The Serbian Dane Read Free Page A

the fringes of her still more or less slumbering consciousness. She woke up panic-stricken, feeling somehow outside of herself. As if she were hovering over the double bed in the light of a late August morning, looking down on herself and her husband, who lay there curled up in a ball or on his back, his lips straining, as though he were struggling to say something. She never remembered her dreams. They faded as soon as she heard the sound of the radio. Music or voices. It woke her just before the news: she had no wish to wake up to death and destruction; better to start the day with pop music or the latest traffic update. For thirty-four years she had taken sleep and the waking from it for granted. As far as she could remember, at any rate. She had been such an easy baby too. Slept soundly at night and woke up cooing and smiling, content to lie there on her own for a while, playing with her fingers or toes. Or so her mum said. But this summer sleep did not come easy, and she woke up with the flat taste of unresolved dreams lingering at the back of her mind.
    Lise Carlsen rolled onto her back and gazed at the ceiling while listening to the closing strains of the Take That number that was being played constantly on Radio P3 that summer. It was going to be another scorcher, she could tell. The curtain barely moved in the soft breeze. Ole groaned and turned over onto his side with his back to her. Time was when he would have slipped his hand into hers and snuggled up to her. Or she to him. Her heart sank still further at the thought that the only memory she had of their lovemaking the night before was a stickiness between her legs; there was no recollection of pleasure. They were both naked. There was nothing else for itin this heat. She longed for rain and cool air. The hot weather generated sweat and lust and moved one to reach for the nearest body. And it didn’t really matter if one’s feelings were lying dormant. The heat craved release. It caused the hormones to run riot. She slid the duvet down to her waist, folded her hands behind her head on the damp pillow and listened to the radio that had woken her. She could not really have said why she greeted the coming of each new morning by listening to the seven o’clock news. She didn’t remember a word of it afterwards. Not until she heard it all repeated an hour later. But she derived a certain comfort from being reminded that her own troubles were as nothing compared to the horrors with which the smooth neutral tones of the newsreader brought her back to reality each morning. Maybe it was because Ole hated being woken by music and chatter. Could it be that what she was really trying to do here was to drive him out of the marriage bed? Or out of the marriage? She was a journalist, earned her own living, could buy her own clock radio, had bought it, plugged it in and used it. So there! Was that what she’d said? Was it perhaps also a sign of her own lack of resolve that she had turned the volume down so low that she could hardly hear it herself? It would have taken a bomb to wake Ole, so it really didn’t bother him at all. While the slightest sound could wake her. These days, at any rate, when every nerve ending seemed to have been dusted with itching powder.
    There were all the usual stories: an incipient stage battle over the forthcoming budget, the never-ending war in Yugoslavia and the continuing drought. She wasn’t listening; instead she was trying to figure out why she felt so miserable and why she always seemed able to shake off this feeling once she’d had her shower. Then she heard Santanda’s name mentioned. She pictured the writer: a pleasant little woman with a round face, brown eyes and the ability to speak about difficult, life-and-death issues without making one feel uncomfortable. She didn’t catch what it was all about. Only the mention of both Sara Santanda and Iran. And the Danish foreign minister, speaking on a sluggish phone link, deploring the