The Seventh Child (52 page)

Early one morning before the sun rose above the fjord, Daniel reconnected with his ancestor’s soul; curling his fingers like claws, he tore at his belt and straps and jerked his outstretched legs with all his might as he screamed and groaned and foamed at the mouth. Finally, the belts and straps flew across the room, and it took four nurses and an orderly to hold down the limbs that now threatened to jump from his imprisoned body. He was pacified with pills and even stronger straps and was no longer allowed to clutch the seal hide that had triggered his revolt. He never spoke to anyone again.

A couple of days later, the broad-shouldered, working-class lad, Benny, from Copenhagen, continued the revolt, loosening his straps and unraveling the bandages from his legs. With a peculiar, contemptuous laugh that rose from his belly like a growl, he pushed down the bedrail and edged triumphantly to the floor. Here he stood a little unsteadily for a few seconds, squeezing a chair before letting go and trying to walk on his frail legs. Surprised at his own lack of strength, he fell to the floor and lay moaning. In the beds around him, his buddies watched with wide-open eyes, petrified by the looming and unbearable catastrophe. As with all newly formed rebellions, they held back cautiously and let the leader take the first (and often also the last) steps alone. But then Benny suddenly stood and made the walk of his life from one wall to the other—with no muscles in his legs. And then on the return (the twelve feet or so to his bed) his painstakingly rebuilt femoral head snapped in its hip socket, causing him to fall sideways into hell and an extra two years in bed.

There were other terrifying stories from the Coastal Sanatorium—like the awful one of Karsten, the truck driver’s son, who ran errands for Asger on his crutches the summer he was discharged. He went back to his father, who promptly made him carry boxes and big sacks day in and day out as his assistant until the fragile hip finally gave in. He never made it back to the sanatorium. A few days before he was supposed to return, he hobbled through the darkness into the adjacent forest and hanged himself. He was twelve years and two days old, and this terrifying story spread like a whisper among the nurses and frightened the kids out of their wits.

From his bed with a view of the fjord, Asger realized that Fate does not spare those already afflicted—on the contrary. He understood that it had a particular aversion to boys like Daniel and Benny and Karsten, those from families who didn’t understand, who had learned nothing, who stupidly ignored or resisted the inevitable. It seemed to take a particular pleasure in knocking down the poorest and most desperate families. Asger got the message though. He held his breadth and made no hasty movements during those days. He knew better than anyone how clearly even the smallest movement could be seen from as far away as outer space.

They took the belts and bandages off in July 1972, on the very day the robotic space probe
Pioneer 10
became the first spacecraft to enter the asteroid belt. At the request of American scientist Carl Sagan it carried humankind’s first message to alien civilization: an aluminum plaque depicting the figures of a man and woman and including directions to planet Earth, just in case anyone wanted to stop by for a visit.

It was anything but a coincidence to Asger; it simply foretold the freedom awaiting him. Suddenly he could bend his legs again and sit up in bed—and for a couple of hours a day, he was allowed to unfasten the six straps that tied him to the mattress.

On the first day he sat up in bed, a little girl with long reddish-brown hair falling over her shoulders—like a halo—appeared in the doorway.
He’d
almost forgotten what a girl’s voice sounded like.

“Can I come in?”

His heart beat hard.

“I live close by,” she said. “My name is Susanne.” Her voice nestled under the skin of his chest.

“I just wanted to see how you’re doing,” she said. “My mother said you were here.”

He didn’t want to frighten her off and therefore didn’t question the peculiar statement.

“What’s that you’ve got there?” she asked, nodding toward the telescope.

“Do you know they sent a spacecraft to look for life in the universe?” he said. And then something incredible happened: she didn’t laugh at him. She simply said, “Did they find any?”

Love washed over him right then and there. It was that easy. The two children had no idea that they’d met before, but I believe their subconscious identified unmistakable signs: a scent, a color, a way of moving—perhaps the tone of voice—everything they’d shared in the Elephant Room, but which neither of them knew at the time.

In August 1972 she appeared again, one Thursday afternoon, as the sun was shining from a deep blue sky and an enormous supertanker had dropped anchor in the fjord right outside Asger’s window; there it lay like a silvery whale, on that wonderful day, and Asger smiled to the whole world.

“Did you know our parents knew one another a really long time ago?” she asked.

He thought about the question a bit. “No,” he said. “They’ve never said anything about that. When was that?” But he was cheered by the thought, because it gave him a special position none of the other boys in the ward could trump.

“When we were born
…
when we were born in Copenhagen,” she said merrily.

A promising thought. The two of them had somehow been together from the beginning.

“I’ve never heard anything about that,” he nevertheless said in all honesty.

“It was at the Rigshospital.”

“All I know is that I was born the day Gagarin launched into space.”

“Parents don’t tell us everything,” she said, precociously. He felt like reaching out and stroking her hair.

In her Aarhus living room, Kristine sat up straighter in her chair and put her hands to her temples as though warding off a sudden headache. “It worries me that Ms. Ingemann Jørgensen has asked her daughter to visit Asger,” she suddenly said.

“But we already talked about this
…
and neither knows their past,” her husband said calmly. “We’ll have to tell him soon. All the doctors know.”

“Maybe she really wants the truth to come out,” Kristine said.

“Why on earth would she want that?”

“We have to tell him.” Kristine shook her head. “Otherwise the doctors will. And then
…
” Her eyes were fearful.

Far away in Ingolf’s mind a shadow moved, taking the shape of the son he loved, before disappearing again. “Well, then
I’ll
do it,” he said, standing.

