Assassination

Whispers by Scharjeel Sarfaraz. Image Courtesy: ArtChowk Gallery

When the alarm goes off, Heidi immediately looks at Asta’s empty place. The report she had been writing is lying on the desk in front of her computer. Heidi looks at her own screen, which displays columns of numbers. Now it is over; this is how it ends.

She closes her eyes and listens for the explosion that will come and drown out everything else: the heavy sounds of her colleagues jumping up, knocking their chairs over, and running across the gray-flecked floor. The shrill sounds. The screams. The alarms.

They are afraid. Heidi is sitting straight up on her chair; she does not need to look; she knows what they look like. How their faces are twisted and their eyes are spherical and milky, like dolls’ eyes.

She waits for the explosion, but it never comes.

Her boss sees that she is still sitting in the office and runs back to get her. He grabs her arm and pulls her along, to the back stairs, down and down. They are some of the last people to go down the stairs; the first run over each other on their way down. Things go worst for Asta, who breaks a leg.

But no boom ever sounds. No bomb explodes, and although Heidi knows that she was not the only one who was waiting for this, the word is never spoken. Fire alarm, false alarm, they say. No one talks about the fact that Asta was already on the back stairs when the alarm went off.

A few days later, Heidi offers to visit Asta in the hospital and give her a bouquet of flowers from the office. The boss thinks this is a good idea. “Very thoughtful,” he says, and smiles at Heidi. He is sitting with his legs crossed and bouncing one foot up and down as though to a melody only he can hear. He keeps on looking at Heidi. He licks his lips.

Heidi cannot take her eyes off the glistening tongue tip moving from one corner of his mouth to the other.

Asta looks surprised when Heidi comes into her room. Perhaps she had not expected a visitor; perhaps she had just not expected to be visited by Heidi. The bouquet is sumptuous: red peonies and yellow irises. Heidi has paid out of her own pocket to get a bigger one than the office usually pays for. She finds a vase and puts the bouquet on the windowsill, where it shines against the winter sky. She pulls her chair close to Asta’s bed and sits down; she has her bag on her lap. “Everyone wanted me to say hello and tell you they hope you’ll get well soon,” she says loudly, looking over her shoulder. There are no nurses in sight. Quickly, she takes the note she has written at home out of her bag. She holds it in front of Asta so she can read it. Asta reaches out for it, but Heidi holds on to it. She holds the note until Asta has read it and then puts it back in her bag. As soon as she is home, she will burn it.

I know that you set off the alarm. I believe that you were planning something more. I believe you will try again. I can help. We must talk.

Heidi has thought for a long time about that note and what it is that she is starting. Now or never—that is how she feels. She looks at Asta, searches for signs on her face. Asta is looking straight ahead, expressionlessly. Then she turns her face toward Heidi again, wrinkles her brows a little, then she smiles and nods.

Heidi waits on the sidewalk outside the apartment complex. It is Sunday. Every Sunday, she waits here. The car always comes exactly at one; her brother is never late. She gets in next to him. He smiles at her, a crooked smile that is supposed to say everything he cannot say because of the audio surveillance. Heidi pretends not to see it. She looks through the windshield and makes polite conversation: How is it going at work? Oh, that’s exciting! Do you want to hear about my job? All right, now I’ll tell you about that—everything is as it usually is. And the weather—isn’t it horrible that it is still so cold? It makes you wonder if it will ever be spring again.

She speaks like a machine, and he answers like a machine.

If only they could leave it at that.

If only they could leave it at lunch. Sunday lunch with the family cannot be avoided; she cannot say no. She must sit in his fine apartment with its view of the park, and usually the sun shines through the large windows and perfectly illuminates his lovely wife and two exemplary children.

Everything is as it should be, and Heidi does what she is supposed to.

She talks to her brother’s wife about the food and the view, and answers the teasing questions about the boyfriends she never has. She plays with the younger child, who wants her to draw animals, and she draws the constantly repeated animals, always the same ones, a cat and a swan. Those are the girl’s favorite animals; this never changes. Or perhaps she does not believe that Heidi can draw anything else. The boy sits by himself and plays. He blushes if Heidi speaks to him; he is not like his father at all. Her brother. He was never introverted, never sullen. Her brother is well-spoken and charming. Smooth. He and his wife are the perfect hosts. The food is good, and the conversation is kept going all the time. It glides along like a stream: it is never serious, never difficult.

