“Why?”

“Does it still apply?” she said.

“Yes, I guess it does,” I said, and felt the anxiety stab down into my chest and squeeze it, hard. Don’t say it’s time now! I thought. Don’t say we have to part now, when we’ve just made friends again, don’t say that she’s going to… and my voice was trembling as I repeated, emphasizing the question:

“Why?”

“Oh,” said Elsa, taking a step toward the door and pushing it open, “I just wanted to check. I just wanted to know that’s what will happen. That you won’t just disappear. That you won’t just be gone one day, without telling me in advance.”

Feeling relieved I got up and followed her out. My legs were shaking, I had been so scared and now I was so relieved. In the shower room she turned to me.

“Can we promise each other, Dorrit? Can we promise each other again?”

“Of course, Elsa,” I said. “Of course we can.”

“Good,” she said, and her voice gave away the fact that she was moved. It was trembling, somehow exposed, as she went on: “Shall we shake on it?”

We clasped hands and then we hugged each other, standing there naked and covered in sweat on the tiled floor outside the sauna. A woman with short white hair smiled at us as she passed on the way in. She reminded me a little of Lena, but she had a longer, narrower face and her expression was more tired.

It was only some hours later, during the night, as I was lying alone in my bed with one hand on my stomach, gazing up at the ceiling, that it occurred to me: “disappear” didn’t necessarily have to mean “make the final donation.” It could just as easily mean “leave,” “run away.” And if I decided to go, if I decided to run away, I wouldn’t be able to keep my promise to Elsa unless I revealed my secret to her, which would mean breaking the promise I had made never to tell anyone about the key card. And I am not the kind of person who breaks promises. I am not the kind of person who betrays a trust. For example, in this story I have not revealed the true circumstances under which I received the key card. Neither of the two nurses who met me when I raced into the surgical department that day has a birthmark. Nor was it either of those two who gave me the key card, and the conversation with the person who did give me the card did not in fact take place in the break room where I sat and waited as I gazed out at the snow-covered park with the pond and the ducks, but in a completely different room in a completely different part of the unit, and at another time. And the code is actually not 98 44 at all.

No, I am not the kind of person who breaks promises. And so now I was faced with a dilemma.

I turned over, facing the side of the bed where Johannes used to lie. I placed one hand on the pillow where his head used to rest. The child in my belly turned over as well. Then we slept.

7

In the newspapers, on the radio and on TV it was early summer. The national days had been celebrated, first the Norwegian and then the Swedish, with flag-waving, royalty, and parades with bands playing. The usual euphoria surrounding those national days was now gradually evolving into the usual euphoria surrounding midsummer. On the news, on talk shows, and in documentaries, they had just finished picking over the to-be-or-not-to-be of the monarchy and the eternal question of why the Norwegians were so much more energetic in their national celebrations than the Swedes, and were just starting to fill report after report and feature after feature with the price of strawberries and new potatoes, and with midsummer poles ready to be danced around, regional variations on the national costume, wooden horses from Dalarna, with islands in the archipelago, barn dances and red-painted cottages, with herring and aquavit, drunken parties and drunk driving offenses. Obviously the old traditions were being kept alive out there. But here inside the unit we celebrated neither the one nor the other; we saw no sign of a flag or a midsummer pole. Aquavit and herring were not on the menu. We could get fresh strawberries all year round, they were grown in a greenhouse in the galleria, and I never heard anyone mention new potatoes. Personally, I have always thought that new potatoes taste unpleasantly doughy, somehow.

It was, however, time for the monthly welcome party, and I had decided to go. I had wanted to dress in a feminine way, but none of my dresses fit me any more. So I stuck to pants, shirt and jacket. I had put weight on all over my body, and had even grown the hint of a double chin. For those who didn’t know me or didn’t know about my condition, and weren’t expecting to see a pregnant dispensable person, I expect I just looked fat. That suited me perfectly, because I didn’t want to offend any of the new arrivals, didn’t want to cause any kind of unpleasantness or consternation. Not tonight. Tonight I was in the mood to have fun. I was in the mood to dance and get to know some new people.

I combed my hair, then stood there looking at my reflection, alternating between the front view and profile. I pushed my hands into my pockets-in the left was the fossil stone, in the right the key card. I stood up straight. I actually looked strong; it was easy to understand why people were happy to believe that I was. I looked indomitable. I looked as if I had authority.

The menu consisted of apple and cauliflower salad with a yogurt dressing, butterfly salmon with teriyaki sauce and stir-fried vegetables, plus, for dessert, chocolate and orange cream with mascarpone and crushed cookies. I was sharing a table with Mats, Vivi and a new arrival, Miranda, who was a sculptor. Like most new arrivals she was very quiet, poking unhappily at her food. I decided to make a point of talking to her during the party, to try to make her feel better. We started chatting, during the meal at first and then later in the bar as we tried out different drinks with umbrellas in them.

The band hadn’t started playing yet, and slow, rhythmic music was churning out of the loudspeakers at a relatively low volume. Miranda was telling me about her work. She made small and large sculptures in clay-the biggest the size of a human, the smallest the size of thimbles-depicting humanlike figures in contorted postures. She had, as she put it, “a weakness for contorted bodies,” and saw a great deal of beauty in the crooked, the misshapen and the scarred.

“There is,” she said, “actually something beautiful in suffering. Even in purely physical pain. Does that sound perverse? Does it sound as if I’m a psychopath?”

“Well…” I said. “Maybe it does. But I presume that an artistic eye, an eye that doesn’t evaluate and analyze, but primarily observes, ought to be able to perceive beauty in more or less any shape or expression.”

“Oh, it’s so nice to talk to someone who understands!” said Miranda. “Because that’s exactly how it is; it isn’t about my evaluation, it isn’t that I think it’s cool if someone is deformed or suffering or in pain. I just happen to think it’s beautiful.”

There was something about her that reminded me of Majken. She was like “the dark side of Majken,” she was the same but the reverse, you might say. And I told her about Majken’s picture of the deformed fetus that was now hanging above the desk in my apartment.

“I’d really like to see that,” said Miranda, and I told her where I lived and said she was welcome to drop by any time.

Just as I said that, the rock band came on stage. I only needed to hear the first two or three beats of the intro to recognize the ballad “For My Girl,” and out of the corner of my eye I saw a figure approaching from the side with a self-assured walk, straight-backed, lithe, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his forearms muscular, his face weather-beaten and healthy and with a slightly cheeky but somehow shy smile, sparkling eyes, a playful look in those eyes that were-so it seemed to me-seeking mine; and as he came closer I turned slowly to face him, ready to hear him say: “Dorrit, you look lovely tonight,” and to bow and kiss my hand.