Doctor Death (41 page)
Authors: Lene Kaaberbol
“Now?”
“Yes. Now.”
We both got up. He took my hand and slowly peeled the glove off it. Then he kissed me once on the back of the hand and once on the palm, precisely where my middle finger began. He
pulled me close and placed his free hand behind my neck. And he kissed me, not choppily like last time, but for a long time, thoroughly and without reservation. My body gave the same unhesitating yes as last time. If that was animal-like, then I was an animal.
“What are you feeling right now?” I asked, and looked up into his face, a few hand lengths from mine.
“Much the same as you, I believe,” he said.
“So you do . . .
like
women?”
“Women—and men.”
“If we marry . . .”
“. . . will you then be the only one? Will I be faithful to you? Is that what you are asking?”
“Um, actually not. But will you?”
“To the best of my ability. And probably as much as most other married men. I cannot promise more than that.”
He was right. The truth was not always the kindest thing you could say. But I nodded. He was still keeping his word.
“If that was not what you wanted to know, what was it, then?”
“If you will let me be myself.”
“What does that mean?”
“That you will not place me in a box labeled ‘wife.’ That you acknowledge that I also have the right to live a life. To make decisions. Grow. Become wiser. According to
my
plan for myself, not yours. And that I may continue to assist my father, even though that is probably not what is expected of the Professor’s Wife.”
He tipped his head slightly.
“This is not just about my expectations,” he protested. “It is also about the expectations forced upon us by culture, society, and religion. Even if I say yes, it would be naïve to believe that all obstacles would then be overcome.”
“I know. But I need to know that I will not also be fighting you.”
This time it was clearly a smile. “Not over that,” he said. “Never that.”
When Frau Gross arrived with the tea, we had just let go of each other after yet another examination of man’s animal nature. She looked back and forth between us and set down the tea tray with a loud and disapproving bang.
She looks upward, toward the blade. There is not much light; the sky is overcast and the hour early. There is no sun to glisten in the metal. Her face is oddly childish; the cropped hair makes her look like a boy. There are only a few people present in the préfecture’s inner courtyard. The priest, whose constant praying is a low rumble that barely makes sense. Her uncle Emanuel, who stands there pale and shaken to his roots, unable to look away and yet equally unable to look at her. The executioner and his assistant, of course. And the Commissioner under whose jurisdiction she will soon belong.
And one more man. It is his face she finally seeks for, his gaze she meets. She knows he is the one who will announce that death has occurred. It is he who will take delivery of her dead body later in the day, and his scalpel, his instruments that will probe her body and her illness. She interrupts the priest.
“Do you think you have solved the riddle?” she asks. “When you have understood my illness, have you understood me?”
The priest believes she is speaking to him, but Doctor Death knows better.
“No,” he says. “At that point I will be able to tell the story of your death. Not of your life.”
She nods.
They strap her to the board and tip her forward, the executioner and his assistant, and she feels the pressure of the lunette like a cool collar around her neck. She closes her eyes, and does not open them again.
Acknowledgments
A huge thank-you to the patient people who have read, checked, examined, listened, and commented along the way:
Bent Lund
Lone-emilie Rasmussen
Bib Carlson—and all the experts at Memorial Sloan Kettering she laid siege to for my sake
Berit Wheler
Lars Ringhof
Anna Grue
Rudo Urban Rasmussen
And not least: Agnete Friis—on whom I cannot place the blame this time.
LENE KAABERBØL
has been a professional writer since the age of fifteen, with more than two million books sold worldwide. She has won several national and international awards for her fiction, and her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. Kaaberbøl is the coauthor of the
New York Times
bestseller
The Boy in the Suitcase,
which received rave reviews, was selected as a
New York Times Book Review
Notable Crime Book of 2011 as well as an Indie Next List Pick, and won the Harald Mogensen Award for Best Danish Thriller of the Year. Born in Copenhagen, she now lives on the small Channel Island of Sark.
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ALSO BY LENE KAABERBØL, WITH AGNETE FRIIS
The Boy in the Suitcase
Invisible Murder
Death of a Nightingale
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015
Doctor Death
by Lene Kaaberbøl
Originally published as
Kadaverdoktoren
in Danish in 2010 by Modtryk.
Copyright © 2015 of English translation by Elisabeth Dyssegaard
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Atria Books hardcover edition February 2015
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Interior design by Kyoko Watanabe
Jacket photograph © Liz Dalziel/Trevillion Images
Author photograph by Lisbeth Holten
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data