Heidi could live with that, if only she could be driven home immediately afterward. That would not be so bad. Fake, false, but not intolerable.

The worst part comes next.

“Shouldn’t we just go for a walk in the park and settle our stomachs before I drive you home?” he always asks when they have finished eating. It is understood that it is to be just the two of them. Sister and brother. Her brother’s wife kisses Heidi on the cheeks and says that it was wonderful to see her. “Wonderful”—she always uses that word. She usually once again assures Heidi that she is welcome to bring a male friend the next time. She speaks with a bright, light voice, but if Heidi looks directly into her eyes it is like looking into an abyss. When she does this, her brother’s wife turns abruptly and goes into the kitchen.

Heidi walks next to her brother. She is wearing completely new winter boots and a completely new winter jacket, but is nevertheless freezing. Her brother makes small talk until they have gone a considerable distance into the park.

All the things he says without actually saying anything.

Then he looks around, makes sure they are completely alone, and says, “I can hardly stand it any longer.” This is how it always starts. Heidi doesn’t even need to listen. He asks whether she has heard any news from home; he asks whether she knows how their mother is doing. He asks her to say hello to their mother.

All the things he does not say.

Mother writes to Heidi every week, and she never mentions him with a single word. Heidi writes back, and she never passes on his greetings.

“I hate this life,” he says, “I hate the dissimulation, the falseness. I do my job, and I’m good at it. They think I like it. They don’t know how much I dream of blowing it all up.” In the pause before he continues—always with the same sentence, always with the same childish, assumed enthusiasm—Heidi takes a deep breath. She has to control herself in order not to say anything. Your own father. You sold your own father. The pain moves around in her body, always somewhere else; every word he says strikes at what she must not do. Not shout, not run away, not react.

He did what was necessary, for the sake of the family.

Everything she has, she owes to him.

He can force her to be here, but he cannot force her to pretend that they still have something in common. That they are something special. He is pitiful to listen to. Pathetic. She is disgusted by his childish talk of blowing everything up; he has understood nothing at all of what their parents taught them.

“One day I’ll do it,” he says and stops.

He turns toward her and looks at her with shining eyes, mad eyes. He takes hold of her shoulders and shakes them gently, looking at her intently. She knows what he wants: he wants her to play along, to widen her eyes too, to gasp in horror, to pretend surprise. “No! What are you saying?” she is supposed to exclaim, but she does not. She lets herself be shaken like a rag doll, closing her eyes to avoid seeing his face. He lets go of her, and they walk on. Now he is crying; he is not even hiding it; he is sniffling and sobbing like a child.

“I wish you would talk to me,” he says. “How I wish we could talk to each other like we did when we were living at home.” He sighs deeply.

“I’m so lonely,” he says. “You must be lonely too—you must feel it, too. Don’t you feel the way I do?” She walks next to him and looks straight ahead stiffly.

Now it will not be long before it is over. He stops and kicks at the gravel. He looks around. They have reached the fountain. It is usually here he suggests that they turn back. Before he has a chance to say it, she starts walking back to the car. She walks fast.

In the car, they always say the same polite phrases, because of the audio surveillance. He drops her off, and she goes straight into her apartment and goes to bed. She takes her boots off but gets under her comforter with all of her outerwear on—so cold she feels. Cold all the way through to the bone. In the winter, this is also part of her Sunday routine. When she has gotten warm, she tugs her jacket and mittens off and fishes the latest letter from Mother out from under her pillow. She reads it but thinks only about all the things it does not say.

His name was Niels. Her brother’s new friend. He said hello to their parents, introduced himself, and shook hands. He had his other hand behind his back; he stood as straight as a soldier. They smiled; they set an extra place. They left the television on while they ate and talked about the weather and about nothing in particular. They never looked directly at each other; no one said anything that meant anything. Heidi secretly looked at Niels and saw his smile. He was the only whose face was lifted. He looked intently both at her mother and at her father, and at one point he even caught Heidi’s eye and winked. She hurried to look down at her plate and did not dare to look up again.

