At the corner of the enormous glass façade, pipes and cables stuck up out of the ground like strange, lifeless disfigurements. A stack of sheetrock lay to the side, the top sheets presumably ruined by now; the middle ones might be okay but they were a waste of time. They were after the marble sinks in the ten apartments. Three men, three hours work, and a short drive out to Beni’s construction site in Valby. It was exactly what he needed, Beni had said.
The front door stood open a crack.
When they had been by earlier that day it was locked, and Taghi sensed Farshad and Djo Djo exchanging glances when he carefully shouldered the door open and stepped into the bitter cold hallway.
“Let’s go, ladies.”
Taghi’s voice rattled off the unfinished cement walls, and he regretted wearing hard-heeled boots. Every single step rang upward through the stairway, fading into weak echoes that vibrated under the large, clear skylights, the steel beams, and the tiles dusty from all the construction. He fished his flashlight out of his pocket and let it play over the steps.
Had he heard something?
Djo Djo stumbled over a few half-empty paint cans, and Farshad laughed at him, a loud, ringing sound. Djo Djo grumbled and hopped around on one leg, the paint cans clattering around on the dark tiles. Those two babies. Annoyed, Taghi bit his lip and decided the ground-floor apartment to the right was a good place to start. For some reason he had gone totally paranoid. Wanted out of here, quick. He felt a prickling under his skin.
“Shut up, you two. It’s not that goddamn funny anyway.”
Farshad held back another giggle, but at least they didn’t speak until they reached the half-open apartment door, and now there was that sound again. A muffled, drawn-out moaning that rose and fell in the empty pitch-dark surrounding them.
Taghi stiffened. “What the hell is that?”
Djo Djo’s whisper broke, his voice on the edge of failing him. “It’s some kind of totally weird ghost or something.”
The muffled moaning was weaker again. They stood listening until it died out, and now the only sound was Djo Djo’s nervous feet on the dusty tiles.
“We’re out of here, right, Taghi?” Farshad had already stepped back, he was gripping Djo Djo’s arm. “We can always come back tomorrow.”
Taghi didn’t answer, he was gazing at the darkness in the doorway while he considered the situation. The truth was that he felt exactly the same way as Farshad. He wanted to get out. He felt sticky underneath the down jacket Laleh had found for him in Føtex-løsning, the discount grocery. He heard a faint scraping sound and possibly a sigh from inside the apartment. He felt unsure, but he was the oldest, after all, and he had to decide what they should do.
“It’s not a ghost,” he said, in a voice as strong and steady as he could make it.
The others hesitated behind him when he pushed the door open and entered the apartment, the beam from the flashlight bouncing in front of him like a disco ball out of whack. There was an open living room and kitchen, bathed in a pale orange light from the plate-glass window facing the canal. Taghi knew instinctively that this wasn’t where to look. It was too open, no place to hide. An empty space at the opposite end of the living room led into what must be the guest bathroom. If there had been any doors in the apartment they were gone now. Maybe someone else had gotten here before them, Taghi thought. Something dark was moving in there. Rocking back and forth on the floor still covered by clear plastic from the painters. He heard Farshad gasping behind him. He had followed, while Djo Djo hung back at the newly plastered island in the kitchen.
Taghi pointed the beam of light directly at the black shadow, and before the figure even turned its head toward him, he knew he’d been right.
It was a woman.
She sat stooped over the toilet seat. Her skirt hung sloppily around her hips and thin legs. Her arms arched like taut bows over the toilet bowl. Like someone throwing up, Taghi thought. But he knew what the woman was doing. First it was as if she didn’t know they were there, not really, anyway. But when he stepped closer she turned her head, and her eyes, completely naked and black, met his.
They had been so close. So close that she could see the bridge, see the long rows of lights leading to Sweden. After the nightmarish days on the open deck of the ship, after months of overcrowded rooms that smelled of fear, with nervous men who always wanted more money than agreed upon, with uncertainty and despair about her belly that kept growing and growing … after all that, only one thing was left: get over the bridge. When she got there she was supposed to call Jacob, and he would come and take care of everything, the rest of her life, he had promised, with her and the baby … She felt an overwhelming yearning in her gut, almost as fierce as the contractions, and her lips formed the words he had taught her to say, the magic words that would open the gate so she could be with Jacob forever:
Jag söker asyl
—I seek asylum. But don’t say it before she got to Sweden, he had said. And for God’s sake, she must not be discovered before she was inside Sweden, otherwise the gate to her life with Jacob would close. If she wasn’t sent back—a terrible, horrifying thought—she would end up in some sort of refugee camp, someplace he couldn’t get to her, couldn’t be with her. It would be like prison, he said, and it could be for several years.
That was why Chaltu hadn’t said anything about the jolts of pain shooting through her body. She had tried,
tried
, but eventually she couldn’t hold it back. The sounds were coming out no matter what, just like the baby. And then it happened, the one terrible thing she couldn’t let happen. Her water broke, came rushing from between her legs and out over the seat beneath her.
The driver stopped the car. This is no good, he said. He cursed about the seat that was wet now, but even worse was how she couldn’t sit upright and keep quiet when the contractions came. They would be stopped, and he wasn’t going to prison because of her, he said.
She screamed and wailed and begged, and they had to drag her out of the car by force. She even tried to run after them, but of course that was hopeless. The driver floored it and a shower of slushy gray snow sprayed up in her face, and then the car was gone.
I will die, Chaltu thought. The baby will kill me and neither of us will ever see Jacob. She slugged her stomach with both hands, punches of helpless rage, and she had to bite her cheek not to say out loud the curse that was on her lips. I must not curse my own child, she thought. God will punish me for that. Holy Virgin, what have I done? But she knew well enough. Her sin was love. Love for Jacob, a love that had no future in Adis Ababa, but maybe in Blekinge, where he had lived since he was seven and was now studying, in Blekinge College and Yrkeshögskolan, to become an agronomist.
