The Seventh Child (77 page)

He’d
tried to escape her sad eyes by sinking into the chair and opening the report
he’d
looked forward to showing her. It was his crowning achievement—his thesis about female inmates and their especially difficult situation—and it had brought them together in the strangest of ways. “Read this, Eva. It’s about you.”

“I’m with child,” she said—as though it were an irreparable situation or a place where time stood still and nothing could ever be redone.

Shocked, Ole Almind-Enevold scrutinized her face for signs that she might be teasing. He heard one of the guards walk past on the other side of the door, but he couldn’t see him because the window was covered with a piece of dark cloth.

“I’m with child,” she repeated and waited for a response.

For a moment the guard stopped outside the door, clanging a chair about. But then his steps grew more distant again and disappeared.

“It’s
your
…
” But she didn’t complete the sentence. Instead her mouth shrank until it looked like a little red flower that had folded in on itself. This was the mouth that had greedily received him on those occasions when
he’d
succumb to his lust. They’d had sex on the low, plank bed with the blue mattress—that much he remembered. Each time the room had been locked and the window covered—theirs alone for the two hours his visit would last. Their affair had gone on for months.

He had just turned twenty-seven, and his political career had been described as extremely promising in both the
Social-Democrat
and, after the Party Congress that year, in the
Berlingske Evening Times.

“Answer me,”
she’d
said, sitting slightly curled up and staring at him through her troubled eyes.

He thought of her naked (because she had been incarcerated for nearly two years, her paleness was perhaps the most fascinating thing about her body). He thought of how sweat ran down her skin and onto the blanket
he’d
spread out beneath them, of how it stormed and rained as she pressed her mouth to his ear and whispered words that only girls from her neighborhood would ever use;
she’d
convulsed under him as though cramping up, before she opened her eyes wide without seeing anyone or anything, and
she’d
completely entwined him.

He put the papers on the table: the official report that was to advance his career. “It’s almost complete,” he said. “This is my last draft.” He was very proud of his work

“You’re
insane
…
” She shook her head. “I’m telling you we’re going to have a
child
…
and all you talk about is that
report
.”

“But this might help
…
your case. Maybe get you out of here,” he said. But he really didn’t want her to get out. He was already married.

He had written the introduction to the report himself.
Prison Services and Copenhagen University 1960. Female inmate. DOB April 7, 1944—ex. 01
.

The entire first chapter was about her, and he considered it a crucial document that would advance the cause for both women and the marginalized:
I talked to 01 about her mother. She gave the impression that her mother’s past was a determining factor in what occurred
.

After that came all the necessary observations, and then it was on to plain facts:
The child of an unknown German soldier, 01 killed her mother with a single shove—she fell down a steep rear stairwell in the apartment building where they lived. This after an argument about that relationship. The episode occurred on the girl’s fifteenth birthday. At first she called it an accident, but later she rescinded her denial and declared such an intense hatred toward her mother that she was taken into custody.

The treatment described in the following sections had been more successful, however, judging by the standard at the time:
After three visits, 01 speaks more openly about herself and her incarceration. Using the questions 16–23 (section 01C), I am trying to find a pattern in her impression of the criminally preventative effect of the sentence. But the questions seem to exhaust the girl. She just turned sixteen.

After that third visit they’d had sex for the first time. He could still hear her shouting, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” And at the moment he wasn’t sure whether she was responding to her own primitive force as a woman—her back had tensed and
she’d
been assailed by tremors
he’d
never before seen, which kept her raised in a high arch above the blue mattress for nearly a minute—or whether her words were a confession, emanating from deep within her conscience.

“They’ll have to let me out now!” She put her hands on her stomach.

“They’ll never let you out,” he answered without hesitation, the relief in his voice audible.

She sat looking at him.

I thought of the girl staring at the cockchafer she had pinned down, and then much later her freedom from Darkness in the form of a white bird disappearing into the sky.

“You’ll have to abort it.” The words had just tumbled out. Because it was Ole Almind-Enevold’s only solution. “They won’t let you out just because you’re
…
” At that moment, her name (the same as the mother of all women) seemed absurd to him, yet he repeated it as a last resort. “Eva, you’ll have to abort.”

“A monstrosity, is it?”

He felt the chill in the room. If she ever spoke to anyone about the baby’s father, or if the prison staff failed to maintain their discretion (of course they’d easily figure out the connection, but prison management could be persuaded to silence), they’d simply lock him up.

Associating with a woman convicted of murder. Abusing a professional client relationship. Abusing a minor in the custody of the criminal services.

Every newspaper in the country would print it on the front page.
He’d
be convicted and lose his license—and the party that had promised to support his run for parliament would abandon him.

The girl before him began to cry. “I’m not going to kill my child too.”

He understood that
she’d
made up her mind, and his thoughts rushed through his head at breakneck speed. Then he made the decision. “Eva, there’s another way. But it requires a big sacrifice that I don’t know if you can handle,” he said. “In that way you can atone for everything that has happened.”

She dried her eyes and stared at him.

He felt her presence in his head, that she was looking for the deceit. But she wouldn’t be able to find it, because sometimes reality is just so bizarre that it’s all the liar needs. He saw the pattern in his mind’s eye, the whole plan, and he knew exactly how to execute it—and who to ask for help.

