by Jo Nesbo
I had instantly regretted saying that. What had I been thinking? That Down’s syndrome would make my not wanting to have a child with my own wife more understandable?
‘There is a great probability that your wife would have lost the child anyway,’ Lotte had said. ‘Down’s syndrome often goes hand in hand with a heart condition.’
Heart condition, I had thought, and inwardly thanked her for being a team player, for making things simple for me once again. For us. An hour later we had taken off all our clothes and I was celebrating a victory that for a person more accustomed to conquests certainly would have appeared cheap but which put me on cloud nine for days. Weeks. To be more precise, three and a half. I had a lover, nothing less. Whom I left after twenty-four days.
As I looked at her now, in front of me in the hall, it seemed quite unreal.
Hamsun wrote that we humans are soon sated with love. We don’t want anything that is served up in excessively large portions. Are we really so banal? Apparently. But that wasn’t what happened to me. What happened was that I was assailed by a bad conscience. Not because I couldn’t return Lotte’s love but because I loved Diana. It had been an ineluctable realisation, but the final blow came in something of a bizarre episode. It was late summer, the twenty-fourth day of sin, and we had gone to bed in Lotte’s cramped two-room flat in Eilert Sundts gate. Before that we had been talking all evening – or, to be more precise, I had been talking. Describing and explaining life the way I see it. I’m good at that, in a Paulo Coelho kind of way, that is, a way which fascinates the intellectually amenable of us and irritates the more demanding listener. Lotte’s melancholic brown eyes had hung on my lips, swallowed every word, I could literally see her stepping into my world of homespun fantasy, her brain assimilating my reasoning into hers, her falling in love with my mind. As for myself, I had long fallen in love with her love, the loyal eyes, the silence and the low, almost inaudible, moaning during lovemaking that was so different from the whine of Diana’s circular saw. Falling in love had put me in a state of constant wantonness for three and a half weeks. So when I finally stopped the monologue, we just looked at each other, I bent forward, placed my hand on her breast, a shiver ran through her or perhaps me – and we made a charge for the bedroom door and the 101-centimetre-wide IKEA bed with the inviting name of Brekke, or break. This evening the moaning had been louder than usual, and she had whispered something Danish in my ear that I didn’t understand, since from an objective standpoint Danish is a difficult language – Danish children learn to speak later than any other children in Europe – but nonetheless I found it uncommonly erotic and increased the tempo. Usually, Lotte had been somewhat against these increases in tempo, but on this evening she had grabbed my buttocks and pulled me into her, which I interpreted as a wish for a further step-up both in thrust and frequency. I obeyed while concentrating on my father in the open coffin during the funeral, a method that had proved to be effective in preventing premature ejaculation. Or, in this case, any ejaculation at all. Even though Lotte said she was on the pill, the thought of pregnancy gave me palpitations. I didn’t know whether Lotte reached an orgasm when we made love; her quiet, controlled manner suggested to me that an orgasm would only manifest itself as tiny ripples on the surface, which I might simply fail to notice. And she was much too delicate a creature for me to expose her to any stress by asking. That was why I was totally unprepared for what happened. I sensed I had to stop but allowed myself a final hard poke. And sensed that I had hit something deep inside. Her body stiffened as her eyes and mouth were thrust open wide. This was followed by some trembling and for one tiny insane moment I was afraid I had induced an epileptic fit. Then I felt something hot, even hotter than her vagina, enveloping my genitals, and then a tidal wave washed against my stomach, hips and balls.
