The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

by Jo Nesbo

  It was just a question of faith in human nature. Like Kierkegaard’s ‘leap of faith’. You needed to persuade yourself to believe something that all experience and logic told you it was impossible to believe. Because there was actually no alternative. If I – a very good but not exceptional researcher – could stumble across the formula for prolonged and in theory eternal life, someone else would be able to also, regardless of whether or not I kept it secret. It’s chaos theory. Anything that can happen, will happen.

  So: one text, four copies, one to each of the four confederation leaders. One formula with an explanation of what it was, and why it was being sent out to everyone. It wouldn’t necessarily get there quickly. Things weren’t like they used to be in the days when the internet existed. But my letter-heading and my signature, Head of Research at Antoil Med, would at least ensure that it would be read by the confederations’ experts. And they would immediately realise what it was they held in their hands, and that it was urgent. It would have to happen at Yalta.

  I pressed down the first key. My office door opened.

  Normally I would have reprimanded my subordinates for entering without knocking, but when I saw the distraught expression on Melissa Worth’s face I realised it wasn’t a simple oversight. I steeled myself. This could only be about one thing: Bernard Johansson’s mysterious absence.

  ‘The mice,’ said Melissa, and now I saw that her eyes were brimming with tears. ‘They. They’re…’

  ‘They’re what?’

  ‘They’re killing each other.’

  * * *

  —

  Melissa and I ran to the laboratory and found the other members of the team gathered round one of the large communal cages where we had allowed the mice to socialise, before they had started to show signs of aggression.

  Six of the mice lay bloody and lifeless in the sawdust, the four others were locked in their individual cages.

  ‘We were just following the programme,’ said Melissa. ‘We reduced the injections to a minimum, and because the mice had stopped showing aggression when we fed them in their individual cages we opened up the slides to the communal cages, just like we all agreed. They went straight for each other, all of them, as though they’d just been waiting. It happened so quickly we didn’t have time to get them back in their cages before…’ Melissa’s voice cracked up. She had been there from the very beginning, one of those who had seen the miracle take place, who had given her time, her whole life to the project.

  ‘Take them out,’ I said. ‘Freeze them.’

  I returned to my office, intending to complete my letter to the confederations.

  But instead I sat there, staring at the blank sheet of paper, seeing the dead mice in my mind’s eye. I wasn’t particularly surprised by what had happened – but why wasn’t I? It was one thing that the aggression in the mice appeared to have been a side effect of Ankh, another thing altogether for the mice to continue to be aggressive even after the doses were reduced. Was it possible that the medication brought about a permanent change in the chemistry of the brain? Other questions arose: among mice there can hardly be a complex scale of aggression, and the difference between hissing at another mouse and killing it are probably minimal. What effects might Ankh have on the behaviour of humans? Klara’s behaviour was an isolated case and could well be the result of completely different factors. Nor had she developed murderous tendencies. Or had she? What would have happened if I had stopped giving her the antidepressants along with the Ankh?

  And so, as the sun sank below the rooftops, reddened by the factory smoke, I had still not begun my letter. Instead I started going back over our research material. Might it be something in the Ankh that was causing the aggression? And if so, could it be removed without affecting Ankh’s power to retard the ageing process?

  At ten o’clock that evening, after the others in the team had gone home, I went to the laboratory and took blood samples from two of the dead mice. I then took one from myself and ran tests. Read the results and concluded that it was as I had thought. The active ingredient that retarded the ageing process was the same as that which triggered the aggression. One and the same thing, two sides of the same coin.

  But the blood-analysis machine showed something else too. That the level of Ankh in the mice’s blood was lower than it ought to have been, given that they had been injected that same day. I took one of the capsules from the fridge and put it under the microscope. In less than a minute I had located the two holes in the lid, invisible to the naked eye but in the microscope enormous craters. Someone had punctured the capsules with a microscopically small hypodermic needle. Through one of the holes they had withdrawn Ankh from the capsule, and through the other replaced the stolen medicine with some other fluid, probably water.

  As Head of Research I had access to my team’s clock-cards and I checked these to see if there was a pattern, if the same person had been clocking out last from the laboratory recently. Because Ankh had a very limited shelf life and wasn’t needed in large quantities for the African pygmy mice, the medicine was in continuous production, but in extremely small quantities. In other words, a thief would need to operate in the same way, continuously, and on a very small scale.

  I found what I was looking for. A name. Anton, a quiet and shy individual who, although thirty-nine years old, still worked as a research assistant. I don’t know whether it was lack of ambition or because he had never taken the last part of his biology exams. Or it could have been for health reasons – over the last couple of years he had been off sick for long periods at a time. Whatever, on account of his long tenure and responsibility for tidying the laboratory at the end of the day, he was a keyholder, and from the others’ clock-cards I could see he had been alone in the laboratory for at least two evenings every week over the last year.

  I mulled it over for a while before calling Kopfer and telling him what I had discovered.

  Then I turned out the light and went home.

