In the Darkness

by Karin Fossum

  Maja returned. She placed the tray on the table and pushed the plate across to Eva. A Danish pastry and a slice of cake covered in icing.

  ‘I can’t eat all that,’ she complained.

  ‘Then you’ll have to make a special effort,’ said Maja emphatically. ‘It’s only a matter of training. The more you eat, the bigger your stomach gets and the more food it needs to fill it. It only takes a couple of days. You’re not twenty any more, you know, and it pays to put on a bit of weight when you’re pushing forty. Oh God, we’ll soon be forty!’

  She stuck the fork into her cake so that the cream filling bulged out at the sides. Eva stared at her, watching how Maja took control, so that she herself could rest and relax and merely do as she was told. Just like when they were girls. At the same time she noticed her fingers with all their gold rings, and the bracelets that jingled round her wrists. She looked well-heeled.

  ‘I’ve lived here for eighteen months,’ said Maja. ‘It’s crazy we haven’t bumped into each other before!’

  ‘I’m hardly ever in town. Haven’t much business here. I live at Engelstad.’

  ‘Married?’ asked Maja cautiously.

  ‘Was. I’ve got a small girl, Emma. She’s not actually all that small. She’s at her father’s at the moment.’

  ‘So, a single mother with a child, then.’

  Maja was trying to make sense of things. Eva felt herself dwindling. When she said it like that it sounded so pathetic. And the hard times probably showed. She bought her clothes at charity shops, whereas Maja was really quite smart. Leather jacket and boots and Levi’s. Clothes like that cost a small fortune.

  ‘Haven’t you got any children?’ Eva asked, holding a hand beneath her Danish pastry as it was shedding so many crumbs.

  ‘No. What would I want one of them for?’

  ‘They’ll look after you when you’re old,’ Eva said simply, ‘and be your comfort and joy when you’re nearing your end.’

  ‘Eva Marie, isn’t that just like you. Deep into old age already. Well, you don’t say, is that why people have kids?’

  Eva had to laugh. She felt like a girl again, transported to the time when they were together every single day, every single free moment, for that was how it had been. Apart from the summer holidays, when she was sent to her uncle’s in the country. Those holidays had been unbearable, she thought, unbearable without Maja.

  ‘You’ll regret it one day. Just wait.’

  ‘I never regret things.’

  ‘No, you probably don’t. I regret almost everything in life.’

  ‘You’ve got to stop doing that, Eva Marie. It’s bad for your health.’

  ‘But I don’t regret Emma, though.’

  ‘No, I suppose people don’t regret their kids, do they. Why aren’t you married any more?’

  ‘He found someone else and left.’

  Maja shook her head. ‘And if I know you, you even helped him pack, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes I did, actually. He’s so impractical. Anyway, it was better than sitting doing nothing and watching all that furniture disappear.’

  ‘I’d have gone over to a girlfriend’s and cracked open a bottle.’

  ‘I haven’t got any girlfriends.’

  They ate cake in silence. Now and then they shook their heads gently, as if they still couldn’t believe that fate had really brought them together again. They had so much to talk about they didn’t know where to begin. In her mind, Eva was still sitting on those cold stone steps staring at the green lorry.

  ‘You never answered my letters,’ said Maja suddenly. She sounded indignant.

  ‘No. My father went on at me about writing, but I refused. I was bitter and cross about having to leave. I probably wanted to pay him back.’

  ‘I was the one who suffered.’

  ‘Yes, I’m a bit clumsy like that. D’you still smoke?’ She rummaged in her bag for cigarettes.

  ‘Like a chimney. But not those factory sweepings of yours.’

  Maja took a pouch of tobacco from her jacket pocket and began rolling. ‘What d’you do for a living?’

  The despair showed on her cheeks. It was an innocent question, but she hated it. She was suddenly tempted to tell a white lie, but it was difficult to fool Maja. She’d never managed to before.

  ‘I’ve often asked myself the same question. Nothing very lucrative, is one way of putting it. I paint.’

  Maja raised her eyebrows.

  ‘So you’re an artist?’

