Invisible Love (20 page)

“I found out what they did with my daughter.”

“How?”

“Sturluson! At the Transplant Center. I went to see him, like you did, to try to get around him, but I didn't even need to meet with him. I overheard a conversation through the door. He was talking to a surgeon about an operation—an operation that took place the day my daughter died.”

“You need more than that, Vilma.”

“I know what I'm talking about.”

With horror, Alba recognized herself in this statement.

“Join me at the usual place,” Vilma ordered.

Confused, Alba stammered an explanation to Jonas, leapt into her car, and drove to Reykjavík.

When she entered the Mermaid Café, Vilma grabbed her arm. Alba looked down, and was reminded of a bird's claw encircling a branch.

“Help me.”

“To do what?”

“To steal the child.”

“What child?”

“The child who got my daughter's heart.”

Aghast at this, Alba broke free. “I thought you only wanted to know.”

“Oh, no! The only reason I've been doing this was to get my daughter back.”

“‘Get you daughter back?' Your daughter's dead, Vilma.”

“No, you're wrong,” Vilma moaned. “If my daughter's heart is throbbing somewhere, then she's still alive. If her heart is keeping a body alive, she'll recognize me. If her heart is beating, she needs me. She misses me, Alba, she's misses me, she's calling me, she needs to resume our life the way it was before.” Vilma's eyes dimmed with tears. “If I delay any longer, she'll think I've abandoned her.”

Vilma's crazy.
Alba had only just realized where her friend's suffering had led her.

“Alba, please help me, we'll both go.”

“I don't agree with it.”

“Aren't you going to help me?”

“I'd really like to help you, but not to do something like that. You're not thinking straight, Vilma.”

“Lend me your car.”

“No.”

“Fine, I'll go alone!”

Red-faced, feverish, resolute as a warrior, the frail Vilma stood up and ran to the door. Alba tried to stop her.

“Give this up, Vilma, it's madness! You're going to see a stranger, not your daughter.”

“What do you know?”

With these words, Vilma ran out onto the street. By the time Alba had paid for their beers, the young woman had disappeared into the storm that was rising over the city.

Helpless, Alba hesitated. Of course, she had to do something. But what? Go to the police? It was too soon for that. Stop Vilma? She didn't even know where she lived.

She went back to the apartment and wrote to Erik the Red, the head of Liberaria. He quickly wrote back confirming that Vilma was deranged, but posing what he said was the real question—Who had made her like that?—and then launching into a relentless four-page diatribe against the Icelandic government.

Alba realized that she wouldn't get any help from that direction.

Magnus came in. For the first time in weeks, the sight of her husband delighted her, and she threw herself into his arms.

“Did you come back for me?” he asked.

“Of course.”

By way of reward, he kissed her.

“I love you, Magnus, you know.”

As she had foreseen, the results of these words were immediately confirmed in Magnus's jeans. Delighted that she could still have this effect on a man, she continued, whispering in his ear that she had missed him, that she couldn't bear being so far from him anymore. She even surprised herself with how well she was making all this up, and wondered if there wasn't some truth in her spontaneous invention.

Magnus lifted her in his arms, laid her down on the couch, and slowly undressed her with his big expert fingers.

They made love several times. They had all the time in the world, and no longer needed to hide: Thor wasn't there anymore, and Liv was looking after Jonas.

As she got dressed again, Alba remembered Vilma, and realized that sleeping with Magnus had distracted her. Should she tell Magnus about her? No, because then she would be forced to tell him about herself as well . . .

“Magnus, will you take me back to Katrin's house? You could stay with Jonas and me.”

“How will I get to work tomorrow?”

“I'll drive you.”

Magnus's enthusiastic agreement was marked with a kiss so moist and so prolonged that they almost made love again on the couch.

 

*

 

When they parked outside the house, they immediately noticed the signs that told them something was wrong. The outside lights were off—Jonas always left them on to help drivers to orientate themselves when there was a storm—and the interior seemed dark too. When they climbed the three steps that led to the door, they realized that it was banging in the wind.

