The Faces Read online

  She propped herself up on her elbow, and hope made a bright border around her thoughts.

  ‘I really was fond of you,’ she said softly. ‘You’ve just misunderstood me. When I come home, I’ll prove it.’

  The face vanished and there was a sound from the pipes as if someone were running through them and beating on a drum.

  ‘Just listen to how meek she is,’ said Gitte triumphantly. ‘She thinks she’s going to go home again. As if anyone has ever gotten out of here alive.’

  ‘It’ll be fun when Jørgensen arrives,’ said Gert.

  ‘I’ll tell him everything,’ Lise threatened. ‘He’ll get me out of here. He’ll see that you’re punished.’

  ‘He was the one who put you in here,’ said Gert sarcastically. ‘Don’t you realize that he’s behind the whole thing?’

  She was silent with horror, remembering his hearty laughter on the telephone. Who could she trust anymore?

  ‘Nadia,’ she said, ‘I’ll call and ask her to come.’

  Gitte laughed maliciously.

  ‘Call?’ she said. ‘How are you going to do that? And who was the one who got you to call the doctor? Nadia said he was your friend, I heard her quite clearly.’

  She thought about her conversation with Nadia and suddenly saw her as part of an enormous plot, whose purpose she had to figure out. She closed her eyes and there was blessed darkness. The little girls were gone. She was mercifully alone and helpless in a world of evil. But if she preserved her sanity, there was still hope. Someone would sooner or later come through the door and discover the crime. A person from outside, someone who would take her at her word and help her find justice. People would start to ask about her out in the world. How long had she been here? Her sense of time had dissolved, the way it does when you’re sitting in the dentist’s chair. She had to get away before it was too late. They couldn’t hold healthy people against their will.

  The door opened and Gitte came in wearing her neat uniform. The stiff white cap on her head looked like a halo. She had a glass of red liquid in her hand, and she put it on the stool beside the bed.

  ‘Drink this,’ she said in a friendly tone of voice. ‘You need a lot of fluids. It’s juice.’

  Lise stared at the glass and felt her thirst slide through her guts. The liquid had dark particles on the bottom, and all at once she knew there was poison in it. They wanted to murder her, just as they had done with the old woman.

  ‘I’m not thirsty,’ she said, and she could barely separate her dry lips. ‘You won’t get me that easily, Gitte.’

  She stared angrily at the smug, self-satisfied face, which looked as though it were fastened to the cap with invisible pins.

  ‘My name isn’t Gitte. How many times do I have to tell you that?’

  She went out and closed the door behind her, and a little while later her breathless voice sounded in the pipes.

  ‘She won’t drink the damn juice, it would have been so easy. Maybe Jørgensen can make her drink it.’

  The voice hadn’t been there when Gitte was standing next to her, because she couldn’t be in two places at once. When she was behind the floor grating, the voice had come out of her there. So she wasn’t crazy, thought Lise. On the contrary, she had never felt her brain work so clearly and logically before. There must be long corridors behind the pipes, which you entered from behind. And there must be peepholes so they could look at her. Now they were talking and laughing with each other, and she tried hard not to hear what they were saying. She had to be patient and make the best of things. But she was about to die of thirst. She looked at the poisonous filth in the glass and licked her lips.

  ‘Look at the blisters on her lips,’ said Gitte in disgust. ‘They look like maggots.’

  She tried to remember a poem, but they had all vanished, and she searched for them the way a child searches for her pacifier.

  ‘There burns a candle in the night,’ sneered Gert hatefully, and Gitte continued: ‘It burns for you alone.’

  She flushed with shame and anger. It was one of her own poems.

  ‘They’re awful,’ said Gitte. ‘Enough to make you throw up. She’s never caught on to modernism. The young people laugh at her.’

  The door opened and Dr Jørgensen stepped in, dressed in a white coat. He had shoulders like a clothes hanger and his tired face had slipped so far down that it was almost covering his neck. He sat down on the stool and moved the glass over a bit. His brown eyes were full of empathy.

  ‘Well,’ he said kindly, ‘I hear you’ve been a little restless.’

  ‘That’s not so strange,’ she said indignantly. ‘The most horrible things are going on here. They kill the oldest patients. I’ve seen it myself.’

