Death Sentence (20 page)

‘Don’t worry, the two of you will work it out, I just know it.’ Bjarne stuck out his big paw of a hand and patted me on the shoulder. ‘You two are made for each other.’

‘I nearly ruined everything.’

Bjarne shook his head. ‘Rubbish, what the two of you have can’t be wrecked just by an interview.’

I hadn’t told anyone about my one-night stand with Linda Hvilbjerg. As far as everyone else was concerned, the interview had been the tipping point, while I kept factoring in the episode with Linda in the lavatory. That was what I truly repented and Bjarne’s words failed to assuage my guilt.

‘I knew it right from the start,’ Bjarne continued. ‘The perfect couple.’

He had had a lot to drink, more than we normally did at this stage, and it showed.

‘The successful author.’ He pointed to me with his whisky glass, swirling the liquid around and nearly spilling it. ‘And the world’s loveliest dancer.’ He raised his glass in a toast and we drank. ‘Who have the most beautiful daughter in the universe.’

‘May we live happily ever after,’ I added and took another sip.

Bjarne leaned closer to me with a grave face.

‘It’s not a joke,’ he said. ‘I mean it. What the two of you have is special. Never forget that.’ He drank his whisky and pulled a face. ‘You have won life’s lottery, hit the jackpot, got a hole-in-one, struck gold, your ship has come in—’

‘I think I get it,’ I interrupted him, grinning.

‘I don’t think you do,’ he said, staring at his drink. ‘I envy you and I’m embarrassed by that. Your book is a success, you have a lovely wife and an even lovelier kid.’ He drank the rest of his whisky.

‘You have Anne,’ I pointed out. There was something in Bjarne’s voice I had never heard before, something melancholic inconsistent with his normally jovial manner.

He nodded. ‘I’m very fond of Anne,’ he said. ‘I think I love her. That’s why I want to give her what you can give Line. I want to give her a successful husband, but more importantly, I wish I could give her a child.’

We had never talked about Anne’s miscarriage, but I assumed it was one of those things and that they were still trying.

‘It’ll happen,’ I said, placing my hand on his. ‘Give it time.’

Bjarne shook his head and picked up the bottle.

‘It’s my sperm,’ he said, half filling his glass with whisky. ‘Something’s wrong with it. The little fellows are sick.’ He drank his whisky and topped up his glass. ‘Anne is perfectly healthy. That’s why she miscarried. Her body rejected the freak I had implanted in her.’

I reached for the bottle and, reluctantly, he let it go.

‘Surely you can find a donor? Or adopt?’

Bjarne made a face. ‘Somehow it just doesn’t feel right, eh?’

‘What doesn’t feel right?’ asked Anne, who had just entered the living room.

We straightened up in our chairs and exchanged looks.

‘That Frank and I get married and moved to Samsø,’ Bjarne said.

‘Now, why on earth would you want to move to Samsø?’ Line asked.

‘Precisely,’ Bjarne said, nodding. ‘Precisely.’

The conversation carried on for a couple more hours, but Bjarne grew more and more drunk and unintelligible, so in the end Line and I thanked them and left. We had also drunk quite a lot and practically stumbled down the stairs, giggling at our clumsiness. I asked if I could see her home. She would like that, she said, but only as far as the garden gate. We cycled slowly through the city. I asked about Ironika and her, all the questions I had prepared but hadn’t yet had the chance to ask. She replied that they missed me. When we reached Amager and Line’s father’s house, we ran out of things to say and we looked at each other.

I took her hand. It was cold, but she gave mine a small encouraging squeeze.

‘Won’t you come home soon, please?’ I asked.

Line looked straight into my eyes and nodded. ‘We’ll come home tomorrow.’

She leaned towards me and kissed my lips. I closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again, she had got off her bicycle and was wheeling it up the garden path.

‘I had a lovely time,’ she said as she disappeared around the corner of the house.

‘Me too!’ I called out and my voice echoed between the buildings. I could hear her giggling. Then I stepped on the pedals and cycled home to the flat.

