by Jo Nesbo
‘Cut it out.’ His father’s voice was weak and despairing. ‘That only works in Westerns, I told you that.’
‘Yes but –’
‘And the other thing I told you was never to stick your hand down into a sack of snakes whether you think they’re dead or not. You turn the sack upside down and empty it, being careful about your legs. Always.’
‘Always’ and ‘never’ in the same didactic utterance. No wonder Ken hadn’t registered it.
‘Empty the sack.’
The snake fell to the ground with a soft thud and coiled itself, paralysed by the sunlight.
‘What do you think, Ken? A Cape cobra?’
Ken didn’t reply, just stared wide-eyed at the snake.
‘Sandslang? Gabon viper?’
The supersensitive tongue slid out of its mouth, absorbing tastes and smells in a way that gave it – at least, according to one of his father’s lectures – a complete picture of its surroundings within a single second.
‘Don’t let it get away, Ken.’
But Ken did let it get away. He had neither the strength nor the nerve to touch a snake again, still less one that had just shortened his lifespan down to twenty-seven years.
‘Damn!’ said his father.
‘You must be joking!’ said Ken. ‘You saw it as clearly as me and you know how to recognise every snake in the whole of this damned continent. Are you telling me you don’t know –’
‘Of course I know which snake it was,’ said his father, looking at Ken in a strange and enigmatic way. ‘And that’s why I said “Damn”. Hurry up and fetch the brown bag from the car.’
‘But shouldn’t we get back to –’
‘It was an Egyptian cobra. Our central nervous systems would be paralysed before we got halfway. Now do as I say.’
Ken’s brain tried desperately to assess the situation and the options. It couldn’t. He even poked the tip of his tongue out of his mouth, but that didn’t help either. So he did as his father told him.
‘Open it,’ his father said when Ken returned with the large brown buffalo-hide doctor’s bag. ‘Hurry.’
His body writhed; his mouth was open as though he couldn’t get enough air.
‘I’m feeling fine, Father, why –’
‘Because I was the one who got bitten first. It’s got five times as much poison as the second time. Which gives me about half an hour and you two and a half. What do you see?’
‘There are a lot of test tubes attached to the sides here.’
‘We always take supplies with us of the antidotes for bites we know we won’t have time to get back home for. The Egyptian cobra, can you see that one?’
Ken’s eyes raced over the names on the labels on the test tubes.
‘Here it is, Father.’
‘I need to take it at once. Hopefully I’ll still be alert enough to show you the way when we drive back to the farm so that we get there well before you start to have problems. The needles are in the bottom. You know what you’ve got to do, son.’
* * *
—
Ken looks across at his father. It’s clear he is no longer able to move. He just sits there, eyes half closed and watching his son. Then Ken concentrates on the needle again. Tries to ignore the nausea. Takes a deep breath. Knows that this is something he’ll remember to his dying day, the moment when he took things into his own hands and saved the life of the man he loved above all others. He places the point of the needle between the two bite holes, sees how the skin dips a little under the pressure, and then moves back out again once it’s been penetrated and the point enters Ken Abbott’s arm. It stings, and he breathes deeply through his nose as he pushes the plunger down. He watches the changing level of the yellow fluid until about two-thirds of it are left, and then pulls the plunger back up a tiny bit, removes the needle and repeats the procedure a little higher up the arm. A thought strikes him: so he won’t be joining the 27 Club after all. Quite the contrary; he’s going to be rich, happy and have a long life. All thanks to an injection. You could die of laughing.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asks cheerfully.
‘Sad,’ whispers his father. His chin is now down in his chest.
Ken withdraws the needle and uses a ball of cotton wool to dry the small bead of blood left behind by the injections. No nausea. No guilty conscience. Just sunshine and joy. In a word – the jackpot, at last.
‘Well, my dear Father. If it’s any comfort, that actually hurt quite a lot.’ Ken looks at his watch. ‘Comfort for the last few remaining minutes of your life.’
With a great effort the father lifts his head.
‘Why, Ken? In God’s name, why?’
Ken sits down beside his father and puts an arm around his shoulder.
‘Why? Why d’you think? Same reason I’ve been going around with that rifle just waiting for a situation to arise in which I could blame a hunting accident, a stray shot or whatever you call it. Money, Father. Money.’
Emerson’s head droops down again. ‘So that was why you came? For your inheritance?’
With his free hand Ken slaps his father on the back. A throbbing pain has now started spreading in the area around the bite and the needle marks in the other arm.
‘I read a depressing article about the age wave in the Guardian. You know the life expectancy of middle-class men between fifty and fifty-five who haven’t yet had a heart attack or got cancer? Ninety-two. I’ve got a few creditors who aren’t willing to wait that long, Father. But I think it will ease their minds considerably when I return as the sole heir and with your death certificate in my hand.’
‘You could have just asked for the money.’
‘A million pounds? Even I’m not that cheeky, Father.’
Ken gives a loud laugh. Instantly his laughter is answered from the other side of the river where a pack of grey-brown hyenas have arrived and are observing them with curiosity. Ken shivers.
