The Philologist 2

Since Lena spent Christmas with Robert in Paris, helping him with his case, it was the middle of January when she came to Malmo to visit the house of another missing girl. Britta Svenson was a thirteen-year-old brunette with already developed breasts and a cheeky smile, when she disappeared, just as other kids, during an orientation run. Her mother was an attractive woman in her late forties, an unnatural blond who took care of her appearance and figure. She was skeptical about Lena’s visit, it seemed as though she didn’t like talking about her daughter. Her English was the worst among other parents, whom Lena had already visited, and she carefully monitored the pictures Lena took of Britta’s room and the family photo album, which her mother was willing to show her.

‘I think she run away with some boyfriend and take drugs with him. She is naughty, she don’t listen to me or my partner.’

‘She didn’t listen to you and her father?’

‘Not her father, my partner. I broke up with her father when she was a little child. Now I’m with Kaj. He’s Dutch.’

Lena had some sense of deja-vu when she heard Britta’s mother talk about her. She carefully looked at Britta’s pictures.

‘She was a pretty girl, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes, but she was just a child. I don’t understand this interest in her. She run away. And join some sect. She want me hurt.’

Lena made sure that she took enough pictures of Britta from the album, including the pictures of her mother and Kaj. She looked at Kaj pretty carefully and saw in the eyes of Britta that she pretty early on stopped being a girl. Or maybe it was a memory from her own teenage years. She wasn’t entirely sure.

It lasted for some time. Not only did they kiss in his office during these rare breaks when he asked her to come to deal with some urgent issues, but soon he started arranging meetings after classes in an unattended class or a cloakroom when the school was empty in the evening. They made love quickly and hastily, afraid of being caught. Lena felt like in a film, a character of a femme fatale novel. She knew that it was all wrong but she just felt so happy and so womanly in his arms that she couldn’t resist it. He brought her flowers, jewelry, and boxes of chocolate. He tried to smuggle a smile, whenever she was in the corridor, attending children, or sat with her during lunch and engaged in meaningless conversations, not always, but occasionally, trying not to raise suspicions of other teachers and school employees.

Lena, on the other hand, was proud of the fact that other female teachers commented on Karol’s appearance and his professional approach and experience. Her womanhood was flattered that it was her who was selected by this popular man. She was blissfully happy to be desired by him, caressed, kissed, and showered with little gifts. She felt more beautiful than she felt in years, even more so than during the time she had a boyfriend of her own.

One conversation, however, changed all that to make her realize that she was nothing more than the other woman.

‘I saw his wife,’ the maths teacher said to her friend who taught biology, ‘She’s a very attractive woman, she’s expecting a child. I know that they have a little boy already. They seemed to be very happy. He was so proud of her. He introduced her to everybody.’

Lena quietly left the room. She couldn’t explain the sensation. It was a mix of shame, guilt, broken-heart, and pain.

‘She’s expecting a child.’ was ringing in her mind like a little annoying bell stabbed with nails, hurting more and more with every move.

She couldn’t stop caring for him, but realized something else. She was just a whim, an option, a second best, which was available at school when nobody was watching. She would never be introduced to anybody as his official girlfriend. Let alone be the proud mother of his children as he already had one and she was bringing another one into this world.

It was peculiar to visit Lulea and speak to little Lars’ mother, as her whole room was covered in bigger and smaller pictures of Jesus, Marry, and saints. Ever since the son disappeared, the mother seemed to fall into the madness of making sure that he would come back through the powers of prayer. To this day, there were no effects of her wishful thinking. Lars disappeared, without any message, without any sign of living. Lena repeated all of her routine actions, took careful pictures of Lars’ private place, saved the files that she found on his computer, wrote down every question that she asked his parents, including every hesitation and every answer.

‘The strangest thing,’ the mother added at the end of their conversation, ‘is that Lars really didn’t like running. He was pretty asthmatic all his life, he easily lost breath. I would be less surprised if he took something along the lines of painting or music classes, but running was really not his cup of tea. He never even ran with other children, he always dragged somewhere at the end...’

