During the next months the man whom she’d once been attracted to under the name of Daniel, and now detested as Lasse, appeared in the outer room every single day to look at her through the porthole. Some days he merely stood there, observing her as if she were a civet cat in a cage, about to fight to the death with a superior force of cobra snakes; on other days he spoke to her. Only rarely did he ask her any questions. He had no need to. It was as though he knew what her answers would be.
“When you looked into my eyes from your car, at the moment when your father was passing us, I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my whole life,” he said one day. “But the next second when you grinned at me, and didn’t bother to notice what a ruckus you were causing in your own car, I knew even then that I hated you. That was the instant before our car spun around, and my little sister sitting next to me broke her neck against my shoulder. I heard it snap, do you realize that?”
He stared at her intently, trying to make her look away, but she refused to avert her eyes. She did feel shame, but that was all. The hatred was mutual.
Then he told his story about the moments that had changed everything. About how his mother tried to give birth to the twins in the wreck of the car, and how his father, whom he had loved and admired so much, stared at him with a loving expression as he died with his mouth agape. About the flames that crept up along his mother’s leg, which was jammed fast under the front seat. About his beloved little sister, so sweet and playful, who lay crushed beneath him; and about the second twin to be born, who lay in such an awkward position, with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck; and the other one, who lay on the windshield wailing as the flames approached.
His words were terrible to hear. She remembered all too clearly their desperate screams as his story savaged her with guilt.
“My mother can’t walk; she’s been crippled ever since the accident. My brother never went to school; he was never able to learn what other children learn. We all lost our lives because of what you did back then. How do you think it feels to have a father, a sweet kid sister, and the prospect of two little brothers, and then all of a sudden nothing is left? My mother always had a fragile psyche, but even so, she was sometimes able to laugh light- heartedly. Until you came into our lives, that is, and she lost everything. Everything!”
By that point the woman had come into the room, and she seemed clearly upset by his account. Maybe she was crying. Merete couldn’t be sure.
“How do you think I felt during those first few months, all alone with a foster family that beat me? A boy like me, who had never experienced anything but love and security in his life. There wasn’t a single moment when I didn’t want to strike back at that shithead who insisted that I call him ‘Dad.’ And the whole time I could see you before me, Merete. You and your lovely, irresponsible eyes that annihilated everything I ever loved.” He paused for so long that the words he spoke next were shockingly clear. “Oh, Merete, I promised myself that I would take revenge on you and all the others, no matter what the cost. And you know what? Today I feel good. I’ve exacted revenge on all of you fuckers who took our lives away. You should know that once I even considered killing your brother. But then one day while I was watching you, I saw what a hold he had on you. How much guilt there was in your eyes when the two of you were together. How much his presence clipped your wings. Did I really want to lighten that burden for you by killing him too? And besides, wasn’t he another one of your victims? So I let him live. But not my foster father, and not you, Merete. Not you.”
He’d been sent to the children’s home after the first time he tried to kill his foster father. The family never told the authorities what he’d done, or that the deep gash in the foster father’s forehead had come from the blade of a shovel. They just said that the boy was sick in the head, and that they could no longer take responsibility for him. That way they could get another foster child from the state, to make money off.
But the wild beast inside Lasse had been awakened. No one would ever take control of him or his life again.
After that episode, five years, two months, and thirteen days passed before the insurance claims were paid, and his mother felt well enough to allow Lasse, now an adult, to move back home to live with her and his handicapped brother. One of the twins had been burned so badly that his life couldn’t be saved, but the other had survived in spite of the cord wrapped around his neck.
Lasse’s infant brother had been placed with a family while their mother was in the hospital and the rehabilitation center, but she brought him home before he turned three. His face and chest had scars from the fire, and he had very poor motor control because of the oxygen deprivation he’d suffered. But he was his mother’s solace for a couple of years while she regained her strength so that Lasse could come home. The family received a million and a half kroner in compensation for their ruined lives. A million and a half for the loss of his father and his successful business, which no one else was able to run; for the loss of a little sister and the infant twin brother, along with his mother’s loss of mobility and the whole family’s well-being. A paltry million and a half kroner. When Merete was no longer their daily focus of attention, Lasse was going to direct his revenge at the insurance people and the lawyers who had cheated his family out of the compensation they deserved. That was something Lasse had promised his mother.
Merete had a great deal to pay for.
Time was about to run out; she knew that. Anxiety and relief grew inside of her at the same time. The almost five years in this loathsome captivity was consuming her, but eventually it would have to come to an end. Of course it would.
By the time New Year’s Eve arrived in 2006, the pressure in the room had long since been increased to six atmospheres, and since then all of the fluorescent lights but one had flickered constantly. A festively clad Lasse appeared, together with his mother and brother on the other side of the mirrored panes to wish Merete a Happy New Year, adding that this would be the last New Year of her life.
“We know the date of your death, if we think about it, don’t we, Merete?” he’d said at the time. “It’s so logical. If you add up the years and months and days that I was forced to be away from my family until the day when I captured you like the animal you are, then you’ll know when you’re going to die. You must suffer in loneliness exactly as long as I did, but no more. Figure it out, Merete. When the time comes, we’ll open the airlock. It will be painful, but it probably won’t last long. The nitrogen has been accumulating in your fatty tissues, Merete. Of course you’re very thin, but you have to remember that there are pockets of air everywhere inside your body. When your bones expand and the bone fragments start bursting inside your tissues, when the pressure under your fillings makes them explode in your mouth, when you feel the pain whistling through your shoulder and hip joints, then you’ll know that the time has come. Figure it out. Five years, two months, and thirteen days, starting on March 2, 2002, then you’ll know what it will say on your tombstone. You can always hope that the blood clots in your lungs and brain will paralyze you, or that your lungs will explode and knock you unconscious or kill you fast. But don’t count on it. And who says that I’ll let it happen quickly?”
So she was going to die on May 15, 2007. If she was right in calculating that today was February thirteenth, then it would be ninety-one days from now-exactly forty-four days since the start of the new year. She had lived every day since New Year’s Eve in the awareness that she would put an end to things before they ever reached that date. But until that time, she was determined to carry on, ignoring all gloomy thoughts and cherishing the best of her memories.
This was how she was mentally preparing herself to say good-bye to the world. She often held up the tongs to look at the sharp jaws, or picked up the longer plastic stiffener from her jacket and considered snapping it in half and sharpening the two pieces on the cement floor. It was going to have to be one of these tools. She would lay down in the corner under the mirrored panes and puncture the arteries in her wrists. Thank God they were easy to see, since her arms were so thin.
It was this state of mind that had kept her going until today. After the airlock delivered the food bucket, she once again heard the voices of Lasse and his mother outside. Both sounded irritable, and their argument took on a life of its own.
So the bastard and the bitch don’t always see eye to eye, she thought. This cheered her up.
“What’s the matter, little Lasse, can’t you keep your mother under control?” she shouted. Of course she knew that an insolent remark like that would bring reprisals; she knew what the witch out there was like.
