The Susan Effect

  ‘Like South Africa?’

  Either she doesn’t want to know or the effort of speaking allows no sound.

  ‘He found out he was going to be arrested and charged the next day. So he fled. It never got out, but they seized everything. All his properties, his savings, the factory, the hunting lodge at Rude Skov. There was nothing left for us.’

  Her hatred of the authorities has been unfailing ever since. I sit down on the edge of the bed. She hasn’t the energy to protest.

  ‘I’ve seen him,’ I say. ‘In a photo. Taken in the Kalahari Desert. I’m sure he must have been in touch with you. Given word.’

  She reaches for the morphine. I hand it to her. Next to the bottle is an embroidered handkerchief with which I dab her mouth. She wants to sit up, I help her. Fabius puts a pillow behind her back. She points to the drawer of the bedside table. I pull it out. Inside is an envelope.

  ‘Open it.’

  I do as she says and remove the contents. Two photographs of the same man. My father. In the first picture he’s older, in the second much older, than I remember him. In both he’s wearing the white, wide-brimmed hat.

  I turn the photos over. On the back of one of them, in black ink, are the words: To my beloved Lana and Susan.

  There are no stamps on the envelope.

  ‘The first one came after ten years. Then another ten years passed before the next one came. Since then there’s been nothing.’

  ‘How did they arrive?’

  ‘By messenger. The same man both times. A Dane. He didn’t say his name.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  She pauses for a moment.

  ‘A physical man.’

  Some people notice features, others intelligence. Others still are able to smell the size of another person’s bank account at 400 metres. My mother tunes in to people’s bodies. With uncanny precision.

  ‘Physical in what way?’

  Her hands flutter a picture in the air. A dancer’s attempt to describe a reality above or beyond language.

  ‘He made me frightened.’

  Only seldom have I heard her express fear of anything other than dwindling audiences.

  ‘But his clothes were impeccable.’

  Fabius has sat down beside me now. I sense the tenderness of his affection for her. His love. For a brief second it’s tangible, as if there were a physical bridge connecting them.

  Until now I’ve always thought that he was looking for his own mother in mine. Now I see it’s the other way round. In spite of the age difference he loves her the way a father loves a daughter.

  ‘How did you and Dad meet?’

  ‘He saw me dance and sent me flowers. A great bunch, as big as a haystack. He asked if he could see me. I declined. He came to seven performances on the trot. Sat in the first row. And the flowers kept coming, after every performance. When the fourth lot came, I asked the theatre not to accept them. So he went to my parents. He had this psychotic charm about him. I was still living at home. One evening he was just there at dinner. A few weeks later I allowed him to take me out.’

  Her eyes are distant. She’s reliving it all.

  ‘Why did you choose him?’

  She looks at me. It’s a crucial question for any child.

  The answer likewise. To what is one conceived and born? What made one’s parents get together?

  ‘It was his power, Susan. Brute force. Women love it.’

  ‘And love?’

  She glances at Fabius. He nods gently and hands her a tall, slender glass. The apple aquavit. He supports her head as she sips.

  ‘We went shooting together. He’d imported Chinese water deer. The only species of deer with tusks. They can be quite dangerous. In the early mornings, as the sun was rising, we would be alone in the shelter, waiting for the animals to appear. Close together, and without a word between us, while all around us nature was waking up. There was a very strong feeling that if only the world had been different, then perhaps there might have been … love.’

  I feel a kind of irrational relief. Perhaps it’s important for the child in us all to know there was some sort of affection.

  ‘Mum, have you ever received instructions from the Ministry of Defence? In case of disaster?’

  In the ensuing silence I hear her laboured breathing. She closes her eyes, trying to worm her way out of the intimacy that has arisen. She fails. We’re too far inside.

  ‘It’s confidential, Susan. There are two phone numbers. Only the head of the theatre and myself have knowledge of them. Not even the ballet master has them. No one must know. Why do you ask? How do you know about it?’