‘Was there anything that Lars didn’t like apart from running.’

‘No.’

Lars’ father made a sudden moaning voice and looked at his wife.

‘Well, maybe one thing. He didn’t really like going to church. We are pretty religious, but Lars started rebelling against Sunday masses. He didn’t seem to like them.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s just that he always hated them. We befriended a nice priest, priest Gunter, when Lars was eleven. He visited us at home very often, we engaged in the life of the church community. Lars was really eager to go to every single mass when priest Gunter was with us. But soon he was transferred to some other parish and Lars stopped enjoying the religious life at all. He isolated himself, started running. It was all pretty mysterious to me, this sudden change. He didn’t even want to pray with us in the evening.’

‘Maybe priest Gunter did something to him? You hear so much about child molestation, pedophiles. I don’t want to offend your religious feelings but such things happen all the time.’

‘We thought... we thought about it,’ the mother was entirely honest, ‘But we didn’t have any proofs, Lars didn’t speak about it, and now we cannot even ask him.’

Lena left the house of Lars’ parents and from Lulea came back to Stockholm. She had another question mark and very few answers formed in her head to lead her on the right path.

Chapter 12 Brigitte

7:19 AM

Lena looked objectively strange when they entered one of the planes and headed for their Christmas break in Paris. Robert didn’t want to dig too deep but she was deep in her thoughts and answered his questions with monosyllabic answers. When Robert showed her what a great present Anton gave him for Christmas (it was a collection of old editions of French classics, which included Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, The Three Musketeers, Queen Margot, and The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas, all of which made Robert happy and grateful), she just nodded and ignored the subject for the rest of the day.

Lena, however, enjoyed Paris itself. She noticed that it was very different from Stockholm and she couldn’t help but appreciate the two cities, which exposed so different nature of its citizens. She noticed that French women were more elegantly and classically dressed than somewhat extravagant and modern Swedes and they were definitely slimmer than those she remembered from her stay in the UK. She liked Paris’s curved pavements, the shade of its old buildings, the cozy atmosphere of cafes. She wasn’t intimidated by the number of immigrants but had to admit that Poland seemed to be bleached from minorities and different religions, as it was inhabited mainly by Polish and Catholic citizens. She didn’t moan much when they were queuing to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower to see the view, she didn’t object when they were climbing Montmartre to admire one more panorama of Paris; only in the Louvre she gave up from time to time and announced that she couldn’t stand another exhibit, painting or work of art, which Robert received with disappointment. He could spend there the whole day and just walk from one accomplishment of culture and history to another. And his fascination reached further than Mona Lisa and the Venus of Milo.

But Robert took Lena to Paris not only to celebrate Christmas and New Year with her in the unassuming way they used to get along with each other. Beforehand, he contacted Alicia’s former coworker in Paris, Brigitte Caron, an extremely slim, short-haired woman, who smoked a lot of cigarettes and wore a white fluffy fur-coat that made her look a bit plumper, adding layers to her skin and bones.

Brigitte didn’t know Polish but she was quite fluent in English, and for the simple translation of her testimony from English to Polish Robert needed his dear Lena. Lena agreed and the first day of Christmas they spent at Brigitte’s apartment full of bookshelves filled with Vogue and other fashion magazines, collections of figurines and souvenirs from all over the world and walking closets packed with clothes from Gucci, Chanel, Burberry, Ives Saint-Laurent, Louis Vuitton, and other expensive and well-known brands.

Brigitte spoke with a strong French accent but Lena had no problems with translating it all to Robert.

‘We were working for many years together. She was a good employee. Her French was perfect, you wouldn’t tell that she came from Poland. You also have this culture of work. You’re very hardworking. People tend to laze about and you Poles are very focused and you usually accomplish a lot of tasks more quickly than others. She resigned from work over two years ago. She said that she needed something else in life. I believe that it had to do with divorce.’