  ‘You’re mistaken,’ he said calmly. ‘You’re just hallucinating a little.’

  ‘You hear that?’ said Gert. ‘You’re crazy as a loon.’

  She stared stiffly at the doctor’s face, but his expression didn’t change, even though he couldn’t avoid hearing it. Maybe he was the most dangerous of them all, and she should watch what she said to him.

  ‘I want to get out of here,’ she said. ‘You have to get me discharged.’

  ‘No. Not as long as you are ill.’

  Something dawned on her. He knew that she wanted to complain to the Minister of Justice, but if he could make her believe she was ill, there would be no reason for it. With terror she realized that she had seen and heard too much for them ever to let her go.

  He patted her hand but she pulled it away.

  ‘What happened at home before you took the sleeping pills?’ he asked. ‘Were you afraid of something? Something to do with your husband, perhaps?’

  ‘Yes, something to do with me,’ Gert howled with laughter behind the pipes. ‘Why don’t you tell him? Don’t you trust him?’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I was just nervous and overwrought, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ he said. ‘We can talk about that when you’re feeling a little better. You should drink something, your mucous membranes are all dried out. Take this.’

  He held the glass up to her lips, and she pulled her head back with a jerk and pressed her lips together tight.

  ‘You know very well that there’s poison in it,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said gravely, ‘there isn’t.’

  He put the glass down and looked at her thoughtfully. She remembered how he had helped her many times in a pinch. Had he really allied himself with all the others against her? And why?

  ‘He needed money,’ said Gert. Now they were answering her thoughts too. It must be telepathy. ‘He’s been living beyond his means and gotten into debt. It was stupid of you not to take your checkbook along.’

  The doctor’s expression didn’t change. He was putting on a great act.

  ‘I’ve spoken with your husband,’ he said and stood up. ‘He said that you haven’t been well for some time. You didn’t dare go outside, for example. But things will get better. We’ll give you something to make you sleep.’

  He left, and the two in the pipes laughed exultantly.

  A new nurse came in and turned on the light. They shook hands.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘My name is Mrs Nordentoft. You just have to call loudly if you need a bedpan.’

  ‘Can’t I go to the toilet by myself?’ she asked dejectedly.

  ‘No. The head doctor said that the belt has to stay on for the time being.’

  The nurse disappeared, and the light reassured her somewhat. Everything was better in the evening; they had to go home to sleep, at any rate. She searched for a face that would give her some rest and remembered Søren’s face in the morning with a milk mustache on his mouth. Suddenly she heard him crying in despair: ‘Mommy, Mommy,’ he called, ‘come and help me!’

  She looked around in panic. Behind the grating up near the ceiling she saw his face against the screen. Tears were streaming down his face and his little fingers were clutching at the screen as if trying to tear it loose.

  ‘Søren,’ she shouted in horror, ‘what’s wrong? Why are you crying?’

  ‘It’s Gitte,’ he whimpered. ‘She’s putting out her cigarettes on my back.’

  Gitte’s face popped up behind Søren’s and stared down at her.

  ‘Don’t let it bother you,’ she said. ‘Don’t feel anything. You don’t worry about the bombed children in Vietnam because you only love your own. It’s people like you who create all the unhappiness in the world. If you can be indifferent about Søren, you can come home. Then you will be cured.’

  She screamed wildly and held her hands to her face. Red flames leaped up behind her eyelids, and her tears could not put them out.

  8

  It was still raining outside. It was raining from a sky that she would never see again. It was the sky of her childhood, and the evening star pricked a hole in it with a bright, delicate light that flooded the windowsill in her bedroom where she sat with legs drawn up and lost herself in gentle dreams. Behind her was the darkness and the fear and the smell of sweat, sleep, and dust. Behind her was the bed with its heavy, clammy quilt that was like the lid on a coffin. Behind her were her father’s and mother’s woolen nighttime voices from the world of sex, which she didn’t understand. Behind her was the imprisoned night, fermenting like a sealed jar of jam that no air could reach.

  It was quiet in the pipes, but Gitte’s face appeared behind the grating near the floor, the one she negotiated from, which was the one Lise feared the least. As long as Gitte was there, Søren was safe.