  Now that my eyes have adjusted to the dark, the details of the room become clearer. From the ceiling hangs a Venetian chandelier: antique, mouth-blown, a hovering, lace-like fantasy of glass. The room is sparsely furnished, but each and every item in it is antique and exquisite in a casual sort of way. As if some passer-by with good taste had accidentally on purpose dropped a million kroner outside the door of a well-chosen home.

  ‘An official came to see me at the theatre. It’s more than ten years ago now. An intelligent man. He told me that even if the whole ballet ceased to exist, as long as they had me they’d still be able to reconstruct the entire Bournonville repertoire. With new dancers. In another place. It’s true, Susan. We won’t say it out loud, but it’s true.’

  ‘What other place?’

  ‘He didn’t say. But it makes such good sense, don’t you think? To protect our most valuable citizens, if anything should happen.’

  I get to my feet.

  ‘He phoned, Susan. Your father. Shortly after the first photo. He was in South Africa. Mobile phones weren’t common in those days. It was the operator who put him through. She said there was a call from South Africa. After a few years he rang again. He asked about you. After that I stopped taking the calls. He wanted to speak to you. It wouldn’t have done you any good. We had lives to be getting on with. You and I together. It could have cost me my position at the theatre. They said it would have been one of the great court cases of all time. International crime. It wasn’t just arms.’

  That’s how she is. At heart, she’s never been bothered about me or my father, nor even her lovers. All she’s ever been interested in is herself and her dancing. I feel tenderness for her. There’s something very pure about only wanting one thing in all your life.

  ‘Did he sound like a man in decline?’

  ‘There was no decline. He was on top. At the top of his game, where he always will be. That’s how he got to me, Susan. It’s how he got to us. It’s the way he always approached life, as something to be conquered. Something to power his way through.’

  There’s a defiant pride about her voice. In a way, she was raped. Maybe it helps to convince herself it was the Prince of Darkness who did it.

  She falls back against her pillows. Fabius follows me out. We stop in the hallway and stand for a moment. What exists between us has no words. The place where he and I converge is in our love for the woman lying in that bed. It’s a feeling so spooky, language would seem to be at a loss.

  ‘Magrethe Spliid. Did you find her, Susan?’

  I nod.

  ‘She and your father were an item. Until he and your mother …’

  As I descend the stairs, he closes the door behind me, quietly and with delicacy.

  At the bottom of the stairwell I see a shadow through the glass pane in the door. I grip the crowbar and step outside into the arch of the gateway. Laban stands leaning up against his bike.

  We walk alongside each other to the pickup. He puts the bike in the back. I climb in behind the wheel.

  I’m about to turn the ignition, only then I pause. The shop on the corner of Gothersgade has been plundered. Its windows are shattered. Inside, virtually everything’s been taken. This happened while I was with my mother.

  I start the car and turn in the opposite direction. I’ve no desire to drive past the vandalised shop. I mak
e a left onto Bredgade. Ahead of me the road stretches from the Royal Theatre and the Magasin du Nord department store, past Nyhavn to the Esplanaden, a sweep through the very centre of the royal city, synonymous with the majestic Copenhagen of old. Now many of the ground-floor windows have been smashed and boarded up. The faint smell of smoke hangs in the air.

  ‘I’ve called the Centre for Particle Physics,’ I say. ‘If Denmark’s being evacuated, Thorbjørn Halk is the first person they’ll bring to safety.’

  4

  THEY PUT THE final touches to the Centre for Particle Physics while we were away in India.

  The visible part of the complex is a four-storey building situated in park-like grounds and enclosed by a high wall, all of which has devoured some 10,000 square metres of the Fælledparken, the part once called Klosterhaven, on the corner of Jagtvej and Serridslevvej. We stop in awe in front of the main steps. The whole thing has cost more than forty billion kroner, ten of which has come from the Danish government, with the EU and NASA chipping in with the remaining thirty.

  The part that cost so much money is the part that can’t be seen above ground. But the rest is no less sumptuous on that account. The stairs are granite, the floor of the main hall herringbone parquet. Elegant sofas provide discreet furnishing, and even the uniforms of the security guards look like something off a catwalk. Official, but without the aggression.