The smoke of cigarettes filled the room and Robert and Lena started to be under the waking-up influence of tobacco.

‘Do you know anything about her relationships?’ Lena was forwarding Robert’s questions.

Brigitte laughed.

‘I do know quite a lot, but Alicia was very careful about revealing details of her personal life. She didn’t tell everything to everybody. She was quite discreet. She was married to this Polish businessman, whom she went to Paris with. She told me that there was no love, only practical reasons. They were good at working with each other and managing their little flat. But you know women, they get bored and they need a genuine feeling. So after some time at our company she had an affair?’

‘Affair?’

‘Oh, yes. With our financial director, Marc.’

Lena turned red when she translated the information to Robert.

‘The age difference wasn’t a problem. She was barely thirty, he was way over fifty. He was married, he had adult children. Alicia was without love and overworked, he was bored and charmed by her. She was beautiful back then. Like little Esmeralda. He seduced her. I think she had high expectations about him, she thought that he would get a divorce, leave his wife, start his life with her, make her divorce her Polish friend. But nothing of the kind happened. He was luring her, giving false promises, prolonging the romance with no step forward. When her Polish friend left her and found another girl, this time for love, I believe, Alicia was quite desperate. She was afraid to be left alone. After a year or two, she met Victor.’

‘And she married him instead?’

‘Yes. She and Adam divorced. Then she married Victor. I think one of her flaws was that she constantly needed a man in her life. She wasn’t independent. She was always looking for help and protection. She wouldn’t move here without Adam, she would have a hard time at work without Marc, and Victor was just the consequence of her previous choices. But this time she just had bad luck.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean it was the worst person in the world that she could marry. You notice things. Bruises. Dark shades under her eyes. Thick layers of make-up.’

‘So he hit her?’

‘I don’t know what else. You hear so much about domestic violence. Rapes. He hit her regularly. He held some power over her. She came from this humanistic world of languages, culture, fashion, and design, he had his own logistics company. He was fascinated with her but soon some things started bothering him and he was getting jealous over her every night out, new clothes or achievement at work. He felt insecure.’

‘Didn’t she ask for help?’

‘She never asked us for anything. But she divorced him. She’s had enough. I was happy to hear that. Sometime after the divorce, she quit her job and we lost touch. I was relieved that she was no longer with this man. I expected that it would get better for her.’

‘But since then, there has been no contact with her. No one knows anything about her and this is the problem. Adam is afraid that this Victor could do something to her, have a revenge. He hit her when they were married, he could do something to her afterward.’

Lena quickly translated Robert’s words.

‘You never know men. It could also be Adam or it could be Marc. Men used her for various reasons. I don’t think that any of them truly loved her. They saw benefits in her for themselves. Adam used her as a language teacher and then as a bridge to his career, Marc treated her as a break in his marriage and work routine, a consolation prize and occasional entertainment, and Victor, unfortunately, as a cherry on top of his money-making machine and a pillow to beat at home. That’s why you and me,’ she looked at Lena, ‘Should remain single.’

Brigitte laughed, but Lena went red in the face again. Robert didn’t know what was the joke, as Lena didn’t translate that last bit to him.

They left Brigitte’s flat and bought for themselves some sweet macaroons to consume in the evening, but when they entered the flat they noticed that the door was opened and everything was lying on the floor in a mess. Drawers were open, their clothes from the suitcases someone dragged on the floor.

‘Someone broke in. Did they steal anything?’, Lena was walking around with her mouth open.

Robert looked around, but nothing was missing. There was apparently nothing of value to steal.

‘They were looking for something. Probably something concerning Alicia. Fortunately, I keep all documents about her in Warsaw.’

‘Do you think it’s one of them? Marc or Victor? Or Adam?’

‘I doubt that Adam would break into his own flat. He hired me to find her.’

‘Look here!’, Lena called him from the bathroom.

There was a sign written with red lipstick on the mirror, looking exactly the same as the one left by the dissected rat some time ago.

