On top of everything else, there are all the public offices to get through to on the telephone, the government forms and insurance forms to fill out, and the confusing bills that Frederik used to pay. By the time I lie down it’s late. Now I have to try to relax and go to sleep with a man who snores differently, smells different, and twitches in his sleep in an unfamiliar fashion. I may as well be sharing our queen-size bed with some burglar.
Will we ever be able to make love again? When he lies there pestering me for sex, I turn my back on him, squeeze my thick pillow between my breasts, and use my legs to push him away.
And then one night I decide he’s got a point. We’re still man and wife, after all. Why keep insisting that he stay on his half of the bed? We both want the same thing, and he’s been a stranger now for five weeks.
Besides, night after night when I’m half asleep under the comforter, I’ve been entertaining a fantasy about making him well again. I know it’ll never happen, but I’m seized by the notion of it all being some misunderstanding. Something in me says that there’s no tumor, that he’ll return to normal if I just let him have sex with me. That the last five weeks have been nothing more than a test of my love for him, and in a short while he’ll become himself again if I only let him.
So one night I consent, and seconds later he’s on top of me, frenetically trying to grind away. There’s nothing erotic or loving about it; for him I’m not really a person, that’s abominably clear. Some creature is pawing at me and attempting to mount me, some creature without age or face, eyes or voice.
I try to instruct him in what I like, in what we used to do. He hears me but keeps going, heedless. His rough snorting in my ear, his clumsy hands; a dog that only wants to hump. His cock bangs against me without him seeming to realize that I’m straining now to keep him out. The unfamiliar sheen of sweat on his face.
I writhe, trying to shove him away, but his response is to pin me to the mattress. Even the smile on his face is someone else’s.
“Stop it! Stop!”
But he won’t.
“Stop, Frederik! God damn it, Frederik, stop!”
He just keeps at it, and in the end I have no choice. I butt him with my head.
“Ow! You fucking sow!” He grabs his nose and raises himself up a little. He howls as I heave him off of me and run out to our bathroom, where I lock the door and lift the door handle, since the lock alone probably won’t hold.
Two seconds later, he’s rattling the door in the jamb, hammering away on it, and shouting, “Come out, you whore! Come on, you know you want it. I’m going to fucking pound you!”
I whisper through the door that he mustn’t wake Niklas. But he doesn’t care.
“You bitch, time for some prick!”
There’s a knock on the bedroom door.
“What’s happening in there? What’s going on?” Niklas’s voice is high and shrill, like it used to be a few years ago.
“Mind your own business!” Frederik yells. “Go to your room! I order you, go to your room!”
I shout through the bathroom door and the bedroom door to where he’s standing in the hallway. “It’s okay, Niklas, it’s no big deal.”
He doesn’t hear me. “Where’s Mom?”
“I’m in here, Niklas! Can you hear me? I’m in our bathroom!”
“Stick it up your ass, you little shit!”
Niklas’s voice sounds panicked now. “Where’s Mom, I want to see her!”
I unlock the door and rush into the bedroom. Frederik is naked, standing with his back propped against the door to the hallway. The door booms and shudders each time Niklas throws himself against it. Frederik’s erection hasn’t subsided. In the dark it looks bigger than when he was healthy.
I come closer.
“Niklas, it’s okay. I’m here. There’s nothing the matter.”
The booming ceases. He must be standing still on the other side of the door. His voice becomes gentle. “I want to see that you’re there.”
“Let me come out to you,” I say, looking for something to throw over myself.
Frederik’s no longer leaning against the door. The tension eases for a moment, then the door flies open with a bang and Niklas tumbles past us.
The light from the doorway falls on me standing there, just as naked as Frederik. Niklas has a wild look in his eyes and his hair is all mussed. He’s ready to fight. And then he crumples to the floor.
“I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize.” I glance over at Frederik’s cock sticking up, as undaunted and brown-violet as ever. I don’t understand why it doesn’t droop. He doesn’t seem self-conscious in the least, though Niklas tries to look away. I hurry to the bed for a comforter to cover myself with.
Niklas is crying with the same irregular rhythm as when he was five years old, the same deep wail broken by a sobbing whimper. “Sorry … sorry … sorry.”
I throw another comforter over to Frederik to wrap himself in. “No need to be sorry about anything, Niklas. It was sweet of you to want to make sure I was okay.”
I crouch down on the floor next to my son and feel a desire to hold him, to hug him, but he pushes me away.
I get up.
“Go back to your room,” I say. “I’ll come in to you in a little bit.”
I gather some clothes together, give Frederik one of the motor-sport magazines Thorkild bought for him, and hurry to the bathroom to get dressed. When I come back out, Niklas is gone, and Frederik’s immersed in the magazine.
I disappear into Niklas’s room. He’s sitting up in his bed, wrapped in his comforter. I slide his desk chair over to the side of the bed and sit down. I know I should remain calm — inhumanly calm, given the situation. His face is stiff, as if all the tiny muscles under his skin are paralyzed, and when he brushes a lock of hair off his forehead, he does so slowly and with physical effort, as if he suffers from some neurological disorder that makes him incapable of normal movement.
I assure him that nothing’s happened to me, and that his father didn’t hit me. Then I repeat it. And repeat it again. The whole time in an artificially calm voice.
And at some point, I feel my false calm start to seep in and become genuine. There’s also something about talking to a healthy human being. The difference is so vast.
“Did Dad hit you that other time too?” he asks at last, and I know he means the time I kicked Frederik out.
“Your father’s never hit me,” I say.
It’s warm in his room. Black-and-white posters printed from his own photos hang on the walls, along with a single colored poster from a techno party in Copenhagen. The room smells of teenage boy, and his clothes lie on the floor in a heap that resembles a fat little troll.
“It’ll be over soon,” he says.
“Yes, after the operation he’ll become normal again.”
“Three weeks max.”
“Three weeks max.”
We both stare into space, saying nothing. A weak light from a streetlamp outside casts a pattern on his cheek and a car drives past; we listen to the sound slowly die away.
It’s become necessary for us to keep an eye on Frederik’s whereabouts at night. Three days ago, I discovered him in our living room at four thirty in the morning, just a few clicks away from e-mailing an apoplectic op-ed to our daily paper, Politiken, about a bunch of headmasters from other private schools who he said were incompetent and should be fired. There’s so much he could destroy — for himself, for us all. Someone has to sleep beside him, ready to wake up if he does.
“I can’t sleep in there tonight,” I say.
Niklas begins to tremble almost imperceptibly. “I can’t either.”
“No, no! Of course not, you’re not going to!”