For a moment this made her happy, but then she reminded herself that no matter how weak the light was, it could also be turned off.
She was not the one who had control of the switch.
When she made a move to stand up, her hand bumped against the little metal tube lying on the floor next to her. It was the flashlight that they’d given her. She curled her fingers tightly around it as her mind tried to work out what it all meant. The flashlight must mean that at some point they were going to turn off the glimmer of light entering the room. Why else would they give her a flashlight?
For a moment she considered switching it on, just because she could. She had long ago given up any notion of being able to control anything, so it was tempting. But she decided not to.
“You still have your eyes, Merete. Make them work,” she admonished herself as she set it down next to the toilet bucket under the glass panes. If she turned on the flashlight, she would just find herself in interminable darkness when she switched it off.
It would be like drinking salt water to assuage her thirst.
But the faint light remained on in spite of her prediction. She could make out the contours of the room and see how her limbs were wasting away. It was in this state, reminiscent of the dark twilight of winter, that almost fifteen months passed until everything was radically changed once again.
That was the day when she saw shadows behind the mirrored glass for the first time.
She’d been lying on the floor thinking about books. That was something she often did in order not to think about the life she might have had, if only she’d made different choices. When she thought about books, she could move into a whole different world. Just remembering the feeling of the dry surface and inexplicable roughness of the paper could ignite a blaze of yearning inside of her. The scent of evaporated cellulose and printer’s ink. Thousands of times now she’d sent her thoughts into her imaginary library and selected the only book in the world that she knew she could recall without embellishing it. It was not the one she wanted to remember, not even the one that had made the greatest impression on her. But it was the only book that had remained completely intact in her tortured memory because of the liberating bursts of laughter she associated with it.
Her mother had read it aloud to her, and Merete had read it to Uffe. And now she sat here in the dark, trying hard to read it to herself. A philosophical little bear named Winnie the Pooh was her salvation, her only defense against madness. Pooh and all the animals in Hundred Acre Wood. And she was far away in the land of honey when a dark patch suddenly stationed itself in front of the faint light coming from the mirrored glass.
She opened her eyes wide and inhaled air deep into her lungs. The flickering was not something she was imagining. For the first time in ages she felt her skin get clammy. The way it had in the schoolyard, in the narrow and silent alleys of distant cities in the evening, and on her first days in parliament. Those were all the places where she’d been aware of this kind of clammy feeling that could only be caused by the presence of a stranger who meant her harm and was secretly watching her.
That shadow wants to hurt me, she thought, wrapping her arms around herself as she stared at the spot that slowly got bigger on one of the panes and then finally stopped moving. The shadow reached to just above the edge of the glass, as if it belonged to someone sitting on a tall stool.
Can they see me? she wondered, staring at the far wall behind her. Yes, the white surface of the wall was very visible, so clearly it could also be seen from behind the glass, even by people who were used to moving around in the light. That meant they could see her too.
It was only a couple of hours since the food bucket had been delivered. She could tell from the rhythms of her body. Everything took place on a regular schedule, day after day. It would be many, many hours before the next bucket arrived. So why were they out there? What did they want?
She stood up very slowly and moved toward the mirrored glass, but the shadow didn’t stir in the least.
Then she placed her hand against the pane on top of the dark shadow and stood there waiting, as she studied her blurry reflection. She stayed like that until she became convinced that she could no longer trust her sense of judgment. Was it a shadow or not? It could be anything at all. Why would somebody stand on the other side of the glass when they’d never done that before?
“To hell with all of you!” she shouted, feeling an electric shock pass through her body from the force of the echo.
But then it happened. Behind the glass the shadow clearly moved. A bit to one side and then back. The farther away from the pane it moved, the smaller and less distinct it became.
“I know you’re there!” she yelled, feeling her damp skin cool down instantly. Her lips and face trembled. “Get away from here!” she snarled at the pane.
But the shadow stayed where it was.
Then she sat down on the floor and buried her face in her arms. Her clothes stank, reeking of mold. She’d been wearing the same blouse for three years.
The gray light was there all the time, day and night, but it was better than total darkness or interminable light. Here, in this gray nothingness, she had a choice. She could ignore the light or she could ignore the dark. She no longer closed her eyes in order to concentrate; she allowed her brain to decide for itself what state of mind to assume.
And this gray light contained all possible nuances. Almost like the world outside, where the day could be winter-light, February-dim, Octobergray, rain-saturated, crystal-clear, and thousands of other shades of the palette. Here inside, her palette consisted of only black and white, and she mixed them as her mood dictated. As long as this gray light was her canvas, she was not forsaken.
And Uffe, Winnie the Pooh, Don Quixote, the Lady of the Camellias, and Smilla all stormed through her head, filling up the hourglass and the shadowy images behind the panes. That made it so much easier to wait for her captors to make another move. She knew it would eventually come. No matter what.
And the shadow behind the mirrored glass became a daily event. Quite a while after she’d eaten, the dark patch would always appear on one of the panes. It never failed to materialize. For the first couple of weeks it was small and indistinct, but it soon grew bigger and sharper. And it came closer.
She knew that she could be seen quite clearly from the other side. One of these days they would aim spotlights on her and demand that she perform. She could only imagine what the animals behind the panes would get out of it, but she couldn’t care less.
Shortly before her thirty-fifth birthday, a second shadow suddenly appeared behind the glass. It was a little bigger and not as sharp-edged, and it loomed quite a bit higher than the other one.
Another person is standing behind the first one, she thought, noticing her fear grow with the certainty that she was outnumbered; the superior force out there had now manifested itself.