He held her shoulders for a long time;
she’d
have to listen if she were to save herself and her child, and that was one thing
he’d
learned in his time as a consultant for Prison Services: working-class girls would save themselves and their children at any cost. It was perhaps the only thing they’d learned from their mothers.

“We have just this one shot,” he said, holding her narrow shoulders.

Later,
he’d
thought of the situation as an accident—one born of other accidents. Isn’t that the origin of most lives, if you really examine matters? Isn’t that how it’s been in the mansions of the wealthy in Klampenborg and at large country estates in Jutland—and even at the King’s Palace—hasn’t it been proved again and again through centuries that children are born into the world accidentally, they drift to shore like Moses in the basket, and are loved by the person who happens to walk by and hear their cry?

By the person who picks them up.

Yes
, he thought to himself.

And there would have been no room for any other thoughts in Visitation Room 4 in Horserød State Prison that autumn day.

“That was in 1960. She gave birth nine months later—on April 30, 1961.”

“In Obstetric Ward B at Rigshospital,” Taasing added.

“Yes. That’s true,” Ole said. “We wielded a certain influence after all. We pulled the necessary strings. And we succeeded. With Magna’s help
…
and her personal contacts with the chief medical doctor at the prison. A cash gift to the prison warden
…
”

“And an alternative scenario in which the warden would be fired for failing to protect his female inmates properly.” Malle allowed himself a little smile.

No doubt that threat had been Malle’s contribution to the plan.

“Magna picked up the child—and she spoke with Eva,” Ole said. “We persuaded her to do the right thing, and finally she left. And then
…
”

“And then everything went wrong,” Taasing said.

The Almighty One replied with a nod. It felt as though the peculiar story had established a historic—and no doubt temporary—armistice between the two men. “Yes
…
then everything went wrong. My wife
…
my wife, Lykke
…
she didn’t want to adopt. And then Magna got scared.
She’d
been an accomplice in a crime, even though she claimed she did it for the sake of the child.”

“And of course because she knew that it would secure her orphanage for all the years to come.” Again Malle added his cynical take to the story.

Irritated by the comment, Almind-Enevold shrugged and went on, “Carl and I didn’t know which of the boys was the right one
…
”

I noticed that Eva had already conveniently disappeared from their story.

“We didn’t know how to determine which one it was. And then Magna succeeded in getting him out of the way before we could do anything.” At that moment, he looked almost as sad as the young woman
he’d
just described. “For all these years, she refused to tell me anything about that time. She had a duty, she said, to offer all her adopted children protection. And that’s how she atoned for her crime.
She’d
broken all of Mother’s Aid Society’s rules when she helped us with Eva’s child, and she was determined never to break another one.”

“So we tracked the seven orphans down.” Malle’s tone suggested there was nothing unusual about shadowing an infant on its journey into the world. “Whenever a child was adopted, there was a farewell ceremony at Kongslund. All the staff would stand in the driveway waving at the little one and their new parents as they made their departure. We simply followed them.”

Malle smiled, and I don’t believe I’ve ever found him more unsympathetic than at that moment.

“Later we visited the orphanage from time to time—whenever possible—to see whether Magna had kept something we could use or something that indicated she still kept contact with the child or the mother,” Malle said.

“You burglarized the house,” Taasing said.

“I do recall that the first couple of times had been at night.” Again Malle smiled at us, defiantly.

“But finally we gave up.” Almind-Enevold was clearly uncomfortable with the more felonious part of the story. The burglaries hadn’t produced any results anyway. “Through the years, we tracked down the seven children from the Elephant Room and followed them at a distance, but we never figured out who
…
”

“John Bjergstrand was.” There was an unmistakably triumph in Taasing’s voice. The armistice between the two was over.

“No. We realized that the adoptive parents weren’t told the truth, and we couldn’t find any other clues,” Almind-Enevold said.

“But genetic science has advanced quite a bit,” Taasing said. “Couldn’t you have gotten samples
…
?”

“We tried that once, but it didn’t yield any result, so we gave up,” Malle interjected. “It was too risky. Which doctor and lab would we approach and what explanation could we give them?
We’d
risk exposing evidence that could be used against us.”

“It
also
meant you could retain your power over Ole—as custodian of the invisible child—which must have suited you very well,” Taasing said, cocking his head like a gigantic bird. “When—strangely enough—the first test didn’t give you anything, maybe you started to feel that Ole wasn’t the father after all, and then
you’d
lose your hold on him.
Of course
you could have found a way if you wanted to.”

For once Malle didn’t respond. His eyes remained expressionless, and I couldn’t tell whether Taasing had hit the bull’s eye or not.

Taasing changed the topic. “Did you have anything to do with Eva’s death in 2001?”

Almind-Enevold narrowed his eyes and appeared genuinely shocked. “No
…
we didn’t even know she was here.”

“And Magna
…
hers was just another mysterious death?” Taasing’s accusation hung in the air.

“Think about it.” The new prime minister stared angrily at his inquisitor. “We had no reason to kill Magna. She was the
only one
who could tell us
…
tell me about my son—if she ever decided to.”