by Jo Nesbo
“What’s that on your trousers, Olav, is it…blood? Oh God, you’re hurt! What happened?” She looked so bewildered and upset standing there that I nearly laughed. She gave me a suspicious, almost angry look. “What is it? Do you think it’s funny that you’re standing here bleeding like a stuck pig? Where’ve you been shot?”
“Only in the thigh.”
“Only? If the artery was hit, you’ll soon bleed out, Olav! Get those trousers off and sit down on the kitchen chair.” She removed the coat she had been wearing when I came in and went into the bathroom.
Came out again with bandages, plasters, iodine, the whole shebang.
“I’ll have to sew you up,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, leaning my head against the wall and closing my eyes.
She got going, trying to clean the wound and stop the bleeding. She made comments as she worked, explaining that she could only patch me up provisionally. That the bullet was still in there somewhere, but that it was impossible to do anything about that now.
“Where did you learn to do this?” I asked.
“Shh, just sit still, or you’ll break the stitches.”
“You’re a proper little nurse.”
“You’re not the first man to get a bullet in him.”
“Oh,” I said, in a matter-of-fact way. As a statement, not a question. There was no rush, we’d have plenty of time for stories like that. I opened my eyes and looked down at the bun at the back of her head as she knelt in front of me. Breathing in her scent. There was something different about it, something mixed in with the good smell of Corina close to me, Corina naked and passionate, Corina’s sweat on my arm. Not much, but a hint of something, ammonia, maybe, something that almost wasn’t there, but was there. Of course. It wasn’t her, it was me. I could smell my own wound. I was already infected, I’d already started to rot.
“There,” she said, biting off the end of the thread.
I stared down at her. Her blouse had slid off one shoulder and she had a bruise on the side of her neck. I hadn’t noticed it before, it must be one Benjamin Hoffmann had given her. I felt like saying something to her, that it would never be allowed to happen again, that no one would ever lay a hand on her again. But it was the wrong time. You don’t reassure a woman that she’s safe with you while she’s sitting there patching you up so you don’t bleed to death in front of her.
She washed the blood away with a damp towel and wound a bandage round my thigh.
“It feels like you’ve got a temperature, Olav. You need to get to bed.”
She pulled off my jacket and shirt. Stared at the chain mail. “What’s that?”
“Iron.”
She helped me off with it, then ran her fingers over the bruises left by the Dane’s bullets. Loving. Fascinated. Kissed them. And as I lay in bed and felt the shakes come, and she wrapped the duvet around me, I felt just like before when I lay in Mum’s bed. It almost didn’t hurt any more. And it felt as if I could escape it all, but it wasn’t up to me; I was a boat on a river, and the river was in charge. My fate, my destination was already determined. Which just left the journey, the time it took and the things you saw and experienced along the way. Life seems simple when you’re sufficiently ill.
I slipped into a dream world.
She was carrying me over her shoulder, running as the water splashed around her feet. It was dark and there was a smell of sewage, infected wounds, ammonia and perfume. From the streets above us came the sound of shots and shouting, and streaks of light filtered through the holes in the drain covers. But she was unstoppable, brave and strong. Strong enough for both of us. And she knew the way out of here, because she’d been here before. That was how the story went. She stopped at a junction in the sewers, put me down, said she had to take a look around but would soon be back. And I lay there on my back, listening to the rats scampering about me as I stared up at the moon through a drain. Drops of water hung from the grid pattern up above, revolving, shimmering in the moonlight. Fat, red, shiny drops. They let go, hurtled down towards me. Hit me in the chest. Passed straight through the chain mail, to where my heart was. Warm, cold. Warm, cold. The smell…
—
I opened my eyes.
I said her name. No answer.
“Corina?”
I sat up in bed. My thigh was throbbing and aching. Laboriously I lowered my foot over the edge of the bed and switched on the light. Jumped up. My thigh had swollen so much it was almost creepy. It looked like it had just carried on bleeding, but all the blood had built up inside the skin and bandage.