In the months that followed it was like our relationship had been reborn. We were together all the time. We talked about everything, laughed a lot and flirted at every opportunity. We rediscovered sex. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other and it happened more than once that we were late for appointments because there was ‘something’ we just had to take care of before we could leave the flat.

Ironika enjoyed having a father again and I realized how much I had missed her small secretive smile. Fortunately she was oblivious that she had been the subject of our crisis.

It was also during this period that I developed the idea for
Join the Club
, which I believed would be my next project, a ‘proper’ novel, the one I would be remembered and admired for. Line was in favour. She supported and encouraged me almost to the point of excess. I suspected
that
some of her enthusiasm was sheer relief that I would be writing something far removed from
Outer Demons
.

Join the Club
would be my effort at the great contemporary novel I had always imagined I was destined to write one day. The book would capture the age and the world we inhabited, a kaleidoscope of scenes from the everyday lives of a dozen different Danes and their experiences alone, in company and with each other. The stories would unfold with clockwork precision and eventually converge with pinpoint accuracy, although the reader wouldn’t realize this until the final page.
Join the Club
centred on our common need to belong: the immigrant trying to access the Danish community, the workman who wants to write books, the gay man seeking acceptance from his family, the nerd who desperately wants a girlfriend, the engineer who would rather run a bar than build bridges, the disabled person who wants to be noticed, the model who wants to be admired for more than her looks, and so on. No one was mutilated or tortured to death, no one would be murdered by psychopathic killers or perverted kidnappers. It would be a book everyone could identify with, a book its readers could admit to having read; the book that would be my epitaph.

Ironika didn’t like the idea. She had been there while I worked on
Outer Demons
, guiding me with smiles and grunts, but she cared little for
Join the Club
. Every time I whispered the story to her or read her samples, she burst into tears. This worried me a little, but I brushed it aside. After all, it was very early in the creative process.

Meanwhile, the momentum of
Outer Demons
was unstoppable. All the Nordic countries and most European ones bought it, the film rights went to a British company at an auction, but the really big prize was when we sold the book to the US market. The advance alone enabled us to buy a house in Kartoffelrækkerne and the subsequent royalties financed our holiday cottage in Rågeleje. Property prices were much lower back then, but the houses still represented considerable investments and for the first time I sensed that my parents believed I might actually be able to provide for their grandchild.

I let myself be dazzled by the money that poured in, and when Finn talked me out of writing
Join the Club
, the loss of potential earnings was a major argument. A contemporary Danish novel would never achieve the same sales figures as my breakthrough book, he claimed, and foreign sales were more or less out of the question. We discussed it on the plane to New York where I was meeting the American publisher, a small round man by the name of Trevor, who had an eye for European culture, especially literature and music. The music was mainly a hobby, but we always discussed music rather than books when we were together. It was on the way to meeting him for the first time that Finn buried
Join the Club
. During our eight-hour flight he convinced me it would be in my best interests to carry on writing horror stories. In his view, it was important to give the public what they wanted, and when they bought a Føns, they wanted to be scared. They expected to be shocked, outraged and possibly repulsed, but if an author didn’t meet their expectations, his readers would turn their backs on him.

I was angry as well as disappointed when we reached New York, but our stay there changed my mind. We were treated like royalty. Trevor took us to all the right places and parties, got hold of the best tickets for the hottest shows and supplied us with everything we could eat, drink and snort. Our trip to New York was one big party, and after such treatment I was easily persuaded to carry on the party, even though it would require me to write another thriller.

It was weeks before I told Line that our shared project would have to wait due to image and financial considerations. She wasn’t happy at all. In fact, she was so upset that she was willing to give up both the holiday cottage and the new house if necessary. I assured her it would only be for a short period, that the sacrifice would enable us to determine our own future. The words coming out of my mouth were Finn’s. They were the very arguments he had used on me. I couldn’t help feeling a touch of sadness when Line finally gave in and agreed that
Outer Demons
would be followed by two more books of the same genre. But after that no more splatter stories, as she referred to them.

