LUCCA
JENS CHRISTIAN GRØNDAHL is one of the most celebrated and widely read writers in Denmark today. Born in 1959, his literary work includes thirteen novels, essays and several plays. Silence in October, published recently by Canongate, is being translated into sixteen languages.
ANNE BORN has translated many works of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish literature, including Letters from Africa by Karen Blixen, The Snake in Sydney by Michael Larsen, Vita Brevis by Jostein Gaarder, and To Siberia by Per Petterson. She has published twelve collections of her own poetry, and many Scandinavian poets in translation.
LUCCA
Jens Christian Grøndahl
Translated from Danish by Anne Born
CANONGATE
First published in English in Great Britain in 2002
by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This new edition published in 2003
First published in Danish in 1998 by
Rosinante, Copenhagen
This digital edition first published in 2015 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Jens Christian Grøndahl, 1998 English translation copyright © Anne Born, 2002
The moral right of Jens Christian Grøndahl and Anne Born to be identified as respectively the author and translator of the work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
The publisher gratefully acknowledges general subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council towards the Canongate International series
The English translation was supported by The Danish Literature Centre, Copenhagen.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 1 84195 397 0
eISBN 978 1 78211 710 0
Contents
Part One
One evening in April a thirty-two-year-old woman, unconscious and severely injured, was admitted to hospital in a provincial town south of Copenhagen. She had concussion and internal bleeding, her legs and arms were broken in several places, and she had deep lesions in her face. A petrol station attendant in a neighbouring village, beside the bridge over the motorway to Copenhagen, had seen her car take the wrong slip-road onto the carriageway and drive at high speed against the oncoming traffic. The first three approaching cars managed to manoeuvre around her, but about 200 metres 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 metres before the crash, while the car approaching him actually increased speed for the last stretch. The front of the vehicle was totally crushed, part of the radiator was stuck fast between the carriageway and the lorry’s cow-catcher, and the woman had to be cut free. The spokesman for the emergency services said it was a miracle she had survived.
On arrival at hospital the woman was pronounced close to death, and it was 24 hours before she was out of danger although still critically ill. Her eyes were so badly damaged that she had lost her sight. Her name was Lucca. Lucca Montale.
Despite the name there was nothing particularly Italian about her appearance, from the photograph