by Jo Nesbo
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that . . .?’
I read the label behind the glass. Inserted a fifty-øre coin and pressed the button.
Monica Zetterlund’s cool but sensual voice crept out. As did the smoking couple. Lea leaned against the jukebox; it looked as though she was soaking up every word, every note. Eyes half closed. Hips swaying almost imperceptibly from side to side, making the hem of her skirt move. When the song was over, she put another fifty øre in and played it again. And then again. Then we went out into the summer’s evening.
Music was coming from behind the trees in the park. We automatically walked towards the sound. There was a queue of young people in front of a ticket booth. Happy, noisy, dressed in light, bright summer clothes. I recognised the poster on the ticket booth from the telephone pole in Kåsund.
‘Shall we . . .?’
‘I can’t,’ she smiled. ‘We don’t dance.’
‘We don’t have to dance.’
‘A Christian doesn’t go to places like that either.’
We sat down on one of the benches under the trees.
‘When you say Christian . . .’ I began.
‘I mean Læstadian, yes. I know it can all seem a bit odd to an outsider, but we stick to the old Bible translations. We don’t believe that the contents of the faith can be changed.’
‘But the idea of burning in hell was only read into the Bible in the Middle Ages, so that’s a fairly modern invention too. Shouldn’t you reject that as well?’
She sighed. ‘Reason lives in the head, and faith in the heart. They’re not always good neighbours.’
‘But dancing lives in the heart too. When you were swaying in time to the music on the jukebox, did that mean you were on the verge of sinning?’
‘Maybe,’ she smiled. ‘But there are probably worse things.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well. Such as socialising with Pentecostalists, for instance.’
‘Is that worse?’
‘I’ve got a cousin in Tromsø who sneaked out to go to a meeting of the local Pentecostalist group. When her father realised that she’d been out, she lied and said she’d been to a disco.’
We both laughed.
It had got slightly darker. It was time to drive back. Even so, we remained seated.
‘What do they feel when they’re walking through Stockholm?’ she asked.
‘Everything,’ I replied, lighting a cigarette. ‘They’re in love. That’s why they see, hear, smell everything.’
‘Is that what people do when they’re in love?’
‘You’ve never experienced it?’
‘I’ve never been in love,’ she said.
‘Really? Why not?’
‘I don’t know. Obsessed, yes. But if being in love is like they say it is, then never.’
‘So you used to be an ice princess, then? The girl all the boys wanted, but never dared talk to.’
‘Me?’ She laughed. ‘I hardly think so.’
She put her hand in front of her mouth, but removed it just as quickly. It’s possible that it was unconscious, because I had trouble believing that such a beautiful woman could have a complex about a tiny scar on her top lip.
‘What about you, Ulf?’ She used my false name without a trace of irony.
‘Loads of times.’
‘Good for you.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’
‘Why not?’
I shrugged. ‘It takes its toll. But I’ve got very good at handling rejection.’
‘Rubbish,’ she said.
I grinned and inhaled. ‘I would have been one of those boys, you know.’
‘Which boys?’
I knew there was no need for me to answer: her blushes revealed that she knew what I meant. I was actually a bit surprised: she didn’t seem the blushing type.
I was just about to reply anyway when I was interrupted by a sharp voice:
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
I turned round. They were standing behind the bench, ten metres away. Three of them. They each had a bottle in their hands. Mattis’s bottles. It wasn’t easy to know which of us the question was aimed at, but even in the murky light I could see and hear who had asked it: Ove. The brother-in-law with inheritance rights.
‘With that . . . that . . . southerner.’
The slurring in his voice made clear that he had sampled the contents of the bottle, but I suspected that wasn’t wholly responsible for his failure to find a more cutting insult.
