The Boy in the Suitcase (17 page)

Valionis shook his head with a disgusted grimace.

“Both cases were dropped. The Belgian went home very suddenly, and all we got from him was a letter from his lawyer to the effect that his client was dropping all charges. And the nurse just as suddenly maintained that it had all been a misunderstanding, and the child was home and quite safe.”

“Isn’t that a little odd?” asked Sigita.

“Yes. We are convinced that they both gave in to some form of pressure.” Evaldas Gužas’s gaze rested on her with an ungentle emphasis. “Which is why I have to ask you yet again, Mrs. Ramoškienė. Does anyone have any reason to subject you to that kind of pressure?”

Sigita shook her head numbly. If it hadn’t been Dobrovolskij, she couldn’t imagine anyone else feeling any need to pressure or threaten her.

“Surely they would say something?” she said. “I haven’t heard a thing.”

Helplessness gripped her once more. Again, an unbearable image flitted through her mind: Mikas in a basement somewhere, on a dirty mattress, crying, afraid. How can anyone stand this? she thought. I can’t. It will kill me.

“I implore you to contact us if you hear anything at all,” said Gužas. “It’s impossible for us to stop people like this if no one will talk to us.”

She nodded heavily. But she knew that if it became a choice between saving Mikas and telling the police, the police didn’t have a prayer.

Valionis closed his briefcase with a crisp snap. The two officers got to their feet, Valionis gave her his card, and Gužas shook her hand.

“There is hope,” he said. “Remember that. Julija Baronienė got her daughter back.”

Sigita felt a brief spasm in her chest.

“Who, did you say?”

“Julija Baronienė. The nurse. Do you know her?”

Sigita’s heart leaped and fluttered.

“No,” she said. “Not at all.”

SHE STOOD ON
her balcony and watched the two men cross the parking lot below, get into a black car, and leave. Her right hand had come to rest just under her navel, without any directions from her. Certain things are never entirely forgotten by the body.

Contrary to everything Sigita had heard about first-time births, it had been quick, and very, very violent. In the beginning she had yelled at everyone in sight, telling them to do something. In the end she just screamed, for four hours straight. It was Julija’s hand she clung to, the nurse who was somehow also Granny; and Julija stayed with her so that she felt at times that this was the only thing that held her to this world: Julija’s strong, square hands, Julija’s voice, and Julija’s face. Her eyes were dark, the color of prunes, and she did not let go, nor did she let Sigita do so.

“You just keep at it,” she said. “You just keep at it until you finish this.”

But when the baby did come, Sigita could hold on no longer. She slipped, and something flowed out of her, something wet and dark and warm, so that there was only cold emptiness left.

“Sigita… .”

But Julija’s voice was already distant.

“She’s hemorrhaging,” said one of the other sisters. “Get the doctor,
now
!”

Sigita kept on slipping, into the chill and empty dark.

IT WAS NEARLY
a day and a night before she came back. She was in a small, windowless room lit by fluorescent ceiling lights. It was the light that had woken her. Her eyelids felt like rubber mats, her throat was sore. One arm had been tied to the side of the bed, and fluids were slowly dripping into her vein from a bag on a thin metal pole. Her body felt heavy and alien to her.

“Are you awake, little darling?”

Her aunt Jolita was by the bedside. The fluorescent lights bleached her skin and dug deep shadowed pits beneath her eyes. She looked like a tired old woman, thought Sigita.

“Would you like some water?”

Sigita nodded. She wasn’t certain she could talk, but in the end she tried anyway.

“Where is Julija?”

Jolita frowned, her penciled brows nearly meeting in the middle.

“Your grandmother?”

“No. The other Julija.”

“I don’t know who you mean, darling. Here, have a sip. Now all you have to do is rest up and get better, so that we can get you home.”

That was when it happened. When Jolita said the word
home
. Something huge and black exploded in her head, her breasts, her belly. Its edges were so sharp and
evil
that it felt as if something was there, even though she knew that it happened because something was lacking. Because something had been taken out of her.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked.

“Don’t think about it,” said Jolita. “The quicker you forget about the whole thing, the better. It will have a good life. With rich people.”

Sigita felt tears slide down her nose. They felt scalding hot because the rest of her was so cold.

“Rich people,” she repeated, testing to see if that might make the Blackness go away.

Jolita nodded. “From Denmark,” she said brightly, as if this was something special.

The Blackness was still there.

TWO DAYS LATER
, Sigita was standing next to the bed in a gray sweatshirt and a pair of jeans she hadn’t been able to fit into for months. Standing was tiring, but she still couldn’t sit, and getting out of bed was so painful that she didn’t want to lie down again. Finally Jolita returned, accompanied by a fair-haired woman in a white lab coat. Sigita had never seen the woman before.

“Goodbye then, Sigita, and good luck,” she said, holding out her hand.

It felt odd, being called by her first name by someone she didn’t know at all. Sigita nodded awkwardly, but returned the handshake. The woman handed Jolita a brown envelope.

“There is a small deduction for the extra days,” she said. “Normally, our girls leave us inside a day.”

Jolita nodded absently. She opened the brown envelope, peeked inside, then closed it again.

“I’ll need your signature here.”

Jolita took the pen.

“Shouldn’t I be the one to sign it?” asked Sigita.

Jolita hesitated. “If you wish,” she said. “But I can do it too.”

Sigita looked at the paper. It wasn’t an adoption form. It was a receipt. For payment received on delivery of “Ass. herbs for the production of natural remedies.” The amount signed for was 14.426 litai.

This is no adoption, thought Sigita suddenly, with glacial clarity. This is a purchase. Strangers have bought my child and paid for it, and this is my share of the loot.

