‘What’s your problem?’ she said.
I pointed to my face. Which I felt should tell her something. ‘I’m so swollen,’ I said. ‘Could it be mumps?’
She looked sourly at me. Nodded towards a couple of chairs. ‘Sit down,’ she said, trotted down a hall and around a corner.
I looked around. Not a doctor in sight. A dark-skinned man hunched in one of the chairs. Black hair fell across his forehead. He was bleeding from an ugly cut over one eyebrow, his left ear looked as if it would fall off any moment and he was holding half of his teeth. His blood dripped in three separate pools on to the floor in front of him: slowly and rhythmically as if the blood were pumping straight from his heart.
I could hear a child crying behind a green curtain. A man in a taxi driver’s uniform paced back and forth, glaring at a sign that said he couldn’t smoke. He looked as if he might yank it off the wall and use it as a toothpick. He was big enough.
The place smelled of ether or whatever all these places smell of.
There was a washbasin and mirror over in one corner. I walked over and discovered it wasn’t a mirror. It was a painting of an extremely ugly person. It wasn’t until I raised my hand and felt what used to be my mouth that I understood that I was really looking at myself. It was too much. I ducked quickly out of range, but I filled the basin and tried to wash. When I looked in the mirror again, it looked more like me but not much. Even my mother would have had problems recognising me and old friends would have walked right by me in the street.
My eyes were gummy slits. Mouth two sizes too large and it sloped up towards one eye. My neck looked like one of those freak potatoes people are always taking around to the newspapers. And this morning’s beautiful skin had changed into a landscape that would have been a sensation at an agriculture seminar.
I plodded over to the foreigner and sat beside him.
He looked at me with black, mournful, baffled eyes. ‘I didn’t do anything to them,’ he said. ‘Why did they beat me up? Because I’m a different colour? Because I come from a different country? I don’t understand.’
I tried to answer but the words wouldn’t come.
He looked at me. Incredulous. ‘But you – you’re a Norwegian. And they beat you up. Why?’
‘I come from a different part of town.’
He shook his head despairingly, looked at the large white teeth shining in the pale palms of his hands. ‘I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why people beat each other up.’
A doctor came in. One of those young doctors they put on night duty. The kind who always has a snappy answer on his tongue and a soothing misdiagnosis in his back pocket. He stopped in front of us and looked us over. ‘Which one of you’s going to live longest?’ he said.
‘He was here first,’ I said.
‘He’s in the wrong place,’ he said. ‘He’s going to the dental clinic. He needs some spare parts.’ He motioned to the foreigner. ‘Come on, comrade. Let’s have a look at those cuts.’ And they disappeared behind a green curtain.
The taxi driver stopped pacing and stared at the curtain. ‘These fucking Pakis!’ he burst out. ‘Who the fuck are they to bitch? Move up here, take people’s jobs, they get what they deserve.’
I looked up to see whether he was talking to me.
He had a face like a quarry man, but the sledgehammer had smashed him back. Flat broad face. Twenty centimetres between his eyes. Nose as wide as a steam-iron and his mouth sagged to the right from holding a cigarette in the corner. I began to wonder whether I shouldn’t go home and go to bed. I could dream up my own nightmares.
‘You oughta hear ’em sitting in the back talking that shit. About girls. I don’t get the words – can’t understand a word they’re saying – but I get the music, know what I mean? Once I stopped the cab, turned around and told ’em: I’m telling you, don’t go waving your dirty black dicks at Norwegians. You better believe they shut up. Not a sound out of ’em rest of the trip. And I got a ten-kroner tip. What yer say to that?’
I didn’t say anything. I sighed.
‘And they got so fucking pure in this dump you can’t even smoke.’
‘Why don’t you go outside?’ I said cautiously.
‘See her face? Ring the bell once too often, she’d rip your stuff off you, take it home and plant it in a flowerpot. Wouldn’t think twice. You don’t wanna mess with that widow woman.’
The doctor and the foreigner emerged from behind the curtain and the foreigner was sent away to fill out some forms. The doctor turned to me. ‘And what trolley did you fall off?’