Robert recognized it immediately and didn’t bother to check it in Google translator.

‘It says ‘Leave me alone.’’

‘No, Robert. It says ‘Leave her alone’,’ Lena was more accurate in translating the sign to her phone.

Now Robert got the message.

Between Christmas and New Year Robert and Lena consumed a lot of French delicacies which were very tasteful and mood-improving. But be it the number of different foods they ate, or the mix of bread, sweets, wines, French escargot, frogs and onion soup, they suffered from food poisoning.

Adrianne Dubois was positively surprised when for the second time in her life she saw that foreign handsome man, whose smile she remembered till this day. But this time he wasn’t alone. He came with an Asian girl and Adrianne felt a pang of jealousy.

The man smiled again, Adrianne reciprocated the smile. He took out his phone and wrote a message.

‘STOP DIARRHEA’

Adrianne nodded and gave him the drug. Then, she smiled at the man and looked in contempt at the girl, as if she wanted to punish her for stealing her man. She didn’t know that at that time this girl had for herself another sort of contempt.

Chapter 11 Bosse and Olle

1:31 AM

This time Lena found an immediate plane connection from Warsaw to Uppsala and decided to take a train from Uppsala back to Stockholm as soon as she had finished with her work. There was only one address which she was supposed to visit and she didn’t expect to spend there a long time.

It was one of these stuga houses, red with white window frames and corners, situated in the forest, near nature, close to the water. The woman who opened the door was a stout woman in her fifties. She was happy to let Lena inside, gave her a cup of warm milk and with imperfect English started telling her about her missing son, Bosse.

‘We were happy that he took part in this orientation game. We sent him to many weight-loss camps, we tried various doctor’s diets. Finally, he gave up on junk food, quit fizzy drinks. We are all a bit on the heavy side. But we always tried doing something about it. Bosse was a big boy. He wasn’t bullied at school or anything. But we encouraged him to be slimmer.’

Lena looked at the photos of the whole family and through the years she wasn’t entirely sure if any of them actually had lost weight.

‘So I was really proud when he lost so much of his body weight and started running. I was sure that he would have a normal life, that he would find a girlfriend, have better marks at school.’

‘From losing weight?’

‘Of course! But then, it was this final event, this orientation game. He ran, got lost somewhere in the middle and never came back. How is that even possible? Shouldn’t the people who organize these games monitor the participants better? It’s about finding your way in an unknown area, not about getting lost.’

‘Can I see his toys or things that belonged to him?’

The mother shrugged.

‘Everything is in the children’s room. Stacked on the shelves. It belongs to all of my kids.’

Lena took the pictures of cars, plane models, kids’ magazines, books, and pictures of the family in little picture frames placed on the shelves. She thanked the mother and promised to do her best to help with finding her missing son.

She ate something at the train station’s cafe, getting rid of the thoughts connected with her longing to see someone else during that weekend instead of traveling around Sweden and stepping into people’s private houses. The next day, she was supposed to go to Gothenburg and from there head back to Warsaw.

Olle’s room was different from the rest of the children. It was a book-filled studio, full of scientific magazines, plane and submarine models, solar systems, science-fiction figurines, and maps. Even though small, as it was a nine-square-meter room in the Gothenburg flat, it posed quite a difference to the rest of the apartment, which was a modernly furnished typical flat of a small middle-class family.

‘To be honest with you,’ his mother said shyly over the cup of coffee and the cinnamon roll, ‘We didn’t even know that he was taking part in this orientation game. He was extremely private. He said that he was going to spend the night at his friend’s house and I was really glad about it. He didn’t have any friends, I was happy that colleagues in his life started appearing. But the next day, there was a team of people knocking at my door and telling me that my son got lost somewhere in the middle of nowhere, kilometers from Gothenburg. To this day, I don’t know what to think of it. We searched his room, we looked for some notes in his diary, but there was nothing.

‘Did you look through his computer?’