  ‘Yes, yes I am, even though most people wouldn’t agree with me. What I mean is, I don’t sell a lot, but I regard that as a passing phase. Otherwise I’d probably have given up.’

  ‘But don’t you work at all?’

  ‘Work?’ Eva looked at her open-mouthed. ‘D’you think pictures paint themselves or something? Of course I work! And it’s not exactly an eight-hour day, either, I can tell you. Work follows me to bed at night. You never get any peace. You want to get up and start making alterations all the time.’

  Maja smiled wryly. ‘Forgive my silly question. I just wondered if you had a little job on the side, with a regular wage.’

  ‘Then I wouldn’t have time to paint,’ Eva said sullenly.

  ‘No, I can see that. It probably takes a fair time, painting a picture.’

  ‘About six months.’

  ‘What? Are they that big?’

  Eva sighed and lit her cigarette. Maja had blood-red nail varnish and well-manicured hands, her own were a sorry sight. ‘People don’t understand how difficult it is,’ she said despairingly. ‘They think it just goes on to the canvas ready-formed from some secret muse.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ Maja said softly. ‘It just amazes me that people choose a life like that if it’s so difficult. And when you’ve got a child and everything.’

  ‘I didn’t choose it.’

  ‘Surely you did?’

  ‘No, not really. You become an artist because you have to. Because there aren’t any alternatives.’

  ‘I don’t understand that either. Hasn’t everyone got alternatives?’

  Eva gave up trying to explain. She’d eaten both cakes just to please Maja, and now she was feeling queasy. ‘Tell me what you do instead. Whatever it is, you earn more than me.’

  Maja lit her roll-up. ‘I almost certainly do. I’m self-employed just like you. I run a small one-woman firm. I work hard and single-mindedly to save up some money, and I’m actually contemplating hanging up my hat in the New Year. Then I’ll head off to northern France and open a small hotel. Perhaps in Normandy. It’s an old dream of mine.’

  ‘Wow!’ Eva smoked and waited for more.

  ‘It’s hard work and it needs quite a lot of self-discipline, but it’s worth it. It’s simply a means to an end, and I won’t give up until I’ve got what I want.’

  ‘No, I can well believe that.’

  ‘If you were a different type of person, Eva, I’d have offered you a partnership.’ She leant across the table. ‘No capital. Full training. And you’d have made a fortune in record time. You really would. Then you could have saved for your own small gallery. You would have been able to do that in, let’s say a couple of years. Every other route is just the long way round, if you ask me.’

  ‘But – what exactly do you do?’ Eva stared in wonder at her friend.

  Maja had folded her napkin into a hard lump while she talked, now she looked right at Eva. ‘Let’s call it customer service of a sort. People ring and make an appointment, and I receive them. There are so many needs out there, you know, and this niche in the market is really deep. About as deep as the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, I should think. But in plain terms I’m a call girl. Or, if you prefer, a good, old-fashioned whore.’

  Eva turned bright red. She must have misheard. Or was Maja simply teasing her, she’d always been a terrible tease. ‘What?’

  Maja gave a sardonic smile and flicked the ash off her roll-up.

  And Eva couldn’t help
staring, she looked with quite different eyes now at the gold jewellery, the costly clothes, the wristwatch and the wallet that bulged opulently on the table by the side of her coffee cup. And up at her face again, as if she were seeing it for the first time.

  ‘You’ve always been easy to shock,’ said Maja dryly.

  ‘Yes, it’s true, you’ll have to forgive me, but you did rather catch me off guard.’ She tried to compose herself. The conversation was moving towards an unknown hinterland, and she was trying to get her bearings. ‘Well, you don’t exactly walk the streets do you, I mean, you don’t look like it.’ She felt inept.

  ‘No, Eva Marie, I don’t. I’m not on drugs, either. I work hard, like other people. Apart from the fact I don’t pay income tax.’

  ‘Have you – do many people know about it?’

