I’d thought these images would be less chilling without the sound. Nothing much happens the first few minutes. The screen flickers. Slack, they call it. You should always forward a new tape a little bit before you begin recording. Count one, two, three, four…
Then a girl on a bed. Somebody lives here, the walls are a faded yellow. Daylight streams onto her from a window that must be to the left of the camera.
The metal tool in the girl’s hand looks cold. Like something a gynecologist would use. Surgical steel. I fumble for the word. What is it, it’s on the tip of my tongue. She’s lying on her back on an unmade bed, slowly spreading her legs while she smiles at the camera.
I don’t think I know her. It’s not Maria, definitely not. Though I can’t help thinking I’ve seen her before. Maybe on a bus or sometime in town. Maybe I’ve seen her in another film like this one. But she doesn’t have the look of a pro. Her movements are clumsy. It could very well be her first time in front of a camera.
She parts her labia with her first and middle fingers. When the point of the surgical instrument enters, it’s hard for her to keep smiling.
Then I remember. A speculum.
That’s what it’s called, the instrument in the girl’s hands.
I know this because I’ve been in prison. While others inside were getting an education or learning a trade-if nothing else, they got better at stealing cars or breaking into summer houses-I acquired a vast knowledge of pornography.
I shared a cell with a long-term inmate who had kicked his wife down a stairway while they’d both been drunk. A long stairway. When he wasn’t crying and looking at photos of her, he was going through his collection of pornography, a library in alphabetical order. The entire back wall of the cell was filled with VHS cassettes and DVDs. We sat on his cot. He educated me. From the first films in the ’70s, when Linda Lovelace gagged on Harry Reems, who later married a deeply religious woman and became a realtor in Utah, to the first ass-to-mouth scene, which my cellmate was reasonably confident came from the early ’90s. He paused the tapes and explained.
The metal instrument goes farther up inside the girl on the bed.
The technical term for her position is spread eagle.
This style of recording, the private setting, the shaky picture, would sell under the label gonzo or amateur.
She’s still smiling.
A rehearsed smile, copied from similar films.
This is what horny looks like.
She’s opened the speculum all the way now. Smile, smile. Horny.
Even with the shaky home recording and the old television we’re watching on, a good gynecologist would be able to make a fairly complete diagnosis.
The word I’m thinking of now is the color salmon. She’s not smiling anymore.
A few lines over the screen. A break in the sound. Then flickering. The first few minutes with the girl on the bed was just an old shot that had been recorded over. The tape has been used again and again. DV tapes are expensive. Another girl in the same bed, this one has strawberry-blond hair gathered in a ponytail, she reaches for something off screen. Then she’s gone too. More flickering on the screen. The tape recorded over again. A new room, maybe the living room in the same apartment. The girl on the screen wears black net stockings. Hair is dark brown and hangs on her shoulders. She wears a short dress of a red, shiny material. She walks awkwardly, her heels must be unusually high. She wears more makeup than I’ve ever seen her wear. Painted like a whore or an ice-skating queen.
The voice behind the camera says: “Show me your ass.” She turns around. Slowly hikes up her dress.
I look over at Christian, he’s fumbling around in his pocket for his cigarettes. He looks strained and focused. On the screen in front of us, his sister shows her G-string.
There’s no doubt about it, it’s Maria.
We’re in the back room of the TV and radio shop I work in. I’ve been here close to two years. Landed the job a few months after I got out.
I stand there praying that the only reason we’re here-the only reason Christian called me, not somebody else-is that he needed to see a videotape. A DV tape. Digital video. Nothing else.
It’s ten-thirty at night. It’s November and black as coal outside. Nabil is the third person in the room. He’s a constant talker. All the time. Now he’s quiet.
But of course this isn’t where it begins, either.
I’ve just stepped out of Erkan’s Diner, Frederikssundsvej in Northwest, the outer edge of the city. You get any further out and it’s the suburbs, human storage and residential districts. I’m holding a kebab wrapped in foil and I already regret buying it. They always give me a stomachache. Erkan only sells to schoolkids at noon, to drunks at night, and to idiots like me. They let the meat sit on the stick way too long, sweating fat and whirling around and around several thousand times before the last scraps are sliced off.
I think about renting a film on the way home, but I don’t feel like going all the way to Blockbuster and I can’t find a parking spot anyway. Or I could double-park, like the ex-Yugoslavians do in front of the place right beside it, Café Montenegro. The place called Palermo until a man got shot there. I debate myself, back and forth. Then the phone rings. I don’t recognize the number and I don’t answer. I sit in the car and I’m about to stick the key in the ignition when it rings again. It’s Christian.
I drive one-handed, eat with the other. Feel dressing on my chin, down my hand, on the way to Bispebjerg Hospital.
My stomach doesn’t complain yet, but it won’t be long.
I open the door to room 18. Christian is standing at the foot of the bed, he looks up, nods.
Nabil can’t have been here more than a few minutes. He’s still wearing his overcoat and hasn’t recovered from the shock yet. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He repeats it slowly, to himself. Only when I’m all the way in the room can I follow his eyes, down to the girl in bed. Maria. Christian’s sister. Her eyes are closed, but her sleep seems more drug-induced than peaceful. Her head is held motionless by a big white collar. Her nostrils are filled with dried blood. One of her cheeks is swollen, almost twice as big as the other. The hospital gown gaps and I see red and purple marks on the small patch of skin visible.
At first I think, traffic accident. A bad one. But something isn’t right. I haven’t seen Christian for several years. Well, once after I got out. At a bar in town, we said hello and agreed to get together soon. Which of course didn’t happen. But why would he call me after a traffic accident? He has new friends now. People who understand him better.
Christian breaks the silence.
“They found her down by Fuglebakken Station. She was just sitting there, bleeding from her nose and mouth. Didn’t have… all her clothes on. Head hanging down on her chest. Then somebody called an ambulance.”
“What happened to her?” Nabil asks. Christian doesn’t answer at first, walks over to his sister and smoothes a lock of hair behind her ear.
“The police were here a few hours ago. I couldn’t help them. I don’t have any idea…” He turns toward me, pulls me in, hugs me. His eyes, dead and distant until now, turn moist. “It’s so damn good to see you guys,” he says. “She had this in her pocket.” He opens his hand, holds out a small DV tape, a videotape from a camera. “The police can have it tomorrow. I want to see it first.”