That night they made love with a passion they hadn’t felt since their college years. It was as though something had suddenly fallen out of their relationship—perhaps their hopes of becoming pregnant—leaving them playful and lighter than they’d ever been before.

There was complete silence on Kongslund’s front patio. I could tell that this was the toughest part of the story for Asger.

With some difficulty I’d managed to put together parts of his story (Susanne knew some important pieces but not all of them), but this was no doubt the first time he talked about it so coherently and under such special circumstances.

He seemed to understand that the past would reveal a connection to the riddle
we’d
gathered to solve. The adults around us had made a pact that bound them together in silence, and both the orphanage and the adoptive parents would have had strong motives to keep it.

“My father
…
my adoptive father, I mean,” he added, blinking behind the glasses, “took the ferry to Kalundborg as
he’d
done so many times before. But this time on his own.”

Everyone around the table listened. Everyone knew that this moment was crucial.

Yes, Ingolf had been alone. He was determined to complete the assignment his wife had entrusted him with. The cab ride from the town to the hospital took fifteen minutes. A nurse’s assistant wheeled Asger’s bed into the waiting room where they could speak.

“Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m here,” Ingolf said.

“Yes,” said Asger, who had been busy making a list of the most important events in space exploration since 1890, and his brain was only slowly returning to planet Earth.

“Your mom and I have been thinking things over. And there’s something
we’d
like to tell you—and—well, maybe we should have told you, eh, earlier.”

Asger’s blue eyes were alert. Fear had not yet sent the first little pulsar into his consciousness.

“Your mom and I couldn’t have children,” Ingolf said.

Asger’s eyes didn’t seem to react, but inside his brain a little beam of light shot through the frontal lobe and pierced his skull with a white-hot heat. The seconds that followed his father’s peculiar statement could have contained the entire life of the Milky Way from dust particles to a midsize spiral galaxy over a span of billions of years.

“That’s why your mother and I decided to adopt a child.” It sounded strange and was uttered in a much-too-loud and decisive voice. Ingolf smiled. “It’s the best decision we ever made.”

Your mother and I
. His father said, “
Your mother and I”
—not Mom and me and you—the only sense of security
he’d
known.

He wanted to return the smile. But a noise traveled from deep within his chest and exited his mouth; something broke in him, and he grew dizzy. The floor of his gut slipped free and hurtled through the mattress, the bed frame, the floor, and finally the basement—all the way under the hospital. Fluids streamed from every orifice; he was like a cracked jug that had split open from top to bottom.

His father’s smile disappeared. “But, Asger, we are your parents
…
Your mother and I will always be with you.”

Your mother and I.

The head nurse, Ms. Müller, appeared by his bedside and held his hand; she asked Ingolf to wait in the hallway while they changed the sheets.

When he returned, he smiled apologetically at his son, but shock was still etched in the boy’s face. They sat for long moments in silence, until Ingolf finally stirred. It was late and he had to teach the following day. He couldn’t stay, and besides, he had to get back to Kristine; no doubt worry would be overtaking her by now.

“I have to leave now,” Ingolf said gently. “I have school in the morning.” In his long, uninterrupted teaching career
he’d
never played hooky. “As I said, your mother sends all her regards. She wanted us to talk this through, man to man, and we did. You’ve taken it really well
…
really well.”

Asger hadn’t said a word.

Ingolf shook his head, a little impatiently. “Your mother wrote you a long letter that you’ll get in the morning, and then we’ll call you Tuesday or Wednesday.” Of course they didn’t want Asger to lie there grappling with this new reality without hearing from them for several days, he told nurse Müller. “We’ll come see you on Sunday, as usual. With all the new magazines—
Akim
,
Captain Mickey
,
Speed and Pace
,
Battler Britton
…
”

He kissed his son’s forehead—where fathers prefer to plant their kisses—and said good-bye.

Many years later, Asger would understand what his father had been thinking after his visit to his broken son as he rode the ferry back to his wife and their newfound tenderness:
It’s no sin to tell the truth. It was the right decision. Maybe they should have done so earlier, but they’d had a lot on their minds—and they’d done nothing wrong.

His mother’s letter never arrived, but she did call him three days later. The staff wheeled him out to the telephone in the hallway, and he told her he was doing well. “Your
father
was tired when he came home,” emphasizing the word
father
.

Asger didn’t reply.

“We’ll get you some magazines for our next visit, and we’ll call you on Thursday,” she said before hanging up.

All of Thursday he waited for them to call, but they never did.

He spent the following night half-asleep until the chief medical doctor made his rounds. Doctor Bohr, son of the famous atomic physicist Niels Bohr (whom Asger greatly admired for his immense contributions to quantum mechanics), entered the room, flanked as usual by Ms. Müller and a small train of nurses. “And how are we feeling today?” he asked. For once Asger seemed completely focused on the external world.

Again, fluids gushed from the boy—just as powerfully as earlier—and everyone stood puzzled. Later he would remember the smell of Ms. Müller’s powder and her freshly ironed uniform. She looked at him and said, “I’m going to give your parents a call. They’ll come see you. They’ll stay at the chief doctor’s guesthouse tonight.”

He understood that her prophecy would come true.

An hour later, Susanne showed up. Normally, she didn’t come on Saturdays. It was as though she could tell something was wrong. In his bed under the blue duvet, Asger’s little body sank back in despair. She put her arms around him quite unexpectedly and cried. He told her everything. “They should have stayed with you,” she said, ice-cold anger in her voice. “I’ll tell my mother and father. They know them. They can talk to them. I’ll be back.”