In the moonlight I could see her case in the middle of the living-room floor. But her coat was gone from the chair. I got to my feet and limped over to the kitchen. I opened the drawer and lifted out the cutlery tray.
The sheets of paper were still there in their envelope, untouched.
I took the envelope over to the window. The thermometer on the outside of the glass showed that the temperature was still dropping.
I looked down.
There she was. She’d just gone out for a bit.
She was standing hunched in the phone box, with her shoulders facing the street, the receiver pressed to her ear.
I waved, even though I knew she couldn’t see me.
Christ, my thigh hurt!
Then she hung up. I took a step back from the window so I wasn’t standing in the light. She came out of the phone box and I saw her look up towards me. I stood completely still, and she did the same. A few snowflakes hung in the air. Then she started walking. Putting her feet down with her ankles straight, placing one foot close to the other. Like a tightrope-walker. She crossed the street back towards me. I could see footprints in the snow. Cat footprints. Rear feet in the same prints as the front ones. The thin light from the street lamps meant that the edge of each print cast a small shadow. No more than that. Just that…
When she crept back inside the flat I was in bed with my eyes closed.
She took her coat off. I had been hoping she might take the rest off as well and get into bed with me. Hold me for a while. Nothing else. Loose change counts as money. Because now I knew that she wouldn’t come and carry me through the sewers. She wasn’t going to rescue me. And we weren’t going to Paris.
Instead of getting onto the bed, she sat on the chair in the dark.
She was watching. Waiting.
“Will it take him long to get here?” I asked.
I saw her jerk in the chair. “You’re awake.”
I repeated the question.
“Who, Olav?”
“The Fisherman.”
“You’re feverish, Olav. Try to get some sleep.”
“That’s who you were calling from the phone box just now.”
“Olav…”
“I just want to know how long I’ve got.”
She was sitting with her head bowed, so her face was in shadow. When she spoke again it was with a different, new voice. A harder voice. But even to my ears the notes sounded purer. “Twenty minutes, maybe.”
“Okay.”
“How did you know…?”
“Ammonia. Skate.”
“What?”
“The smell of ammonia, it sits in your skin after you’ve been in contact with skate, particularly before the fish has been prepared. I read somewhere that it’s because skates store uric acid in their flesh, like sharks do. But what do I know?”
Corina looked at me with a distant smile. “I see.”
Another pause.
“Olav?”
“Yes.”
“It’s nothing…”
“Personal?”
“Exactly.”
I felt the stitches tear. A stench of inflammation and pus belched out. I put my hand on my thigh. The gauze bandage was soaked. And it was still stretched tight—there was loads more to come out.
“So what is it, then?” I asked.
She sighed. “Does it matter?”
“I like stories,” I said. “I�
�ve got twenty minutes.”
“This isn’t about you. It’s about me.”
“And what are you about, then?”
“Yes. What am I about?”
“Daniel Hoffmann was dying. You knew that, didn’t you? And that Benjamin Hoffmann would be taking over?”
She shrugged. “You’ve pretty much got me there.”
“Someone who deceives the people she needs to deceive without a guilty conscience in order to follow the money and power?”
Corina stood up abruptly and went over to the window. Looked down at the street. Lit a cigarette.
“Apart from the bit about the guilty conscience, that’s more or less right,” she said.
I listened. It was quiet. I realised that it was past midnight, that it was now Christmas Eve.
“You just gave him a call?” I asked.
“I went to his shop.”
“And he agreed to see you?”
I could see the silhouette of her pout against the window as she exhaled the smoke. “He’s a man. Just like all other men.”
I thought about the shadows behind the frosted glass. The bruise on her neck. It was fresh. How blind can you be? The beatings. The submission. The humiliation. That was how she wanted it.
“The Fisherman’s a married man. So what did he offer you?”
She shrugged. “Nothing. For the time being. But he will.”
She was right. Beauty trumps everything.
“When you looked so shocked when I came home, it wasn’t because I was wounded, but because I was alive.”
