The Boy in the Suitcase (2 page)

The day before it was to happen, they had celebrated. Everything was done, everything ready. The car was packed, all preparations were in place. The only thing that could stop them now was if the bitch suddenly changed her pattern. And even if she did, all they had to do was wait another week.

“Let’s go to the country,” said Barbara. “Let’s go find someplace where we can lie in the grass and be alone together.”

At first he refused on the grounds that it was best not to alter one’s own pattern. People remembered. Only as long as one did what one always did would one remain relatively invisible. But then he realized this might be his last day in Lithuania ever, if everything went according to plan. And he didn’t really feel like spending that day selling security systems to middle-range businessmen in Vilnius.

He called the client he was due to see and canceled, telling them the company would be sending someone Monday or Tuesday instead. Barbara called in sick with “the flu.” It would be Monday before anyone at Klimka’s realized they had been playing hooky at the same time, and by then it wouldn’t matter.

They drove out to Lake Didžiulis. Once, this had been a holiday camp for Pioneer children. Now it was a scout camp instead, and on an ordinary school day at the end of August, the whole place was completely deserted. Jučas parked the Mitsubishi in the shade beneath some pines, hoping the car wouldn’t be an oven when they returned. Barbara got out, stretching so that her white shirt slid up to reveal a bit of tanned stomach. That was enough to make his cock twitch. He had never known a woman who could arouse him as quickly as Barbara. He had never known anyone like her, period. He still wondered why on earth she had picked someone like him. They stayed clear of the wooden huts, which in any case looked rather sad and dilapidated. Instead they followed the path past the flag hill and into the woods. He inhaled the smell of resin and sun-parched trees, and for a moment was back with Granny Edita on the farm near Visaginas. He had spent the first seven years of his life there. Freezing cold and lonely in the winter, but in the summer Rimantas moved in with
his
Gran on the neighboring farm, and then the thicket of pines between the two smallholdings became Tarzan’s African Jungle, or the endless Mohican woods of Hawkeye.

“Looks like we can swim here.” Barbara pointed at the lakeshore further ahead. An old swimming platform stuck into the waters of the lake like a slightly crooked finger.

Jučas stuffed Visaginas back into the box where it belonged, the one labeled “The Past.” He didn’t often open that box, and there was certainly no reason to mess with it now.

“There are probably leeches,” he said, to tease her.

She grimaced. “Of course there aren’t. Or they wouldn’t let the children swim here.”

Belatedly, he realized he didn’t really want to stop her from taking her clothes off.

“You’re probably right,” he said, hastily.

She flashed him a quick smile, as though she knew exactly what he was thinking. And as he watched, she slowly unbuttoned her shirt and stepped out of her sand-colored skirt and string sandals, until she stood barefoot on the beach, wearing only white panties and a plain white bra.

“Do we have to swim first?” he asked.

“No,” she said, stepping close. “We can do that afterwards.”

He wanted her so badly it sometimes made him clumsy like a teenager. But today he forced himself to wait. Playing with her. Kissing her. Making sure she was just as aroused as he was. He fumbled for the condom he always kept in his wallet, at her insistence. But this time she stopped him.

“It’s such a beautiful day,” she said. “And such a beautiful place. Surely, we can make a beautiful child, don’t you think?”

He was beyond speech. But he let go of the wallet and held her for several long minutes before he pushed her down onto the grass and tried to give her what she so badly wanted.

AFTERWARDS, THEY DID
swim in the deep, cool waters of the lake. She was not a strong swimmer, had never really learned how, so mostly she doggy-paddled, splashing and kicking. Finally she linked her hands behind his neck and let herself be towed along as he backstroked to keep them both afloat. She looked into his eyes.

“Do you love me?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Even though I’m an old, old woman?” She was nine years older than him, and it bothered her. He didn’t care.

“Insanely,” he said. “And you’re not old.”

“Take care of me,” she said, settling her head on his chest. He was surprised at the strength of the tenderness he felt.

“Always at your service,” he murmured. And he thought that perhaps the family in the dream was him and Barbara, perhaps that was the point of it all—him and Barbara, in the house just outside Krakow. Soon.