We take the car, my car, an old Peugeot. Down Hovmestervej, Tomsgårdsvej toward Borups Allé. A ride through our old neighborhood. I could slow down and say, There’s where we smashed a few windows, there’s where we broke into a car. There’s where I beat somebody up, there’s where I got beat up. There’s where we wrote our names on the wall.
The rest of the kebab sits on the dashboard, the greasy wax paper flutters above the air vent. None of us speak. I roll down the window and throw it out, watch in the rearview mirror how it hits the street and explodes into small pieces of lettuce and meat. Someone honks behind us. There was a time when that would have been enough for us to stomp on the brakes.
The boys ride again. The boys from the Bird section of Northwest. From Stærevej, Swallow Street. The boys from the block. There was a time that would have made me happy. Us, back together.
Your first friends are your best, you’ll never have better. That thought warmed me while I was in prison. The thought that someday we would meet again, Christian in a shirt and tie, Nabil who had finally figured out what he wanted to be, a driving instructor maybe, pointing at a blue Audi parked and shining in the sun. I would pull out my wallet, show photos of a girl in her late twenties, a pretty girl. Another photo of two kids. Maybe just a boy who looked like his father. We would sit in a café, toast with beer. Talk about old times, laugh, and feel just a little bit ashamed of all the shit we did. Boys’ pranks.
It’s still quiet in the car, no one says a word. No one laughs. This wasn’t how I pictured our reunion.
Maria on the screen. She’s dancing without music. She pulls the front of her dress down, gives a shot of her breasts. Dances some more, shows her ass, striptease. She’s much better than the first girl on the tape, and though she almost falls a few times from her heels, she’s always showing a naughty smile.
“Now you’re going to suck my cock.” The voice comes from the man behind the camera. Maria grabs a pillow from the sofa and lays it on the floor. I would never say it out loud, but she does it so naturally that this can’t be her first film. The camera shakes and turns upside down a moment when it’s taken off the tripod. Then the man films down on himself. Films Maria with her knees on the pillow, reaching out for the zipper of a pair of dark blue jeans, pulling a half-stiff cock out of the gap in a pair of boxers.
The phrase for this is POV. Point of view. A subcategory of gonzo. I’m not trying to remember this industry lingo. But the words pop into my head, and I’m ashamed to think about them while Christian’s little sister gives head on the screen. If I hadn’t seen her in the hospital bed this would be hot. I try to hold the image of her in my mind as the little girl going to confirmation class in Grøndal Church. Nabil and I took turns following her there when Christian couldn’t. Because we thought it was too far and because we knew the ugly side of the neighborhood better than she did. Knew boys like us. She laughed and said that we were being silly, that she could walk there just fine herself. But she never refused us. I think she was proud to have an older boy escort her.
Now she’s lifted the guy’s member and is licking it underneath, also his balls. Christian still says nothing. His face dead, eyes unblinking. If you didn’t know him you would think he doesn’t feel a thing. It’s impossible to look more indifferent than he does right now, to show less emotion. Christian was always the toughest one of us three, the one always willing to go the farthest.
Being tough was something he had to learn and learn fast, because he was an outsider. If he had continued his suburban ways he would have been beaten up. And beaten and beaten and beaten again. So he turned tough and he was good at it.
With his free hand the man grabs Maria’s neck, jerks her throat around a few times. She makes a half-choked sound, as if she’s about to throw up.
More fumbling with the camera, he sets it back on the tripod, zooms in so it’s filming the sofa.
Then he steps into the picture. Still only his upper body and part of his legs.
The condom he puts on is pink. It’s hard to hear what he’s saying but it sounds like: Doggy.
Maria kneels on the edge of the sofa, sticks her ass in the air. He lowers himself onto her. First time we see his face. A half profile, turned away from the camera. He has light-colored, curly hair. He’s thin, the way you’re thin if you’re badly fed as a child.
“I think…” Nabil says, but doesn’t finish the sentence.
The guy’s ass moves up and down. Dimples.
She says: Fuck me.
She says: Fuck me, it’s so good when you fuck me.
She says: Give me your cock, give me your big cock. Oh God.
She moans. An artificial moan. One she’s heard in other porno films and she’s imitating.
That’s how horny sounds.
“I’ve seen him before,” Nabil says.
The man on the screen turns Maria around on the sofa. Bends her legs backward as if she were a folding chair. Her head is lying on the sofa’s arm, feet next to her ears. He presses his hands into the hollows of her knees and starts banging away. She still moans, tries to sound horny, but it’s getting harder and harder for her to make it sound natural. Now more scream than moan.
He holds his hand over her mouth. “Be quiet,” he says. “I have neighbors.”
“Almost sure I’ve seen him,” Nabil says.
I think we’re all shocked when the guy on the screen hits Maria the first time. A hard smack with the back of his hand that leaves a big red mark on her cheek. She looks up at him, surprised. Then she tries to smile again. As if it was kinky, something she liked. “You want punished?” he asks. “You want punished?”
“Yes,” she says. “Yes, yes, yes.”
The next few slaps aren’t as hard as the first one. Each time she tries to moan and cry out, Yes.
Then he starts using his fists.
I turn off the sound. Had hoped that these images would be easier to watch without sound. That they would be less real. Like old film, silent film. But it makes no difference.
It’s still Maria lying on the sofa. The man on top of her is punching her in the side, in the ribs. Several times in the stomach while he holds her by the throat so she can’t straighten up. Meanwhile his cock is still driving in and out of her.
He looks over at the camera a few times. Like to make sure it’s still taping. That it’s picking up everything he’s doing.
“I know I’ve seen him before.” Nabil is mostly talking to himself. The man on the screen slams a fist into Maria’s mouth. Her lip splits.
“I can’t take this anymore.” Christian is holding his hand over his mouth, the words slip out between his fingers. “You’ll have to watch the rest of it. You have to watch the rest of it, watch everything he does to her. And turn the volume up. I want to hear what he said. Get all of it.”
Christian walks out into the hallway. I turn the volume up when he’s out of the room.
On the screen the guy is covering Maria’s nose and mouth. She’s fighting off his hands. He lets go, and when she gasps for air he punches her in the side. It should stop now. But it doesn’t. He keeps going. It goes on and on. It gets rougher. Her eyes start to lose focus.
He slugs her a few more times, then he pulls out and gets up.