Lea sprang up and hurried towards him, putting a hand on his arm. ‘Ove, don’t—’
‘Hey, you! Southerner! Look at me! You thought you were going to get to fuck her now, did you? Now that my brother’s in his grave and she’s a widow. But they’re not allowed to, did you know that? They’re not allowed to fuck, not even then! Not until they’re married again! Ha ha!’ He brushed her aside before raising the bottle in a wide arc and setting it to his lips.
‘Mind you, it might work with this one . . .’ Alcohol and saliva sprayed from his mouth. ‘Because this one’s a whore!’ He stared at me, wild-eyed. ‘A whore!’ he repeated when I didn’t react. Not that I didn’t know that calling a woman a whore is an internationally recognised signal to stand up and plant a fist in the speaker’s face. But I remained seated.
‘What is it, southerner? Are you a coward, as well as a cunt-thief?’ He laughed, evidently pleased with himself for finally finding the right words.
‘Ove . . .’ Lea tried, but he shoved her away with his drinking hand. It might not have been intentional, but the bottle caught her on the forehead. Might not. I stood up.
He grinned. Held the bottle out to the friends standing in the semi-darkness under a tree, came towards me with his fists raised in front of him. Legs apart, with quick, nimble steps, until he got himself into position, head slightly tilted behind his fists, with a look in his eyes that was suddenly clear and focused. As for me, I hadn’t done much fighting since I left primary school. Correction. I hadn’t done any fighting since primary school.
The first punch hit me on the nose, and I was blinded by the tears that instantly filled my eyes. The second one hit my jaw. I felt something come loose, and then the metallic taste of blood. I spat out a tooth and threw a wild punch at the air. His third blow hit me on the nose again. I don’t know what it sounded like to them, but to me the crunch sounded like a car being crushed.
I punched another hole in the summer night. His next blow hit me in the chest as I tumbled forward and wrapped my arms round him. I tried to pin his arms down so they couldn’t do any more damage, but he got his left hand free and hit me repeatedly on the ear and temple. There was a banging, squeaking sound, and it felt as if something cracked. I gnashed my teeth like a dog, got hold of something, an ear, and bit as hard as I could.
‘Fuck!’ he yelled, and yanked both arms free and locked my head under his right arm. I was struck by a pungent smell of sweat and adrenalin. I’d smelled it before. On men who had suddenly been confronted with the fact that they owed the Fisherman money, and didn’t know what was going to happen.
‘If you touch her –’ I whispered into the remnants of his ear, hearing the words gurgle with my own blood – ‘I’ll kill you.’
He laughed. ‘And what about you, southerner? What if I knock out the rest of your lovely white teeth?’
‘Go ahead,’ I panted. ‘But if you touch her . . .’
‘With this?’
The only positive thing I can say about the knife he was holding in his free hand is that it was smaller than Knut’s.
‘You haven’t got the nerve,’ I groaned.
He put the point of the knife to my cheek. ‘No?’
‘Come on them, you fucking –’ I couldn’t work out where my sudden lisp had come from until I felt the cold steel against my tongue and realised that he’d stuck the knife right through my cheek – ‘inbreed,’ I managed to say, with some effort, seeing as it’s a word th
at requires a certain amount of tongue gymnastics.
‘What did you say, dickhead?’
I felt the knife being twisted.
‘Your brother’s your father,’ I lisped. ‘That’s why you’re so thick and ugly.’
The knife was suddenly pulled out.
I knew what was coming. I knew it was going to end here. And that I’d pretty much demanded it, as good as begged for it. A man with the violent genes he had inherited didn’t have any choice but to stick the knife into me.
So why did I do it? Fucked if I know. Fucked if I know what calculations go on inside our heads, the way we add and subtract in the hope of getting a positive result. I just know that fragments of that sort of calculation must have fluttered through my sleep-deprived, sun- and alcohol-addled brain, where the positive result was that a man has to spend a hell of a long time in prison for first-degree murder, and in that time a woman like Lea could get a long way away, or at least could if she had the sense to keep hold of some of the money she knew where to find. Another plus: by the time Ove was released, Knut Haguroyama would have grown up enough to protect them both. On the negative side was my own life. Which, considering the probable extent and quality of the time remaining to me, wasn’t worth much. Yep, even I could do the maths.