I levered myself up with my arms and stared in disbelief and horror at the point where our bodies were conjoined. Her lower abdomen was contracting as if she wanted to eject me, she gave a deep groan, a kind of lowing I had never heard before, and then came the next wave. The water poured out of her, spurted out between our hips and ran down into the mattress that still had not succeeded in absorbing the first wave. My God, I thought. I have poked a hole in her. Panicking, my brain searched for causal connections. She’s pregnant, I thought. And I have just poked a hole in that bag containing the foetus, and now all of the crap is soaking into the bed. My God, we’re swimming in life and death, it’s a water child, another water child! Well, I might have read about women’s so-called wet orgasms, OK, I may have seen it in the odd porn film too, but I had considered it a trick, a sham, a male fantasy about having a partner with equal ejaculation rights. All I could think as I lay there was that this was the retribution, the gods’ punishment for my persuading Diana to have an abortion: for my killing another innocent child with my reckless prick.
I struggled onto the floor, pulling the duvet off the bed with me. Lotte gave a start, but I didn’t notice her huddled-up naked body, I just stared at the dark circle still spreading outwards on the sheet. Slowly I realised what had happened. Or, even more important, what by a happy chance had not happened. But the damage was done, it was too late, there was no way back.
‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘This cannot go on.’
‘What are you doing?’ Lotte, barely audible, whispered from her foetal position.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I said. ‘But I have to go home and beg Diana for forgiveness.’
‘You won’t get it though,’ Lotte whispered.
I didn’t hear a sound from the bedroom while rinsing the smell of her off my hands and mouth in the bathroom, and I left, closing the front door carefully behind me.
And now – three months later – I was standing in her hall again, and I knew that it was not Lotte but me who had puppy eyes this time.
‘Can you forgive me?’ I asked.
‘Couldn’t she?’ Lotte asked in a monotone. But perhaps it was just Danish intonation.
‘I never told her what happened.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s very likely that I have a heart condition.’
She sent me a long searching look. And I caught the suggestion of a smile at the back of those brown and much too melancholic eyes of hers.
‘Why are you here?’
‘Because I can’t forget you.’
‘Why are you here?’ she repeated with a firmness I had not heard before.
‘I just think we should—’
‘Why, Roger?’
I sighed. ‘I don’t owe her anything any more. She has a lover.’
A long silence ensued.
She jutted out her bottom lip a fraction. ‘Has she broken your heart?’
I nodded.
‘And now you want me to put it together for you again?’
I hadn’t heard this woman of few words express herself in such a light, effortless fashion before.
‘You can’t, Lotte.’
‘No, I suppose not. Do you know who her lover is?’
‘Just a guy who’s applied for a job with us he won’t get, let me put it like that. Can we talk about something else?’
‘Just talk?’
‘You decide.’
‘Yes, I will. Just talk. And that’s your department.’
‘Yep. I brought a bottle of wine.’
She gave an imperceptible nod of the head. Then she turned, and I followed.
I talked us through the wine and fell asleep on the sofa. When I awoke, I was lying with my head in her lap and she was stroking my hair.
‘Do you know what the first thing I noticed about you was?’ she asked when she spotted that I was awake again.
‘My hair,’ I said.
‘Have I told you before?’
‘No,’ I said, looking at my watch. Half past nine. It was time to go home. Well, the ruins of a home. I dreaded it.
‘May I come back?’ I asked.
I saw her he
sitate.
‘I need you,’ I said.
I knew this argument didn’t carry much weight. It was borrowed from a woman who chose QPR because the club had made her feel wanted. But it was the only argument I had.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’
Diana was sitting in the living room reading a large book when I went in. Van Morrison was singing ‘… someone like you makes it all worth while’, and she didn’t hear me until I was standing in front of her and reading the title on the front cover out loud.
‘A Child is Born?’
She gave a start, but brightened up and hurriedly put the book back on the shelf behind her.
‘You’re late, darling. Have you been doing something nice or just working?’
‘Both,’ I said, walking over to the living-room window. The garage was bathed in white moonlight, but Ove wasn’t due to collect the painting for several hours. ‘I’ve been answering a few phone calls and thinking a bit about which candidate to nominate for Pathfinder.’
She clapped her hands with enthusiasm. ‘So exciting. It’s going to be the one I helped you with, that … oh, what’s his name again?’
‘Greve.’