I hear a lighter somewhere off screen, a cigarette being lit. Then his naked feet on the hallway floor. He pisses long and hard, a small waterfall the camera’s mike captures. Maria is lying just like he left her. The girl on the sofa, I say to myself, just a girl on the sofa. She could be dead. Then an arm moves. The girl’s arm. Slowly she turns on her side. Stands up with great difficulty. Hobbles a half-step before she falls off screen, lying somewhere below the camera. The camera films an empty sofa and a framed poster on the wall above. Two dolphins jumping out of the water, the full moon is so big that their snouts almost seem to touch it. Then Maria comes back in the picture. Her head hangs down halfway to her chest, she’s sobbing very weakly. Falters a few steps forward on shaky legs. The sound of a toilet flushing. His naked feet on the hallway floor. Maria stops. Lifts her head just a little, eyes staring at a spot behind the camera, the doorway. It feels like minutes, not seconds. Her staring, the feet approaching. Then the sound of a cell phone. And the feet walk away again. Out into the kitchen, I’m guessing. He says hi, hey, how you doing. His voice cuts through clearly. First they talk soccer. A Brøndby match that didn’t go exactly the way it should have.
Maria tries to get into the red dress. One of her hands is useless.
“I’m working,” the guy says from out in the kitchen, and laughs loudly. “No,” he says. “It’s going to be one of the rough ones. Nobody buys the soft stuff anymore.”
Maria goes off screen. She’s gone a few moments. The sound of the man from the kitchen, he’s still laughing. Then we see the red dress close up, her arm rising, reaching toward the camera. The picture goes black. She’s taken the tape.
How she got past him and down the stairs, I don’t know. But after she reached the street he probably didn’t try to catch up with her. She looked too beat up. It would look like a rape, still in progress. And he wouldn’t have known she had the tape. So he’d let her go. All they’d been doing was making one of the rough ones.
Nabil covers his mouth. “I’ve seen him before,” he says. He makes a face, to concentrate. An escape from the images on the screen. Then he snaps his fingers.
“I’ve seen him with Ali’s little brother. Down at Nørrebro City Center.” Nabil pulls out his cell phone, makes a few calls. Speaks half Arabic, half Danish. His voice switches between sounding chummy, they laugh together, and a little bit menacing. Our time is over. That time when we were the boys on Swallow Street. The boys. The big shots. But even now, nobody fucks with Nabil.
He puts the phone back in his pocket.
“I know where he lives.”
Christian is back in the room again. His eyes scare me.
“Let’s do it,” he says.
“Let’s go over to one of my friends’ first,” Nabil says. “He’s got some things lying around.”
I know what he means.
I had actually thought I would just follow along. Do what had to be done. But no more than that. I’m the one, though, who bends over and pulls the toolbox out of the closet. Opens it on the workbench, finds a sports bag. The one thing I learned in prison was to make sure I’d never return. Three young men, stopped in the middle of the night, the trunk filled with baseball bats, they spend the night in jail. And with my record I would be back in prison.
But a hammer, a wrench, a large screwdriver, and a pair of hobby knives, they’re all tools. Even if you’ve just finished doing time for a violent crime, the police can’t do shit. They have to let you drive away. I lifted weights with a man who always kept a set of golf clubs in his car. No balls, just the clubs.
We’re out riding again. The boys from the Bird. Even though we have the streets to ourselves, rainy November streets, I stay under the speed limit.
It was on a night like this that the police caught me. Almost four years ago. I tried to run, but when a big policeman from Jutland cuffed me, it was a relief. I knew it would happen. It had begun a year earlier and it had to end, one way or another.
While everyone else went into job training or the military or found girlfriends who wanted to go to Ikea and buy coffee tables you assemble yourself, and many of them began talking about home entertainment systems with large, flat screens and surround sound, so they could hold each others’ hands and watch I, Robot, I became a dedicated amphetamine abuser. A few months that came back to me in flashes as the indictment was being read. Like emptying the minibar in a hotel room and waking up hung over, then looking at the price list on top of the television.
Nabil enrolled in several areas of training at vo-tech schools, but always stopped after a short while. He talked about becoming a driving instructor. Next time I saw him he wanted to start up a cleaning service.
As quickly as Christian became part of the neighborhood, became one of the natives, he pulled out just as fast. He moved away, went to school. The last I heard he was about to become an auditor or bookkeeper or economist. Something with numbers and lots of money. When I met him he was wearing a polo shirt with a Gucci bag over his shoulder.
Now we’re in the car together. Our reunion.
Nabil guides us. Down this street, make a right ahead. Otherwise no one speaks.
We’re still in Northwest, close to Emdrup. “Here it is,” Nabil says, and points to a redbrick building. I drive by, park the car on the first side street. We get out. Everything happens so slowly, infinitely slowly. Like underwater. Three men, one with a sports bag in his hand. They walk down the street, come to a door. Slowly, slowly. There’s no intercom, one of them opens the door, and they continue up the stairs. So slowly, three men. Though I’m one of them, I’m watching from the outside. Feet climbing the stairway.
Nabil presses the buzzer.
If I hadn’t answered my phone I would be lying on the sofa right now. I would be asleep in front of the film I’d rented, a few empty beer bottles on the coffee table. Tomorrow I’d have woken up, watched the rest of the film while eating breakfast, fed my two birds, and went to work.
The door opens. I recognize him from the video, a sunkenchested young man in a T-shirt and jogging pants. When he sees us he tries to slam the door. He doesn’t stand a chance, the door rams his head. He stumbles back a few steps.
Then I see the knife in his hand. It must have been there in the hall, on the little table under the mirror, ready in case. He smiles for a moment, raises the knife. Then it happens. I wake up. No longer underwater, I feel the blood in my veins again. The world is suddenly hard and sharp. I can feel my hands, feel my legs, feel the air flowing in my nostrils and filling my lungs. I toss the sports bag full of tools in his face. Before he hits the floor Nabil has started hitting him. I was never hooked on amphetamines. At least not only. This was what I needed. What I was trying to snort up, to no avail. Now, in this moment, I know it. When I hear Christian close the door behind us, and we drag the guy through the hall and into the living room.
We’re the boys from the block again. The boys from the high-rise on Swallow Street. We’re together again.
I don’t know how long we keep at it. Not just an hour, a lot longer. With the stereo turned way up. We sweat, we laugh. I lose my sense of time. Remember only short flashes. Postcards of violence. One where I’ve raised the hammer above my head. One where I hold him and Christian sticks the handle of the screwdriver down his throat. One where Nabil jerks the guy’s pants down and reaches for the monkey wrench.
