I look him in the eye, the way he and I are able to now, my son and I, the two of us alone in the dark hallway.
“But I love Bernard even more,” I say. “I had to do it, Niklas. I love Bernard in another way.”
He stands still, listening, his short hair above me.
“I had to. I didn’t have any choice.”
• • •
It’s the day before the trial is scheduled to begin. Frederik’s fired Bernard, though I did what I could to dissuade him.
On the news, they’re reporting an industrial fire at a factory fifty miles west of Copenhagen. Twelve workers died in the explosion that started it, and firemen have been called in from all the neighboring cities.
I have TV2 News turned up loud while I clean so I can follow the story. They’re warning people within a three-mile radius against going outside because of the chemicals in the air. But the rest of us, they say, should go out and watch the sunset tonight. The vast quantity of soot particles in the atmosphere won’t be visible to the eye, but they’ll act like a filter, only letting through the sun’s red rays. If the clouds dissipate, the evening sky will turn blood-red like it’s never been seen in Denmark before.
Maybe I’ll step out for a bit to see it, but with my new life I’ve gotten behind on math assignments in all my classes. Tonight’s my last chance to correct them before the trial begins; starting tomorrow, I can’t expect to be able to concentrate on anything other than the sentence that the panel of judges will hand down.
The phone rings. It’s Frederik, and I assume he’s worried about tomorrow too. But no. Some way or another, he’s heard about Bernard’s brain injury, and that’s the only thing he wants to talk about.
After a short while I have to interrupt him.
“Frederik, I’m happy to talk about your case if you want. I’m terribly anxious too. We all are. But you’re going to have to stop criticizing Bernard and running him down. I don’t want to hear it!”
“But he’s been soaking in an artificial bath of hormones that’s turned him into a teddy bear.”
“Frederik, if you don’t change the subject, I’m going to have to hang up.”
“Do you really want a love robot like that instead of a real man?”
“Bernard’s the man I’ve dreamt about for a very long time. Now let’s talk about something else.”
“Surely you have to admit that—”
I hang up the phone.
• • •
It’s early evening, and I’m actually making good headway on the assignments when there comes a knock on the door. Niklas is down by the marina with Emilie and some friends, so I think it might be him and he’s forgotten his keys.
But it’s Frederik.
“I don’t want to discuss it anymore,” I say right away.
“We won’t. I understand that.”
“So what’s up then? What do you want?”
“To show you something.”
He doesn’t look angry. He looks gentle, radiant, kind. Like he’s in a good mood, yet at the same time miles from the manic high spirits of his illness.
“What sort of something?” I ask.
“Something outside.”
“You mean the sunset? I can see that by myself. I heard about it on the news.”
“Just come with me. It’ll be a surprise.”
“First I want to know what it is you’d like to show me.”
“Mia, trust me. It’s something nice. You won’t regret it.”
I think about Niklas; his father and I ought to try and cultivate a good relationship with each other. And I think of the trial tomorrow. It’ll have a major impact on all of our lives, Frederik’s most of all; he must be terrified. So I put on my jacket.
He gets four cushions out of the large closet in what used to be his room. We’re going somewhere outside, apparently. That must be it — the sunset from some special place he’s found.
We don’t say much as he leads the way through Farum Midtpunkt. The sky is already amazing, and there’s still half an hour before the sun goes down. A peculiar violet shade, not only in the west but also above us and to the east. He seems tense, but cheerful as well. I don’t think there’s any reason for me to be nervous.
“Any new developments in your case?” I ask.
He doesn’t reply, just smiles mysteriously.
We head down toward the train station.
“Have you gotten a job at a school?”
“No, I haven’t. But it’ll be great at the corner shop too,” he says. As if in another week he won’t in all likelihood be sitting in jail.
From the station he takes me down Station Road.
“Are we going home? Frederik, what are you trying to do?”
Once more I grow uneasy. Is he sick again? Is he aware of what he’s doing?
But then I see our house. I haven’t been here since we moved. There are new curtains and the hedge is higher; I would have trimmed it. The garbage cans and the wicker enclosure around them have been moved, and it actually looks pretty nice; that’s something we could have done too. They’ve painted the door, and through the windows I can see one of those new origami lamps in the living room.
Frederik walks up to the gate and opens it.
“Frederik, it’s theirs now. We can’t just walk in there.”
“I met Jens at The Square,” he says. “He said that the new owners are on holiday for two weeks.”
And then he strolls into the yard, as if nothing’s happened.
“I’m really not sure that …”
But somehow he gets me to join him anyway.
My flowers and bushes have grown like mad during the past three months. I planted the trumpetweed last year and have never seen it like this. Everything’s a little wilder than when it was mine. By next year it might be unmanageable, but right now — with the phlox and the asters blooming, the weigela fading, and night about to fall — the hint of neglect only makes the yard seem that much more fertile and lush.
“Come,” he says. He takes my hand and leads me around to the backyard. I follow gladly.
When we turn the corner and see the sky, we can hardly move. Never have I seen the like: red flames tower up from the horizon and have driven the violet back. Toward the west there are no clouds, so that the sinking sun is colossal, bright and blazing crimson. And above us the clouds are lit from below, by all the red. The beauty is paralyzing. And I see from Frederik, who’s standing still, that he can appreciate beauty again.
Our hanging sofa hangs where it always has. The grass is overgrown, though perhaps that’s just because the owners are on vacation. Frederik places the cushions on the sofa and sits down.
“Come.”
I seat myself at his side. The way we often sat during the good years.
Above us there’s a maze of grey and white folds, splashed with red. There lies the sense of smell, and there visual processing. There lies muscular control of the speech organs, and there short-term memory.
The soot from the burning factory and its dead workers has filtered out so much of the sun’s rays that we can gaze directly into its disk. The immense red sun. The unnatural sun. We can stare at it in silence: the beauty, this place, our life together. Here we sat once, and this was our world. We left the neighbor’s party because it felt better to be just the two of us alone. We made love, we set the crooked row of tiles in the bathroom upstairs. We argued about Niklas’s camera, and we shouted with joy when he showed us his tennis medal.
The hanging sofa rocks beneath us and that in itself is enough to make me smile.
Who shall I hold now as we gaze at our son? Who shall I smile at because we have made him? Who shall look at old vacation pictures with me? Or should those pictures just be thrown out? Should everything? And who should break into the yard with me and sit in this hanging sofa?
Finally, Frederik speaks. “Mia, I’m a real man. I pass gas under the covers and sometimes I talk too loud; sometimes I run my mouth off at the wrong time, or I forget to ask how you’re doing. And there were those times, years ago, with Dorte and Gitte. I know all that. And yet I still believe that you and I are the ones who belong together. That it’s you and I who are each other’s mate, and the love of each other’s life. Aren’t we?”