Ever since Laust hired Frederik, the two of them have been on the phone to each other pretty much every day, like a pair of fast-talking teenage boys. Laust lets the school take up a lot more space in his life than he ought to, given his wife and his position as section chief in the Ministry of Education. And it’s safe to say that Frederik’s boss has also become his best friend.
Laust sketched a series of amusing minor incidents from school life, describing how he and Frederik had responded to them together. But then, late in the speech, he grew serious.
Some years ago, a girl at the school had become quite introverted, and her PE teacher had noticed bruises on her. The girl said she’d gotten them from climbing trees, but Frederik called her mother and stepfather in for a meeting anyway. They said that they would never hit her.
But Frederik went with his gut. Though the school had hundreds of students, he kept on the case. He arranged further meetings, and at last the stepfather admitted that he couldn’t govern his temper, and the couple elected to go into therapy.
“Frederik,” said Laust from up on his chair, “what makes this story so typical is that at no point did the parents become angry with you. Nor did they, once they owned up to their problems, feel too humiliated to let their daughter keep attending our school. On the contrary — they thanked you for your help, and they became even more involved in school activities than before.”
Laust must have also known the girl and her parents; he paused to take a sip of his red wine. There was something delicate in his pale skin and thin hair. He caught Frederik’s eye and was ready to go on.
“If they hadn’t understood before why your abilities as headmaster were so highly respected, they understood now. You made a difference in that girl’s life forever, Frederik. And she is only one of many. Very very many! And you’ve made a difference in parents’ lives, and in the lives of the people who work at the school. And you’ve made an even greater difference in the lives of those of us gathered here — we who are lucky enough to be counted your friends.”
He got down and we toasted, shouted hurrah! and applauded, and Frederik went over and gave him a hug.
There were other speeches and songs. A friend from when Frederik worked at Trørød Elementary told about when we met. “Frederik got the young, fair-haired tennis girl that every man wanted,” he said. Later another old friend said, “And then he snagged the hot babe, Mia,” and again people laughed.
Niklas changed the music, a couple of his friends joining him; we pushed the chairs back against the walls and some people danced, we opened the door to the yard even though it was November, and people stood on the back stairs and smoked. Frederik and I danced too, the light uneven on the dance floor, I flung my arms around his waist, more wine, a shelf toppled over and so what, the clock struck two, there was noise and then the music grew more mellow.
Frederik and I were sweaty from dancing. He pulled me out the back door, down the stairs, and out into the yard, so far from the windows that we were standing in darkness. He kissed me under the black branches of the apple tree.
It was much too cold, but we picked our way across the black lawn toward the white steel skeleton of our hanging sofa where it caught the light in the shadows. There were no cushions, and the seat’s dark springs shaded into the space and the grass beneath them. We sat down, and with the alcohol and dancing in our blood it was as if we were hovering suspended in the cold night.
Hell, the price Niklas and I paid that Frederik might merit such a collection of speeches. It hadn’t been my vision of a marriage, to endure so many years essentially in solitude while my husband lavished his attention upon anyone connected to Saxtorph — and too much attention upon a couple of female teachers and board members in particular.
Ever since, I’ve tried to forget how lonely I was during all those years. No one except my girlfriends and Niklas to look me in the eye, no one else to hear my trivial asides and understand how I felt just from the tone of my voice. The longing for another kind of marriage and my despairing wonder about why I stayed with Frederik. What had he done to me? Why didn’t I go out and seek the marriage I’d always dreamt of?
A few years ago he finally came back to us. It’d been a hard struggle, but I thought I succeeded in swallowing my bitterness. And now it felt as if we’d really only been with each other the last couple of years, as if our relationship were still brand spanking new and full of possibility. A joyful feeling that his betrayal belonged to another world than this.
There was almost nothing in the yard we could see. So it was more a sound, or a sense that something was moving in the apple branches. As if a bird were taking flight, or a dried-up winter apple were letting go of its stem.
“Frederik, the others praise you for so many marvelous things. And I’m so proud of you. So very proud to have a man who’s so clever and so good with people.”
I pressed myself against him, and there in the hanging sofa, in the night, in the cold, I felt in my trembling body that he and I belonged together.
“But this is what I love you for.”
• • •
Another nurse enters Frederik’s hospital room. We can’t understand what she’s saying, but with gestures she makes us understand that Frederik and I are to follow her to see somebody else — perhaps another doctor.
Frederik gets up from the bed as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Niklas remains behind, and Frederik and I are led into a large corner office where we sit across from an older doctor with an immense mustache. The exaggerated rectitude of his bearing gives me the impression that he’s been a military doctor most of his life. He speaks excellent English with great pride, an old-fashioned, British boarding-school English.
“I can say with almost complete certitude that it is not cancer,” he says. “That means that my colleagues in Denmark can probably remove the tumor completely. Before the operation, however, no one will be able to say precisely the extent of the procedure they will be required to perform. Perhaps afterwards you will be completely as you were accustomed to being before; perhaps you will find yourself changed.”
Frederik doesn’t say anything, so I ask for him. “Changed?”
“Yes, for you must have already experienced changes recently. Am I correct?”
I try to think, but my thoughts lead nowhere. I have no idea what the doctor is talking about, and yet I hear myself saying, “Yes.”
“What you must be particularly prepared for is for your husband to lose all empathy for you and how you are doing,” the doctor says. “He will have a harder time restraining his more primitive impulses. He may have sudden fits of anger and deny every suggestion that he is unwell. Those are the most typical symptoms when there is pressure on the orbitofrontal region of the brain.”
I stare at Frederik, still not knowing what the doctor is talking about. The doctor folds his sunburned hands on the desktop and looks into my eyes probingly.
“But to judge by the size of his tumor, you know all about these orbitofrontal symptoms already, do you not?”
In my head I hear myself asking Do I? but I answer, “Yes.”
“Good. Frederik, we shall give you corticotropin to reduce the swelling in your brain, as well as some anticonvulsants so that you do not risk another epileptic seizure like the one you experienced yesterday … Frederik?”
“Yes,” he says.