Just one little thing to be done first.

S
ATURDAYS WERE
S
IGITA’S
loneliest days.

The week went by quite quickly; there was work, and there was Mikas, and from the time she picked him up at kindergarten shortly before six, everything was done in a strict routine—cook, eat, bathe the child, tuck him in, lay out his clothes for the morning, tidy up, do the dishes, watch a little television. Sometimes she fell asleep to the drone of the news.

But Saturdays. Saturday belonged to the grandparents. From early morning the parking lot in front of their building was busy as cars were packed full of children and bags and empty wooden crates. They would return Sunday evening laden with potatoes, lettuce, and cabbage, and sometimes fresh eggs and new honey. Everyone was going “up to the country,” whether the country was a simple allotment or a grandparental farm.

Sigita was going nowhere. She bought all her vegetables at the supermarket now. And when she saw little four-year-old Sofija from number 32 dash across the pavement and throw herself into the bosom of her hennaed, sun-tanned grandmother, it sometimes hurt so badly that it felt as if she had lost a limb.

This Saturday, her solution was the same as it always was—to make a thermos full of coffee and pack a small lunch, and then take Mikas to the kindergarten playground. The birch trees by the fence shimmered green and white in the sun. There had been rain during the night, and a couple of starlings were bathing themselves in the brown puddles underneath the seesaw.

“Lookmama thebirdis takingabath!” said Mikas, pointing enthusiastically. Lately, he had begun to talk rapidly and almost incessantly, but not yet very clearly. It wasn’t always easy to understand what he was saying.

“Yes. I suppose he wants to be nice and clean. Do you think he knows it’s Sunday tomorrow?”

She had hoped that there might be a child or two in the playground, but this Saturday they were alone, which was usually the case. She gave Mikas his truck and his little red plastic bucket and shovel. He still loved the sandbox and would play for hours, laying out ambitious projects involving moats and roads, twigs standing in for trees, or possibly fortifications. She sat on the edge of the box, closing her eyes for a minute.

She was so tired.

A shower of wet sand caught her in the face. She opened her eyes.

“Mikas!”

He had done it on purpose. She could see the suppressed laughter in his face. His eyes were alight.

“Mikas, don’t do that!”

He pushed the tip of his shovel into the sand and twitched it, so that another volley of sand hit her square in the chest. She felt some of it trickle down inside her blouse.

“
Mikas
!”

He could no longer hold back his giggle. It bubbled out of him, contagious and irresistible. She leaped up.

“I’ll get you for this!”

He screamed with delight and took off at his best three-year-old speed. She slowed her steps a bit to let him get a head start, then went after him, catching him and swinging him up in the air, then into a tight embrace. At first he wriggled a little, then he threw his arms around her neck, and burrowed his head under her chin. His light, fair hair smelled of shampoo and boy. She kissed the top of his head, loudly and smackingly, making him squirm and giggle again.

“Mamadon’t!”

Only later, after they had settled by the sandbox again and she had poured herself the first cup of coffee, did the tiredness return. She held the plastic cup to her face and sniffed as though it were cocaine. But this was not a tiredness that coffee could cure.

Would it always be like this? she thought. Just me and Mikas. Alone in the world. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Or was it?

Suddenly Mikas jumped up and ran to the fence. A woman was standing there, a tall young woman in a pale summer coat, with a flowery scarf around her head as though she were on her way to Mass. Mikas was heading for her with determination. Was it one of the kindergarten teachers? No, she didn’t think so. Sigita got hesitantly to her feet.

Then she saw that the woman had something in her hand. The shiny wrapper glittered in the sunshine, and Mikas had hauled himself halfway up the fence with eagerness and desire. Chocolate.

Sigita was taken aback by the heat of her anger. In ten or twelve very long paces, she was at the fence herself. She grabbed Mikas a little too harshly, and he gave her an offended look. He already had chocolate smears on his face.

“What are you giving him!”

The unfamiliar woman looked at her in surprise.

“It’s just a little chocolate. . . .”

