings had always transformed the suffering of fellow humans into entertainment. Each stratum of human history had revealed an infinitely thick layer of callousness. And the sediment forming new layers was constantly piling up; she was finding that out for herself now. That was why she made the decision.
She pushed the food bucket aside, stood in front of one of the portholes, and declared that she would no longer eat any of the food. She’d had enough. Then she lay down on the floor and wrapped herself in her ragged clothes and her dreams. According to her calculations, it had to be October 6. She figured she’d last a week. At that time she would have lived for thirty-five years, three months, and one week. To be more precise: twelve thousand, eight hundred and sixty-four days, although she wasn’t entirely sure. She would have no headstone. There would be no birth date or death date to see anywhere. Not a thing left after her death that might link her to the time she’d spent in this cage, where she’d spent this last long period of her life. Other than her killers, she was the only one who would know the date of her death. And she alone would know it beforehand, with more or less accuracy. On approximately October 13, 2005, she intended to die.
On the second day of her refusal to eat, they shouted to her to trade out the buckets, but she refused. What could they do? Either leave the bucket in the hatch of the airlock door or take it back. It was all the same to her.
So they left the bucket in the hatch and repeated the same ritual over the next couple of days. The old bucket out and a new one in. They yelled at her. Threatened to increase the pressure and then let all the air out. But how could they use death as a threat when it was death she desired? Maybe they would come in, maybe they wouldn’t, she didn’t care. She let her mind run amok with thoughts and images and memories that could push the howling in her ears away, and on the fifth day, everything merged into one. Dreams of happiness, her political work, Uffe standing alone on the ship, love that had been shoved aside, the children she’d never had,
Everything was as it should be, and then all of sudden she felt a throbbing in her jaw.
In her listless condition, it felt at first like a vibration from outside. Just enough to make her open her eyes slightly, but nothing more. Are they coming in? What’s happening? she thought briefly, and then fell back into a silent torpor until a couple of hours later when she awoke with a pain as sharp as a knife stabbing into her face.
She had no idea what time it was; she had no idea if they were out there; and she screamed as she’d never screamed before in that barren room. Her whole face felt as if it had split in two. The pain in her tooth felt like a jackhammer pounding in her mouth, and there was nothing she could do to fight it. Oh God, was this the punishment for taking her life into her own hands? She’d neglected looking after herself for only five days, and now this torment. Cautiously she stuck her finger inside her mouth and felt the abscess around the back molar. That tooth had always been a weak point, providing a steady income for her dentist. A bad spot, which her homemade toothpick had tried to keep clean every day. She carefully pressed on the abscess and felt the pain explode through bone and marrow. She doubled over, opened her mouth wide, and gasped frantically for air. A short time ago her body had succumbed to lethargy, but now it had awakened to this torturous agony. She felt like an animal that would have to chew off its own paw to slip out of a trap. If pain was a defense against death, then she was more alive now than ever before.
“Ohhh!” she sobbed. It hurt so much. She reached for her toothpick and slowly held it up to her mouth. Cautiously she tried to find out whether something stuck in her gums had caused the infection, but as soon as the tip touched the abscess, her tooth once more exploded in agony.
You have to puncture it, Merete. Come on, she told herself, weeping, and jabbed at it again. The little that was left in her stomach threatened to come up. She had to puncture the abscess, but she couldn’t. She simply couldn’t do it.
Instead she crawled over to the airlock door to see what they’d put in the bucket that day. Maybe there was something that might offer some relief. Or perhaps a little drop of water on the abscess would make it stop throbbing so badly.
She looked down at the bucket and saw temptations she’d never dared dream of before. Two bananas, an apple, a piece of chocolate. It was totally absurd. They were trying to bait her hunger. Force her to eat, and now she couldn’t. Couldn’t and wouldn’t.
She grimaced at the next stabs of pain that nearly knocked her over. Then she took out all the pieces of fruit and placed them on the floor, thrust her hand in the bucket and grabbed the water bottle. She stuck her finger in the water and held it up to the abscess, but the icy-cold water didn’t have the expected effect. There was the pain and there was the water, and they had absolutely nothing to do with each other. The water couldn’t even assuage her thirst.
So she moved away, curled up in a fetal position underneath the mirrored panes, and prayed a silent prayer for God’s forgiveness. At some point her body would give up; she knew that. She would have to live her last days in pain.