‘Yes, but there were only his favorite websites, popular scientific blogs, historical online magazines, something about literature. He was reading so much. I usually just buy a TV programme or some tabloid. There was an application form to take part in the orientation game. He faked our consents. We didn’t know that he was planning to run. He wasn’t the best at sport, to be fair. Actually, he had never even practiced physical education at school.’

‘Can I look into his computer?’

Olle’s mother nodded and allowed Lena to take the pictures of the room and to send the search history of Olle’s computer to her own mailbox.

Lena left Gothenburg intrigued. Children left empty spots in their parents’ life, coming from different backgrounds and material status. There were two more kids to look into, her heart was getting heavy at the end of the weekend and more cheerful at the approach of the new week, since she was more and more in love.

First, they just used the office. Karol Markowski closed the door with a key making sure that nobody would enter it out of the blue and disturb them. He sat next to her, smiled, took her hand, placed another hand at her hip and started kissing her passionately. She felt the thickness of his beard against her cheeks, she felt his hand moving in between her legs, making her feel pleasure and fear of being caught at the same time. When they heard the school bell, he stopped, straightened his shirt, put on his jacket, and with a smile said:

‘You will be late for classes,’

She nodded and left the office, making sure that she had all of her hair in the right place. She didn’t think much during the classes. She just made her students fill in the crossword puzzle with names of fruit and vegetables and buried herself in thoughts on what had happened just a few moments before.

Chapter 10 Anna

6:05 AM

Unfortunately, Robert’s time in Paris was limited as his duties in Warsaw were waiting for him unmoved and bothersome. He was so busy that he didn’t have time to chat with Lena, meet Anton or even notice that Rebeka’s room was furnished with a very womanly set of furniture that Lena welcomed with rolling eyes and envious looks, for Edward chose the more expensive items, which Lena simply couldn’t afford. Only Kit-Kat attacked him along his night way to the bathroom and Robert wondered what on earth this pet did in the flat at night and who dared to allow it. Robert punished him with a kick, which resulted in a small revenge later that day by means of Kit-Kat’s claws deeply wounding Robert’s ankles.

Immediately when Robert came back to Warsaw, there was one person who agreed to tell him something more about Alicia. It was her school friend, who still lived in Warsaw and, fortunately for Robert, spoke his own native tongue. They decided to meet in one little cafe in the city center, ordered one cup of coffee and a little sweet roll each to make themselves occupied. Anna was a blond attractive woman of Alicia’s age, almost her height and, definitely, of more Slavic beauty than her dark-haired girlfriend.

‘Were you close friends?’

Anna smiled.

‘We were close friends when we were at school. We kind of needed another girl in our lives. Alicia had a younger brother, I had two older brothers. My mother died when I was little, I was left only with my brothers and the father. Alicia’s mother was raising them on her own, she was busy, she was working for a long time, I still remember that she was traveling to Germany for work. During the summer kids were left alone. Believe me, it can be annoying when you have your first period or you need a bra and there’s no one who can help you with this. We found each other. I confessed to her, she confessed to me. Yes, for some time we were close.’

‘I found information that you danced together, first ballet, then modern jazz, is that true?’

Anna laughed.

‘Yes! Every little girl needs to have some passion! When we were dancing ballet, we didn’t really know each other that well. It was a primary school. We were sitting with different classmates at school and we had different friends in the ballet class. There’s a lot of competition. But then, in high-school we didn’t really have a choice, we were in the same class, we got too fat to be in ballet, although I think it was for the better for both of us. Honestly, we just got bored with it. Ultimately, we came to the same modern jazz class. One conversation led to another and, after a while, we basically lived in each other’s flats. In the last year, Alicia had this knee problem, she slipped on a stair, I don’t really remember what exactly caused it, but I recall that she couldn’t bend her knee for months. She couldn’t dance anymore. I was still coming to classes, she was spending time at home, her brother drove her to school and took her home afterward. He had a motorbike. It was old but they somehow managed to ride together with her leg stretched in this ridiculous plaster. Then, high school was coming to an end, we had exams and we were studying all evenings. She got hooked on French. I didn’t know what to do with myself, then I decided to study psychology.’