‘Clas Greve! I’m becoming so forgetful. I hope he buys a really expensive painting from me when he finds out. I deserve that, don’t I?’
She gave a bright laugh, stretched out her slim legs which had been tucked beneath her and yawned. It was like a claw tightening round my heart and squeezing it like a water balloon, and I had to turn quickly back to the window so that she wouldn’t see the pain in my face. The woman I had believed devoid of all deception was not only successfully maintaining the mask, she was playing the role like a professional. I swallowed and waited until I was sure I had my voice under control.
‘Greve is not the right person,’ I said, scrutinising her reflection in the window. ‘I’m going to select someone else.’
Semi-professional. She didn’t tackle this one quite so well. I saw her chin drop.
‘You’re joking, darling. He’s perfect! You said so yourself …’
‘I was mistaken.’
‘Mistaken?’ To my great satisfaction I could hear a low screech in her voice. ‘What in the name of God do you mean?’
‘Greve is a foreigner. He’s under one eighty. And he suffers from serious personality disorders.’
‘Under one eighty! My God, Roger, you’re under one seventy. You’re the one with the personality disorder!’
That hurt. Not the bit about the personality disorders, she might have been right about that, of course. I strained to keep my voice calm.
‘Why the passion, Diana? I had hopes for Clas Greve too, but people disappointing us and not living up to expectations is something that goes on all the time.’
‘But … but you’re wrong. Can’t you see that? He’s a real man!’
I turned to her with an attempt at a condescending smile. ‘Listen, Diana, I’m one of the best at what I do. And that is judging and selecting people. I may make mistakes in my private life …’
I saw a tiny twitch in her face.
‘But never in my work. Never.’
She was silent.
‘I’m exhausted,’ I said. ‘I didn’t sleep much last night. Goodnight.’
Lying in bed, I heard her footsteps above. Restless, to and fro. I didn’t hear any voices, but I knew she tended to pace the floor when she was on the phone. It struck me that this was a feature of the generations that had grown up without cordless communication, that we moved about while talking on the telephone as though still fascinated that it was possible. I had read somewhere that modern man spends six times as many hours communicating as our forefathers. So we communicate more, but do we communicate any better? Why, for example, had I not confronted Diana with the fact that I knew she and Greve had made love in his apartment? Was it because I knew she would not be able to communicate why, that I would be left to my own assumptions and conjecture? She might have told me it was a chance meeting, for example, a one-off, but I would have known it was not. No woman tries to manipulate her husband into giving a well-paid job to a man because she has had casual sex with him.
There were other reasons for keeping my mouth shut, though. For as long as I pretended not to know about Diana and Greve, no one could accuse me of being too partial to assess his application, and instead of having to leave Alfa’s appointment to Ferdinand, I could enjoy my pathetic little revenge in peace and quiet. Then there was the matter of explaining to Diana how I had come to have suspicions. After all, revealing to Diana that I was a thief and regularly broke into other people’s homes was out of the question.
I tossed and turned in bed, listening to her stiletto heels banging down their monotonous, incomprehensible Morse signals to me. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to dream. I wanted to escape. And wake up having forgotten everything. For that was of course the most important reason for not saying anything to her. As long as things remained unsaid, there was still a chance that we could forget. That we could sleep and dream in such a way that when we awoke it had disappeared, become something abstract, scenes from something that only took place in our heads, on the same level as those treacherous thoughts and fantasies that are the daily infidelity in every – even the most all-consuming – loving relationship.
It occurred to me that if she was talking on a mobile phone now, she must have bought a new one. And that the sight of the new one would be irrefutable, concrete, commonplace evidence that what had happened was not just a dream.
When at last she entered the bedroom and undressed, I pretended I was asleep. But in a pale strip of moonlight that crept in between the curtains, I managed to catch a glimpse of her switching off the phone before slipping it into her trouser pocket. And that it was the same one. A black Prada. So I might have been dreaming. I felt sleep catch hold of me and begin to drag me down. Or perhaps he had bought one just like it. The drift downwards came to a halt. Or perhaps she had found her phone and they had met again. I rose upwards, broke the surface and knew that I was not going to sleep tonight.