‘Where did they come from?’
‘They can smell it,’ says Emerson.
‘Smell? Surely you haven’t begun to smell already.’
‘Death. They recognise the smell of it. I’ve seen it before.’
‘Well. They’re ugly, they’re stupid and they’re on the other side of the river. I hate them.’
‘That’s because they’re morally superior to us.’
Ken looks on in surprise as his father continues:
‘No freedom of choice, no morality, you’re probably thinking. But if freedom of choice means being able to force your nature, and morality is to will it, then why are we so unhappy?’
Emerson Abbott raises his head again and smiles sadly.
‘Well, it’s because we fool ourselves into thinking we could have done things differently. We think having souls gives us the ability to act in ways that are not just designed to benefit ourselves. But we can’t. And the proof is that we are here, we still exist. We eat our fathers and sons when we must, not from hate but out of love of life. And yet we think we’ll burn in hell for it. And maybe we will. That’s why the cobra which chooses to eat its own young is morally superior to us. It doesn’t feel a moment’s shame, because there is no sin, just the consuming will to live. Understand? You are your only redeemer. And redemption comes only when you do what you have to do to survive.’
Ken’s on the point of replying when a sudden pain in his chest causes him to lose his breath.
‘Something wrong?’ asks the father.
‘I…’
‘You have a pain in your chest,’ said his father. Suddenly his voice is normal again. ‘That’s how it starts.’
‘Starts? What…’
‘The Egyptian cobra. You do remember how we went through this?’
‘But…’
‘Nerve poison. First, burning pains around the site of the bite that gradually spread
to the rest of the body. The skin around the bite becomes discoloured, the arms and legs swell up, and then comes a feeling of drowsiness. And then, towards the end: accelerating heart rate, discharges from the mouth and eyes, paralysis at the back of the throat making it difficult to speak or breathe before the advent of the final stage: the nerve poison paralyses the heart and lungs and you die. It can take hours and is extremely painful.’
‘Father!’
‘You sound surprised, son. Weren’t you paying attention in class?’
‘But you…you seem…better.’
‘No, you can’t have been paying attention,’ says the father with a thoughtful look on his face. ‘Or you would have noticed the difference between an Egyptian cobra and an African rock python.’
‘African…rock python?’
‘Aggressive and unpleasant, but not poisonous.’ His father sits up and rolls his neck. ‘You’re right, I’m absolutely fine. But how are you? Do you notice how your throat is beginning to constrict, son? In a little while the cramps will come, and that really isn’t something to look forward to.’
‘But we…’
‘Were bitten by the same snake. Mysterious, isn’t it? Maybe what you took is a little different from what’s in me.’
Ken’s mind clouds over. He looks at the empty test tube on the ground, tries to get up but his legs won’t carry him. His armpits have started aching.
‘If you’d been paying attention in class you would have checked the cork on the test tube before injecting yourself, Ken.’
Red, thought Ken. Red cork. He’s injected poison into his own arm.
‘But there were no other test tubes for the Egyptian cobra, I checked them all. None with a blue cork, no antidote…’
His father shrugs. Ken gasps for air. The buzzing of insects has become a steady pressure against his eardrums.
‘You knew it all along. You knew…why…I came.’
‘No, I didn’t know. But I’m not stupid so I didn’t completely exclude it either. And of course, I would have stopped you had you tried to inject me with it.’
Ken can’t feel the tears coursing down his cheeks.
‘Father…drive me back now. Time is…’
But his father seems not to have heard him. He is on his feet now and peering across to the other side of the river.
‘Adolf says they’re good swimmers, though I’ve never seen it myself.’
Ken slides down and remains lying on his back, staring up at the sky. The sun is still high above the trees on the hilltop, but he knows that come seven o’clock it will be as though someone cuts an invisible thread, and the sun will tumble in free fall below the horizon and within fifteen minutes all will be pitch-black. The white bird screeches again. It flaps its wings and two seconds later Ken sees it crossing his field of vision. It’s so beautiful.
‘Time to be getting back,’ says his father. ‘Adolf will have dinner ready soon.’
Ken hears his father pick up the bag with the serum inside and then hears him move away. For a few seconds there is silence. Then he hears splashing sounds from the water. Ken Abbott knows he hasn’t a chance.
BLACK KNIGHT
Part 1: The Opening
‘you can feel your eyelids getting heavy,’ I said.
The pocket-watch – maker unknown but weighted by sufficient gold to keep it swaying steadily for some time – had been in the family’s possession since 1870.
‘You are feeling tired. Close your eyes.’
The silence was complete. The street-facing windows were triple-glazed, so that not even the chiming from the mighty bells of the Duomo di Milano penetrated. It was so quiet that the absence of ticking was noticeable. The hands were splayed out on each side from the moment the watch breathed its last. Now the mute object was minus the function a watch is meant for.
‘When you wake up you will not remember that you were gravid or that you’ve had an abortion. The child never existed.’