We might have been easier on him, stopped earlier, if the room hadn’t reminded us of the images from the video.
At some point he starts screaming. Screaming so loudly that he drowns out the stereo. This is after we’ve got his pants off. Which wasn’t easy, because he kept twisting, kicking. Nabil goes into the bedroom. He’s laughing when he comes back out. He’s holding a gag, a pink rubber ball hanging by two leather strings. In it goes, into the guy’s mouth. “One of the rough ones!” Christian yells, while he holds him by the throat. “This here is going to be one of the rough ones!”
There’s not much left of him when we leave. He’s barely alive. It’s hard to determine which sex he is. We destroyed him. How do you destroy a man? Keep at it. Just keep at it.
Early morning. It’s quiet in the car again. I drop the two of them off. Stop a few times on the way home and throw the tools in various trash containers. Then the sports bag.
I take a shower before going to bed. Stuff the clothes in a garbage bag that I’ll throw out on the way to work.
I lie in bed and listen to the quiet. My eyes are already heavy. I know that as soon as I wake up the hangover will check in. Far stronger and different from any I’ve had before. The first few minutes I’ll think it’s something I dreamed. A nasty dream I can blink away, that will be out of my body when I’m done pissing. A dream I’ll have forgotten when I smell the coffee flowing through the machine. But then I’ll remember that it wasn’t a dream. I’ll grab the duvet or sheet and try to hold on. I’ll sit there like it’s a bad movie and make a face and keep holding on until the alarm clock rings again. Telling me that the day has begun.
First I’ll drive out and buy some new tools. Then to work. Be on time. Old Nielsen will be waiting with a new record player or transistor radio that should have been thrown out but some old lady has insisted it be repaired. The next few weeks I’ll jump up whenever the doorbell rings. Every time I’ll think it’s the police. Whenever I’m about to forget what happened, my sore muscles will remind me. But that’s not the hard part. Not at all. Time will pass. A new day will begin. New days always begin. The hard part will be forgetting how good it felt. To be alive again. To be the boys from Swallow Street, the boys from the block. Us.
AUSTRALIA BY CHRISTIAN DORPH & SIMON PASTERNAK
Vesterbro
MThursday, 6:05 p.m. E65 to Swinouscie, Reza’s Bistro arek opened the camper door. Reza stood on a stool with her back to him and both hands in a tub. She had rolled up her puffed sleeves, and her elbows were pumping. The camper smelled like fish. She turned, stood with a large cooked roach in her gloved hand.
“I’m too old for this, Marek. I had to send Zbigniew out for gelatin for the aspic. And now I need shallots and coriander.”
The rubber glove slid off with a snap. She stepped down from the stool, left the fish on the kitchen counter, and walked over to the laminated table at the back of camper, took out a cigarette from a silver case, lit up, and inhaled the smoke deep into her lungs. Then she came back, stood with her face inches from his. She had been drinking slivovitz again and had eaten something spicy. She lifted her forearm and showed him the z and the small green numbers of the tattoo.
“They’ve tried to kill us off, Marek. They injected phenol in the hearts of my younger brothers. They shot color in Sonja’s green, green eyes and they got infected, but they didn’t let her die, not before she got gangrene. But we will never die, Marek.”
Marek lowered his head, he always felt uneasy here. Glanced around at the screaming-red sashed curtains, the brown laminate, the green, red, yellow lamps, the picture of the brothers and sisters, the cousins, and the mother and father in a frame beside the television, the press photo for Zigeuner-Zirkus 1939, the entire tiny band with a Great Dane to establish proportions-the violinist to the right holding the toy violin reached the dog’s shoulders: Reza at nine years of age.
“Irina says that you pull out. And you’re doing it less and less.” She pinched his arm with her small, hard claws. “Look at me, Marek.”
He turned to her, stared down at her wrinkled cleavage, the ample makeup.
“You fucking Polacks. Big men, but what are you shooting? Blanks? I want grandchildren, Marek.”
She looked him hatefully in the eyes, but then broke off and walked over to the dresser, put on her large glasses. She brought out a folder. Marek glimpsed a passport and a pile of other papers.
“We have a job for you in Copenhagen. One of our Polish girls has run away. Adina something or other. Olek will tell you everything. Zbigniew has arranged another car.”
“Can’t I take my own car?”
“No. You are escorting another girl. Here are her papers, straight from Moldavia.”
Marek walked past the well-lit bistro. Another hooker job. Do they think I’m worthless? He looked in through the glass. His wife, Irina, stood inside, flushed, red blisters on her body. Five years and nowhere. She was giving orders to a girl who stood trying to keep a tub from spilling. He could feel Reza’s fingernails all the way into his soul.
He walked over to his own car, grabbed the spare tire, 100,000 euros stowed under the rim.
He’d reached 100,000 yesterday. Enough for a new life.
The girl, pale and silent, was already in the car when he plopped down in the driver’s seat.
“Marek,” he said. “I’m Marek.”
The girl began crying.
Thursday, 7:10 p.m. Abel Cathrines Gade 5, Fifth Floor, 1654 Copenhagen V
Henry og Connie Jensen was the name on the oval copper nameplate on the fifth floor. Adina had run and run and run like a deer in a cone of light, she was all in, and it wasn’t until now that she felt how cold she’d been, how scared. She had stood on the bridge above Dybbølsbro Station, wanting to throw herself in front of the train. Better to die than go back to Olek, better to do it herself. But then suddenly she didn’t dare do it, and she remembered Henry. You can come anytime, and I mean it, he had said. He always repeated it: Anytime. It was stupid to hide at a client’s place, impossible, but now he opened the door, welcomed her, stood there with his big furrowed face, the worried eyes, and she fell into his apartment, was sucked into the warm hallway. Henry helped her over the thick wool rug, over to the sofa.
“You need to take your clothes off, Adina,” he said. “I don’t mean that way,” he added, without irony. “I think I still have some of Connie’s clothes. Wait here.”
A brown bureau filled the wall to the right; tiled table, wing-back chair, floor lamps, TV. Christmas plates lined the walls, all the way around. With stiff fingers she lit up a cigarette and searched her bag; a half Rohypnol in foil, two codies, and a Valium. She stuck the pills in her mouth, swallowed them, and slid back on the sofa. She felt nauseous. Henry returned with a pair of much-too-large beige pants and a wool cardigan. He helped her off with her clothes, rolled them off her, the pantyhose, the clammy panties. She sat smoking through it all, it was nice to let someone else take over. He sat at the other end of the sofa and hugged her ankles.
