Lucca - Hardcover

Jens Christian Grřndahl is one of the most acclaimed and widely read authors in Europe today. He has written plays, essays, and twelve novels, and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Copenhagen.

One evening in April a thirty-two-year-old woman, unconscious and severely injured, was admitted to the hospital in a provincial town south of Copenhagen. She had a concussion and internal bleeding, her legs and arms were broken in several places, and she had deep lesions in her face. A gas station attendant in a neighboring village, beside the bridge over the highway to Copenhagen, had seen her go the wrong way up the exit and drive at high speed into the oncoming traffic. The first three approaching cars managed to maneuver around her, but about 200 meters after the junction she collided head-on with a truck.

The Dutch driver was admitted for observation but released the next day. According to his statement he started to brake a good 100 meters before the crash, while the car seemed to actually increase its speed over the last stretch. The front of the vehicle was totally crushed, part of the radiator was stuck between the road and the truck's bumper, and the woman had to be cut free. The spokesman for emergency services said it was a miracle she had survived.

On arrival at the hospital the woman was in very critical condition, and it was twenty-four hours before she was out of serious danger. Her eyes were so badly damaged that she lost her sight. Her name was Lucca. Lucca Montale.

Despite the name there was nothing particularly Italian about her appearance. She had auburn hair and green eyes in a narrow face with high cheek-bones. She was slim and fairly tall. It turned out she was Danish, born in Copenhagen.

Her husband, Andreas Bark, arrived with their small son while she was still on the operating table. The couple's home was an isolated old farmhouse in the woods seven kilometers from the site of the accident. Andreas Bark told the police he had tried to stop his wife from driving. He thought she had just gone out for a breath of air when he heard the car start. By the time he got outside he saw it disappearing along the road. She had been drinking a lot. They had had a marital disagreement. Those were the words he used; he was not questioned further on that point.

Early in the morning, when Lucca Montale was moved from the operating room into intensive care, her husband was still in the waiting room with the sleeping boy's head on his lap. He was looking out at the sky and the dark trees when Robert sat down next to him. Andreas Bark went on staring into the gray morning light with an exhausted, absent gaze. He seemed slightly younger than Robert, in his late thirties. He had dark, wavy hair and a prominent chin, his eyes were narrow and deep-set, and he was wearing a shabby leather jacket.

Robert rested his hands on his knees in the green cotton trousers and looked down at the perforations in the leather uppers of his white clogs. He realized he had forgotten to take off his plastic cap after the operation. The thin plastic crackled between his hands. Andreas looked at him and Robert straightened up to meet his gaze. The boy woke up, bewildered. His father stroked his hair slowly, mechanically, as the doctor spoke.

When he got home Robert had a shower, poured himself a whisky, and puttered around the house for a while. Apart from a faint twittering, the only sounds were those he made himself, the parquet floorboards creaking beneath his bare feet and the ice cubes clinking in his glass. He never went straight to bed when he came home after a night shift. He sat on the sofa as it grew light outside, listening to the new recording of Brahms's third symphony that he had bought the last time he was in Copenhagen. He gave in to fatigue and imagined he was floating on the peaceful, swelling waves of the strings, studied the palings of the fence at the end of the garden, the birch leaves fluttering in the breeze, and the hesitant little hops of the sparrows on the paving stones, between the plastic lawnchairs on the terrace outside the wide bay window.

The house was actually too large for him. It was meant for a family with two or three children, but it had been going at a favorable price. Moreover, Lea came home every other weekend. He had a room for her with everything she might need. They had gone together to buy the furniture, and she chose the colors herself. He gave her a bicycle too, which awaited her in the garage, and a Ping-Pong table he set up in what was supposed to be the dining room. He preferred to eat in the kitchen. Lea was getting good at table tennis, she could now beat him every other time. She was just twelve.

He had grown used to living alone. It wasn't as hard as he had feared, he worked long hours. He moved out of Copenhagen two years ago, when he was divorced. At that time he and Lea's mother had worked at the same hospital. Six months after the divorce Monica moved in with the mutual colleague she had started a relationship with while still married to Robert. He didn't enjoy running into them in the corridors.