At midnight I was still awake and through the open window I thought I heard a faint noise from the garage which might have been Ove, come to collect the Rubens. Even though I tried, I did not hear him leaving. Perhaps I had gone to sleep after all. I dreamed about a world under the sea. Happy, smiling people, silent women and children with speech bubbles rumbling and rising out of their mouths. Nothing pointing towards the nightmare that was awaiting me at the other end of my sleep.
11
CURACIT
I GOT UP at eight o’clock and ate breakfast on my own. For someone sleeping the sleep of the guilty Diana slept extremely well. I had only had a couple of hours myself. At a quarter to nine I went down to the garage and unlocked it. From an open window nearby I recognised the tones of Turbonegro, not by the music, but by the English pronunciation. The light came on automatically and shone on my Volvo S80 waiting majestically but subserviently for its master. I grabbed the door handle and immediately recoiled. Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat! After the first fright had passed I saw that it was Ove Kjikerud’s oar-blade face. Night work over the last few days had clearly taken its toll for he was sitting there with closed eyes and a half-open mouth. And he was obviously fast asleep because when I opened the door he still didn’t react.
I used the voice from the three-month sergeants’ course I had gone on, against my father’s wishes: ‘Good morning, Kjikerud!’
He didn’t stir an eyelid. I inhaled to blow a reveille when I noticed that the ceiling liner was open and the edge of the Rubens was sticking out. A sudden chill, as when a fluffy spring cloud sails past the sun, made me shudder. And instead of making more noise, I grabbed his shoulder and shook him lightly. Still no reaction.
I shook harder. His head frolicked to and fro on his shoulders, without any resistance.
I placed my first finger and thumb against where I thought
the main artery ran, but it was impossible to determine whether the pulse I felt came from him or my wildly racing heart. But he was cold. Too cold, wasn’t he? With trembling fingers I opened his eyelids. And that settled the matter. Involuntarily, I backed away when I saw the lifeless black pupils staring at me.
I have always thought of myself as the kind of person who can think clearly in critical situations, someone who won’t panic. Of course, that could be because there have never really been any situations in my life that were critical enough for me to panic. Apart from the time when Diana became pregnant, of course, and on that occasion I hadn’t found it difficult to panic. So perhaps I was a panicky type after all. In any case, at this moment decidedly irrational thoughts entered my head. Like the car needing a wash. That Kjikerud’s shirt – with a Dior label sewn on – had presumably been bought on one of his holidays in Thailand. And that Turbonegro were actually what everyone thought they were not, that is, a decent band. But I knew what was happening, that I was about to lose my grip, and I clenched my eyes shut and blasted the thoughts out of my head. Then I opened my eyes again and had to concede that a tiny little bit of hope had managed to sneak in. But no, the realities were the same, the body of Ove Kjikerud was still sitting there.
The first conclusion I drew was simple: Ove Kjikerud had to go. If anyone found him here, all would be revealed. Resolutely, I pushed Kjikerud forward against the steering wheel, leaned over his back, grabbed him round the chest and dragged him out. He was heavy and his arms were pulled upwards as though he was trying to wriggle out of my grasp. I lifted him up again and took a new hold, but the same thing happened; his hands swung up in my face and a finger got caught in the corner of my mouth. I felt a bitten-down nail scrape against my tongue and in horror I spat, but the taste of bitter nicotine remained. I dropped him onto the garage floor and opened the car boot, but when I tried to pull him up, only his jacket and fake Dior shirt followed; he remained firmly on the cement floor. I cursed, grabbed the inside of his trouser belt with one hand, jerked him up and shoved him head first into the 480-litre boot. His head hit the floor with a soft thud. I slammed the boot lid and rubbed my hands together, the way one often does after a manual job well done.