“It was both. You mustn’t think I don’t have any feelings for you, Olav. You were a good lover.” She let out a short laugh. “At first I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Had what in me?”
She just smiled. Sucked hard on her cigarette. The tip glowed red in the semi-darkness over by the window. And I thought that if anyone down in the street looked up at that moment, they might think they were looking at a plastic tube trying to imitate cosy home life, happy families, a sense of Christmas. And they might imagine that the people up there had everything I wished I had. Up there they lived the sort of lives people ought to live. I don’t know. I just know that that’s what I would have been thinking.
“Had what?” I repeated.
“The dominant thing. My king.”
“My king?”
“Yes.” She laughed. “I thought I was going to have to stop you there for a while.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This,” she said, pulling her blouse down over her shoulder and pointing at the bruise.
“I didn’t do that.”
She stopped with the cigarette halfway to her mouth and looked at me suspiciously.
“You didn’t? Do you think I did it myself?”
“It wasn’t me, I’m telling you.”
She laughed gently. “Come on, Olav, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I don’t hit women.”
“No, it was harder to get you to do that, I’ll give you that. But you liked the strangling. After I got you going you really liked that.”
“No!” I pressed my hands to my ears. I could see her lips moving, but couldn’t hear anything. It wasn’t worth hearing. Because that’s not how the story went. It had never been like that.
But her mouth kept making shapes. Like a sea anemone, which I once learned has its mouth as its anus and vice versa. Why was she talking, what was it she wanted? What was it they all wanted? I was deaf and dumb now. I no longer had the equipment to interpret the sound waves which they, normal people, produced incessantly, waves crashing over the coral reef and then vanishing. I stared out at a world that made no sense, had no coherence, just people desperately living the life that each of us has been given, instinctively sating every sick desire, stifling our anxieties about loneliness and the death-throes that start as soon as we realise we’re mortal. I knew what she meant. Was. That. It?
I grabbed my trousers from the chair by the bed and pulled them on. The fabric of one of the legs was stiff with blood and pus. I heaved myself out of bed and dragged my leg behind me across the floor.
Corina didn’t move.
I leaned down over my shoes and felt a wave of nausea, but managed to pull them on. My coat. I had my passport and the tickets to Paris in the inside pocket.
“You won’t get far,” she said.
The keys to the Volvo were in my trouser pocket.
“Your wound has opened up, just look at yourself.”
I opened the door and went out into the stairwell. I got hold of the handrail and heaved myself down using my lower arms, as I thought about the randy little male spider realising that visiting time was over just a bit too late.
By the time I got downstairs my shoe was already sloshing with blood.
I set off towards the car. Police sirens. They had been there the whole time. Like wolves howling in the distance around the snow-covered hills that surrounded Oslo. Rising, falling, sniffing out the scent of blood.
This time the Volvo started at once.
I knew where I was going, but it was as if the streets had lost their shape and direction, becoming gently swaying tentacles of a lion’s mane jellyfish that I had to keep swerving to follow. It was hard to see where you were in this rubber city where nothing wanted to stay as it was. I saw a red light and braked. Tried to get my bearings. I must have nodded off, because I jumped when the lights changed and a car behind blew its horn. I put my foot down. Where was this, was I still in Oslo?
My mum never said anything about my father’s murder. It was as if it had never happened. And that was fine with me. Then one day, four or five years later, when we were sitting at the kitchen table, she suddenly asked: “When do you think he’ll come back?”
“Who?”
“Your father.” She looked through me, past me with unfocused eyes. “He’s been gone a long time. Wonder where he’s been this time?”
“He’s not coming back, Mum.”
“Of course he is. He always comes back.” She raised her glass again. “He’s very fond of me, you know. And you.”
“Mum, you helped me carry him…”
She put the glass down with a bang, spilling some of the gin.
“Oh,” she said without any trace of emotion, fixing her gaze on me. “Anyone who took him from me would have to be a terrible person, don’t you think?”