She had a slight accent, Russian, perhaps, and this did not lessen Sigita’s rancor.

“My son is not allowed to take candy from strangers,” she said.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that . . . he’s such a sweet boy.”

“Was it you yesterday? And the other day, before that?” There had been traces of chocolate on Mikas’s jersey, and Sigita had had a nasty argument with the staff about it. They had steadfastly denied giving the children any sweets. Once a month, that was the agreed policy, and they wouldn’t dream of diverging from it, they had said. Now it appeared it was true.

“I pass by here quite often. I live over there,” said the woman, indicating one of the concrete apartment blocks surrounding the playground. “I bring the children sweets all the time.”

“Why?”

The woman in the pale coat looked at Mikas for a long moment. She seemed nervous now, as though she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t.

“I don’t have any of my own,” she finally said.

A pang of sympathy caught Sigita amidst her anger.

“That’ll come soon enough,” she heard herself say. “You’re still young.”

The woman shook her head.

“Thirty-six,” she said, as though the figure itself were a tragedy.

It wasn’t until now that Sigita really noticed the careful makeup designed to eradicate the slight signs of aging around her eyes and her mouth. Automatically, she clutched her son a little tighter. At least I have Mikas, she told herself. At least I have that.

“Please don’t do it again,” she said, less strictly than she had meant to. “It’s not good for him.”

The woman’s eyes flickered.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It won’t happen again.” Then she spun suddenly and walked away with rapid steps.

Poor woman, thought Sigita. I guess I’m not the only one whose life turned out quite different from expected.

SHE WIPED AWAY
the chocolate smears with a moistened handkerchief. Mikas wriggled like a worm and was unhappy.

“Morechoclate,” he said. “More!”

“No,” said Sigita. “There is no more.”

She could see that he was considering a tantrum, and looked around quickly for a diversion.

“Hey,” she said, grabbing the red bucket. “Why don’t you and I build a castle?”

She played with him until he was caught up in the game again, the endless fascination of water and sand and sticks and the things one could do with them. The coffee had gone cold, but she drank it anyway. Sharp little grains of sand dug into her skin beneath the edge of her bra, and she tried discretely to dislodge them. Leafy shadows from the birches shimmered across the gray sand, and Mikas crawled about on all fours with his truck clutched in one hand, making quite realistic engine noises.

Afterwards, that was the last thing she remembered.

A
SEAGULL, THOUGHT
J
AN
. A damned seagull!

He should have been back home in Denmark more than an hour ago. Instead he sat on what should have been the 7:45 to Copenhagen Airport, frying inside an overheated aluminum tube along with 122 other unfortunates. No matter how many cooling drinks he was offered by the flight attendants, nothing could ease his desperation.

The plane had arrived on schedule from Copenhagen. But boarding had been postponed, first by fifteen minutes, then by another fifteen minutes, and finally by an additional half hour. Jan had begun to sweat. He was on a tight schedule. But the desk staff kept saying it was a temporary problem, and the passengers were asked to stay by the gate. When they suddenly postponed boarding again, this time by a full hour, without any explanation, he lost his temper and demanded to have his case unloaded so that he could find some other flight to Copenhagen. This met with polite refusal. Luggage that had been checked in was already aboard the plane, and there was apparently no willingness to find his bag among the other 122. When he said to hell with the bag, then, and wanted to leave the gate without it, there were suddenly two security officers flanking him, telling him that if his bag was flying out on that plane, so was he. Was that a problem?

No, he demurred hastily, having absolutely no desire to spend further hours in some windowless room with a lock on the door. He was no terrorist, just a frustrated businessman with very important business to attend to, he explained. Airline security was very important business, too, they said. Sir. He nodded obediently and sat himself down on one of the blue plastic chairs, silently cursing 9/11 and everything that awful day had wrought in the world.

At long last they were told to begin boarding. Now everything suddenly had to be accomplished at breakneck speed. Two extra desks were opened, and staff in pale blue uniforms raced around snapping at passenger heels if anyone strayed or loitered. Jan sank gratefully into his wide business-class seat and checked his watch. He could still make it.