They hastened to enter.

Magnus went first, ready to attack the intruder . . . Nothing was moving inside the building. They called. No reply.

“That's impossible!” Alba said. “Jonas must be here.”

They called again, then, without further ado, searched the rooms. No Jonas.

In the kitchen, they found Liv lying unconscious on the floor behind the counter.

Magnus revived her while Alba called the police and the emergency services.

Before the paramedics arrived, Liv regained consciousness and told them what had happened. “A woman rang the doorbell. I opened the door because I thought she'd gotten lost in the storm. She asked me if this was where Jonas lived. That surprised me. Then she told me she was one of the nurses that had taken care of him in the last few weeks and that she wanted to say hello to her favorite patient. I wasn't suspicious, she looked so kind, a little redheaded mouse . . . I took her to Jonas, and then, I don't know what happened . . . After being so lovely, she started scolding our boy. I went up to her and she punched me and knocked me out . . . My God! Jonas! Did she hit him too?”

“He isn't here,” Magnus said.

“She took him with her,” Alba said. “It's a kidnapping.”

Magnus and Liv both turned to her, surprised by her certainty.

 

*

 

Until late into the night, Alba told the police officers what she knew, plus what she suspected. As far as she was concerned, there was no other possibility: the visitor could only have been Vilma.

Sitting not far from her, Magnus listened because it was partly for him that Alba was speaking.

Unfortunately, all she knew about Vilma was her cell phone number, which she had stopped answering, and which nobody could trace. To identify her, the police had to rely on the date of her daughter's death, which she had indicated was the same as that of Jonas's operation.

The results appeared on the computer. In Iceland that day there had only been two adolescents who could have provided organs: a certain Helga Vilmadottir and Thor Magnusson.

Alba bowed her head as if she had just been accused of a crime and was being taken to court. After a few seconds, she glanced at Magnus, who was just starting to grasp the whole thing: Alma's friendship with Vilma, her obsessive research, her distancing herself from him.

“Can they put a girl's heart in a boy?” a police officer asked in surprise. “The heart isn't a sexual organ,” Magnus replied.

“There's no proof that Jonas received that heart,” Alba said.

“Some people are really crazy!” the policeman concluded.

Alba stared at the tips of her pumps: Vilma wanted to capture Jonas to love him, Alba to kill him. How could she have thought like that? It suddenly struck her as stupid to claim that a body belonged to you, even more stupid to claim a right over a transplant patient. She had the feeling she was waking from a long nightmare.

But now a new nightmare had begun: Jonas's disappearance.

The police officers left. Alba and Magnus locked up the house and returned in silence to Reykjavík. They thought of the frail Jonas in the hands of a madwoman.

Once they were back in their apartment, Magnus grabbed two chairs and asked Alba to sit down facing him. She tried to kiss him, to cling to him, but he pushed her away.

“Stay where you are, Alba, and listen to me.”

“But—”

“Let go of me, or I'll tie you to that chair.”

She sat down, head bowed, like a little girl being punished.

“I'm going to tell you what I think, Alba, and you can tell me if I'm wrong. You're so ashamed of having left Thor after an argument in which you insulted him and threatened him like a harpy that you're running away from that memory. You want to avoid feeling guilty. So to protect yourself from remorse, your bad faith has led you to forget Thor, and you've been lashing out blindly, aiming at Jonas or at society the aggression you should have turned on yourself.”

Alba started crying. “I wasn't a good mother!”

“Yes, you were, Alba. Not that night, because you couldn't control your nerves, but the other nights. Many nights. Thor was no angel. He wasn't as easy to love as Jonas. But you and I loved him and raised him as best we could.” He kneeled down before her. “You resented Jonas for being alive. You fantasized God knows what, that Thor had been killed to save Jonas, some madness or other that suited you because it stopped you confronting your own sense of unease. You have to stop now, Alba, you can't think such nonsense anymore.”