  ‘In the kibbutz,’ said Gitte longingly, ‘all the children belong to everyone. The mothers don’t love their own children any more than the others. It’s the same way with deer in a flock. Lion cubs nurse from the closest female, and she doesn’t care if she’s their mother or not.’

  ‘People always overrate the importance of what they don’t have,’ said Lise. ‘I haven’t always been equally fond of my mother.’

  ‘I haven’t either.’ Hanne’s childish voice, full of annoyance, rang from the speaker in the pillow at her ear.

  ‘If you knew how much I envied my girlfriends because their mothers talk to them when they come home from school. I was just supposed to read your disgusting book chapters; they made me sick. You thought they were about me, but you were always writing about yourself. You’ve never seen anything but yourself in the whole world.’

  ‘And so you took your revenge,’ said Lise softly, as a stab of guilt pierced her heart.

  ‘Yes, then she took her revenge.’ That was Gitte’s voice from the pipe.

  Mrs Nordentoft came in. She looked suspiciously at the untouched glass.

  ‘You have to drink something,’ she said sternly. ‘What do you want? Water, milk, tea? It doesn’t matter so much if you don’t eat, but we can’t have you lying here dying of thirst. That won’t do at all.’

  ‘No,’ said Gert, ‘you have to drink something. Then your suffering will be over.’

  He laughed, and the nurse played her role just as well as Dr Jørgensen had. Lise’s tongue was swollen and tender, and she could only speak with difficulty.

  ‘I’m not thirsty,’ she said, ‘but can’t you loosen the belt a little? It’s cutting into me like knives.’

  Mrs Nordentoft felt the belt and took out her keys.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t have to be so tight.’

  Lise looked up into her gray eyes, which were not the same size.

  ‘Couldn’t I have a cigarette?’ she asked.

  ‘No, then the bed will just catch on fire.’

  She left, and Lise noticed a burning smell in her nostrils. She sat up and to her horror saw frantic little flames darting up from the comforter.

  ‘It’s on fire,’ she yelled, ‘the bed is burning! Help me!’

  The fire spread quickly and was nearing her face. She screamed wildly and yanked at the belt to get loose.

  Mrs Nordentoft came back in.

  ‘What is it now? Why are you screaming like that?’

  ‘The bed,’ she said, her body shaking all over. ‘It’s on fire.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said the other woman, passing her hand lightly over the bedclothes. The flames sank down and disappeared, and the quilt bore no trace of them.

  ‘Now I’m going to bring you your injection. Then you’ll fall asleep right away.’

  She came back accompanied by Gitte, who was holding a full hypodermic in her hand.

  ‘Should this be the final one?’ she said as if to herself. ‘Then we’d get it over with.’

  ‘No,’ Lise pleaded, terrified. ‘Don’t kill me now. I’ll do anything you say, but just let me live tonight.’

  ‘No. When I think of all the bread you made me bake for your beastly children because you didn’t feel like doing it yourself…’

  ‘I didn’t know it was a nuisance for you,’ she said in despair, but they had already pulled back the comforter. She thrashed around in the belt and screamed, the way you scream to wake up from a gruesome nightmare.

  ‘Come on, stop making such a fuss. We’re only doing it for your own good.’

  She noticed a momentary pain in her thigh and, exhausted, rolled onto her side, whimpering like a sick dog.

  ‘Stop crying,’ said Gitte. ‘This time we were only teasing you. You won’t die yet. It’s all much too amusing for that.’

  They were pounding away on the drums, and Dr Jørgensen said with eerie gentleness:

  ‘Close your eyes now and sleep. Then we won’t bother you anymore.’

  She closed her eyes and there stood Gitte with a sign from a demonstration held up in front of her. She was standing as motionless as a photograph, and on the sign it said in childish printing: SLEEPING FORBIDDEN! Quickly she opened her eyes again, and at the same moment Mrs Nordentoft came in and turned off the light.

  ‘Good night,’ she said. ‘Sleep well.’

  The darkness was so dense you could cut it with a knife. It covered her face like a sweaty hand. She felt a deathlike weariness, and her thoughts rose up in the air like balloons whose strings have been let go.