Every day her brother either visited Niels or had Niels over for a visit. They spoke clearly; they walked with long steps and with their hands in their pockets. Her brother began to behave in that way when he was alone, too. Neither her mother nor her father said anything about it—about the change. But they stopped going on Sunday excursions.

The only thing they—all of them—had used to do together. It was on these outings that Father had spoken—had taught them.

The first Sunday they did not go anywhere, Heidi did not understand why. She was thirteen years old—there was so much she did not understand. So much that could not be said directly. She pestered her parents. She knew enough to use different words, but she kept it up; she wanted to go. Her mother stroked her hair, did not say anything, did not look Heidi in the eyes; she bit her lips and then she went out on the balcony. Heidi followed her, stood next to her. They stood for a long time and looked at the building opposite theirs, at the children playing in the courtyard. Several times, it seemed as though her mother was about to say something, but then she did not do so after all.

It was a Tuesday afternoon, only a few weeks later. They waited. Father did not come home. Heidi sat on the sofa with her mother; her brother came home from school and went directly to his room. The longest night. Heidi fell asleep from time to time; she went to the toilet; she drank a little water. Mother did not move. When morning came, Mother stood up and went into Heidi’s brother’s room without knocking. Heidi followed her. He was sitting straight up at his desk. He was wearing the clothes he had come home in.

“Who are you?” whispered Mother. “How have you become such a monster? What did we do wrong?” He turned and looked at her.

“I did it for our sake, of course,” he said. “It was our only chance.” Heidi looked at him and Mother. Her face. Her eyes, spherical, milky. Heidi looked from the one to the other of them without understanding what was happening. Then she did not understand it. Mother put her hand to her throat and fell to her knees, sank down further, lay on the floor completely limp as though there were not a single bone in her body. As though she could spread out completely and dissolve into nothingness.

Heidi closes her eyes and sees the scene before her. Sees her mother’s body spread out and seep down through the floorboards and disappear. Heidi’s father disappeared that night; he never came back.

That kind of thing happened. It was not abnormal.

But in contrast to what everyone expected nothing else happened.

Their mother could continue working at her usual job; they kept their good apartment. Niels and his family continued to keep company with her brother. One day they also invited Heidi and her mother. It was unmistakable: they were not pariahs. Despite their father’s disappearance.

People relaxed. No: they pretended to relax. They dared not do anything but return to earlier routines. Heidi was still invited to her friends’ birthday parties. Her teachers still treated her as a model student. Her mother still taught the same classes, and her colleagues drank coffee with her as if nothing had happened. Their father’s disappearance was never mentioned. No one asked. It was as if he had never existed.

After a while, Heidi was able to figure out what had happened, and she was no doubt not the only one who could see how things were related. Heidi’s brother had exposed their father. He had exposed him and somehow convinced them that he was valuable enough that they let the rest of the family go. Niels’s father was sufficiently highly-placed. It was an agreement that benefited everyone. They got a loyal supporter in her brother. A worker who was forever grateful and, they thought, a sister and mother who, despite everything, must be grateful because they had been spared. After finishing school, her brother got a good job in the bank’s main office. Heidi also achieved advancement. Heidi has understood that it is only thanks to him that she received a good education and that it was he who saw to it that she also got work here. Far from Mother.

Heidi does not know whether they had figured out in advance what bonus benefit they would secure by not acting in accordance with people’s expectations. One would have thought that people would have been encouraged when a family was saved in that fashion, but it had the exact opposite effect: people became afraid. They did not know what was expected of them. They did not know what else could turn out to be different from what they believed. Of course no one said this out loud. But Heidi could feel it. It was in the air.

It was all around her. The air vibrated with it.

She was in a state of emergency that never ceased. Heidi and her family had become a flickering, incomprehensible quantity no one knew how they should behave toward. They were either too effusive or too awkward, too polite or too subdued.

