by Helene Flood
Here’s what I remember of Massimo on that last night: that he had a surprising tattoo of a shark on his shoulder. That he was worried someone might come in, even though I’d locked the door. That we did it standing up, leaning against the wall; that it was a little uncomfortable because of the position but enjoyable enough. That I asked him to say something in Italian while we did it, and that this made him self-conscious – he didn’t know what to say, he said, but didn’t want to disappoint me either, and so he said, “Sara, bella,” and I regretted having insisted that he say something.
That best of all was afterwards, when we went back out to join the others but didn’t say anything to anyone, just smiled knowingly at one another for the rest of the evening.
Early in the morning, around seven o’clock or so, everyone took off their remaining clothes and jumped into the water. I saw Massimo’s shark tattoo for the second time. The water was freezing cold and I ducked my head below the surface. Back on land I dried myself on some old stage curtains. Then I got dressed, gave Massimo a hug that was too long and encouraging, wrote a made-up tele-phone number on a scrap of paper when he asked for mine, and then walked back to the station with Ronja.
“What happened with the Italian guy?” she asked me.
“Nothing,” I said.
I slept the entire train journey home.
Sigurd is out at the university when I get home. I stay up until I hear him come in, and then get ten minutes with him.
“Did you have a nice time?” he says between bites of a cheese sandwich, his eyes red and tired. “Tell me all about it.”
“Everything was great,” I say.
“Great,” he says, and his gaze loses focus.
It takes a week for the memories of Nattjazz to become as faded as all my other memories from Bergen – something that happened in another time, to a girl almost someone other than me, someone I know or have read about. Sigurd is hoping to hand in his thesis during the summer. Now he sometimes even sleeps at the university; creeps into the installation he’s working on with a sleeping bag and a pillow. Ronja is back in Madrid, and our e-mails to one another are light and superficial. At least I manage to hold back my tears until I’m at home in the apartment, for the most part. I apply for a couple of jobs, get my hair cut in a new style.
One day Sigurd is home when I let myself in. I’m not prepared for this, and when I hear his voice call out my name, I have to call his in return:
“Sigurd?”
As if I can’t believe that it’s him.
“I’m in the kitchen,” he says, and I go in without taking off my shoes.
He’s sitting at the kitchen table. In front of him is a postcard.
“What are you doing home at this time of day?”
“Who’s Massimo?” he says.
“Massimo?” I say, and it’s true that for a moment I’m not sure who he’s talking about. He throws the postcard at me.
Dear Sara, it says, Thank you for the wonderful time we spent together in Bergen, and especially for the last night. That was really special for me. I miss you a lot, and think about you. I wish I could visit you in Oslo, or you could come here to Milan. Please write back to me, or call at any time. Many kisses, your Massimo.
“Sigurd,” I say, and for the first time in many months it feels as if he actually sees me.
Tuesday, March 10: Breathe and start again
Gundersen hurries into my kitchen, a satisfied expression on his face. I’m sitting at the kitchen island and staring down into a half-drunk cup of coffee. There really is something compelling about this man, I think. When he’s satisfied with something, as he obviously is now, he’s pure energy. I feel small and frayed. I’ve spent half the night locked in my office, nodding off every now and then with my back against the carpet, the steak knife within reach. There’s nothing in particular I want to do.
Without a word he slaps a slim sheaf of papers on the table. I look at it – the pages lie there, printed side down, important-looking.
“Do you know what I have here, Sara?”
“No,” I say.
“Three signed consent forms granting permission to access the patient records of – let’s see – Trygve, Vera and Christoffer.”
He holds them out to me, and as I summon the energy to lift my hand to take the sheets of paper they simply hang there, imperative, from his hand. Sad proof of what the powers that be can achieve when busy. So I take them, see the childish signatures in blue pen, but the letters swim before my eyes. I can’t be bothered to read them, but I can’t be bothered to protest, either. It’s all the same to me.
“All in order,” Gundersen says. “I gather you don’t have any other grounds on which you’d like to protest?”
“No,” I say lamely, and we head out to my office.
I let us in. My duvet is rolled up and set against one wall.
“So, I heard someone paid you a visit last night?” Gundersen says.
“Yes,” I say, and to my surprise he says nothing more about it. “There’s the filing cabinet,” I say and point, but he bats away my words. He has all the time in the world now he has the paperwork in order.
Instead, he goes across to the two armchairs by the window.
“So this is where the magic happens?”
“This is where I treat my patients, yes,” I say.
“I’ve never been to a psychologist,” he says. “I considered it once. Just after I got divorced. I don’t know. I’ve always wondered what it’s like.”