  ‘I’ve never been able to understand,’ chatted Gert, ‘why she didn’t take a lover.’

  ‘She’s a lesbian,’ replied Gitte. ‘She’s in love with Hanne.’

  Suddenly she heard a whirring sound close to her bed.

  ‘Now you’re going to hear the tape, Mother,’ said Mogens. ‘I put it under Hanne’s bed. Gitte and I played it after you fell asleep.’

  ‘No,’ she cried. ‘Mogens, how did you get in here? Why are you doing this to me?’

  She put out her hands to take hold of him but he was out of her reach. The whirring sound stopped, and Gert and Hanne’s laughter filled the whole world.

  ‘I’ve studied the marriage statutes,’ said Gert. ‘We can only be married if she dies or goes insane.’

  ‘Gitte can help us with that,’ said Hanne’s little voice. ‘It worked with Grete. Why shouldn’t she fall for the same trick?’

  ‘Wait a minute! Stop it, Mogens. I don’t want to hear any more.’

  She held her hands over her ears and sobbed in despair into her pillow.

  ‘Help!’ she shouted. ‘Take him away. Turn on the light. I can’t stand it!’

  Mrs Nordentoft came in and turned on the light. There was no sign of Mogens or his tape recorder.

  ‘What’s the matter now?’ she asked patiently. ‘You must try to sleep while the injection is working.’

  She bent down over Lise and wiped away the tears with her handkerchief. Her face was made of thin paper that had torn in several places. Underneath, the flesh was a suppurating wound. The smaller eye was rigid and expressionless like a glass eye.

  ‘Don’t turn off the light,’ Lise begged. ‘I’m afraid of the dark.’

  ‘You can’t sleep with the light on. And it’s also against the rules.’ She frowned and bit her lip thoughtfully. ‘Do you hear voices?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ said Lise. ‘You hear them too.’

  ‘No,’ the woman said adamantly, shaking her head. ‘All the voices you hear come from inside yourself.’

  It dawned on Lise that the whole staff must be in on the plot.

  ‘If I believed that,’ she said, ‘I would be insane.’

  ‘You aren’t well, you know.’

  ‘Close your mouth,’ said Gitte, ‘she’s looking at your ugly teeth.’

  ‘False teeth are cold,’ Gert said with loathing.

  Mrs Nordentoft turned off the light and left. The darkness was hot like a steam bath, and the voices in the pipes grew distant and indistinct. She closed her eyes, and Gitte’s form with the sign slowly became blurred and hazy. In her dreams, Dr Jørgensen’s face appeared before her like a close-up on TV. It was gentle and kind, and the brown eyes were moist as if with tears.

  ‘Reality,’ he whispered, ‘only exists in your mind. Things would be much better for you if you understood that. It has no objective existence.’

  ‘Then where do I exist myself?’ she asked.

  ‘In the consciousness of others,’ he said patiently, as if speaking to an obstinate but talented pupil.

  ‘I don’t want that,’ she said, afraid. ‘I just want to be myself.’

  ‘Yes, but don’t you know that everyone exists in numerous editions, just like books? Copies are made of them in the office for the secret files.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, astonished, ‘that explains a lot of things. So are you still my friend?’

  ‘Yes, of course I’m your friend,’ he said and laughed suddenly with Gitte’s mouth. She saw that he had a hypodermic in his hand.

  ‘Here’s some LSD for you,’ he said and stuck the needle into her leg. ‘It will teach you to love your neighbor.’

  She screamed and opened her eyes. The morning light that filled the hideous room had a gray, hopeless sheen to it, like on school days when you hadn’t done your homework. It smelled of sweat and she noticed that the bed was wet and her gown was clinging to her body. Her thirst was so intense that it seemed to weaken her hearing. From the pipes came an indistinct murmur of voices, and there were no faces behind the two gratings.

  The door opened and a man in a white jacket with brass buttons came in. He was carrying a basin and pushed down the door handle with his elbow. When he turned around, she saw it was Gert, but that didn’t particularly surprise her. She had gotten used to her world of terrors the way you get used to a physical pain. Maybe there really were several versions of the same person, and this was just a copy.