“What happened?”
She didn’t want him sitting there touching her.
“Adina, you have to tell me, or I can’t help.”
“Lenja is dead.” It popped out of her mouth, and she doubled up; she wasn’t going to cry while he was touching her.
“We have to call the police, then.”
“No, no, no, Olek will kill me!”
“Do you want some soup?” he asked suddenly. “I have some broth I can warm.”
A few minutes went by as he rummaged around in the kitchen. Then a bowl of steaming soup was sitting in front of her, and he handed her a spoon. She was insanely hungry.
“Lenja’s the one with the blond hair, right?”
Adina ate with her face in the bowl, three dumplings and four meatballs, she counted them.
“I’ll get out, Henry. I’ll leave in a minute. I just need to lie down a while.”
Friday, 1:30 a.m. Hawaii Bio, Oehlenschlægersgade 1, 1620 Copenhagen V
Just call me Yvonne, said the middle-aged fake blonde at the till in the rear of Hawaii Bio, a twenty-four-hour dive filled with porno films and sex toys at a corner on Vesterbrogade. I’m looking for Olek, Marek replied in English, the language she had spoken. Yvonne turned her head and yelled, Olek! Then she offered him a cup of coffee. She sat knitting a stocking cap with a purple border. The coffee tasted bitter.
The girl was asleep in the car. She lay there hugging his coat. Ludmilla, fourteen years old, from Moldavia. She’d just sat there on the ferry, blue-eyed, cold, and frightened. Marek couldn’t get a single bite down her, so he’d gone into the dutyfree shop and bought a box of assorted candy, which she ate in the front seat. When they drove off the ferry she said, I have money for school, in English, and showed him a brown envelope. He looked out over the turnip fields and stuck a Marlboro in his mouth.
She’d fallen asleep while he was filling up in Tappernøje.
“Where is she?” Olek said, barging in through the back door. His eyes were bloodshot, he was every bit as blistered as his sister.
“Who?”
“You know, the new one.”
“We’ll get to her. She’s asleep in the car. Your mother says there’s something that needs taken care of quick.”
They sized each other up. Olek gave him the eye and turned on his heel. Marek followed him out to the stairway, where Olek took three steps at a time. Second floor: cubicles, they heard someone moaning in one of the closest. Third floor: rooms to let, they entered one and Olek passed him a photo-Adina Sobczak. Thirtyfive years old. Disappeared yesterday morning, emptied her closet and tricked a moronic Albanian at the till into handing over her passport. Last job: four Polish workmen on Mysundegade 3, the loft, lunch break, two hundred kroner per. Her roommate Lenja croaked yesterday morning, that might have made Adina crack. Olek pointed out Lenja’s things in the small room. Clothes, mashed down in a large sports bag. The breath freshener was hers too. Why don’t these fucking Lats brush their teeth?
Only the metal case belonged to Adina. Quickly they dumped it out, a barrette lay at the bottom. Marek picked it up. Hello Kitty. There was also a receipt. She’d bought a brush and something in product group 16 for 67.75 in Føtex on Vesterbrogade, the day before yesterday.
Not much to go on. Four Polish workmen who had gotten it on the cheap. He turned the barrette in his hand.
“Find her,” Olek said. “Find her and do her.”
Thursday 9:23 p.m. Abel Cathrines Gade 5, Fifth Floor, 1654 Copenhagen V
Adina brushed her long hair. The rain had made it ratty. Her back hurt, her lower back. Olek’s sperm burned inside her. All the humiliations, the beatings, the cold. Lenja had lain on the bathroom floor behind the shower curtain, naked, bloody behind her ear. Olek’s signature. He fucked them in the ass, then before he came he smacked them behind the ear so they would tense up and contract; they laid there waiting for that clout. She went over and opened the curtain a crack. One of Olek’s boys, Kofi, was selling dope on the corner. She’d have to wait until he left. She sat down and Henry came in with coffee and a plate of cookies.
“It’s strange having someone in the apartment,” he said, speaking into the air while he set the cups down. “It’s two years now since Connie died. We had two wonderful children,” he continued, calmly. “Tina and Jørn. I don’t see Jørn very much, but that’s because of his new wife. Tina lives in Perth, Australia. Would you like to see some pictures?”
He edged past the coffee table and over to the bureau, opened the lowest drawer, and returned with a photo album.
“Here, this is their ranch. Greg breeds horses. And here, that’s William, and this is Bill and Evan, and what’s his name, the little one, Ross, yes, his name is Ross.”
They went through the photo album, it was filled with photos, of horses and red-haired boys, two, three, four of them stood together, smiling at the camera. Adina followed along indifferently, the back of her eyes ached, and suddenly, without warning, she began crying. The tears streamed down, she couldn’t take it anymore.
“There, there,” Henry said, and grabbed her shoulders with both hands.
She shook her head and wiped under one of her eyes with her index finger.
“You know what?” he said, looking at her seriously.
“No.”
“There hasn’t been anyone but you after Connie died.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I say. I haven’t had other women except you since Connie died.”
“You’re saying that you’ve been true to me?”
“Yes.”
She started to giggle. She laughed through her tears. Henry looked hurt, which only made it worse. Her laughter turned hysterical, she doubled over, unable to stop. Everything that happened had been so horrible, she’d been all alone in the world, and now here he was, talking like this. It wasn’t funny-it was absurd. Henry, with his friendly eyes and sheeplike expression, his wrinkled forehead. She threw her arms around him and kissed him on the forehead.
“Thank you, Henry. Thanks. That was beautiful, what you said. Too bad I can’t tell you the same thing.”
“No, obviously you can’t. Do you think Olek will kill you?”
“Yes.”
Friday, 9:45 a.m. Mysundegade 3, Loft, 1620 Copenhagen V
Karol: We tossed for her. Ryszard went first. I was number three, but I couldn’t. She just laid there. Over there on the mattress, on her stomach. Yeah, that’s where we sleep. She didn’t even turn over. And I just couldn’t. I asked her if she wouldn’t give me a handjob. She didn’t answer me, so I just sat down beside her. I thought about my son. His name is Krzysztof. After Krzysztof Oliwa of the New Jersey Devils. The hockey player, you know. He’s also from Tychy. It was Witold’s turn after me. He already had a hard-on and he told me to get away.