When everyone had sworn to accept the plan, all I had to do was sit down and write. Only it wasn’t as straightforward as that. I felt like a cow that had been allowed to graze outside for some months, but had now been herded back to the darkness of the cowshed for the foreseeable future.

Moreover, there were plenty of other distractions. I was still invited to take part in interviews and talk shows. I had become the guy they called whenever there
was
a discussion of violence in literature, on television, in films or in computer games. I agreed to participate in anything from Saturday evening entertainment to writing columns in the local paper. The interruptions were welcome. They provided me with an excuse for not writing, because I had nothing to write. Every time I sat in front of the computer, the ability to express myself coherently deserted me. I was incapable of thinking of plots or structures. As my frustration rose, I invented more and more displacement activities. I always found time to go out with Bjarne, carry out domestic duties or simply let myself be swallowed up in the bosom of my family with Line and my daughter.

I opened up socially, but I shut down in terms of work. I told no one, not even Line, that I wasn’t producing anything at all. She had sufficient delicacy not to ask too many questions and I sensed her tacit acceptance that I would complete the splatter trilogy without her, as long as I was present in the family. And present I was. I was the superdaddy who always had time to play with his daughter and I was the attentive husband who supported his wife in her career as a dancer.

All the things I failed to do as a writer, I achieved as a father, and fathers make babies, so when Line told me she was pregnant again, I was overwhelmed not only with joy, but also relief. Now I had yet another reason for not working, a project that no one would ever blame me for investing all my energy in. The best excuse in the world.

I’m fascinated by how the subconscious works. Sometimes I think there is a tug of war between the two halves of the brain, a battle between will and intuition. If
one
lets go, the other wins. When I tried to force myself to write or plot a story nothing happened, but when I adjusted to being a full-time father and postponed my writing, the story appeared effortlessly.

The idea for
Inner Demons
came shortly after Line got pregnant with our second daughter. We lay in bed, naked and sweaty after making love, and I rested my head in her lap while she ran her fingers through my hair. She wasn’t showing very much yet, but her breasts had grown and were a little tender – to my great irritation, because she was quite hysterical when I handled them and I, in turn, couldn’t get enough of them. Line’s breasts weren’t large, but when she was pregnant they grew to the size of a good handful and they hung perfectly.

I don’t know how we got on to the subject, but we started talking about childbirth in earlier times, how tough it must have been without anaesthetic and how many maternal and infant deaths must have occurred. How would it affect a child to have been subjected to a traumatic birth where its mother had died, and the child had to live its life knowing it had caused its mother’s death? It was this idea that started fermenting inside me and it would later form the premise for
Inner Demons
.

Line stopped dancing, but maintained her contacts to the profession through her job as an assistant at the Bellevue Theatre. This meant that I was alone with Ironika during the day and could focus on writing and looking after my daughter. It was almost like when I wrote
Outer Demons
, a father–daughter collaboration that brought us closer together.

Perhaps Line felt marginalized? One day she claimed I
was
shutting her out and she was scared I was becoming too involved with my work. She didn’t know precisely what I wrote, that was between me and Ironika, but she was aware that it was affecting me. I didn’t share her view and couldn’t understand her concern at all. The script grew day by day and with it my self-esteem as a writer returned. I had forgotten my ambitions with
Join The Club
and got a kick out of seeing the number of pages for
Inner Demons
increase, so perhaps she was right, I might have seemed a little distant and tired when I had written that day’s quota of words. She considered taking early maternity leave, but I persuaded her to carry on for the benefit of her own career. Not because I couldn’t work when she was at home, but I treasured the fixed routine of taking Ironika to and from nursery, and the pleasure of playing with her when she couldn’t entertain herself. Line probably envied our closeness. It was as if Ironika and I shared a secret. We’d exchange private glances during dinner that went completely over Line’s head. I felt a bit sorry for her, but we enjoyed our little game and I attached no further importance to its effect on Line.