  Nonetheless, the men wearing them won’t let us in.

  ‘I called,’ I tell them. ‘I’ve got an appointment. I’m a professor of the University.’

  They refuse to listen. Laban can hardly contain himself.

  A woman appears.

  ‘Elisabeth,’ I say, ‘what’s going on?’

  She draws us aside. Her voice is hushed.

  ‘I got your message, Susan. But I’m afraid you can’t come in. We’re busy. Thorbjørn says to say hello. I understand from him that you’ve tendered your resignation. You’ll be very welcome some other time.’

  There’s a little badge pinned to her white blouse: Professor Elisabeth Halk.

  ‘So now you’re Mrs Halk,’ I say. ‘And a professor to boot. Nice work, Elisabeth.’

  She blushes.

  ‘I need to speak to Thorbjørn,’ I say.

  ‘You can’t. He hasn’t got time. And you’re no longer cleared for access. I must ask you to leave.’

  I lean towards her and place a hand on top of hers. With the other I grip her forearm. And then I press down, bending her hand unnaturally towards the inside of her forearm in a hyper-flexing wristlock.

  The colour drains from her face. Her eyes widen in alarm. Academia is so focused on the mind. It has little experience with physical pleasures and pains.

  I maintain the pressure as I lead her towards the lifts. Laban follows hesitantly.

  ‘Elisabeth,’ I say, ‘there are women who would consider you a scheming little tart, shagging her way up the ladder. But not me. I might say you’ve speeded up the process a bit, but I’m convinced you’d have got there anyway at some point.’

  Her eyes are moist with tears. We reach the lift. The guards eye us with suspicion, but I’ve angled myself so they can’t see our hands.

  ‘Just keep a brave face, Elisabeth,’ I tell her. ‘Otherwise I shall have to break your wrist. We’re going down, by the way.’

  The lift descends and stops. We step out into a space furnished like the lobby of a luxury hotel: more granite, more sofas, armchairs in black leather, modern art on the walls. We proceed into a large oval room lined with banks of monitors, at which some twenty or thirty people are seated. A small group stands gathered in front of a large screen in the middle. At the centre of the group is Thorbjørn Halk.

  Halk is two metres tall, with a shock of red hair. He is the very reason for all this. His discovery of the so-called Halk Spin while conducting experiments with the giant accelerator at CERN earned him a Nobel prize quite as distinguished as those of Bohr and Andrea Fink, and has moreover enabled Copenhagen to attract the funding for what we now stand gaping at through an open door.

  What we see is a concrete tunnel, inside which a cylinder of blue enamelled metal a metre and a half in diameter describes the beginnings of a perfect circle sweeping out at a depth of fifteen metres under the Fælledparken, Svanemøllen, central Hellerup, outer Østerbro, Nørrebro, Valby, the docklands, Amagerbro and Holmen, then back through the city centre to be completed here at the place where we stand: a total distance of forty kilometres, making it the largest particle collider in the world.

  It circulates elementary particles through the forty kilometres, accelerating them to a speed close to that of light, creating eight hundred million collisions per second, thereby generating an annual eighteen petabytes of data, an amount that would fill the equivalent of two million DVDs if it weren’t for the filter system in whose design I was involved, which from the eight hundred million collisions per second extracts the four hundred most important.

  I let go of Elisabeth. She sinks into a chair. I step forward and tap Thorbjørn Halk on the shoulder.

  He has difficulty concealing his annoyance at turning round to see me. But behind his annoyance there is fear. His eyes are distracted by the sight of his wife, and his fear intensifies.

  ‘Thorbjørn,’ I say, ‘I’d like to offer my warmest congratulations. Not only on all this having reached fruition, but on your wedding, too. I’d like you to meet my husband, Laban Svendsen.’

  He and Laban shake hands. Without either of them knowing quite which leg to stand on.

  Two-thirds of the electronics in the room have been dismantled. A team of men in blue overalls is busy with the rest.

