The Dinosaur Feather(163)

“Why didn’t Anna know you had a son?”

Professor Moritzen looked up.

“She asked me the same question a few hours ago.” She smiled weakly and fidgeted with her clothes. “She was angry with me because I had kept it a secret. She shouted at me, in fact.” Another feeble smile. “But we didn’t see each other outside work. We met at a summer course where I taught terrestrial ecology. We started talking, and I was fascinated by her. She was so different from Asger, from my own child, and she reminded me of me, when I was a young biologist and a single parent. We had lunch together, maybe five times. It was lovely sitting in the cafeteria with her. It made sense. Anna’s life isn’t easy, is it? Living on a student grant with a young child. She never told me her story outright, but today she admitted she felt ashamed because her boyfriend had left them. And do you know something?” She looked up at Søren. “I, too, felt ashamed. I was ashamed of Asger.”

Søren tried to get his thoughts in order. “And then, last Thursday, Asger told you he had infected Professor Helland with parasites?”

“Yes.” She looked wretched. “But it’s my fault. I should never have told him Helland was his father. But I did. The night I told him, he reacted with surprising equanimity. He seemed puzzled more than anything. He kept saying: I thought you didn’t know who my dad was? As if it wouldn’t sink in that I had lied. Afterward, we shared takeout and watched a movie. When he went home, he seemed pensive rather than angry. Three days later, he called to say he didn’t want to see me for awhile. Then he hung up. Asger had never rebelled, not even as a teenager. He has always been my sweet little boy. I was shocked when he hung up on me. I called him back, but he didn’t answer. I went to bed. I wanted to sleep on it, not compound the damage by acting in haste. After three weeks, I called him. Yes, he was fine. What day was it? Really? He sounded surprised. He responded to everything I said as though he had had a lobotomy. I invited him to dinner; I asked if we should go away for Easter break but he said no, we wouldn’t be seeing each other. Good-bye. I told myself everything was all right. He was twenty-seven years old and he had the right to create some space between himself and his mother. Only I desperately wanted to talk to him, to explain to him once more why I had kept Lars a secret. I wrote him a long letter, begging for his forgiveness. I wrote I had been nineteen years old when I had slept with my tutor; I knew nothing, and today I would never have made the choices I had made then. I heard nothing, not even on my birthday in July, which Asger always used to make a big deal of. Not so much as a postcard.” The tears rolled down Professor Moritzen’s cheeks.

“He didn’t respond to anything. To my letters or my calls. He had quite simply dropped me. Last August I started therapy. It was mainly about my relationship with Asger, about my role in his life. My therapist told me to write another letter to Asger, that he definitely read them and they made a difference even if he didn’t respond. In the letter I was to assure him I would be there when he was ready, and I was to tell him I loved him and I looked forward to seeing him again. But not until he was ready. That was important, the therapist stressed. He had begun an emancipation process, she said, and I was to leave him alone. Respect him. The therapist insisted it was about time, too.” She looked embarrassed. “So that’s what I did. Wrote a letter, which the therapist read and approved before I sent it to Asger. Then I waited. I heard nothing, but the therapist comforted me. It was quite normal. The longer the period after puberty when emancipation ought to have taken place, the harder it was. She said it might take years. So I was so happy when he suddenly called last Thursday.” Professor Moritzen looked earnestly at Søren. “I swear it never occurred to me that Asger might be implicated in Lars’s death. I had speculated like crazy whether the parasite might have come from our stock, but in consultation with my colleagues, I concluded it couldn’t possibly be one of ours. We hadn’t been broken into, nothing had been touched, nothing had been taken. Last Thursday, Asger told me he had watched me through my office window. His plan was to make it look like I had infected Helland with tapeworm. We should both be punished, he said. He even found the prospect amusing. He knew tapeworms weren’t dangerous, but they frequently aren’t discovered until they’re several feet long and fill most of the intestines. He thought his plan was brilliantly disgusting. He imagined how the tapeworm would grow and take up more and more space, just like Helland and I had gradually taken over his life.