I felt suddenly on the verge of tears. When I lost my own child I also lost what we psychologists call my affective control, meaning that I could whimper and blubber over the slightest thing that reminded me of it. I pulled myself together and continued: ‘It will seem to you as though you came here to be cured of a nicotine addiction.’
Ten minutes later I carefully woke Fru Karlsson from her trance.
‘I don’t feel any craving at all,’ she said as she buttoned her mink coat and looked at me.
I was sitting behind my desk and taking notes with the Montegrappa pen I had come across many years ago in an antiques shop. Patients like to see you making notes, it makes them feel a little less like something on a conveyor belt.
‘Tell me, Dr Meyer, is hypnosis difficult?’
‘It depends what you’re hypnotising,’ I said. ‘As film directors say, the hardest to work with are children and animals. And it’s easiest with a receptive and creative spirit like yours, signora.’
She laughed.
‘There are rumours that you once managed to hypnotise a dog, Dr Meyer. Is that true?’
‘Just rumours,’ I smiled. ‘And even if I had, I have a vow of confidentiality as regards all my patients.’
She laughed again. ‘But what power it gives you!’
‘I’m afraid I’m as powerless as anyone else,’ I said, searching through the desk drawer for an ink cartridge to replace the one in the pen, now empty. The leader of a local chess club I used to belong to once said to me that the reason I always lost was not that I didn’t know what I was doing, but that I sabotaged my own chances of winning through my bewildering weakness for the weak. He suspected that I would prefer to sacrifice a castle rather than a knight because I liked the knight better. Or because I thought of myself as a knight.
‘They’re pieces, Lukas,’ he said. ‘Pieces! The knight is the least valuable, and that is a fact, not preferences.’
‘Not in every position. The knight can get himself out of some pretty tight situations.’
‘Knights are slow and always arrive too late to save anyone, Lukas.’
I found the ink cartridge, a narrow metal sleeve the same length as the pen, and with a thin steel tip like a hypodermic syringe. I realised it would be my last one, that Montegrappa pens and cartridges were no longer produced. Like so many other uselessly beautiful quality products it had vanished beneath the merciless pressure of global competition.
I wrote slowly, reverently, careful not to waste my words. Fru Karlsson would start smoking again. And she’d tell all her friends that Dr Meyer was no good so I’d spared a rush from that quarter. She wouldn’t remember she’d had an abortion. If she ever did it would be because something had overridden the hypnosis. A special word, a mood, a dream, it could be anything. As in my case. At times I’ve thought I might like to obliterate Benjamin and Maria from my memory. At other times not. Anyway, it’s been a long time now since I had the ability to hypnotise myself. One learns too much about it. Like the conjuror no longer able to enjoy being fooled, even when one wants to be.
Once Fru Karlsson had gone I packed my beautiful black leather Calvino bag. I’d bought it because it had the same name as the anti-Fascist rebel Italo Calvino. And, of course, because I could afford it.
I knotted my Burberry scarf and walked into the reception area. Linda, who was the receptionist for me and the two other psychologists in our joint practice, looked up.
‘Have a nice day, Lukas,’ she said with an almost inaudible sigh and a scarcely noticeable glance at her watch which showed, as usual, that it was still only three. She used this Americanism not, primarily, to bless the remaining hours of daylight, or until I went to bed, but to point out the injustice in the fact that my working day was so much shorter than that of my two colleagues, and therefore hers. I think she believed – or thought she believed – that my not taking on more patients showed a lack
of solidarity, but there was no way she could know that in recent years the psychology practice had become secondary and functioned more or less as a cover for my other, real job. Which was to kill people.
‘Have a nice day, Linda,’ I said as I strolled out into the lovely December sunshine.
* * *
—
I’ve never quite been able to make up my mind whether or not Milan is a beautiful city. It has been in the past, you only need to look at the pictures from back then, when Milan was a city in Italy, and not in Capitalia, as I call the stateless condition the world is in today. Of course, before the last of the physical world wars it had been almost supernaturally beautiful, but even after the bombs the city has preserved a discreet but distinct elegance in which the fashion houses in particular had influenced the style and taste, and vice versa. In the days before the sixteen giant business cartels assumed control of Europe, North America and Asia, factory emissions were subject to central authority regulations, which meant that even in Milan, with one of the worse air-pollution problems in Europe, one could still on a good day see all the way to the white peaks of the Dolomites. Now it lay over the city in a constant veil, and those who could not afford the overpriced air conditioners now in the hands of a monopoly lived lives that were short and sickly.
The cartel-run media tell us that people are richer than ever before and prove it by presenting us with statistics showing the real income per inhabitant. The reality is of course that the creators and directors of the cartels earn a thousand times more than the average worker. Eighty per cent of them are on temporary contracts with no chance to plan for the long term. They have to live in the ever-expanding slum that surrounds the city on all sides save in the north.
After Milan became the centre of European finance, with the Borsa Milano and the headquarters of seven of the cartels, the population exploded. The city was now not only the largest in Europe but also harboured the world’s third-largest slum. I’m no socialist, but you don’t need to be one to feel a longing for a time when incomes were lower but distributed more evenly, and there was a functioning state which did its best to help those who were struggling.