  We cross the floor, and a door opens into Thorbjørn’s office. Or one of them.

  It’s like entering a garden: there are plants everywhere. A system of angled mirrors draws light from the Fælledparken down through a light well, creating the illusion of being outside.

  The whole of one wall is a system of sliding whiteboards showing diagrams of something that looks like a ship suspended under a balloon. On top of the balloon are mounted what appear to be upended aeroplane wings.

  ‘A new patent, Thorbjørn?’

  He can’t resist the chance to brag. Especially to me. He swells visibly, as if he were the balloon.

  ‘The plane wingsail is something I borrowed from the America’s Cup. It’ll go five degrees to the wind. Beneath the sail I attached a small balloon, filled with a light gas. Solar cells deliver energy to expand and decrease the volume of the container. Underneath is a small enclosed cabin of carbon fibre with a long keel. It’s a brilliant hybrid, Susan. In rough seas it’s a boat that can reach twenty-five knots and sail close to the wind. In fair weather, with a favourable wind, it will fly. It needs no fuel. It’s going to revolutionise the transport sector. I’m flying it today, as a matter of fact. An official test flight.’

  Mad inventors go back a long way in this country. Ørsted, Mads Clausen with his expansion valves, Krøyer with his polystyrene beads, Thorsen pressing his stainless-steel sinks, Erik Jacobsen, who invented Antabuse. Thorbjørn Halk is another in a very long line.

  For a moment he has been immersed in his own merits. Now his wife calls him back to earth.

  ‘She’s mad, Thorbjørn! And violent. She nearly broke my arm. Call the police, immediately!’

  Halk chews on his lip.

  ‘I have received your letter of resignation, Susan. We’re sad, of course. However, we do understand—’

  ‘It’s a forgery. Someone wants me off the lists.’

  He chews again.

  ‘Why are you dismantling the instruments?’

  ‘Refurbishing.’

  ‘Those men aren’t refurbishing, they’re dismantling and packing up. Something big is going on. The government’s lining up some kind of evacuation. They think society’s breaking up. So they’re bringing the elite to safety. Tell me about it.’

  He’s as pale now as his wife was before. He’s scared of
me. But he’s more scared of something else.

  ‘I can’t talk about it, Susan. My advice to you is to get out while you can and stay away.’

  ‘I think we should call a journalist,’ I say.

  ‘Susan. No matter what you do, no matter what kind of threats you issue, I can’t talk about it.’

  He’s got his back against a wall that won’t give. We’ll get no further than this. In any case, I’ve got no documentation any journalist would be able to use. I give Laban a nod. Elisabeth Halk gets to her feet.

  ‘I’m calling the police, Thorbjørn!’

  ‘Shut up, Elisabeth!’

  She sinks back into the chair. We turn and leave. As we do so, we note the shock in her voice:

  ‘Why are you so afraid of that bitch?’

  The lift doors close behind us.

  ‘I know why he’s afraid, Susan,’ Laban says.

  I am silent.

  ‘I noticed his hands. His limp. He’s the man who raped you, isn’t he? At the home you were in. The one you nailed to the decking.’

  We pass the pensive-looking security staff and exit down the main steps.

  ‘He worked at Holmgangen,’ I say. ‘To pay his way through university. It was he who introduced me to the periodic table. He was the first person to talk to me about physics. I adored him. He was a friendly grown-up in a world of darkness. Until he became part of it. Despite what happened, I’m still grateful to him.’

  Laban stops in his tracks, prompting me to do likewise. He scrutinises me. As if there’s something in my eyes he needs to understand.

  He might as well give up. Love and affection between two people can never be understood. How close those feelings are to abuse.

  I point, and he turns. Three vehicles – a van and two trucks – are parked in front of the building. Lettered on the side of the van is the name SecuriCom.

  Laban stiffens. I follow his gaze and see two bicycles leaned against a lamp post. Beside them stand Thit and Harald.

  5

  WE’VE SAT DOWN on a bench in the Fælledparken, the least exposed spot we could find.