‘Sandvikey,’ I said. ‘Twenty years ago. It just takes a hell of a long time to get here.’
‘You’re one of the lucky ones.’
Twenty minutes later he said, ‘OK. Here’s a prescription. Get it filled and go home and go to bed. Stay quiet two or three days and take it easy a week at least. No sudden movements. No excitement. OK?’
No sudden movements? No excitement? I was in the wrong business. I ought to be working for a florist.
‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘Booze? Nyet!’
Before I left I took another look at the mirror to see if the same picture hung there. It did. They’d merely changed the style a little. Added some bandages, and some iodine.
I walked away with my life in my hands. Life’s a prescription scribbled by an inexperienced doctor on night duty. He’s got handwriting not a living soul can decipher. And the idea is nobody should be able to decipher it. The pharmacist takes a chance. We all do. That’s how life is: you survive if the prescription’s legible. If you’re given the wrong medicine, you get lucky and die.
40
I dreamed. A Polish girl with short dark hair and big black eyes was sitting in my office and making faces. She had to leave in an hour but somehow we both knew we loved one another. Somehow we were soulmates who’d been brought together only to be separated. And I couldn’t understand one word she said.
‘Do you speak English?’ I said and she shook her head and smiled. ‘Parlez-vous français?’ No! she smiled. ‘Sprechen Sie Deutsch?’ No, no, no. No. She went on smiling and speaking Polish with its clear diphthongs and gutteral sounds.
And then I walked her to a big green tourist bus parked outside the Bristol Hotel. Somehow I’d written her a letter in Norwegian and I gave it to her. I realised she wanted my address and I found a crumpled slip of paper. She had a pencil but the point was broken off, so I scratched my name and address as well as I could on the paper. And we kissed. Her feline tongue entered my mouth, she looked around – and disappeared. Her lips were like a wet leaf falling from a tree in autumn. It touches your face – and is gone.
And when I woke up, I lay there wondering how I could get her letters translated. Wondered whether I knew anybody who knew Polish or whether I could get hold of a dictionary and spell my way through them myself.
I was lying in my shirt and trousers on top of the quilt. I’d taken off my jacket and shoes. Outside the window it was light, but I didn’t know what time it was. I didn’t remember getting home. I had to think a while before I could remember my name. If anybody had asked me how old I was, I’d have said I was seventeen.
I lay there. I could hear muffled voices overhead, children’s voices out in the alley. The never-ending swish of the city’s traffic. From somewhere out on the fjord the wail of a ship. A distant jet trailed a veil of sound through the air.
I carefully turned my head towards the window so I could see the rooftops and sky. It was grey-white with a tinge of light brown. Like crêpe paper. My head felt like a rotten orange somebody had stepped on. I lifted my left arm and waved it before my eyes. My arm was leaden, my wristwatch didn’t move: the crystal was broken.
I raised my head and looked for the alarm clock. Things splintered and the room listed heavily. I sank back on to the bed and when I opened my eyes again, it was dark. The air was stale. Dim. Somebody was tiptoeing across the floor overhead. He turned off the TV and tip
toed further through life. It was evening in the world and little boys slept. Big boys lay in bed in their shirt and trousers with a head split like a tomato. And a stomach that was uncomfortably hollow.
I carefully sat up. Looked around. The room spun but didn’t shatter. I stood up and managed to stay up. Went over to the window and opened it. It banged against the wall. I leaned out cautiously. Cold clean night air washed over me: a mixture of chimney smoke, old exhaust and cold car engines. I rested my elbows on the windowsill and breathed. I breathed, therefore I was. But what time was it? What day?
I left the window open and looked at the clock. Nobody’d wound it. The hands were frozen at two forty-five. I went to the phone. The only number I could think of was Beate’s. And her new husband’s. I dialled, listened to that distant ringing. It rang five times and then a woman answered. She sounded different. It couldn’t be …
‘Hello? Beate?’
‘Hello. Fru Wiik’s out. This is the babysitter.’