Ryszard: She just took her clothes off and then I fucked her. Her name? I don’t know. I didn’t marry her.
Witold: She was on time. Asked where she was supposed to lay down. We asked her if she wanted some salami and vodka first, but she didn’t. So then Ryszard went at it and we sat there and watched. He smacked her and yelled at her. Karol didn’t like that so he pushed him off. I turned her over when it was my turn. I like missionary best.
Jan: She wouldn’t say her name. I was sorry about that. There aren’t many Polish women up here you can talk to, you know. I asked her if she was going somewhere, but she didn’t answer. She had a big bag with her. Time? Little after two, I think. No, that picture doesn’t tell me a thing. I don’t remember her face.
Friday 2:47 a.m. Abel Cathrines Gade 5, Fifth Floor, 1654 Copenhagen V
The yellow light from the floor lamp softened Henry’s face, and suddenly she remembered her grandmother, her babushka in the mountains. They visited her in the summer and at Christmas, and she always sat in her armchair and watched TV, her big pale face, the deep wrinkles, her knitting.
They had watched High Noon, Henry’s favorite western. He said he’d seen it a thousand times and he hummed along with the title song, Do not forsake me, oh my darling, on this our wedding day… Adina had cried during the film. It was so beautiful and sad. Why didn’t he leave with Grace Kelly, why did he have to be so proud? They drank beer afterward, and Henry made sandwiches, piled high with lettuce and tartar sauce on the roast beef, onion and jellied stock on the liver paté. She lay on the sofa, she’d had enough. Vesterbro was a thousand miles away. She walked over and peeked down at the street. Kofi was still standing there, dealing. He looked purple in the yellow light.
“Do you know what I dream about?”
“No,” she mumbled.
“Moving to Australia. I’ve saved up twenty-seven thousand, and when I have forty I’m leaving. What about you?”
“I just want to get as far away as I can.”
“Australia! That’s as far away as you can get.”
“It is?”
“You don’t know where it’s at?”
“No,” she lied.
The globe stood on a low table in the bedroom. He flicked a switch on the wall, and the inside of the globe lit up. Henry got down on his knees. She knew where Australia was, why was she playing dumb?
“See, here we are.” He put a finger on the small, blurry speck that was Denmark. “And here,” he said, turning the globe without letting go of Denmark, “we have Australia. And here we have Perth.” He put a finger on the city. “You simply can’t get farther away. It’s on the other side of the earth.”
“And here,” she said, and reached between his arms and put her finger on a spot between Warsaw and Vienna, “is where my family lives.”
“What’s the name of the city?”
“Krosno.”
“Are your parents alive?”
“No.”
They sat for a while without speaking, squatting in front of the glowing world.
Friday 12:32 p.m. Skelbækgade, Driveway into Den Hvide Kødby, 1717 Copenhagen V
It was sprinkling, and Marek was sick and tired of it all. He had asked around at massage clinics, questioned Thai masseurs, tattooists, pushers, stood on street corners, in back rooms, gambling joints, checked with Pakistani taxi drivers, no one has seen anything, he had bounced around among the street whores, he had found a Polish girl with her head between her legs and a rubber hose tight around her arm in a basement stairway on Colbjørnsensgade, it’s not her, he’d put his nose to the ground, bribed a med student who opened the drawers for him at the morgue under the National Hospital, it isn’t her either, to hell with it all, he thought, why shouldn’t she be allowed to disappear, crawl in a hole, die someplace warm, he was freezing and Ludmilla was hungry and hysterical, he gave her a shawarma and some candy, no, he didn’t want her brown envelope. No, he didn’t know what would happen to her. Shut up. He grabbed her by the chin, hard, shut your goddamn mouth, and then it didn’t matter anymore, he had a bad taste in his mouth and he himself had caused it, he bought a pack of mints. Finally, the wind whipping his coat, a Nigerian whore on Skelbækgade reacted when he showed her Adina’s picture, seen this girl? She wore a T-shirt, Ivory Love with sweeping gold letters, long nails with screaming pink polish. He had to dish out a hundred euros.
“I saw her yesterday. She was standing at this bridge by the station. What’s its name… Dybbølsbro. Looked like she was going to jump. Didn’t do it, but she looked desperate. Stood there with a big bag and no coat on. And it was raining!”
“What time?”
“In the afternoon. Around two-thirty. Maybe three. Then she was picked up by this guy. Don’t know his name, but he is real wicked. A bastard. Uses his hand. Always takes his wedding ring and Rolex off. Don’t wanna pay.”
She scrounged around in her bag, found her cell phone, pecked on it, her nails clicking on the case. She held the display out to him and he saw the rear end of a car: XZ 98754. It looked like an Audi 4.
Friday 12:51 p.m. Abel Cathrines Gade 5, Fifth Floor, 1654 Copenhagen V
Henry stood in the kitchen holding a bag of fresh bread under his arm. His windbreaker was wet and smelled of rain. They had slept in bed with their clothes on, she had dreamed about High Noon, and in the dream she had been Grace Kelly wearing a bonnet and a laced-up, lace-trimmed dress and all the time that song, Do not forsake me… But then she woke up and felt his erection against her back. She lay still and fell asleep again, they had slept way too long. He stood up and smiled at her, and then something snapped inside her. She couldn’t take it, the big friendly face, the same slightly baffled expression as when he came inside her every Friday afternoon, leaving a pathetic little blob of semen in the condom. The punctual little postman with the gray sideburns and the kind eyes-she had the urge to scratch them out and rip that cheap dream apart. She lunged at him, punching him, tugging and pulling at his big square body, she was furious, hammered at his arms and chest.
“What do you want from me? You want me to be your cheap little whore the rest of your life? Is that what you want?” she screamed. “You want me to be your little hole?”
“No. Adina-”
“And all that shit about Australia… and Gary Cooper… and… and… it’s all just a bunch of lies and bullshit!”
She screamed and shouted. But then he grabbed her. Grabbed hard. His arms closed tight around her, clenched her. A brutal look came over his face, a coldness she hadn’t seen before. She was surprised at how strong he was; she pulled and pushed and scratched and bit. He hummed, Adina, Adina, Adina, as if she was a child. He gripped her even tighter as he hummed. The floor fell away under her, and she was sucked down in it.