  Two hours later I was sitting on the sofa with a beer watching the TV when it came on the news. A reporter standing in the street in front of a squad car with a flashing blue light said that the police had tried to arrest a thirty-nine-year-old man in his home, suspected of stealing from the company where he was employed, and that the suspect had attacked the two policemen with a knife, critically injuring one of them. The man had now barricaded himself inside his flat. Armed police had arrived and were trying to engage him in dialogue, but the thirty-nine-year-old had shown no willingness either to communicate or to give himself up. The excitable reporter pointed to a house and explained that the man had just been seen in a window, waving a bloody knife and shouting threats and obscenities. At this point the anchorman in the studio interrupted and gravely announced that they had just heard from the hospital that the badly injured policeman had been declared dead.

  I stared at the TV pictures. The police stood sheltering behind their cars, their guns pointed in the direction of Anton’s house. If they didn’t already know it, they would soon find out that he had killed their colleague. It was as though I could see their fingers squeezing a little harder on the triggers. I didn’t need to watch any more; the outcome was a foregone conclusion and I switched off the TV. I put the empty beer bottle on the table and looked at the syringe that lay there. That I myself had taken Ankh home was hardly a question of theft. It had been done to speed up the testing on humans, on Klara. And, after she had responded positively, although with what might look like unfortunate side effects, on myself. I had been taking Ankh for a month and a half now and hadn’t noticed any sign of depressive thoughts or increased aggression. But of course, it could well be the case that the individual involved is not aware of his own feelings, that he or she rationalises them away and regards the situation itself as difficult or demanding of a violent response, that the cause is not to be found in his or her own psyche or behaviour.

  I thought
of the body in the bathtub.

  I, who had never laid a hand on another person, not even as a child, had killed a man.

  Ankh. If I hadn’t seen it before it was clear enough to me now. Ankh was not a recipe for eternal life, it was a recipe for chaos and death. Fortunately, for the time being at least, the recipe was a secret, the formula that gave more than just the ingredients involved but also the correct procedures, pressures and temperatures necessary, and that could not be reproduced by an examination of the material itself; for that they would need to get hold of me, find the recipe in my brain.

  The memory-shredder. It was still in El Aaiún.

  I called the airport. And found I was in luck. If I could make it to Vienna the following day I could get a seat on board the weekly flight to London, and from there the Madrid plane that departed every other day. From then on I would have to improvise. I booked the ticket.

  Afterwards I called Switzerland. I got Fru Tsjekhov on the line, apologised for ringing so late and explained that Klara should be completely taken off the medicine I sent them. That I had discovered it might be the direct cause of her mental condition. And that we could only hope the damage wasn’t permanent, but that it would probably take some time before she was herself again.

  I went up to the bedroom and packed a bag. Some clothes, the few roubles I had, and a wedding photo of Klara and me. If I drove all night I could make Vienna by daybreak.

  When I entered the bathroom to get my toiletries I stood looking in the mirror at the bath behind me.

  I turned, pulled away the rug and looked at Bernard Johansson. At the hole in the forehead. The coagulated black blood that had run over the bottom of the bathtub. I might perhaps manage to delete myself, but once they found the body of my closest associate they would definitely put his brain through Exor. How long would it take them to fill in the remainder of the formula? A hundred years? Ten years? One year? But it was too late to hide the body now.

  The dead man appeared to be staring at a point in the ceiling above me, as though still waiting for the angels to come and take him away. Fly off with his soul.

  Fly off.

  I swallowed.

  It had to be done.

  I went back up to the bedroom and took out an old leather suitcase.

  Then I went down to the cellar and fetched the saw.

  The Journey

  From out in the corridor a voice shouts my name.

  Something hard pounding on the door. Could be the butt of a gun.

  The journey. I must remember the journey. Vienna. London. Madrid. Then a transport flight to Marrakesh and from there hitched a ride on a lorry.

  The driver spoke a little Russian and wondered what I had in the suitcase that smelled so bad. I told him it was a human head, that I had opened the cranium up with an axe and left it out in the sun for three days to attract the flies. That flies had crawled into every orifice and laid eggs that had turned into larvae and were now eating up the brain. The driver laughed at my joke, but still wanted to know why.

  ‘So that he can get to heaven,’ I said.

  ‘So you’re religious?’

  ‘Not yet. First I need to see his ascent to heaven.’

  After that the driver didn’t speak any more, but when he let me off at El Aaiún and I gave him the last of my roubles he leaned out of his window and said in a quick, low voice: ‘They’re on your trail, señor.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘I don’t know. I heard in Marrakesh.’ Then he put his lorry in gear and disappeared in a cloud of black diesel smoke.

  I let myself into the flat and the stuffy air hit me like a wall. For months I had lived and worked here. I had suffered, hoped, rejoiced, wept, taken wrong turnings and still achieved the miracle. But most of all I had longed to be at home with Klara. I opened the windows and doors and dusted off the memory-shredder. Switched it on and breathed a sigh of relief: the batteries were still able to provide power. I took the wedding photo out of the bag, put it on the table next to the shredder, sat down, took a deep breath, concentrated. The desert wind moved the heavy rugs in front of the windows. Then I began at the beginning.