Heidi knows where Asta lives. She knows which bus she takes to work. Heidi lives closer to the office, in a nicer area. Heidi can walk to work—it is not very far—but she starts taking the bus as soon as Asta is released from the hospital. While she still has her leg in a cast and is limping along on her crutches. Heidi cannot even be bothered to pretend this is a coincidence. She sits down next to Asta if the seat is free. If not, she stands nearby. They talk. In a friendly, polite manner. They talk of neutral topics: the weather, clothes, the weekend’s parties. They wait. Heidi can see it in Asta; there is always that extra look. A quick toss of the head, a nervous twitch.

She is afraid. Heidi is also afraid.

But most of all she is ready to do something. Now. Soon. The sooner the better. At home she can see it when she looks in the mirror. Her cheeks have color; her eyes glow. She can feel it in her body. Her muscles are working; her heart is pumping blood through her body. Her body is a ma-chine working for this cause. It is good for the body to be a machine, bad for the brain to be one. She learned that from her parents.

Heidi is awake; she is ready. Asta will show her the way, introduce her to the others that Heidi knows are there. The group, the resistance, in whom her father placed all his trust. They will carry out the assassination. The bomb will be placed correctly this time. Heidi will do it herself if they let her.

Of course one bomb will not be enough. It will not solve all the problems. She knows very well that it will not be that easy. It will take many. Pinpricks. That was her father’s plan. The one he had developed, that Heidi and her brother were to execute. When the time was right. “Look up,” her father always said, and Heidi put her head back and looked up at the sky. “Not that high,” her father laughed. “Look at the upper floors.” Heidi did as he said, and he explained that they are always there, always on the top floor.

“When one has power, one also wants to have the best view. One can live with not being able to flaunt one’s power; one can live with having to hide one’s wealth. But no one is going to take the best view away from them. That is something that is deeply ingrained in all people; it would go against nature to let someone else have that place.”

Heidi looked at the broad windows. There were balconies in many places, and in the evenings one could see silhouettes moving behind the lowered blinds. “Blow up the highest floors; that is how one will take out the right people. Pinpricks. One at a time, like a tireless wasp. It’s a signal to them: We know that you’re there; we know what you’re doing.”

That was her father’s plan; that is Heidi’s plan.

She will tell Asta this when the time is right. When they have confidence in each other. Even if it turns out that Asta is not working together with others; even if they are the only two. In that case they will do it anyway and awaken the courage of others. She will explain to Asta how it will work. People have given up; they believe it is impossible to fight against the system. But Heidi knows she is not the only one who wants something else. She sees the same in Asta’s eyes. The resistance, the fight. They have not given up.

All the people at the top are secure in their offices. They believe they are in complete control. They created the system; they have taken everything into account. They are listening in on any-one who has the least bit of influence. They move people around; they split up families, friends. They spread rumors—false ones and true ones—and know what people choose to believe in the end. The never say anything out loud. They do not need to.

Heidi has been looking into people’s eyes for a long time. She has become so good at doing it that they seldom notice. Fast; a toss of her head, her hair distracts them. She looks into their eyes and can see in a split second whether they are still there, behind the fear. So many have been lost completely. An abyss. It is as if they have been switched off.

But she saw it immediately in Asta, the first day she was at the office. Her eyes are open. She looks back; she looks at Heidi in the same way. She evaluates. At the office they are the only ones, but on the bus or when she is walking on the street Heidi sees more such eyes. This is why Heidi knows there is hope. This is how she knows there is resistance.

The days at the office are all alike while Heidi waits for Asta to speak. Heidi is good at her job. She always arrives on time, she works in a concentrated fashion, and she accomplishes all of the tasks with which she is entrusted. Her boss is very satisfied with her. He does not conceal this. Sometimes he comes out of his office just to praise her work. He lets a comment hang in the air so everyone can hear it. “You’ll go far—your brother must be proud of you,” he will say, for example. “Just keep working like that, and they are sure to notice your contributions. With your connections, you are sure to advance.”

He always mentions her brother; he always does so demonstratively loudly. He lays a hand on her shoulder, leaves it there too long. It is ridiculous. She is an accountant. She is given numbers that she places in columns. She calculates and offsets.