‘Oh hello. This is Fru Wiik’s husband.’
Silence.
‘I mean, Fru Wiik’s former husband.’
‘I see.’ She sounded as faraway and as inhuman as a robot.
‘Is Thomas – is my son there?’
‘He’s asleep.’
‘Oh. Excuse me, but could you tell me what time it is?’
The time? It’s ten-thirty.’ I could feel the cold seeping through the line.
‘What day is it?’
‘What day?’ A long pause. ‘Saturday.’
Another pause.
‘Saturday? Well. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight.’
I hung up. ‘Happy Saturday, Varg,’ I said aloud. ‘Happy weekend.’
I went to the kitchen, cut three slices of three-day-old bread, spread them with butter, poured raspberry jam over them, on to the counter and the floor. Drank some milk. It tasted of old cardboard. Swallowed a double dose of the tablets I’d got from the pharmacy the night before. Keep out of reach of children, it said on the bottle. Then I fell into bed and into a dreamless sleep until late on Sunday.
It was a long Sunday. My body hurt, my face looked like a prop in a bad thriller, and there was no way I could do anything constructive. I tried to keep moving. Back and forth across the living room. Walked for a while with the bottle of aquavit, mostly for company – I didn’t dare open it. It was going to be a busy Monday.
The phone rang at one o’clock. It was Beate and she was furious.
‘Varg? This is Beate. I’ll thank you not to call my babysitter when you’re drunk.’
‘But I …’
‘You really do mess things up for me! What you did when we were married can’t be helped, but I don’t know how we manage to live in the same town as you! And what do you suppose Thomas thinks of a father who’s a ridiculous private investigator? Who doesn’t think twice about phoning and bothering the babysitter with his drunken ravings? If it ever happens again, Varg, it’s not me you’ll be hearing from. It’ll be my lawyer.’ And she slammed down the phone.
‘Hello? Hello?’ I said to the dialling tone. Just so I’d have something to say.
I could have called back, tried to explain. But I know her when she’s furious. It would have taken too much energy. I was too tired.
I found a tin of meatballs in brown sauce in a kitchen cupboard and a slightly wrinkled green pepper in the refrigerator. Made a kind of stew. I couldn’t cope with boiling potatoes and settled for a couple of slices of stale bread. Poured a glass of red wine from a half-full bottle but only drank a sip. It gave me a headache that lasted long into the evening.
The hours withered slowly away. A fresh night took over the city, an old day was gone. I sat in front of the TV which flashed squared blue pictures of cross-country skiers setting world records on a Russian alpine course. I thought about Joker. I thought harder about Joker than I’d thought about another person for a long time.
And I said to myself: next time, Joker. Next time. Next time, I’ll cut the cards. And next time, Joker, you won’t be so easy to shuffle.
I struggled back to bed about ten and slept like a rock until eleven o’clock on Monday.
Monday’s a strange day to wake up to. It’s a day to die for some. And that Monday there was a strange feeling of death in the air, as if the dark angel had spread his black wings over the city during the night and had chosen his victim …
I tried to call Paulus Smith but got no further than his secretary. She said he was in court.
‘Tell him I called,’ I said. ‘Tell him I still haven’t found anything that could help us. Not yet anyway. Tell him I’m on my way to talk to Wenche Andresen. Some new questions to ask her, OK?’
She said she’d pass on the message, so I thanked her, hung up and walked out into Monday.
41
It was one of those grey days with rain in the air. The sky held its breath as if it waited for the clouds to open and pour with the rain we all knew must fall sometime during the day. It was after twelve and it really was March. The light was brighter and the sun higher behind those clouds. Even though it was a grey day it was not February.
February’s a short-legged man somewhere in a forest. He’s got frost in his beard, his cap pulled down over his forehead and winter-pale eyes in his strong broad face. March is a woman. A woman who’s just woken up in the morning, who turns in bed to avoid the sun and who asks you in a sleepy voice if it’s already morning.