“I don't think it anymore.”

“I know, because you're finally listening to me.”

With a paternal gesture, he let her rest her head on his shoulder and breathe deeply.

“A little black death?”

She gave a start, forgetting for a moment that “black death” was the name given to
brennivin
, the national drink—aromatic brandy flavored with bergamot.

They both drank a glass, and then Magnus poured himself a second. “Now you're going to think and tell me as much as you can about Vilma. Maybe we can figure out where she's hiding Jonas.”

 

*

 

Alba did not sleep a wink all night. In bed, sometimes lying on her left side, sometimes on her right, holding her breath in order not to wake Magnus, she tried to put herself in Vilma's shoes and couldn't manage it.

At seven in the morning, she called the police inspector who had given her his number, hoping that the professionals had been more effective than she had.

Embarrassed, the inspector told her that the investigation was certainly making progress but that they still had no idea where Vilma was keeping Jonas. They had discovered that she had no job and no family, and had had no fixed abode since her daughter's death.

Alba shuddered. Where was Jonas? Had he been bound and gagged to stop him escaping or calling out? If he went out into the cold of the storm, he wouldn't be able to withstand the violence of the elements . . .

She started walking up and down the apartment. Walking had always helped her to think. Each time, she stopped outside Thor's door, sighed, and set off again.

Suddenly, a detail drew her attention. Something was missing. She inspected the walls around her: the key to the cabin had disappeared.

“Magnus!”

She threw herself on her husband, woke him, and told him what she had deduced: Vilma must have taken refuge in their house in the mountains.

“How would she have got there? You told me she didn't have a car.”

“She stole one. When you steal a child, you can steal a car, can't you? Magnus, she's taken Jonas to the most dangerous place in Iceland.”

Angrily, he opened the closet and grabbed their mountain clothes.

“Let's get dressed and go!”

 

*

 

Around them, the ashes had cast a black pall over the landscape.

The volcanic cloud raced above their heads, organic and immense, driven by the winds that blew against the car. Swelling here, getting denser there, this plume drew terrifying figures: trumpets from the Day of Judgment, demons, bulls, trolls, chimera, an army of cruel and incredible monsters.

As the vehicle approached the eruption, the plume lost its shape, descended until it formed a dark ceiling that stifled the light. Then, as they came through a pass, this leaden ceiling reached the ground, becoming a black soup that turned the atmosphere opaque, reduced visibility, and blocked all movement.

At every moment, Alba and Magnus were afraid that they would be stopped by a roadblock. The area had become dangerous and had been forbidden to human activity. They shuddered at the thought of Jonas doomed to breathe this noxious air.

They glimpsed torches in the distance: the authorities were blocking off the perimeter of the explosion. Cautiously, Magnus stopped the car and switched out the lights, then set off along an adjacent path.

“How could Vilma have managed to get this far?” Alba asked, assailed by doubts.

“Don't forget she's with Jonas, and he knows the region like the back of his hand.”

“He'd never tell her!”

“You don't know what people reveal under threat.”

Alba swallowed her saliva. Jonas was in hell. As long as he had the strength . . .

Their car was rocking more and more, manhandled by the state of the road, which was not only covered with particles but strewn with stones.

Magnus braked abruptly. A sudden torrent had cut across the road, barring their way completely. It was impossible to go any further.

They put on hoods, as well as protective masks over their noses and mouths, then continued on foot.

An apocalyptic atmosphere reigned everywhere.

The wind wrapped itself around them, slowing their progress. It was coming down from the mountaintops, sharpening itself on the rocks, then charging on, as cutting as a steel blade.

When they reached the plateau where the cabin was, a gust of wind suddenly blew in the opposite direction and the view cleared. For a few seconds, the countryside was wrapped in a kind of lethargy, a lethargy that resembled a slow death, and they spotted a 4x4 parked five hundred yards from the house.