He moved to this particular town by chance, never having thought of taking a job at a provincial hospital. But he liked his work, and although the town depressed him with its red-brick suburban houses and provincial town properties with small bay windows and absurd zinc spires, after a time he learned to appreciate the qualities of the place. It boasted a white-washed medieval church, where organ recitals were given in summer, flanked by a couple of half-timbered merchants' houses at the end of the main street, and the woods, the seashore and a bird reserve at the end of a peninsula past an area of half-flooded meadowland. He liked to walk out there, surrounded by the huge vault of sky above the tufts of grass, the calm water reflecting the cloud masses and the wedge formations of migrating birds.

Now and then he would visit one of the couples among his colleagues. They were all married and most had children. As a newly-arrived single man he was met with friendliness and courtesy, but he always felt like a guest in their world, and he noticed that the women in particular confused his slightly reserved manner with arrogance. One woman had made a pass at him, she was a librarian and a few years younger than he was. He found her attractive and went out with her a few times, but when it came to the point he rebuffed her advances. It was not that he missed Monica. For the last year or two of their marriage they had lived in silence, like two strangers, the silence broken now and then by sudden pointless quarrels.

Not that there was anything wrong with the librarian. She had a beautiful figure and a sense of humor. He actually made the initial move himself when he asked her one day for a biography of Gustav Mahler. But he ended up rejecting her. Naturally she was hurt, and he had since stopped going to the library. It left him feeling chagrined, but he was unable to explain either to her or to himself why he had asked her to leave, one evening after dinner as they were sitting on his sofa listening to Mahler's fifth.

She was in a short low-necked dress and black stockings that night. Having slipped off her shoes and drawn up her legs beneath her on the sofa, she looked at him out of her large, appealing eyes as they sipped brandy. It was all so obvious, everything arranged without a single word, and he lost the urge to have anything to do with her. After she had left he told himself he could at least have gone to bed with her, as she had plainly offered, but when he woke up the next morning, alone as usual, he was relieved. He ran into her once in a while, that was unavoidable in such a small town. They greeted each other politely and, as they passed in the street, she tried to catch his eye.

Robert was responsible for Lucca Montale's care. It fell to him to tell her, a few days after the accident, that she was unlikely to see again. Her arms and legs were in plaster, most of her face covered with bandages. She didn't reply. For a moment he thought she was asleep, then she moved her lips, but uttered no sound. He sat down on the edge of the bed and asked what she wanted to say. The words came slowly, with difficulty. Her voice was faint and uncertain, it threatened to crack, and he had to bend over her to hear what she said.

She asked about the weather. He told her that the day was gray but promised to clear up, that it had rained. Yes, she said, she had heard it. Had it rained in the morning or during the night? In the night, he said. For a time neither spoke. He would have liked to say something encouraging, but couldn't think of anything. Everything that occurred to him seemed either foolish or simply wrong.

She asked whether Andreas was there. She used his first name, as if assuming Robert would know whom she had in mind. He told her Andreas would probably come later in the day. It felt odd to mention her husband by name, as if he knew him. He said Andreas had been there several times with their son, while she was unconscious. The boy's name was Lauritz. She wanted to see him. Then she corrected herself. He must come. Robert suggested she should arrange it with her husband. The next thing she said was surprising. She did not want to see Andreas. Only Lauritz. Could she count on her wishes being respected?

Yes, he said without thinking, if that was what she wanted. It sounded formal, almost solemn. He looked at the trees, just coming into leaf. She did not want anything. He looked at her again. Her voice was expressionless, without bitterness or self-pity. He stood up to go, she asked him to stay a little longer. He stood by the window, waiting for her to say something more. Was it certain? He asked what she meant, feeling foolish. That she would never see again? He hesitated. As good as certain, he replied. He said he was sorry, at once regretting it. She said she would like to be alone.

He relayed Lucca Montale's wishes to the sister-in-charge and asked her to arrange with the husband to let their son visit. A few hours later Andreas Bark was sitting in Robert's office. He was pale and unshaven, his dark hair tousled. He slouched in the chair and asked if he could s...