Yes, it was morning. It wasn’t just the light, it was also the temperature, the shine on the roofs, that cold wind from the north-west with the seeds of mild weather in it, a woman passing you on the pavement and loosening her scarf a little bit so you could see the shadow at the base of her throat …
This time I didn’t have to see Wenche Andresen in her cell. I was taken to a little room furnished with a wooden table, some chairs and a guard who sat in a chair by the door and acted as if she heard and saw nothing.
Wenche Andresen walked with short steps, as if she’d already adapted the length of her stride to the limited floor space she now lived in. There was something passive, a sudden apathy in the way she moved.
She smiled thinly at me when she came in and sat in the chair nearest the door. She’d changed in the last seventy-two hours. She’d spent four days and five nights inside four brick walls with a steel door and a square window with matt glass in it.
Days and nights in a cell are longer than those outside. They can feel like years and they leave the marks of years on you. Wenche Andresen looked as if she’d spent six years instead of a hundred hours inside these walls. Her skin was already paler, unhealthier than it had been. The grey shadows under her eyes weren’t caused by lack of sleep now but by an invisible fever, the same fever that dimmed those dull eyes with grey frost. She’d already lost the battle. Six years ago.
Her hands lay absurdly weakly on the table. I leaned over and squeezed them to try to bring them to life. But she didn’t react. She didn’t squeeze back, didn’t try to hold on. Her hands lay limp in mine.
‘How are you, Wenche?’ I said.
No answer. She looked at me and I could see something still glimmering deep in her eyes. ‘What – what happened?’ she said.
I let go of one of her hands and quickly touched my face. ‘You mean this?’
She nodded slowly.
‘A little – meeting with Joker and his gang. I’ve got a date with him later today. Whether he likes it or not.’
‘You’d better be – careful,’ she said and looked around her. As if to say I’d end up here if I didn’t watch myself.
‘I’ve got some more questions, Wenche,’ I said.
She looked at me as if she knew I’d go on talking, but there wasn’t any hope in her eyes. She wasn’t interested in my questions. It made me suddenly wonder what her nights must be like, what kinds of dreams she must be having. They had to be exhausting. She’d changed so much since
Friday.
‘Richard Ljosne,’ I said. ‘I’ve talked to him. We talked about last Tuesday, among other things. The Tuesday night you told me about.’
I held her gaze with mine. But there was no reaction. Nothing.
‘He didn’t tell me the same story you did,’ I continued. ‘His description of the evening was different from yours.’
Her look was that of a stuffed animal. A doll. She’d fallen into a Sleeping-Beauty trance. Maybe if I kissed her …
‘What really happened when you got home, Wenche?’
After a while she said dully, ‘Happened? Did something happen? I told you what happened.’
‘You did. But he tells it differently. He says … He says you slept together, Wenche. The two of you. You and he. You slept together, didn’t you?’
She drew her lifeless hands from mine and tucked them safely under the table’s edge. ‘Then he’s lying, Varg. And if you believe him, you aren’t my friend any more.’
It was the kind of thing she might have screamed, but instead she sounded as if we’d been married for twenty years and she was telling me we’d be having fish dumplings for dinner again.
‘I am your friend, Wenche! You know that. And I won’t believe him – not if you tell me otherwise. But why – why should he lie?’
She shrugged. ‘Men.’
She didn’t need to add anything. It was enough. It was a sentence from which there could be no appeal, a sentence which condemned an entire gender to death at dawn. There we’d stand with blindfolded eyes and our dicks in our hands, we who transmitted death and deceit and lies from father to son, from generation to generation.
I wasn’t going to ask her again. There wasn’t any reason why she should lie. So I moved down the list. ‘Gunnar Våge?’ I said.
She reacted. Shut her eyes and vigorously shook her head. When she opened them again, her look was sharper. She was coming back to life. ‘Oh? What about Gunnar Våge?’ she said.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you knew him?’
She hesitated. ‘I don’t understand … I can’t see what it’s got to – what bearing it could have on – this. I honestly didn’t think about him before, before you …’
Yours Until Death Page 22