  ‘Only my clients, and there are lots of them. But most are regulars. It’s really pretty good, the jungle telegraph does its work and business flourishes. I’m not bursting with pride, but I’m not ashamed either.’ She stopped for a moment. ‘Well, what do you think, Eva,’ she said, pulling at her cigarette, ‘do you think I should be ashamed?’

  Eva shook her head. But the mere thought, the first dim flickering pictures that came when she thought of Maja and her occupation, or when she thought of herself in the same situation, made her stomach turn.

  ‘No, goodness, I don’t know. It’s just so – unexpected. I can’t see why you need to.’

  ‘I don’t need to. I’ve chosen to.’

  ‘But how can you choose something like that?’

  ‘It was simple. Loads of money as fast as possible. Tax free.’

  ‘Well, but your health! I mean, what does it do to your self-respect? When you go giving yourself away to just anyone?’

  ‘I don’t give anything away at all, I sell it. In any case, we all have to make a distinction between professional and private life, and I don’t find that at all difficult.’ She smiled, and Eva saw that her dimples had got deeper with the years.

  ‘But what would a man say if he found out about it?’

  ‘He’d have to accept it or walk away,’ she said curtly.

  ‘But isn’t it a heavy burden to carry year after year? Surely, there must be lots of people you can’t tell?’

  ‘Haven’t you got secrets? Everyone has. This is so like you, isn’t it,’ she added, ‘you make everything so difficult, you ask too many questions. I’d like a little bed-and-breakfast place, on the coast if possible, maybe Normandy. An old house preferably, one I could do up myself. I need a couple of million kroner. By New Year I’ll have it, and then I’m off.’

  ‘A couple of million?’ Eva felt quite weak.

  ‘And besides, I’ve learnt a lot.’

  ‘What can you learn from that?’

  ‘Oh, lots of things. If you only knew. Much more than you learn when you’re painting, I’ll bet. And if you do learn anything, it’ll probably only be about yourself. I think being a painter’s a bit egoistic. You’re really exploring yourself. Instead of the people round you.’

  ‘You sound just like my father.’

  ‘How’s he keeping?’

  ‘Not all that well. He’s on his own now.’

  ‘Oh? I didn’t know. What happened to your mother?’

  ‘I’ll tell you about it another time.’

  They fell silent a while and let their thoughts roam. To a stranger they didn’t seem to belong together at all, it needed a sharp eye to perceive the bonds that existed.

  ‘In work terms we’re both outsiders,’ Maja said, ‘but at least I’m making money, and that’s why we work after all, isn’t it? If I didn’t have enough for a slice of cake in a café I couldn’t survive. I mean, what does it do to your self-respect?’

  Eva had to smile at her own line being thrown back at her. ‘It makes me feel lousy,’ she said suddenly. She couldn’t be bothered to pretend any more. ‘I’ve got 140 kroner in my wallet and unpaid bills amounting to ten thousand in the drawer at home. They’re cutting off the phone today, and I haven’t paid the house insurance. But I’m expecting some money, any day now. I get a grant,’ she said proudly, ‘from the Arts Council.’

  ‘So you’re on handouts?’

  ‘No! Good God, of course I’m not!’ Eva’s composure evaporated. ‘It’s money I get because my work is considered to be important and promising! It gives me the chance to carry on and develop so that sooner or later I’ll be able to stand on my own artistic legs!’

  That hit home.

  ‘Sorry,’ Maja said lamely. ‘I’m just not very familiar with the terminology here. So really it’s something positive, this grant?’

  ‘Of course! It’s what everyone hopes for.’

  ‘Well, I don’t get a state subsidy.’

  ‘That would look good,’ said Eva grinning.

  ‘I’ll get some more coffee.’

  Eva fished out another cigarette and followed the full figure with her eyes. She couldn’t take in the fact that Maja had done this. The Maja she thought she knew so well. But earning a couple of million, that wasn’t exactly peanuts – could it really be true? Was it that easy? She thought of all the things she could do with two million. She could pay all her debts. Buy a small gallery. No, two million couldn’t be right, she was probably laying it on a bit thick. But she didn’t usually tell tall stories. They never used to lie to each other.

