by Pia Juul
Soft, dark.
I mustn’t make the taste sound luscious. I was frightened, really frightened. I have tried to come to terms with my physical self since I was born, just as I assume everyone else has with greater or lesser success. Anyway, you get to know your physical self and every now and then even gain a fleeting sense of pleasure from some part of your body. I had had my ups and downs. But this feeling was new. Perhaps I had never been frightened before. Of course I had felt fear when Halland was lying there. But then I didn’t think anything much because I didn’t know what was happening. Now my body expressed what I felt and I had no say in the matter. A paranoid itch between the shoulder blades on a bathing jetty was nothing compared to this. I fainted. Or rather, I had a blackout; I think that’s what they would call it. A second or two, perhaps, maybe more. I slumped against the man in the aisle seat. He nudged me; his moustache nearly touched my face. ‘I want to get out,’ I said.
‘They won’t let you.’
‘I want to get out. I really must make that call. It’s urgent.’
‘You’ve got claustrophobia. I’m having trouble breathing myself.’
‘I want to get out!’ Sitting up, I swivelled my head gingerly, then tried to stand up. The man remained seated. As I stepped over his legs, I straddled him for a moment before he grabbed me. ‘Let go!’ I said. Everyone stared. I wanted to sit down again and be quiet and ordinary, but too late.
Suddenly we jerked into motion. I banged my chin against the man’s head. His breath smelt of eggs. I found my feet, then lost my balance and fell towards the aisle. My phone chimed again as the floor reared up. I stayed on the floor and opened the message. It was from Halland: Where are you? I rang his number, still on the floor, breathing heavily. The phone rang. I imagined him in the car, perhaps in the narrow bed with Pernille, staring up at the poster of Martin Guerre that hung like an altarpiece above his head, in the living room at home, at the window with his binoculars. No answer.
29
‘…but I cannot credit it until I see it with my own eyes.’
ARABIAN NIGHTS
Funder told me to stay calm and think things through. He wasn’t as shocked as I. I regained control of my breathing and switched off the phone. I drove home from the station intent on my driving. I didn’t sing. I felt dead inside, as though swaddled in cotton wool. The rational part of me knew that I wasn’t dying, that Halland was dead and that whoever had sent me the text messages had not been Halland. The cotton-wool feeling changed into a burning sensation. With the heat I became weightless and short of breath. But I drove home fully focused, although I felt I occupied a no-man’s-land and didn’t really exist.
I have no idea how my brain works. Every few years I used to write a collection of stories. That was what I did. How they came about I no longer know. I read a lot and went for long walks. I was often on my own because Halland travelled a lot. Sometimes we went away together, though never when he was working. I lived mostly on his money, though I seldom gave such matters much thought. Not even now. I sat in the car on the square, feeling too heavy to get out and go into the house. Brandt’s house was dark and so was mine.
Finding my phone in my bag, I turned it on again, holding my breath. Nothing more from Halland. Six unanswered calls from the ever-alert detective, and one text: Don’t turn off your phone. Call us immediately if that number contacts you again. That number. Funder was so very correct. And tanned. I rang Brandt. No one picked up. His house was dark. Where was he? Where was the lodger? Abby was in England. Halland was in the churchyard. I turned off the phone, then took out of my bag the envelope of cash and the photocopy. I opened the car door, so that the automatic light inside the car came on. I peered at the story title, then at the first page. ‘Wondrous Derailment’. I remembered it now. The uncoupling. That was me.
‘Oh dear!’ I exclaimed.
Now I had said ‘Oh dear’ several times. It couldn’t go on. It wasn’t enough. I couldn’t just sit here. I had to do something. Buy a pet. Or sell up and move on. Yes, sell up and move on. No, buy a pet – a grey cat. But I couldn’t stand animals. And I was fond of the house, so why should I leave?