  * * *

  —

  So that’s how it is. The snake bites its own tail and the circle is closed.

  I shut my eyes. Everything’s inside now. Everything that must be wiped out, deleted, vanished. Including Klara. My darling, darling Klara. Forgive me.

  As the door crashes open I press the large button on which it says DELETE. After that I remember noth—

  * * *

  —

  I’m staring up at a large fan in the ceiling. It’s turning slowly, but I can’t move. I hear two sounds: a low humming, and a regular tapping sound. Two faces enter my field of vision. They’re wearing sand-coloured camouflage uniforms and pointing at me with machine guns. I have so many questions, and I know the answer to at least two of them. The humming I can’t identify, but the tapping is easy to recognise. It has to be the walking stick belonging to Daniel Egger, chairman of the board at Antoil Med, the company I work for.

  ‘Release him,’ says a voice. And sure enough, it’s Egger’s.

  I’m able to move again, so I sit up. Look around. I’m sitting on the floor in a room in semi-darkness. Light leaks in between the hanging rugs. Where the hell are we?

  Egger sits in a chair directly in front of me. He’s in uniform, like the others. It’s a little too new-looking to be his old colonel’s uniform from the days before he took over the family concern. The face is lightly sunburned. He leans his chin against the smooth, black top of the stick and directs his cold, intelligent gaze on me.

  ‘Where is the formula?’ he asks. His voice sounds hoarse. Maybe he has a cold.

  ‘Formula?’

  ‘For the medicine, idiot.’

  He says it calmly, as though it’s my name. Idiot? Have I done something wrong?

  ‘But it’s in the reports I sent to Kopfer,’ I say.

  ‘What reports?’

  ‘What reports? The research reports on HADES1, they’re submitted every week and –’

  ‘Ankh!’ snarls Egger. ‘I’m talking about Ankh.’

  I look at him, look at the armed men in the room. What’s going on?

  ‘Ankh?’ I repeat, as my brain searches for a place where this word might have hidden itself.

  Egger looks at me expectantly. And then my brain finds the word in there, in the drawer in which it’s hidden.

  A drawer from my childhood, when I read about Egypt. ‘You mean the hieroglyph for eternal life?’

  Egger’s sunburned face glows even redder. He turns to the desk behind him. There’s a machine there, I don’t know what it is. It looks like one of those personal computers, from the days before the collapse of civilian technology. Egger picks up something next to the machine and holds it up in front of me.

  ‘If you don’t give me the formula we’ll find her and kill her.’

  It’s a photograph in a wooden frame. I recognise myself, of course, but not the woman in the picture. We’re dressed like a bridal couple and I try to recall the occasion. Perhaps it was at a carnival, or some kind of practical joke. I really try, but the pretty, if ageing, face of the woman doesn’t excite any associations. And yet it seems as though Egger is serious about his threat. Can’t help wondering if maybe the man isn’t quite all there.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Herr Egger,’ I say. ‘But I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  It’s hard to interpret exactly what it is I see in his look. Rage? Hatred? Bewilderment? Fear? Like I said, it’s hard.

  ‘Boss,’ says a voice. I look towards the end of the room where a man is standing with a sergeant’s stripes on his chest. He points at a worn leather suitcase with his gun. ‘There’s a humming noise coming from this.’

  I s
ee that the other men start backing off towards the walls.

  ‘Brown!’ barks Egger. ‘See if that’s a bomb.’

  ‘Jawohl!’ A man steps forward. He’s holding a metallic object that resembles what people used to call a mobile phone. Runs it along the side of the suitcase. And now I recognise the suitcase. It’s the one I inherited from my brother Jürgen. Did I bring it here myself? And suddenly it dawns on me, why nothing dawns on me, why I have this feeling of staring at a jigsaw puzzle in which not just individual pieces are missing but the whole puzzle. Because that apparatus with a screen on the desk, doesn’t that look like the apparatus I once saw used on a patient suffering from trauma, a so-called memory-shredder? A machine that shreds certain parts of the memory, eliminating specific thematically connected memories but leaving the rest untouched? Have I used such a machine on myself? Egger was asking about a recipe. Have I removed a recipe from my memory? For a bomb? Is that a bomb inside the –?

  ‘The suitcase is clean,’ says the man with the metallic object.

  ‘Open it,’ says Egger.

  The men around him press their backs against the walls. My heart beats faster.

  ‘We’ll all die if we don’t find the formula,’ hisses Egger. ‘Now!’

  The sergeant steps forward, flips up both locks on the suitcase and looks to be taking a deep breath before he flips the lid open.

  The humming is now deafening, and it is as though we are staring into a black storm, a night in motion. It takes a second for me to realise what this is. Then it rises up towards the ceiling in a single dense mass, there to break up into black sections that again divide into even smaller sections. Flies. Fat, heavy flies. And now that they’re all over the room, attention focuses on what is revealed inside the suitcase.