  ‘There you are! I hope your coffee won’t go down the wrong way, now that you know where the money’s coming from.’

  Eva had to laugh. ‘No, it tastes just as good,’ she said smiling.

  ‘That’s just what I thought. It’s strange isn’t it, Eva? To put the whole thing in a nutshell: we’re driven on by the things we need, the things we want. And when we achieve our aims we’re satisfied for a short while, and then we set ourselves new objectives. At least, I do. And in that way I feel I’m alive, that something’s happening and that I’m getting on. I mean, how long have you been stuck in the same rut? Artistically and financially?’

  ‘Ah, quite a long time. At least ten years.’

  ‘And you’re not getting any younger. I don’t think that sounds too good. What is it you paint? Landscapes?’

  Eva drank some coffee and prepared herself for a long defence. ‘Abstracts. And I paint in black and white, and the shades in between.’

  Maja nodded patiently.

  ‘I’ve got a special technique that I’ve developed over the years,’ Eva said. ‘I stretch a canvas of the size I want, paint it with a white foundation, and add a coat of light grey, quite a thick coat, and when it’s dry I continue with a darker grey. And when that’s dry, I add an even darker layer, and I go on like this until I end up with pure black. Then I let it dry. Really thoroughly. Eventually, I’m standing in front of a large, black surface, and now I have to delve into it to bring out the light.’

  Maja was listening with a polite expression.

  ‘Then I get to work,’ Eva went on, and now her enthusiasm began to show, it was so rare for anyone to sit and listen like this, it was glorious, she had to make the most of it. ‘I scrape out the picture. I work with an old-fashioned paint-scraper, and with a steel brush, or possibly with sandpaper or a knife. When I scrape gently I find shades of grey, and if I scrape hard, I get right down to the white and bring out a lot of light.’

  ‘But what’s it supposed to represent?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if I can answer that. The viewer must decide what they see. It kind of forms by itself. It’s simply light and shadow, light and shadow. I like them, I think they’re good. I know I’m a great artist,’ she said defiantly.

  ‘Well, that certainly wasn’t particularly modest.’

  ‘No. It was “the productive egoist’s essential brutality”. As Charles Morice called it.’

  ‘I’m not quite with you. It all sounds very exciting, but it’s not much good if no one wants to buy them.’

  ‘I can’t paint the pictures people want,’ Eva said
despairingly. ‘I have to paint the pictures I want. Otherwise it wouldn’t be art. It would just be doing things to order. Illustrations that people wanted to hang over their sofas.’

  ‘I’ve got some pictures in my flat,’ Maja said with a smile, ‘I’d love to know what you think of them.’

  ‘Hmm. If I know you, they’ll be pretty, colourful paintings of birds and flowers and things.’

  ‘They are. Should I be embarrassed about them, d’you think?’

  ‘Maybe, especially if you paid a lot for them.’

  ‘I did.’

  Eva chuckled.

  ‘I thought artists used paintbrushes,’ Maja said suddenly. ‘Don’t you ever use a brush?’

  ‘Never. The way I do it, it’s all there ready when I begin to scrape. All the light, all the darkness. I just have to reveal it, seek it out. It’s thrilling, I never quite know what I’m going to find. I’ve tried painting with a brush, but it didn’t work, it was like an artificial extension of my arm, I couldn’t get close enough. Everyone finds their own technique, and I’ve found mine. And they don’t look like anyone else’s pictures. I’ve got to go on with it. Sooner or later I’ll break through with somebody. Some art dealer who’s excited by what I do and who’ll give me a chance. And lets me have a one-woman exhibition. I need a couple of good reviews in the papers and perhaps an interview, and then the ball will be rolling. I’m sure of it, I’m not going to give up. Not on your life!’

  Her own stubbornness grew as she talked, it made her feel good.

  ‘Can’t you work a bit, I mean, at an ordinary job, so that you’d get a regular income, and then paint in the evenings or something?’

  ‘Two jobs? And looking after Emma alone? I’m not someone with a vast amount of surplus energy, Maja.’

  ‘I’ve got two jobs. I have to put something on my tax return.’