Heidi wishes she would hate her work. When she enters the lobby, she finds herself looking at the glittering chandeliers and the ceiling, whose dome rises high above her. She displays her access card and smiles back at the guard by the elevator without thinking about it. She greets everyone in the elevator with her in a friendly fashion. They do not know each other, but they have in common their right of access to this building, and that is enough. She walks down the corridor and opens the door to the open cubicle area. She stands there for a moment listening to the subdued sounds of work: low telephone conversations, discreet tapping on keyboards. Everything about the room is pleasant. The lighting, the plants, the materials and colors of the furniture. It is a good room in which to work.

There is nothing wrong with her colleagues, either. Each of them is an appealing and gifted individual. Like her. They do their work; they mind their own business.

Her brother may have thought they could move away from it, start over. But they cannot. The flickering has followed them. The state of emergency. Heidi does not know how the rumors spread—they never reach her—but she can tell they know. She should be an outcast. They do not know how it is possible that she can work here. They have to make an effort. They try to be-have appropriately toward her.

Heidi goes to work and goes home. She buys groceries and cooks and eats. She watches tele-vision. She writes letters to her mother. Polite letters that reveal nothing. She gets polite letters back. No one who reads them would be able to use them as evidence of anything. Heidi even writes that she likes her job. Not every time, but occasionally. Otherwise it would arouse suspicion. She is very privileged. Many people dream of such an opportunity. She has a bright future ahead of her. She can work her way up, and she is still so young. Why should she not be happy?

Heidi goes to work every day, from early in the morning until late in the afternoon. Only Sundays are free.

But every Sunday she is picked up by her brother; they eat lunch and go for a walk.

Before she found Asta, there was nothing else in her life.

Work and Sundays.

It is difficult to hate the work when there is nothing else. It is worst when her boss comes out of his office. When Heidi can see that he is heading directly toward her desk; when she feels his hand on her shoulder.

Because it makes her glad. She feels proud.

Even though she knows that he only says it because he is afraid. Because he always repeats and underscores that she has a brother. It is him he wishes to reach. Her boss wants to protect himself against her brother. Against what should not be possible.

But now Heidi has Asta. She has found the way out for which she has been searching for so long. Together they will find others and change everything.

Blow it up from the inside as her father wanted to.

Heidi has to wait a long time before the opening finally comes. They are on their way home from work; they have been talking to each other for several weeks, on their way to and from work, during their coffee breaks, in the lunchroom. Talking without mentioning what Heidi is always thinking about. They are standing at the bus stop, and Asta says, “Should we walk part of the way instead? The weather is so good.” Heidi nods. The weather is not good at all. It has snowed, and now the wind is causing the tiny grains of snow to whirl along the road. The earth is frozen hard; the cold bites one’s cheeks. They walk with their shoulders hunched up to their ears; Asta hobbles along on her crutches. Heidi waits for Asta to begin to speak.

“If I tell you a secret, will you tell me one, too?” asks Asta. Heidi is breathing easily; she feels light and bubbly. She has waited so long.

“I hate my brother,” she says. Then she tells Asta everything.

When Asta is promoted and hugs Heidi at the farewell reception and whispers, “Don’t worry—I didn’t tell them anything about you,” Heidi does not understand. When Sunday comes, and she waits, and the time gets to be one-fifteen and one-thirty, and her brother does not show up, she understands.

He has disappeared.

Now there is nothing between her and the abyss.

(Click here to read the original Danish text)

Maja Elverkilde is the author of two volumes of short stories, Alt det der er mit (“All That Which Is Mine”) (Borgens Forlag, 2008) and Det dør man af (“This Will Kill You”) (Forlaget Republik, 2014). She lives in a house in a forest in Sweden, an experience about which she has blogged in Danish and English.

Peter Sean Woltemade is an American-born literary translator based in Copenhagen. He is a former Fulbright Graduate Fellow (Berlin) and holds a Ph.D. in medieval German literature from the University of California at Berkeley. His work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail and The Missing Slate; his translation of Stefanie Ross’s novel Nemesis – Verkaufte Unschuld is currently in production at AmazonCrossing.