I closed my eyes. Felt the warmth of the blood running down my cheek and under my collar.
Waited.
Nothing happened.
‘You know I’ll do it,’ a voice said.
The grip round my head loosened.
I took two steps back. Opened my eyes again.
Ove had raised his hands and dropped the knife. Right in front of him stood Lea. I recognised the pistol she was holding, aimed at his forehead.
‘Get lost,’ she said.
Ove Eliassen’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. ‘Lea . . .’
‘Now!’
He leaned over to pick up the knife.
‘I think you’ve lost that,’ she snarled.
He held his palms up towards her and backed away into the darkness, empty-handed. We heard angry cursing, bottles being swigged from and branches rustling as they disappeared between the trees.
‘Here you are,’ Lea said, handing me the pistol. ‘It was on the bench.’
‘Must have slipped out,’ I said, and tucked it back under my waistband. I swallowed the blood from my cheek, felt my pulse hammer frantically in my temples, and noticed that I couldn’t hear much from one ear.
‘I saw you take it out before you stood up, Ulf.’ She closed one eye. The family habit. ‘That hole in your cheek needs sewing up. Come on, I’ve got a needle and thread in the car.’
I don’t remember much of the journey back. Well, I remember us driving down to the Alta river, where we sat on the bank while she washed my wounds and I listened to the sound of the water and gazed at the scree, which looked like sugar piled up against the steep, pale cliff faces on either side. And I remember thinking that I had seen more sky in these days and nights than I had done in my whole life before coming here.
She felt my nose gently and concluded that it wasn’t broken. Then she sewed my cheek while she talked to me in Sámi and sang something that was supposed to be a joik about getting better. Joik and the sound of the river. And I remember that I felt a bit sick, but that she waved the midges away and stroked my brow more than was strictly necessary to keep my hair away from the wound. When I asked why she had needle, thread and antiseptic in the car, and if her family was particularly prone to accidents when they were out, she shook her head.
‘Not when we’re out, no. A domestic accident.’
‘A domestic accident?’
‘Yes. Called Hugo. Used to fight and was full of drink. The only thing to do was flee the house and patch up any injuries.’
‘You used to sew yourself?’
‘And Knut.’
‘He hit Knut?’
‘Where do you think he got those stitches on his forehead?’
‘You sewed him back together? Here in the car?’
‘It was earlier in the summer. Hugo was drunk, and it was the usual thing. He said I was looking at him with that reproachful look in my eyes, and that he wouldn’t have touched me that night if only I’d had the sense to show him a bit of respect and not just ignored him. After all, I was only a girl at the time, and he was an Eliassen who had just come home from sea with a huge catch. I didn’t reply, but even so he got even angrier and eventually stood up to fight. I knew how to defend myself, but at that moment Knut came in. So Hugo picked up the bottle and struck out. Hit Knut on the forehead and he collapsed in a heap, so I carried him out to the car. When I got back home Hugo had calmed down. But Knut was in bed for a week, all dizzy and nauseous. A doctor came all the way from Alta to look at him. Hugo told the doctor and everyone else that Knut had fallen down the stairs. And I . . . I didn’t say anything to anyone, and I kept telling Knut that it was sure to be a one-off.’
I had misunderstood. Misunderstood when Knut said his mum had told him he didn’t have to worry about his dad.
‘No one knew anything,’ she said. ‘Until one evening when the usual gang of drinkers was round at Ove’s and someone asked what really happened, and Hugo told them all about his disrespectful wife and brat, and how he’d put them in their place. So the whole village knew. And then Hugo went off to sea.’
‘So that was what the preacher meant when he said Hugo had tried to run away from deeds he hadn’t atoned for?’