“Can’t I at least see it?” she asked. “And meet the people who are taking it?” Her breasts were swollen and throbbed painfully. Julija had provided her with a tight elastic bandage that she was to keep wrapped around her torso for at least a week, she had been told, to stop the milk from coming.

The woman in the white coat shook her head. “They left the clinic yesterday. But in our experience, that’s best for both parties anyway.”

The Blackness stirred inside her, carving new passages in her body, flowing into her veins. She could feel the chill beneath her skin. It was already done, she thought. Now all that was left was the money. She held out a hand toward Jolita.

“Give it to me.”

“Little darling… .” Jolita looked at her in confusion. “You make it sound as if I was about to steal it!”

Sigita merely waited. In the end, Jolita passed her the envelope. It was thick and heavy with the notes inside it. Sigita clutched it in one hand and waddled for the exit. The stitches stung with every stride.

“Sigita, wait,” said Jolita. “The receipt!”

“You sign it,” she said, over her shoulder. “It was all your idea anyway.”

Jolita scribbled a hasty signature and said goodbye to the woman. Sigita just walked on. Into the corridor, through the waiting room, and out the door.

Jolita caught up with her on the rain-drenched pavement.

“Let’s get a taxi,” she said. “Let me take you home.”

Sigita stopped. She turned and looked at Jolita with all the new coldness she now possessed. “You go home,” she said. “I’m going to a hotel. I don’t want to see you again. Ever.”

THERE WERE FOUR
Baronienės in the Vilnius phone book. Sigita called them all, asking for Julija. No result. Then she tried Baronas, in case the telephone was registered to the husband only. Eight of those. Two didn’t answer, one had an answering machine that made no mention of any Julija, two said they didn’t know anyone of that name. The sixth call was answered by a woman’s voice with a cautious “Yes?”

Sigita listened intently, but she wasn’t sure whether she recognized the voice.

“Is this Julija?” she asked.

“Yes. To whom am I speaking?”

“Sigita Ramoškienė. I would just like to—”

She got no further. The connection was severed with an abrupt click.

J
UČAS DROVE THE
car all the way down onto the beach.

It was dark now, and there were no people. Behind him, the thicket of pines formed a black wall. He took off all his clothes except his underpants. The sand was still warm beneath the soles of his feet, and the water tepid and so shallow that he had to wade several hundred feet before it became deep enough for him to swim.

There was no significant surf, no suction. Just this flat, lukewarm water that could not give him the stinging shock he craved. It had to there, he thought, further out—the cold, the undertow, the powers. He considered quite soberly the possiblity of simply continuing until he met something stronger than he was.

Barbara was waiting at the hotel. He hadn’t told her much, just that he had to help the Dane with something before they could get their money.

There would be no Krakow now, he thought, digging into the water with furious strokes that did, after all, make his muscles burn a little. In his mind he could still see the smiling family, the mother, the father, the two children, but large brown rats had begun to gnaw at the house so that it was disappearing bite by bite, and now one of the rats had started on the leg of the smallest child, without causing the child or the parents to smile any less.

He stopped his progress abruptly, treading water. He knew where those rats came from. Could still remember them scuttling away as he had come into the stable with the lantern and had found Gran on the floor next to the feed bin. No one had ever thought it necessary to tell him what she had died from. But dead she was, even a seven-year-old boy could tell as much. And the rats had known it, too.

He had succeeded in finding waters too deep for him to touch bottom. But he began to swim for the coast, this time with smooth, methodical strokes. He would not let the rats win. And there was still a trail of sorts that he might follow.

He thought about his clothes. What to do with them. In the end he dipped the sleeve of his shirt into the petrol tank of the car and made a small bonfire on the beach. He had only vague notions of DNA and microscopic fibers, but surely fire would deal with most of that.

The first thing to go wrong had been the woman herself. It hadn’t been the one he had seen in the railway station—the bony, crew-cut boy-bitch. This one was fair-haired like Barbara and had even bigger breasts. It would have been so much easier if it had only been the other one.

But she tried to run the minute she saw him, and surely she wouldn’t have done that if she had been innocent? His reflexes took over, and he hit her a few times on the arms and legs when he caught her, just to stop her from trying to run again. She was terrified. She gabbled at him in a language that was probably Danish, then seemed to realize that he didn’t understand. She began speaking English instead. Asked him who he was, and what he was doing there? But he could tell from her eyes that she knew precisely why he had come. And she was so scared that a trickle of yellow pee ran down one leg and made a damp spot in the middle of her white dress.

Why wouldn’t the stupid woman just
tell
him, he thought? What was she thinking? That if she said “no” enough times, he would apologize for the inconvenience and go away?

There always came a point when they knew. Some tried to escape, or scream and beg. Others simply gave up. But the time always came when they knew. Once he had torn away all the things they used for protection—nice clothes, perhaps, or an immaculate home, courtesy and starched curtains, a name, a position, an illusion of power and security:
this can’t be happening to us
… once he had made them understand that yes, it was happening, it could happen to anybody, and right now it’s happening to you. Once the disbelief had vanished. Then there was only one raw reality left: that he would not stop until they gave him what he had come for.

Despite her terror, it took a long while for the fair-haired Danish woman to get to that point. Much longer than he was used to in Lithuania. Perhaps the layer of security was thicker here, like the layer of fat on the fish in the Tivoli lake. Peeling it off took time. But in the end she was just trying to figure out what he wanted her to say.

He asked about the money. I put it back, she said. Jan has it. She kept saying that, so it might be true.

Then he asked about the boy. Who was the bitch who had collected him? Where was he now? Who had him?