Invisible Love (19 page)

Pursued by the whole family, she resolved to write a letter that belied her real emotions. Pretending to still feel what she felt before, to still be the affectionate godmother she had once been, she wrote a wonderful text, vibrant with love and overflowing with compassion, which moved Jonas, Katrin, and Magnus deeply—she sent them all copies—and moved her too.

Having obtained this reprieve, she went to see Vilma, her new sister, who allowed her to express what she actually felt.

One afternoon, because there were too many people in the café and Vilma really wanted to see her drawings, she took her home with her.

Open-mouthed and wide-eyed, Vilma examined every object, asking their provenance or their price, unable to conduct a normal conversation. Flattered, Alba let her rhapsodize.

Outside Thor's room, Alba came to a halt. “I haven't set foot in here since he went.”

Knowing that Magnus had tidied the room, she dreaded seeing the result. Whatever he had done, it would hurt her: either he had kept it in its original state and she would enter a grim mausoleum, or he had wiped out all traces of Thor and the boy would be snatched from her a second time.

“Curious,” Vilma said. “I always have my daughter's things with me. Here, look, I have her notebook in my bag. How can you live next to a room that's all boarded up?”

Alba thought about “Bluebeard,” the Perrault story she had once illustrated, in which a young bride cannot bear her husband hiding a room from her and, in trying to find out the truth, narrowly escapes death.

“For now, yes.”

Sensing that she shouldn't insist, Vilma turned her attention to an old key hanging from a hook on the wall in the corridor. “What's this?”

They went back to the living room, and Alba happily told her about the cabin, her childhood house in the south, not far from Eyjafjöll.

They were startled by a noise. Magnus had come home earlier than expected. They stood up, blushing, as if caught in the act.

“Hello, darling.” As Alba was still frozen, he insisted, “Aren't you going to introduce me?”

Alba shook off her lethargy. “Magnus, this is my new friend Vilma.”

Magnus threw an intrigued look at the slightly built Vilma, a look in which there was a touch of anxiety: it wasn't common for Alba, who wasn't very sociable, and was so attached to her sister and her godson, to bring “new friends” home.

Vilma, for her part, gave a broad smile, touched her hair coquettishly, and even wiggled her hips slightly. This gesture surprised Alba so much, she thought she must have been mistaken.

“I'll see you out, Vilma.”

“Nice to have met you,” Magnus muttered, heading for the bathroom.

By the time they had gone back down the three flights of stairs, Vilma was once again the suffering, tearful, inconsolable mother Alba had been seeing since that first visit to the Mermaid Café. She was reassured: after all, Vilma and she had so many things in common, it was only natural they would like the same type of men.

Watching her walk away along the sidewalks heavy with gray snow, Alba realized that, even though she told Vilma her most private sorrows, she had never told her about Jonas or revealed that she suspected her godson of having stolen her son's heart.

Once back upstairs, she implored Magnus, “Please don't ask me for any explanations.”

“That's a pity,” he sighed. “I'd have liked to know how you came to meet a redheaded mouse.”

A day or two earlier, she would have picked a quarrel with him—they weren't supposed to laugh since Thor had died. That evening, though, Magnus's irony suited her too much for her to criticize him.

 

*

 

In the morning, Katrin burst in on them. She put some cookies on the table to justify her intrusion, said she would make breakfast, threw an embarrassed glance at Magnus—whose privates, though at rest, swelled his underpants flatteringly—then said to Alba, “My sister, I have a favor to ask you.”

Katrin had uttered these words as she might have said, “My sister, I have an order to give you.”

“Jonas is leaving hospital tomorrow, and I have to go to Geneva for a crucial meeting. Matters of world strategy, cooperation of the Red Cross with the Red Crescent, etc. I'm chairing it, so I absolutely have to attend. You'll have to get Jonas settled in at home and take care of him. Don't worry, Liv will make the meals and do the shopping. With both Liv and you there, we'll be able to keep an eye on him. Liv agrees. What do you think?”