She kept walking without knowing where she was going. First she thought she might be able to find the bridge again and cross it on foot, but she quickly lost all sense of direction. What kind of a city was this? There were no people, none at all. It was almost as if the buildings owned the city and the streets, as if they had decided that they didn’t want any dirty living creatures crawling around.
A strange singing tone stopped her. For a moment she wondered if she were hearing angel voices, because she was so close to death. But then a light popped out, an entire snake of light, and she saw that it was a train, even though it zipped through the air above her, on a track supported by concrete pillars. There was water underneath the track, long shiny-black sheets of water reflecting the train light. Why couldn’t it run on the ground? Chaltu wondered. It was as if someone had erected a bridge just to remind her of the one she couldn’t get across.
There were people up there, she noticed. They were being carried through the dead city and they looked warm and cozy and cheerful in the belly of the snake train.
The wet snow was denser now, and the wind drove it against her head so she could no longer feel her face. When she noticed the building still under construction, with the fence knocked down and the empty, dark windows, she realized it might be a place she could stay without being discovered. No one could be living there.
And it was dark and quiet in there too, but there were so many windows. She thought the whole world must be able to see her. And it was almost as bitter cold as outside. There were no blankets, no furniture, nothing soft whatsoever. Some of the inside doors were missing. The wind whistled through the main hallway, and the wet snow slid quietly down the enormous panes of glass.
A violent contraction came—it felt as if God Himself had grabbed her with His giant hand and squeezed until she was close to breaking apart.
“Stop,” she whispered desperately. “Stop.” If only it would hold off again. If the contractions would stop; if the baby would just stay in there and leave her alone—then maybe she could cross the right bridge to the right country instead of dying in the wrong one.
She crouched down on the tile floor beside a toilet bowl because she felt least visible there. But the sounds from inside kept coming, and what good did it do to hide?
Here there is no one, she told herself. The building is empty, it is unfinished. No one can hear you now. But suddenly there
was
someone. She hadn’t even heard him come in. She just opened her eyes and there he was. Her heart took a long, hovering leap and ended up stuck in her throat.
He was just a silhouette in the dark, a darker outline, and the glare from the flashlight blinded her even more. A moment earlier she had thought she would die either from the cold or from her baby. Now another possibility had shown up.
“Leave me alone,” she said, but of course he didn’t understand her.
The man said something, and she realized he wasn’t the only one there.
“Don’t kill me,” she said.
And he didn’t. To her amazement he took off his coat and put it around her shoulders.
His name was Taghi. She understood that much from his words and gestures, even though they shared almost no common language. And he was trying to help her. This was so strange that she could barely comprehend it. His hands were friendly, his tone of voice reassuring. And he said one word she understood.
“Doctor,” he said in English. “We will get you to a doctor.”
“No,” she answered, the word scaring her. “No doctor.”
“It is okay,” he said, slowly and clearly. “It is a secret doctor. Okay? You understand? Secret doctor okay.”
She couldn’t answer. The next contraction hit her, and she was only vaguely aware that he brought out a cell phone and called the okay secret doctor.
Nina was staring at the vending machine when the telephone rang. For a measly five kroner you could choose between coffee with cream, coffee with sugar, coffee with cream and sugar, bouillon, pungently sweet lemon tea, and cocoa. Unsweetened and uncreamed coffee had once been options, but they had been eliminated sometime in the mid ’90s, if those who had been here even longer than her were to be believed.
It’s Morten, she thought, without taking the phone from her white coat. And he’ll be pissed with me again.
She was tired. She had been on duty since seven that morning, and the Danish Red Cross Center at Furesø, commonly known as the Coalhouse Camp, was every bit as ravaged by December flu as the rest of Copenhagen, with various traumas and symptoms of depression thrown in, plus an epidemic of false croup among the youngest children in Block A.
Despite all that, she could have been home by now. If she had left at four, after the evening nurse delayed by the snowstorm had finally shown up, she could have been sitting right now in their apartment in Østerbro with a cup of real coffee and a few of the slightly deformed Christmas cookies Anton had baked in the SFO, his youth center. Why hadn’t she? Instead of hanging out on a tattered, tobacco-stained sofa in the Block A lounge, listening through the walls to Liljana’s thin cough, her professional ear focused. How obstructed was the child’s respiratory tract? How much strength was there behind each cough? Should she be suctioned again, and when
was
the last time her temperature had been taken?
The sick-staff excuse was about as worn out as the sofa—Morten wasn’t buying it any longer.
“Damnit, Nina. She’s
your
mother!” he had hissed the last time she had called home to say she’d be late. He was supposed to be going to some sort of show with the others from his work, and if she wasn’t there it would be the second night in a row that Nina’s mother would be alone with the kids.
The phone began to repeat its cheery little electronic theme. Reluctantly, Nina grabbed it out of her coat’s pocket.
It wasn’t Morten. It was an extremely frantic voice she didn’t recognize until he said his name.
“It’s Taghi. You have to help. There’s a woman, and she’s … she’s about to have a baby.”
Even then it took her some time, for Taghi had been out of the Coalhouse Camp for three years, and there had been so many others since then.
“Take her to the hospital,” she said, even though she knew that wasn’t an option. Not when he was calling her.
“No,” he replied. “She’s from Africa. She won’t go to the hospital. You have to help.”
I’m not a doctor or a midwife. The words were in her mind, but she didn’t speak them. Her exhaustion was already gone. Adrenaline shot into her blood, she was clear-headed and energetic. Morten will have a fit, she thought. But this would be so much easier than trying to explain to him why she couldn’t handle spending another night alone with her own mother after the kids went to sleep.