I just wanted to lie on the sofa and watch telly. Please don’t think I never watched television. Now things were back to normal and I could finally switch it on again. All I needed for happiness was a detective series. And there were lots to choose from. Simplicity was a virtue. First a murder, nothing too bestial. Then a police inspector. Insights into his or her personal problems, perhaps. Details about the victim. Puzzles and anomalies. Lines of investigation. Clues. Detours. Breakthrough. Case solved. Nothing like real life. I watched one thriller, then another. But as soon as the penny dropped, I lost interest. The puzzle attracted me – the solution left me cold. Nothing like real life. When only the loose ends were left to tie up, I usually went into the kitchen to fetch something to eat, or went to the loo. But when I got back, the police inspector had almost invariably realized, at the last minute, that the amicable individual in whom he had been confiding was in fact the villain. In the twinkling of an eye, someone found themselves in grave danger. Their rescue involved a few last-gasp killings before the villain was allowed to explain his sick, jealous mind or the abuse he had suffered as a child. Nothing like real life. The plot might have started off plausibly, but then all similarity disappeared. And another thing: this crime thriller appeared far better organized and far more real than my own life.
I decided to make a list to focus my thoughts. Perhaps we could all gather in the drawing room at the end, when the detective had worked it out. Leaning back on the sofa with a notepad on my knee, I chewed on a biro as the opening credits of the next detective thriller scrolled across the screen.
Halland (dead)
Shot
Deer
Peter Olsen (rifle)
Pernille (flat, redirected mail)
Stine (in the woods)
Brandt (missing)
I was none the wiser, unable even to organize those few points. On the back of the sheet of paper I wrote:
Laundry
Groceries
Dry cleaning
Go through
Letters
Room at P
As I settled myself more comfortably, my body remembered the morning when I had gone to sleep here not long before Halland was shot. With an unfamiliar sense of satisfaction I had imagined myself reading to him what I had written the previous night. I hadn’t shown him my work for a long time, although in earlier days I often read it out loud to him, sitting on the kitchen counter while he cooked. He took pleasure in this routine, I think; sometimes he laughed. Now, just when I had finally made a start on a new book, he had to die. I was angry. My anger was of course unwarranted, but far worse was my desire for revenge. Not towards the murderer – the gunman was too abstract to inspire feeling. Rather, I wanted to kill Halland myself. Was that because of his secrets or because his death was preventing me from finishing the book?
In my life I often thirsted for revenge, though I never managed to satisfy my thirst to the extent my grandfather once did. As an adult I came to suspect that he had stolen the tale from someone else, but as a child I couldn’t hear it enough. My grandfather was a difficult child and badly behaved at school. His teacher would beat him with a cane and with his bare hands. No one ever intervened; there was no law against caning. Years later, when my grandfather was twenty-three and had turned into a broad-shouldered bricklayer, he met his former teacher in the street. The teacher greeted him with enthusiasm – a detail that added significantly to the listener’s craving for retribution: the man was completely unaware of the wrongs he had committed! Like a fool, he invited my grandfather home for tea. There, to get his own back, my grandfather beat the living daylights out of him.
I wanted to hear the story over and over again. And yet I never had the courage to ask what the teacher looked like by the time Grandfather had finished with him. Was he bleeding? Lying crumpled on t
he floor? Sobbing? Were his bones broken? Did he die? None of that seemed relevant. The sense of retribution was the shocking element. I could picture the terror in the teacher’s eyes. But to whom was I to administer a beating now?
My gaze fell on the windowsill facing the garden. Halland’s binoculars stood on top of his bird book, a heavy, rather dog-eared volume. I knew that he annotated the pages, scribbled little symbols to indicate that he had observed this or that bird, as well as locations, dates and sometimes a commentary on song or behaviour. I had listened when he told me about a particular bird and followed his gestures when he pointed one out. In time, I learnt to spot a few raptors. I could tell the difference between a black-headed gull and a tern, and was familiar with winter plumage. I listened to him mainly at the beginning of our relationship. I retrieved the book and returned to the sofa. A piece of paper fell out from between the pages. Halland’s handwriting. Apus apus, it said. The common swift spends almost its entire life in flight. Food and nesting materials are collected on the wing. Drinking, bathing, even sleep too. Normally, a swift will interrupt flight only for the purpose of breeding. When young leave the nest they often remain airborne for three years until returning to breed. ME.