As usual when faced with one of her elder sister's demands, Alba was struck dumb. Katrin was so domineering, she always presented her with a
fait accompli
. It was as if she were the only person in the world who couldn't take care of her family because of pressing engagements, and she seemed to find it natural that her sister should make herself as freely available as Liv, a housekeeper whom she actually paid.

“Do I have any choice?” Alba said, stirring her tea.

For forty years, that had been her way of saying yes to her elder sister.

 

*

 

She walked to the cardiology department, dreading her reunion with Jonas. Would he ask her to explain why she had stayed away? What would she reply? Would they still understand each other? Would she be able to conceal her grief, her anger, her frustration? She had changed so much since Thor's death! And Jonas had matured since his operation . . . Two strangers were about to meet, doomed to play at a familiarity that no longer existed.

As soon as she crossed the threshold, a kind of miracle took place: the luminous grace with which they had always been surrounded now flooded over them. They kissed, joked, laughed, and chatted, drunk with happiness.

Because Jonas made no reference to the past few weeks, it was a simple, warm, immensely sweet occasion. Overjoyed to see his aunt again, Jonas couldn't stop talking. He was radiant. As for Alba, she had the feeling she was going back to the old days, the days when everything had been wonderful. There was even a fleeting moment of amnesia when, amused by her godson's clever reflections, she thought that when she got home she would find Thor stubbornly glued to his screen.

Doctors and nurses came in to arrange Jonas's departure. As usual, he had charmed everyone. “Come back to see us, even if you aren't sick,” they all said. It made Alba feel proud—proud to be the godmother of such a charismatic young man.

She drove him carefully to his mother's house, which was half an hour from Reykjavík. Jonas was like a convict just released from prison, marveling at the light, the colors, the tiny changes in the climate since he had been admitted to the hospital. Winter was losing its grip but spring had not yet established itself. From time to time, the wind rushed into the empty spaces, bringing flurries of snow with it.

They arrived to a lunch of dried fish and rye cakes prepared by Liv. Exhausted and overexcited, Jonas collapsed on the couch with a plate in his hand and switched on the television.

The screen showed a series of explosions above a glacier, then a colossal column of smoke reaching up into the sky. After a lull, the volcano Eyjafjöll had become active again, in fact, more active than ever. Although the first eruption hadn't caused any major damage or claimed any victims, the second was destroying roads, farms, and power lines.

Their first impulse was to worry about the cabin, then the flood of images carried them away and they stared at the TV screen, hypnotized by the godlike action of the earth.

Since the previous day, nature had been producing a spectacle far more fearsome, more terrifying, and more masterly than the best Hollywood special effects.

Everything had begun with an ice break. When the volcano started erupting, the heat of the magma had melted the lower layers of the glacier. The water had accumulated, held in by the rocks and kept down by the frozen icecap. When the pressure had become too great, this natural lid had burst open, releasing enormous quantities of liquid. By now, the jets were rising into the sky, laden with rocks, particles, and gas. While the heaviest elements fell back down immediately, bombarding the area round the volcano with stones, the lightest formed a plume of dust a few miles high. Lightning flashed from it, capricious and wild, liberating the electricity caused by the clash of molecules.

“Do you realize, Alba, that whenever something memorable happens to us, Eyjafjöll does something? It spits when we leave each other, it explodes when we meet again. What we have between us is cosmic.”

Alba smiled in agreement.

The day continued. To avoid the transplanted heart being rejected, the medical team had lowered Jonas's immune reactions, which meant that he had to be protected against germs, viruses and bacteria.

Alba and Jonas resumed their traditions: card games, playing piano duets, reading side by side, and watching films.

“Aren't you drawing anything right now, Auntie?”

