The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [89]
Mikas was obviously uncomfortable with the question. He twisted, and began to fill the bucket with fresh sand, but the purposefulness had gone out of him, and after a few spadefuls, he dropped the little red spade and looked around, as if searching for something to hide behind. Then he looked directly at Marija, and answered her with a few soft words.
She nodded and put her hand against his cheek to keep his attention a little while longer. But at her next question, he struggled as if overwhelmed by a cold wave. His face closed, and with a thin frightened exclamation, barely audible, he tore himself free of her gentle grasp and ran towards the water.
Marija shot an accusing glance at Nina, blaming her, or, at least, her questions.
Nina got up quickly and caught up with Mikas in a few long strides. She swung him onto her hip and held him as gently as she could. At first he fought her, kicking against her shins and thighs with bare feet. Then he curled limply against her shoulder, not in trust but in resignation. Marija had risen too, and was pulling on her clothes with angry jerks.
“His mother?”
The question hung in the air between them while Marija buttoned her jeans, not looking up.
“Marija.”
Nina put her free hand on Marija’s arm, and finally the girl gave up her button battle and met Nina’s eyes.
“Sorry.” Marija took a deep breath. “It is just that he was so upset. I do not like it.”
Nina shook her head slightly, but she had to know.
“What did he say about his mother?”
“I don’t understand all. Children say what they like, no more,” said Marija apologetically. “But he said he lives with his mama, she is nice, but he couldn’t wake her.”
Nina frowned. Couldn’t wake her? She looked at Marija doubtfully.
Had Mikas’s mama been ill? Or unconscious? And did it have anything at all to do with his involuntary trip to Denmark? As Nina recalled it, a three-year-old’s grasp of the concept of time left something to be desired. She cursed her own linguistic inadequacies.
She needed to know if his own mother had sold him. Such things did happen. She knew that very well.
“What happened to take him away from his mother? Did he say?”
Marija raised her carefully plucked and penciled eyebrows.
“He said the chocolate lady took him. I do not know what that means.”
“Does he miss his mother? Does he want to go back to her?”
Marija froze, and the look she gave Nina was completely naked.
“Of course he misses his mama. He is just a baby!”
S UNNY BEACH SOLARIUM AND WELLNESS, said the glass door leading down to the basement floor, with the added legend New lamps! Inside was a reception area with a dark-haired woman behind a desk. She was talking to someone on the phone, and Jučas could not make out which language she was speaking. Not Lithuanian, at any rate, but then that was hardly surprising. She was dressed in a white uniform as though she were a nurse or some kind of clinic assistant, and in Jučas’s estimation, she was too old to be a whore. Perhaps it was actually possible to acquire a tan in this place.
The woman lowered the receiver for a moment and asked him something he didn’t understand.
“Bukovski,” he said, and then continued in English. “I have to see Bukovski.”
“Wait,” she said. “Name?”
He just gave her a look. Suddenly her gestures took on a nervous quickness that had not been there before. She rose and disappeared into the regions behind the reception, to emerge a few minutes later with the expected permission.
“You go in,” she said.
It was surprisingly spacious, thought Jučas. There weren’t any windows, but heavy-duty ventilation ensured that the air was cool and almost fresh. There were a couple of exercise bikes and two treadmills, but for the most part, the floor space was given over to numerous well-worn TechnoGym machines and a large freeweight area. This was no pastel-colored wellness center for fatfearing forty-year-old women or middle-aged men with aspirations to a “healthier lifestyle.” This was a T-zone.