‘That, and everything else,’ she said. ‘Your temple’s bleeding.’
She took off her red silk scarf and tied it round my head.
I don’t remember anything after that for quite some time. When I came to, I was curled up on the back seat of the car, and she was telling me we’d arrived. I’d probably got a bit of concussion, she said, that was why I was so sleepy. She said it would be best if she accompanied me back to the cabin.
I walked off ahead of her and sat down on a rock when I was out of sight of the village. The light and stillness. Like the moment just before a storm. Or after a storm, a storm that had wiped out all life. Patches of mist were creeping down the green sides of the hills, like spirits in white sheets, swallowing up the small, stunted mountain birches, and as they reappeared from the mist they looked bewitched.
Then she came. Swaying, sort of, also bewitched.
‘Out for a walk?’ she asked with a smile. ‘Perhaps we’re going the same way?’
Secret hiding.
My ear had started to whistle and peep, and I felt giddy, so Lea held onto me just to be on the safe side. The walk went remarkably quickly, possibly because I seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness. Once I was finally back in the cabin I had a strange feeling of having come home, an inbuilt security and peace that I’d never felt in any of the far too many places I had lived in Oslo.
‘You can sleep now,’ she said, feeling my forehead. ‘Take things easy tomorrow. And don’t drink anything except water. Promise?’
‘Where are you going?’ I asked when she moved from the edge of the bed.
‘Home, of course.’
‘Are you in a hurry? Knut’s with his grandpa.’
‘Well, not too much of a hurry. I just think you ought to lie completely quiet and not talk or worry.’
‘I agree. But can’t you lie here quietly with me? Just for a little while.’
I shut my eyes. Heard her calm breathing. Imagined I could hear her weighing things up.
‘I’m not dangerous,’ I said. ‘I’m not a Pentecostalist.’
She laughed softly. ‘Just a little while, then.’
I moved closer to the wall, and she squeezed in beside me on the narrow bunk.
‘I’ll go when you fall asleep,’ she said. ‘Knut will be home early.’
I lay there, feeling myself half out of it and yet absolutely present, as my senses took in everything: the heat and pulse of her body, the scent filtering out of the neckline of her blouse, the s
mell of soap from her hair, the hand and arm she had placed between us so our bodies weren’t in direct contact.
When I woke up I had a feeling that it was night. Something to do with the stillness. Even when the midnight sun was at its zenith, it was as if nature was resting, as if its heartbeat had slowed down. Lea’s face had slipped into the crook of my neck; I could feel her nose and her even breathing against my skin. I ought to wake her, tell her it was time to go if she wanted to make sure she was home when Knut got back. Of course I wanted her to be there, so he didn’t get worried. But I also wanted her to stay, at least for a few more seconds. So I didn’t move, just lay there and reflected. Feeling that I was alive. As if her body was giving mine life. There was a distant rumble. And I felt her eyelashes flutter against my skin and realised she was awake.
‘What was that?’ she whispered.
‘Thunder,’ I said. ‘Nothing to worry about, it’s a long way away.’
‘There’s never any thunder here,’ she said. ‘It’s too cold.’
‘Maybe there’s warmer weather from the south.’
‘Maybe. I had such bad dreams.’
‘What about?’
‘That he’s on his way. That he’s coming to kill us.’
‘The man from Oslo? Or Ove?’
‘I don’t know. It slipped away from me.’
We lay there listening for more thunder. None came.
‘Ulf?’
‘Yes?’
‘Have you ever been to Stockholm?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it nice?’
‘It’s very nice in summer.’
She raised herself up on one arm and looked down at me. ‘Jon,’ she said. ‘Leo.’
I nodded. ‘Did the man from Oslo say that too?’
She shook her head. ‘I saw the tag on your necklace while you were sleeping. “Jon Hansen, born 24 July”. I’m Libra. You’re fire and I’m air.’
‘I’m going to burn and you’re going to heaven.’