ME? What did that mean? I read the words out loud, thinking they sounded like poetry that might fill a person with both joy and sorrow. But Halland was no poet, and what he had written was merely fact. ME? ‘Oh, stop it!’ I burst out. ‘Just stop it, will you!’
30
‘Cleaning merely stirs up the dust. Leave well alone and the dust stays where it is.’
Edvard Munch, according to Rolf E. Stenersen
Monday. Good! Were we finally back to normal? You could argue I had been away on business in Jutland. I didn’t cope very well, but now I was getting there.
If normal weekday life had resumed, the washing needed attention. I filled the machine. I toyed with the idea of going for a walk, buying some groceries and then sitting down to write. Instead, I made some coffee and went upstairs. Martin Guerre was still rolled up in Halland’s study. I had put the redirected post on his desk. It had been preying on my mind. I tore open the envelopes and pulled out the contents. Placing the letters in a pile, I read them one by one, counted them, then went through them again. Reminders. All of them. One said our telephone was going to be cut off. I went downstairs, lifted the receiver and found that the line was dead. Did they have to do that now?
I knew everything about Halland. He was the love of my life. Did I hate him? As I pulled a jumper over my head and crossed the square, I felt that I did. I entered the bank on the high street and went straight through to the desks behind the counter, where Kirsten was sitting. She stood up to greet me and then, gently holding my elbow, ushered me into a room at the back.
‘Have you closed Halland’s account? That’s what happens, isn’t it, when people die? I have no money of my own. Why didn’t anyone tell me?’
One thing at a time. Kirsten poured me some coffee. Looking over at me, she said, ‘Now, tell me what’s the matter.’
‘Our phone’s been cut off!’
‘Things never happen that fast. What’s Halland’s ID number?’
I gave her his number. She stared at a computer screen, then looked back across the desk at me. ‘It seems that Halland cancelled his standing orders some time ago. Are they now supposed to come out of your account?’
‘That wouldn’t make any sense. I hardly use my account, there’s so little money in it.’ I gave Kirsten my own ID number.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘there’s 2,700 in your current account. And in your interest-bearing account…’
‘That’s to pay my taxes…’
‘Is there supposed to be more than half a million?’
‘How much?’
Nodding, she clicked on the mouse a few more times.
‘Where’s it all from?’
‘From Halland. He transferred a large sum about a month ago, 450,000 kroner. Were you not aware of that?’
Was I aware of that? I stood up and walked out past the cashiers onto the high street.
‘If that number should contact you again,’ Funder had written. I had been contacted. What a lot of money!
Back in my living room, I simply yelled, ‘What’s going on?’ Halland couldn’t possibly have known that he was going to die, and neither would he have wanted to die. He had battled to survive his illness. On the other hand, he had clearly developed some sort of scheme, something he had been close to achieving. He had moved his papers out of the house. He had transferred bags of money into my account. That must be illegal. What would I want with all that money? I needed to pay the bills, but what else? I could only think of one explanation. He wanted to leave me. But that made no sense. The house was his. Was there another woman? That lunatic in the woods? Pernille? I went to my desk, rummaged for the note with her number on it, then sat with the receiver to my ear before remembering that the line was dead.
Had I stopped to think, I would have taken the car. But I wasn’t thinking. Climbing on my bike, I cycled towards the woods through the wind and rain. Laburnum. Lilac. Drizzle. I needed the rhythm of words to penetrate the headwind. Whoever had planted that hedgerow with laburnum and lilac should’ve been given a medal, assuming they were still alive. Which was unlikely.