It took her a couple of days to get used to this new situation, but then she decided to challenge her captors.
She began lying down under the panes to wait for the shadows. In this position she was out of their line of vision when they arrived to observe her. She refused to accommodate them, not knowing how long they would wait for her to come out of hiding. That was the whole point of the maneuver.
The second day, when the urge to pee came over her for the second time, she got up and looked directly into the mirrored glass. As always there was a slight glow from the subdued light on the other side, but the shadows were gone.
She repeated this routine for three days in a row. If they want to see me, they can just say so, she thought.
On the fourth day, she got ready. She lay down under the panes, patiently memorizing her books as she gripped the flashlight tightly in her hand. She’d tested it the night before, and the light had come pouring into the room, making her dizzy and giving her an instant headache. The force of the light was overwhelming.
When it was time for the shadows to appear, she leaned her head back a bit so she could look up at the panes. Suddenly, like mushroom clouds, they were standing there in one of the portholes, closer together than ever. They must have noticed her at once, because they both moved back slightly. But after a minute or two they stepped forward again.
At that instant she jumped up, switched on the flashlight, and pressed it against the pane.
The reflection of the light ricocheted off the long wall behind her, but a tiny sliver penetrated the mirrored glass and settled revealingly like faint moonlight upon the silhouettes on the other side. The pupils of their eyes, looking straight at her, contracted and then expanded again. She’d prepared herself for the shock if her plan succeeded, but she had never imagined how deeply the sight of those two indistinct faces would be burned into her consciousness.
23. 2007
Carl had made appointments for
two meetings at Christiansborg. He was received by a lanky woman who seemed to have frequented the place since childhood. She was able to lead him through the labyrinthine halls and up to the office belonging to the vice-chair of the Democrats with such familiarity that a snail in its shell would have envied her.
Birger Larsen was an experienced politician who had succeeded Merete Lynggaard as vice-chair of the party three days after she disappeared. Since then he’d distinguished himself by acting as the glue that was needed to hold the two vying wings of the party in reasonably close contact. Merete’s disappearance had left a gaping void. The veteran leader had almost blindly selected his new heir, a female airhead with a big smile, who initially became the political spokesperson. No one, except the designated successor, was happy with his choice. It didn’t take two seconds for Carl to sense that Birger Larsen would have preferred making a career for himself in some tiny business out in the sticks to working at some point under this self-satisfied potential prime minister.
The time would no doubt arrive when he wouldn’t be allowed to make that decision on his own.
“Even today I still can’t make any sense of the idea that Merete supposedly committed suicide,” he said, pouring Carl a cup of lukewarm coffee. It was so tepid that he could have stuck his thumb in it with no ill effects.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone here who seemed more vital and glad to be alive.” He shrugged. “But when it comes right down to it, what do we really know about our fellow human beings? Haven’t we all had some sort of tragedy happen in our lives that we couldn’t foresee?”
Carl nodded. “Did she have any enemies here at Christiansborg?”
Larsen displayed a row of exceedingly crooked teeth when he smiled. “Who the hell doesn’t? Merete was the most dangerous woman here in terms of the future of the government, the influence of Piv Vestergård, and the likelihood of the Radical Center Party grabbing the prime minister position. She was actually dangerous to anyone who pictured themselves in that position, and Merete would undoubtedly have achieved it for herself if only she’d been here a couple more years.”
“Do you think she’d received threats from anyone here?”
“Oh, Mørck. We MPs are too smart for anything like that.”
“Maybe she had personal relationships that could have led to jealousy or hatred. Do you know anything about that?”
“As far as I know, Merete wasn’t interested in personal relationships. For her it was all work, work, work and more work. I knew her since she was a political science student, but even I was never permitted to get closer to her than she would allow.”
“And she didn’t allow it?”
The man’s teeth appeared again. “You mean, was anyone interested in her romantically? Of course, I can think of at least half a dozen men here who would gladly have given up their wives for ten minutes alone with Merete Lynggaard.”
“Did that include yourself?” Carl permitted himself a smile.
“Hmm, well, who wouldn’t?” The teeth disappeared. “But Merete and I were friends. I knew what my limits were.”
“But maybe there were others who didn’t?”
“You’ll have to ask Marianne Koch about that.”
“Merete’s former secretary? Do you know why she was replaced?”
“Well, not really. They’d worked together for a couple of years, but it could be that Marianne got a little too personal for Merete’s taste.”
“Where can I find this Marianne Koch today?”
A slyness appeared in Larsen’s eyes. “Where you just said hello to her ten minutes ago, I would imagine.”
“She’s your secretary now?” Carl put down his coffee cup and pointed toward the door. “The woman sitting out there?”
Marianne Koch was the complete opposite of the woman who had escorted Carl up to the office. She was petite, with thick, curly black hair that seemed fragrant with temptation even from the other side of the desk.
“Why weren’t you still working as Merete Lynggaard’s secretary during the period just before she disappeared?” he asked, after the requisite introductory remarks had been exchanged.
She knitted her brow in thought. “I couldn’t understand it either. Not at the time, at any rate. I was actually quite ticked off at her. But then it came out that she had a disabled brother she was taking care of.”
“And?”
“Well, I thought she had a boyfriend since she was always acting so secretive and was in such a hurry to go home every day.”
He smiled. “Was that what you told her?”
“Yes, it was dumb. I can see that now. But I thought we were closer friends than we really were. You live and learn.” She gave Carl a wry smile, revealing a whole set of dimples. If Assad ever met her, he’d never be able to get on with his life.