‘And during the studies? Did you keep in touch when you were studying?’

‘Yes, occasionally. But you meet so many new people, boyfriends especially. You change, you don’t have so much time for your old friends. Then you realize that your old friends are actually better than new friends, I think, more honest and reliable, but everybody is busy with their lives, there’s not much time for anything, let alone keeping up with every detail of your old friends’ lives. And as I recall, when we were studying, Alicia met Adam.’

‘Adam Fabjan?’

‘Yes, him. They had this crazy idea to move to France and start a new life there. They both knew French. She helped him to become more fluent. We were all adventurous at that time. I remembered that I myself got married, then after a year, I got divorced. Young life, many mistakes. But we wouldn’t be where we are now without those, would we?’

Robert nodded, recalling his own, a little bit under-considered, marriage.

‘Can you tell me something about this marriage to Adam Fabjan? What kind of couple were they?’

Anna looked astonished.

‘They got married? This is a revelation! I would never tell. I always thought that they were rather... you know... friends with benefits. She knew French, he wanted to have a career. I think she wouldn’t move to Paris on her own. She was much less independent then. They just existed as a couple and they shared a flat together. I was there once. She invited me over to visit Paris. She took me to all those little cafes, bistros, Eiffel Tower, Montmartre, we went to the Palace of Versailles. I loved it! I have never been interested in French culture, but I remember the city to this day. I even remember that flat. Once, I almost got stuck in the bathroom, the door was old and the doorknob was wobbly.’

Robert pretended to smile. His buttocks started getting better but it still wasn’t the color of the rest of his body’s skin.

‘Yeah, it still is. I think they got married for the same reason that they went together to Paris.’

‘It wasn’t one of these big loves if you ask me. Even when I went there, they behaved more like flatmates than lovers. They never hugged, cuddled or kissed each other. But they had known each other for a long time. You get married for various reasons. Wait for a second, that reminds me why Alicia wanted to head to Paris so badly. When she was studying, Alicia had a stalker.’

‘A stalker?’

‘Yes, there was one guy, an old guy. Well, for us he was old, as we were in our twenties’. She was giving him French lessons, she was tutoring after classes to earn extra money, and he must have fallen in love with her. He was obsessed with her. He called her, hung up, left her messages. She stopped giving him classes, but once or twice when she was coming back from lectures, he waited by her house. She was really afraid. Her brother started coming for her after classes to take her home. I think this was also the reason why she wanted to change the place. She moved to Paris, then this stalking finished.’

‘Do you think that this stalker might have caused her disappearance?’

‘I hope not. He would be over sixty now. She didn’t come back to Warsaw. For all these years, she stayed in Paris. You should contact someone who knew her then. We met from time to time, but I didn’t know much about her personal life. After she separated with Adam, I haven’t heard anything about her relationships. Someone told me that she got married to someone else. It’s years since I saw her. I hope she’s fine. I hope that it’s nothing serious. I met her mother recently and she was hoping for the same. It’s an old woman. She doesn’t work anymore. It’s sad to see how people change in time. We were all young, now we just grow older and see how silly we were in the past.’

That day Robert occupied the couch and mindlessly watched TV. He didn’t even have the strength to read a book. Lena came later that day and sat on the couch next to him, mumbled something under her nose, changed the channel, and sighed a couple of times.

‘How’s life?’

‘Miserable,’ she answered briefly.

‘How’s Sweden?’

‘Getting cold.’

‘How are the children?’

Lena ignored the question.

‘Would you like to come with me to Paris for the Christmas break?’

‘Wouldn’t you rather go with Anton?’

‘He’s going to Russia. And no, I would like to take you there.’

Lena pondered for a while.

‘Fine. I start getting used to these changes of location.’

‘Thank you.’