Alba shook her head. Drawing meant opening the door to her soul, which was so murky she was determined to keep it secret. A curious phenomenon had taken place inside her: she had divided herself. A surface Alba coexisted with another, buried Alba. On the outside, she was living happily with her nephew, affable, dynamic, even-tempered; inside, an angry woman looked at the boy with suspicion, condemning everything he said, seeing some act of treachery beneath the most insignificant word, plotting her vengeance, waiting for the hour when he would be punished. As soon as she could be certain that he had stolen Thor's heart, that her son had been murdered for his sake, she would take her revenge.

That was what the demonic Alba was pondering while the angelic Alba joked with her nephew. Both lived together beneath the same exterior.

But for the moment, there was no way. Whistle said he had another mission to carry out first. The waiting was becoming intolerable . . .

 

*

 

One evening, when Jonas had fallen asleep watching a Frank Capra comedy, Alba bent over him. Was there a way to see if Thor's heart was beating inside Jonas? A mother should be able to spot that. No need to use her senses . . . her instinct would tell her. She just had to be beside his body and open her mind to her emotions.

She stared at the boy.

A feeling of intense familiarity overcame her. There in front of her was more than her nephew. There was something in Jonas that came from elsewhere, something that animated the curl of his lips, agitated his girlish eyelashes, ran through the delicate veins that crisscrossed his milk-white arms, made his narrow chest rise and fall. That something was her son. What was best in this patient named Jonas, what was healthy and essential, was Thor. Thor had been killed to prolong the existence of this useless invalid. There was no doubt about it.

Alba decided to have done with it once and for all! There was no way she could smile at her son's murderer. She couldn't stand to fuss over him anymore. Continuing with this playacting would amount to a betrayal.

“Don't worry, Thor, I'll avenge you.”

How? There was no lack of possible methods: forget to draftproof the windows, serve him rotten food . . . The problem was that it was too obvious. She would easily be found out if they investigated. What to do, then?

Suddenly, she had a brilliant idea: a welcome-home party for his friends! Instead of avoiding contact, she only had to invite about twenty kids here and she'd have an army of killers. Biological warfare! A banquet for microbes. Kids are the biggest carriers of diseases. Jonas would get some germ or virus that his immune system couldn't fight. That was it! A tragic anniversary! A homecoming party that turns sour! Nobody is guilty, or else everybody is . . . With Jonas's friends and their brothers and sisters, she would infect Jonas and the house.

She withdrew to her room to draw up a list.

How to carry out this plan before Katrin got back? She had to act quickly. Would it be possible to gather these human time bombs before April 16th? It was the 16th that Katrin was due back, wasn't it? She couldn't quite remember. It was already the 14th . . .

That night, Alba prepared her invitations, checked she had everyone's postal and e-mail addresses, and at last, exhausted, fell asleep as dawn broke.

 

*

 

On the morning of April 15th, Katrin left them a frantic message on the answering machine:

“Jonas, Alba, I won't be back tomorrow as planned. Switzerland is closing its airspace. Because of us, because of Eyjafjöll! Just my luck! You'll have to manage a bit longer without me. I don't know how long it's going to last. Love.”

When they woke up, Alba and Jonas verified Katrin's information. The volcanic dust, pushed by the wind in a south-easterly direction, was converging on northern Europe. After some experts pointed out that dust particles could affect aircraft engines, the authorities of various countries had decided to close their air space. Britain and Poland had been the first, followed by Belgium, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, and Ireland . . .

The aunt and the nephew reacted differently to this news.

Jonas felt a wave of nationalistic pride. “Do you realize, Auntie, a little country like ours is stopping international air traffic! Amazing, isn't it? It'll cost them millions and millions.”

Alba, though, saw this event as a sign from fate: Katrin being stuck in Geneva gave her free rein to get rid of Jonas; she had to see her murderous plan through to the end.

She told her nephew that she had a big surprise for him, then shut herself in her room to phone the guests. She had planned the party for Thursday evening, the day after tomorrow. Within a day, she had received twenty positive replies.

On the Wednesday, as she was looking at the estimate from a caterer who specialized in birthdays, her cell phone rang.

“I found out!” Vilma cried at the other end of the line.

“What?”