“There’s nothing magic about it,” I say. “It’s hard work.”
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, maybe.”
We stand beside one another.
“Which chair do you sit in?” he says, and even in my deep indifference this amuses me, just the tiniest bit. So now he’s asking.
“I let my patients choose,” I say.
“I see,” he says, and nods, “but which one do you prefer?”
“The right.”
Gundersen sits down in the chair on the left, and with a commanding gesture of his hand he says:
“Sit down for a moment, Sara.”
“Aren’t you going to go through my archive?”
“We have time,” he says.
So there we sit.
“How do you start a session?” Gundersen says. “If that’s not a professional secret.”
“It depends,” I say. “But as a general rule I provide a bit of practical information, and then I ask the patient why he or she is here.”
“And what do they answer?”
“They generally tell me what they’re struggling with.”
He nods.
“Perhaps our jobs aren’t so very different,” he says, but he doesn’t look at me. It’s almost as if he’s pondering this only for himself.
I say nothing. He passes a hand across his chin. He must be forty-something. The decades of smoking have clearly been rough with him, but he’s still a good-looking man. If he got rid of the moustache and worn-out parka, you might even be able to call him attractive. Sitting here like this there’s something disarming about him, as if we could just sit here and chat for a while – as if I could ask him, “How do you usually start a conversation with an informant?” and we could contemplate our professions’ similarities and differences. I wonder how much of this is calculated, a means of creating the desired mood, and how much of it – if any – is genuine.
“Do you have any patients who hate you?” he says then.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” he says, stretching his arms. “You’ve practised for what, four, five years?”
“Three.”
“And during that time, have any of your patients threatened you?”
“I’ve worked with psychotic drug abusers,” I say. “What do you think?”
He laughs amiably.
“I get it,” he says. “But is there anyone who stands out?”
I sigh; shrug.
“Of course they were aggressive, but I don’t think any of them hated me, personally. I got the impression it was more the system they hated.”
“Well,” Gundersen says, “the system might be enough. Just give it some thought. Whether there’s anything at all you can think of.”
I close my eyes, think of a couple of the episodes in which I was spat on. Angry, desperate adolescents in withdrawal or terrified by psychosis. Of the outpatient clinic for children and young people – eight year olds who wet the bed and teenagers who refused to go to school and who cut their arms, but little animosity. And then my private practice. I give it some reflection. Trygve.
Haven’t I always thought that there’s something malicious in him? Not towards me personally, perhaps, but towards what I represent for him – coercion. He’s forced to come here weekly and confess, and finds it degrading. Every now and again, as on Friday, rage rips through his face. He once told me that gamers have all the power: “We could make your life a living hell and you wouldn’t even know what hit you,” he said. He’ll never stop coming to treatment because it’s a condition of his being allowed to live with his parents, but he loathes coming here. If something were to happen that made me unable to work with him – to work at all – would that not serve Trygve’s purpose?
But I’m not going to tell any of this to Gundersen. First, it seems far-fetched. If Trygve really wanted to get rid of me, and if he was able to use such extreme means as murder – which is quite an assertion – why would he kill Sigurd? Why not just do away with me directly? Not to mention all the other things: why Krokskogen, what does Sigurd’s lie have to do with it, and who was in my house in the middle of the night? The second reason not to mention this to Gundersen is how Trygve would be treated. I can just see Gundersen hurrying into the kitchen of Trygve’s confused parents, the way he hurried into mine twenty minutes ago, and saying, “Now listen here, Trygve’s psychologist believes he may have killed her husband.” It would be impossible to reconstruct anything with the family after that. And although, if I’m being honest, it wouldn’t be any skin off my nose not to have to deal with the weekly sessions with Trygve, I’m worried about where it would leave him – and his parents – in terms of trust in the system. Not to mention how I would feel having to see the disappointment in the eyes of these parents who are trying so hard. All this because Trygve, of all my patients, is the only one I feel expresses any form of hatred, and because of the unlikely possibility that he may therefore have shot Sigurd in the back.
“No,” I say, “I can’t think of anyone.”
Gundersen nods.
“Let me know if that changes,” he says, then thinks about this for a moment. “O.K., then. Good. Practising for several years, no animosity.”
I give him a brief smile.
“So then, what about the other way around?” he says. “Is there anyone who has shown, how should I put this, an excessive interest in you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, have any of your patients developed a crush on you?”
I frown.
“That’s probably much more common in films than in Norwegian private practice,” I say, adding, “at least, if you work with children and young people.”
“Well,” Gundersen says, stretching out his long legs, “no stone must be left unturned.”