Friday 3:25 p.m. ColonWelfare, Vognmagergade 11, 1148 Copenhagen K
The owner of XZ 98754, Audi 4, Gregers Ege, walked alongside the impressive instrument with its hoses and buttons, talking about it. Marek had spelled his way through the English version of the questionnaire out in the reception area, and he believed he had checked “yes” to a bloated sensation in stomach area and headache and checked “no” to bleeding ulcer and taking Prednisol. Gregers Ege realized that colon hydrotherapy, colon irrigation with the new hygienic and 100 percent odorless technology, crossed a line of modesty for many patients, but ColonWelfare used the open system, LIBBE, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Marek could insert the funnel-shaped plastic gizmo into his anus himself, Gregers Ege showed him. No one would at any time touch him or see him naked; he would be covered except for the area in question, and he would be lying comfortably on the form-fitting examination table and he could see what came out of the closed tube right there. Gregers turned the plastic gizmo in his hands, lost himself in its small molded end. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. There was a pale outline of a watch and band on his suntanned wrist. Marek grabbed hold of it with his left hand and rammed his right elbow into Gregers Ege’s throat. The man went into shock. Marek maneuvered him down onto the formfitting table, strapped him in securely, grabbed several disposable wipes and stuffed them in his mouth, pulled his white coat up and his pants down, and shoved the plastic gizmo in his anal opening. Marek showed him the photo of Adina, stuck it under his nose. Gregers squirmed and jerked his head around when Marek connected the hose, turned it to the max, all the way up in the red. Gregers’s eyes went wide, and when Marek ungagged him it shot out like a cannon: It was the first time, I’ll never do it again. You want money? Is it those fucking whores…? They take people’s license plates or what? Marek had only one question, Where did you let her off, but first he asked Gregers about something else. How much did you pay to fist-fuck her? He got answers to both questions. Two hundred and fifty kroner in the parking lot at Sjælør Station. And, the end of Istedgade at Enghave Park and the community building. She staggered along Enghavevej, down by Prima. He saw that she had taken his watch when he looked to see what time it was. Three-fifteen p.m. on his car’s display. It was pouring, and she didn’t have a coat on.
Friday 12:55 p.m. Abel Cathrines Gade 5, Fifth Floor, 1654 Copenhagen V
“Adina, are you okay?”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know what got into me, I…”
“Henry?”
“Yes.”
“When I’m all alone at night, all my customers run together… They turn into hundreds of mouths that moan, snort, scream, slobber, spit in my face. But with you, there was something… a tenderness, I don’t know… And then it ends like this anyway.”
“Adina. Come over here.”
“No. It’s best I leave. We can’t change our lives.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No.”
Pause. “We’re doing it.”
“What?”
“We’re going to Australia. Perth. I’ll empty my account. We’ll leave tonight. Will you go?”
Friday 4:10 p.m. Hawaii Bio, Oehlenschlægersgade 1, 1620 Copenhagen V
Marek sat in the back room of the Hawaii Bio, wishing he was somewhere else, far away. Yvonne smiled with a cigarette between her lips; one of her eyelids drooped a bit. She held his hand in hers. The knuckles on his right hand were bruised and bloody, his fingers tingled. He couldn’t remember what he had done to his hand. Had he beaten up Gregers Ege, or was it Ludmilla when she’d started screaming and wanted to go home? Why hadn’t he delivered her? He didn’t know why. She had taken some of his Rohypnols and was totally out of it when he’d left her. Just as well. Yvonne brushed the palm of his hand with iodine from a green bottle. Suddenly he felt a tenderness for her. Did she have a life outside of this, did she have a grandkid who would get the ugly little stocking cap with the purple border?
Zdrow bidၺ, krolu anjelski.
Why was he thinking about that now? He always saw his mother’s face when he thought about that psalm.
He pulled his hand away, raised his fist to the corner of his eye. There was a tiny wet streak on the back of his hand.
He reconstructed Adina’s route. Mysundegade yesterday around noon, Dybbølsbro at two-thirty, Sjælør Station two-forty-five, Enghavevej three-fifteen. Then: gone. At the most she had a few thousand and a red-hot Rolex. She was still in town.
“Yvonne?”
“Yes, Marek.”
“Did Adina have any regular customers?”
“What do you mean… regular?”
“I mean… did somebody treat her nice? Have you heard of anyone who was nice to her?”
“Nice, I don’t know… Hey. There is this one guy, comes every Friday at four o’clock. Wait a minute… he didn’t come today.”
Friday 4:50 p.m. Abel Cathrines Gade 5, Fifth Floor, 1654 Copenhagen V
Henry had left again. Adina lit up her last cigarette with the next-to-last; she didn’t know what to do with herself. She trudged back and forth between the sofa and the window and ran her fingers through her short hair. Henry had cut it. It felt all wrong.
Kofi was gone. Another African was dealing down on the street, someone she didn’t know.
Henry! He had nagged and begged and pleaded and had been down on his knees. At last she had said she’d go with him. Why not? And then there was no stopping him. He helped with her hair and went out for henna and was down at the bank to withdraw his entire savings. She added her seven hundred to show her solidarity. That much for Australia. He had packed two suitcases and called his son, they talked a long time. They argued. She got a headache and lay down on his bed, rested there in regret, it was all way too far out. He went off to get the tickets, Melbourne via Frankfurt, departure at eight p.m., a taxi was reserved. But when he returned he came up with the idea that she should have a nice dress to travel in. She tried to talk him out of it. But he smiled and said, I saw one with a big rose on it. It will look nice on you, you’ll be wearing it when we get to Melbourne, and out he went.
Where was he?
A girl came out of the laundromat and walked over to the African, one of the young kids from Skelbækgade, thin as a curtain rod. She stood freezing in a purple leather jacket with a fur collar, and he stuck a bag of brown h in her hand. The taxi arrived. Where the hell was he?
Then she heard him at the door.
Friday 4:57 p.m. Abel Cathrines Gade 5, Fifth Floor, 1654 Copenhagen V
Olek kicked the door in and rushed into the living room directly to Adina. She was standing there with the cigarette and Olek slapped her. He was half a head shorter than her, but he punched her in the stomach and she collapsed on the sofa, still holding the cigarette between her fingers. The glowing end fell off onto the cushions. Olek beat her systematically, first in the face, then the body, her breasts, arms, and stomach. She didn’t scream, but every breath had its sound. She moaned and groaned after each punch, and he continued punishing her. He worked with both hands and covered her body with blows. Only when he grabbed her by her short red hair and pulled her down on the coffee table did she begin to scream, and he threw her to the rug.