Stine was in. Sitting down on the bench at the side of her house to get my breath back, I realized that she played the piano better than most lunatics, if that was her playing inside. I listened for a bit. When the piece came to an end, I went round to the front door. Through the little round pane I saw a pair of feet. Was she standing on her head? I lifted my hand, ready to knock, but my nerves failed me. If Halland had been planning to move in with Stine, I didn’t want to know. I crept away from the door, grabbed my bike and walked slowly back along the path. The rain had stopped. I didn’t feel like going home. What were those birds sitting on the telephone line? Were they swallows? Were they swifts? No. They were perched in a row, not in the air. Was Halland a swift, living on the wing, never landing? I had no idea how to analyse poetry, only how to enjoy it. Specialist literature was a mystery to me too. I interpreted words at face value. Normally, a swift will interrupt flight only for the purpose of breeding. In my mind’s eye, I saw Halland dancing in the garden. ‘Come out, come out!’ he had called. Did I go to him?
When I arrived back in the square, Bjørn the caretaker was walking towards his car. He raised his hand in greeting. I raised mine, then waved to indicate that I wanted to speak to him. He came over. He looked embarrassed. I gripped the handlebars of my bike.
‘What exactly did you hear Halland say?’ I asked.
He took a deep breath and thought for a moment. ‘My wife has killed me.’
‘But he can’t have said that, surely? Are you quite certain?’
He furrowed his brow. ‘Yes. At least I think so.’
‘Is that what you told the police?’
‘As far as I remember.’
I felt annoyed. ‘That’s not the sort of thing you should say without being certain!’
‘Well, it’s a while ago now,’ he protested. ‘I’m fairly sure that’s what I told them.’
Shaking my head, I walked my bike towards the gate. ‘Do you fancy dinner at the Postgården?’ he called after me.
‘I always eat there on Mondays,’ Bjørn the caretaker said as we walked down the hill together. I never had supper at the Postgården. In fact, it was a long time since I had done anything as unremarkable as walking down the hill to the Postgården.
The dish of the day was a traditional fatty roast pork with potatoes and gravy. We waited in silence for the food to come. When it arrived, I fell on it. Eventually I looked up. The caretaker pointed at my plate and said, ‘You’ve eaten everything!’ He had removed the fat from his pork and left a large potato. ‘I was hungry,’ I replied, getting up to go to the loo. Was I going to throw up again? I had forgotten to check if there were any traces of my previous mishap on St
ine’s step. Cold sweat appeared on my forehead. I was back in the woods. How had I got there that night? What about my bike? Stine didn’t have a car. Didn’t I see a car? My editor once scribbled a note on the side of one of my manuscripts. Halland would tease me about it: Are there going to be any more flashbacks? I hardly knew what flashbacks were any more. My life was a continuous stream of flashbacks. Like now: I went to the ladies. I read the words on the toilet-paper dispenser: TORK. And immediately all the other times I had sat in a cubicle in the ladies’ loo recalling Thorkild Hansen’s French nickname, Mon Tork, came back to me. I had repeated the word to myself in many a public convenience. Flashbacks were all that was left.
When I returned to the table, Bjørn had gone. ‘He paid the bill,’ Betina said from across the room. ‘Would you like some coffee?’ Nodding, I sat down at my empty plate. I saw people at the harbour, near the side entrance of the old warehouse. The view reminded me of something I was supposed to remember but had forgotten. Had I killed Halland? Was that even plausible? Had he really said that I had? I hadn’t shot him, I knew that much. I couldn’t even hit a barn door that time I tried to apply for a hunting licence in my youth.
‘I didn’t have a chance to talk to him,’ I said when Betina put a cup of coffee in front of me.
‘It’s nice to see you getting out again,’ she said. ‘How are you?’
Why was she so friendly? I had come here a few times for coffee, but we had never exchanged more than two words. I almost told her I was fine, but I didn’t. Partly because it wasn’t true, partly because it would be the wrong thing to say. So all I did was shrug.
‘Well, it’s no wonder!’ she said.