She wiped the glistening liquid from the table-cloth with one hand, then went on rubbing it, as if she were trying to erase something. I didn’t know what to say. She had put together a story of her own. And I mine. I could hardly start diving into that lake up in Nittedal just to see whose version was more truthful. So I said nothing.
But the knowledge that she could love a man who treated her like that taught me just one thing about love.
No, actually.
It didn’t.
It taught me nothing about love.
We never spoke about my father again after that.
I turned the wheel to follow the road, matching it as closely as I could, but it was as if it was trying to shake me off the whole time, swerving so that I and the car would hit a wall or one of the cars coming in the other direction, disappearing behind me with wailing horns that diminished in strength like an exhausted barrel organ.
I turned off to the right. Found myself in quieter streets. Fewer lights. Less traffic. Darkness was falling. And then it got completely dark.
I must have fainted and driven off the road. Not fast. I had hit my head on the windscreen but there was no damage, either to windscreen or head. And the lamp post that the radiator had buckled around wasn’t even bent. But the engine had stopped. I turned the key in the ignition a few times, but it just complained with ever decreasing enthusiasm. I opened the car door and crawled out. I lay on my knees and elbows like a Muslim praying, with the fresh snow stinging the palms of my hands. I moved my hands together, trying to gather up the powdery snow. But po
wdery snow is just that. It’s white and beautiful, but difficult to make anything enduring out of. It promises so much, but in the end everything you try to make collapses, crumbling between your fingers. I peered up and looked around to see where I’d driven.
Leaning on the car I got to my feet, then staggered over to the window. I pressed my face to the glass, which was lovely and cool against my burning forehead. The shelves and counters inside were bathed in a flickering half-light. I was too late, the shop was closed. Of course it was, it was the middle of the night. There was even a sign on the door saying they’d closed earlier than usual: “Closing at 17:00 on December 23 for stocktaking.”
Taking stock. Of course. It was the day before Christmas Eve, after all. The end of a year. Perhaps it was time for that.
In the corner, beyond the short train of trolleys, there was a Christmas tree, mean and small. But it still demanded the title—it was a Christmas tree, no matter what.
I didn’t know why I had driven here. I could have driven to the hotel and got a room there. Right across the street from the man we had just fixed. Opposite the woman who had fixed me. No one would think of looking for me there. I had enough money for two nights. I could call the Fisherman in the morning and ask to have the rest of the fee paid into my bank account.
I heard myself laugh.
Felt a warm tear trickle down my cheek, saw it fall and burrow into the fresh snow.
Then another one. It just disappeared.
I caught sight of my knee. Blood was oozing out through the fabric of the trousers and dribbling down to settle on the snow with a skin of slime, like egg whites. I knew it would disappear. Melt down and vanish like my tears. But it just lay there, red and quivering. I felt my sweaty hair stick to the glass of the window. It’s probably a bit late to mention it now, but in case I haven’t said, I’ve got long, slightly lank, blond hair and a beard, I’m average height and I’ve got blue eyes. That’s pretty much me. There’s an advantage to having a lot of hair and a beard: if there are too many witnesses to a job, you have the potential to change your appearance quickly. And it was this potential to change quickly that I now felt freezing to the window, setting root, like part of that coral reef I keep going on about. Anyway. I wanted to become one with this window, to become glass, just like the invertebrate anemones in Animal Kingdom 5: The Sea actually become the coral reef they live on. And in the morning I would be able to watch Maria, watch her all day without her seeing me. Whisper whatever I liked to her. Call out, sing. My only wish just then was to disappear—maybe it was the only thing I had ever wanted. To disappear, like Mum drinking herself invisible with neat spirits. Rubbing it in until it erased her. Where was she now? I no longer remember. I hadn’t been able to remember for a long time. It was odd, I could say where my father was, but where was my mother, the woman who had given me life and kept me alive? Was she really dead and buried at Ris Church? Or was she still out there somewhere? Obviously I knew, it was just a question of remembering.