“Get your clothes off!”
Marek had screwed the silencer onto his Zastava CZ-99, 9mm pistol; now he stepped over to Adina.
“Goddamn, Olek. Your mother will go crazy if she finds out you came along.”
“I don’t give a shit about that.”
“You probably don’t. But get out anyway, let me do my job.”
Her one eye was closed and yellow, her ear and lips were bleeding. Olek spat in her face. She had stopped screaming and lay panting hysterically. Her lungs rattled, her wide-open eyes looked wild, green with bits of gray. Marek spread his legs, bent his knees a bit, took off the safety, and pressed the silencer between her lips. The metal clicked against her teeth. For some reason he changed his mind and aimed under her left breast. But then another click came from behind him. Another weapon, another safety off.
“Marek!”
“Yeah?”
“This is for my sister.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You think you can run from us? And take your little whore with you?”
Their eyes met. Marek stood awkwardly; he had to turn his knee and shoulder to swing around, then he threw himself backward at Olek and stretched his arm out straight. But he hung in the air when the shot boomed out in the emptiness. Marek felt a hard blow to his head, then everything turned red and faded out as the bullet snapped around inside his brain like a bear trap and blasted out through his neck and made a starshaped crack in a Christmas plate, 1972.
Adina crab-crawled backward on her elbows, over to the door, and put her hands in front of her eyes. Olek walked over to her nice and easy and kneeled down. Sat there pointing the gun at her.
“Here. Here… take it. Take it, goddamnit, take the gun.”
“What?”
“I’m giving you a ticket to your freedom. Take it.”
Friday 5:15 p.m. Abel Cathrines Gade 5, Fifth Floor, 1654 Copenhagen V
By an act of pure will she raised herself up on her elbows and scooted across the floor. She wanted to see her executioner. He was stocky, balding, his head was shaved. He lay with his mouth open and pale eyes staring out; he looked like an idiot. Drool seeped out of the corner of his mouth and his right cheek was slush.
Olek was gone.
She searched the man’s pockets and found a wallet with four twenty-euro bills, a Danish five-hundred kroner bill, and a set of car keys. She stuck everything in her clothes when she heard Henry letting himself in the apartment. Moments later he appeared at the door with a sack from Soul Made on Vesterbrogade. He sat it down on the bureau, but then everything began to blur for her. He walked over to her but it all happened very slowly. Everything sounded loud, and there was a shrill tone in her one ear, the day’s last rays of sunlight slashing through the apartment. He stood looking down at her. He had beautiful eyes, she thought, he was actually a very handsome man. There was a glow to him. She was no longer afraid.
“Adina.”
“Yes.”
His lips curled as he squatted down. Was he smiling? What was it about his eyes? He stroked her forehead and everything began flickering. He lifted her up, carried her over to the sofa.
“It was one of Olek’s men, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“It was him or you?”
“Yes.”
“It’s good that you got him. I’m happy about that. But it’s best that you disappear now.”
“What do you mean?”
“You need to get out of the country. I’ll take care of all this. Give me the gun.”
She had completely forgotten the pistol she was hugging to her breast, but he untangled it from her stiff fingers. He sat a moment looking at her, he hummed a little tune, the melody from the film, Do not forsake me…
Adina ran down to the taxi. But of course it was gone. A rusty Mazda 323 with Polish plates was parked in front of the gate. She tried the key. She would have said more to Henry, explained. But he just kept on. It was all going to be okay, he said. He also wanted to give her half the money. She would leave first, he would follow in a few weeks when everything had settled down. He would get through all this. Wouldn’t be charged. He kept his wits about him surprisingly well, considering there was a dead Polack on his living room floor, shot in the face. She ended up taking seven thousand.
The key turned in the lock, and suddenly she was behind the wheel of her executioner’s car. She started it and flipped on the blinker and drove off. But she didn’t head for the airport. She drove out of the city. She just wanted to get away! She didn’t know where, but it felt good tearing out into nowhere. She held the ticket, Copenhagen-Frankfurt-Melbourne, in her free hand, checked the rearview mirror, no one, she doubted she could get anything for it. She rolled the window down. Do not forsake me, oh my darling… Then she heard a pop, and the car began swerving. She threw the ticket on the passenger seat and steered off onto the shoulder. But when she turned to get out of the car she saw a girl in the backseat, asleep under an old gray windbreaker. She grabbed hold of the girl and shook her.
“Who are you?”
“Ludmilla… Where’s Marek?”
“Marek is dead. What are you doing here?”
“I’m going to school in Sweden. I have money. See?” Ludmilla took a crumpled brown envelope out of her jacket pocket and waved it around.
“No, you were going to work as a prostitute for a bastard called Olek.”
“I don’t believe you. My mother said I was going to school in Sweden.”
“All right, fine.”
“You’re lying,” Ludmilla persisted. “Who the hell are you anyway? Where is Marek?”
The spare tire was in the trunk. Adina dropped it, and it rolled onto the sidewalk; something rattled when she took hold of it again. She grabbed it with both hands and shook. There was something inside. She removed her pocketknife from her bag, made a slit in the tire, and stuck her hand in, and there she stood with a roll of hundred-euro notes! She sat back inside the car and cut the tire all the way around-it was filled with rolls. Ludmilla still sulked in the backseat. She began slitting the brown envelope open with her finger, turned it upside down. A birth certificate, a physician’s statement, a stack of tourist brochures about Copenhagen in Polish. The girl looked unhappy and started hammering her knuckles into the front seat. Then she let her head fall between her knees. Adina laid an arm around her neck, squeezed her, and then stuffed the money into the bag; she could count it later. Ludmilla sat crying with her head in her hands.
“Come on,” Adina said, and she got out of the car and started looking for a taxi.
“Where are we going?” Ludmilla asked, following her outside. She was skinny as a reed.
Adina didn’t answer immediately. She felt strangely weightless, and the pale, thin girl made her feel sentimental. She wasn’t dead, Henry had saved her. The girl could sink to the bottom as quickly as a stone. She put her hand on Ludmilla’s cheek, wiped the tears away.
“Where are we going?” the girl asked again.
“I’m going to Australia, and you can come along.”
“What will we do there?”
“Wait for a man. A good man.”