I nod in agreement at this, but consider the tips of his trainers as I think, is that really the direction they’re taking? Nobody had reason to want to take Sigurd’s life, so they reach for the most far-fetched possibilities – that one of my patients may be harbouring a burning hatred or passion?
“There’s one more thing I have to ask you, Sara,” Gundersen says, as if prompted.
He hesitates for a moment, then looks at me with steady eyes.
“Were you and Sigurd having any difficulties in your relationship?”
This is surely the most obvious of questions. I understand. Gundersen’s amicable tone has been deployed, with care, for this purpose.
“No,” I say. “The usual marital disagreements, but nothing beyond that. We’ve had a good marriage.”
“What were the disagreements about?”
I sigh, feeling the weight of this question. To have to bring up the most trivial of disagreements with the man I love, just days after he’s gone. To have these disagreements subjected to critical assessment – we’re talking about motive here – to have each and every stupid act committed by either him or me blown up to billboard size, rendered suspect. It is, of course, necessary. But it’s so uncomfortable, so shameful.
“We’re renovating a house together,” I say, “as you’ve seen. Sigurd was the project manager, I was the foot soldier. I was impatient, thought it was taking him too long to get anything finished; he thought my private practice wasn’t lucrative enough, that I didn’t have enough patients, that my turnover was too low. Things like that.”
Gundersen nods, thoughtful.
“Who owns the house?”
“We do, together. I mean, it’s my mother-in-law’s childhood home. When her father died, she gave the house to Sigurd. Sigurd’s brother took over the family cabin and will inherit the house at Røa when the time comes, so we got this.”
“And now it’s yours,” Gundersen says quietly, to the toes of his shoes.
“Yes,” I say, remembering the conversation with Annika yesterday, “I assume so. But, I mean, won’t Margrethe inherit some of Sigurd’s share?”
“Your mother-in-law? Well. A small portion, maybe. But she can’t throw you out of the house.”
“Regardless,” I say, “it’s Margrethe’s childhood home. It was she who inherited it; she gave it to us so we could have a house.”
“That was kind of her,” Gundersen says. “What are the houses around here going for these days? A detached property like this one? Ten million? Fifteen?”
It squeezes my chest, the stress of being pressured. One thing I learned from working with young psychotic patients was this: to take note of my own reactions. In therapy this is known as countertransference – a good therapist can make use of it in treatment. If a patient makes you feel angry or upset or dejected, this tells you something about what’s going on within the patient; what others close to him or her feel. Used with consideration, it can give the patient insight into their own behaviour, their mental defences. Under all circumstances it’s important to be clear about countertransference, “what the patient awakens in you”, as one of my tutors once said. Gundersen is insinuating something uncomfortable. He’s awakening a need to defend myself, but it isn’t like that, I wasn’t interested in the house other than that I wanted to live here with Sigurd. I mean, good God, this hovel has caused me enough problems.
Breathe. And start again. This is also something I learned when working with young people struggling with psychosis. I inhale, take a deep breath, in and out. I am calm. I can handle this. I can interpret it, and hand it back.
“Gundersen,” I say to him, “I’m getting the impression that you’re trying to tell me something. Can you not just say whatever it is you mean?”
But Gundersen is no patient, and this is not a session to work on his behaviour and defences.
“You’ve benefited greatly – financially – from your marriage to Sigurd,” he says. He doesn’t look away, and nor do I.
“I’ve lost an infinite amount these last few days,” I say. “You think I wouldn’t give up this house – this nightmare of a building project – in an instant, if it would give me Sigurd back?”
Gundersen shrugs.
“I’m just making an observation,” he says.
“You think I would have killed Sigurd for the house?”
“People have killed their spouses for less.”
“Well,” I say, “I loved Sigurd. I would never have murdered him, not for anything in the world. I could never kill anyone. But I assume my telling you this doesn’t help at all.”
He shrugs again.
“O.K.,” he says. “Finances and the house. Was there anything else you fought about?”
For a fraction of a second I think about the child we had planned to have when we lived in Torshov, how we stopped trying when we moved up here. We talked about it only once, and then it was never mentioned between us again. It wasn’t an argument. But it was something I wondered about.
“No,” I say.
Gundersen leans forward.
“Were you thinking about something just then, Sara? Just say it. I’ve been married – I know how it is.”
“No,” I say. “We rarely argued.”
“I see,” he says, looking around my office, up one wall and then down the other. “But there’s something else I was wondering about. As I understand it, there was a third person in the picture at one point. On your part. A little breach of the agreement, as it were. A few years ago.”