We called her Beffen when we were kids and made that endless journey across Vågen to practise gymnastics in the Viking Hall.
Later we took Beffen to go to dances in that same hall. The ferry stopped running just as the dance was over. And those of us who couldn’t find a girl to see home ‘somewhere out in Sandviken’ because all the girls worth seeing home lived ‘somewhere out in Sandviken’, or in the opposite direction from where we were headed – we, who didn’t have a girl to see home, had to walk all the endless way around Vågen.
They’ve changed Beffen since then. The old brown-and-white wooden boat is now fibreglass. Orange-and-white. She rides higher in the water now and her engine sounds different.
For old times’ sake, I walked out to Gågaten, bought a paper at a news-stand and then walked down to take Beffen across Vågen to Dreggen.
Those years in Nordnes always seem clearer when I travel this way between seasons. It gives me time to think about those days.
I can’t remember that the trolley went all the way out to Nordnes. But I do remember my father getting off the bus up in Haugeveien with his conductor’s satchel over his shoulder and his cap not exactly four-square on his head. His face was ruddy in the summer and a sort of greyish-red in winter. It was a strong face. Round, with a fullness in his cheeks on either side of his mouth. His mouth was always tense. As if he were just swinging off or on to a trolley that hadn’t stopped or started yet.
He’d come down the steps from Haugeveien and I’d come running, calling him. Saying hello. He’d ruffle my hair, look at me with his pale clear eyes and ask if I’d been a good boy. And then he’d go home to his books and newspapers. And a quarter of an hour later my mother’d come up from the alley and call, ‘Varg! It’s dinnertime!’
I can close my eyes and see her face to this day. Always pale, but a face of gentle contours – like the rest of her. Her mouth belonged to a prettier – or maybe a younger – face than hers. Her eyes were warmer and darker than my father’s, and her voice was always welcoming.
I can remember the checked tablecloth. I remember the salted cod one day, haddock in white sauce the next. Fish dumplings one day, fish chowder the next. Potato dumplings and salted meat one day, hash the next. Dessert on Sundays. Jelly with a synthetic taste and warm vanilla sauce. My father at one end of the table, my mother at the other. I sat in the middle, facing the window. The window was the fourth person at the table because time and the seasons were out there: brilliant sunshine, pouring rain, or snow and glittering hoar-frost. Once – and an eternity ago.
They’re dead now. And it’s been a long time since I sat at a dinner table with as many as three people around it. And there’s almost nothing left of the Nordnes I knew.
I boarded Beffen and walked aft. Looked back at Nordnes, at the tall ugly brick buildings that edge Vågen now, at that infinite variety of misbegotten architecture that stretches like the Great Wall from the market to Nordnesbakken.
Suddenly it hurt. As if Beffen were taking me away from my own promised land, from my childhood. I thought of those I’d left behind. Of the dead I’d escorted to their graves. Of the faces I’d never see again. Of the houses I’d never again run between. Neither as a little boy nor as a grown man. Because all those houses were gone. Not one was still standing.
We chugged towards Mount Fløien and Dreggen, and the parts of Bergen that were still relatively unchanged. Small wooden houses still defended their turf up on the mountainside. Old buildings still stood along Bryggen. And Mount Fløien still surveyed the whole, its contours as they always had been, contours nobody could change. Or could they?
I walked through Beffen and on to dry land.
44
She had chosen a little tea-shop. It was as much a baker’s as a tea-shop. Too small to sing arias in. It wasn’t a place to get personal. I’d have suggested another spot.
The room was divided by a display case full of bread and cakes. In the back, to the right, a refrigerated case held racks of soft drinks. Two little tables, each with two chairs, stood between it and the door. There was another table under the window to the left of the door. That was it.
I picked the table nearest the soft drink’s counter. It seemed the most private, if you could call sitting half a metre from the soft drinks and three metres from the door being private.
An elderly grey-haired woman whose face was a network of laugh-lines stood behind the display case. She wore yellow: blouse, skirt and apron. I ordered two rum cakes and a cup of hot chocolate with cream. It was three twenty-five. One of my bad habits: I’m always five minutes early.
She came through the door, the late afternoon light at her back. She didn’t have to look for me. I was the only other customer.
As she walked to the table, I saw how small and delicate she was. She held out a pale slim hand and said, ‘Hello. Solveig Manger.’
I stood up and said, ‘Varg Veum. Hello.’
We shook hands. She apologised for being five minutes late. I said not to worry and she smiled as if she were used to men saying that. Then she went to the counter and ordered coffee and a roll.
She came back, unbuttoned her coat and sat down. She must have had that coat for years: it was weathered green corduroy with full lapels and a wide belt with a dark brown buckle. She was wearing a soft beige blouse printed with little brown and orange autumn flowers. The blouse didn’t tell you much about the body under it. There was something romantic and mysterious about her, and you could imagine those soft little breasts and the taut diaphragm and the sweet smooth belly lower down. Her shoulders were narrow but straight and she sat with natural grace.
She was wearing a green corduroy skirt. The small breasts and broad hips made her look a little like an ice-age sculpture. She was no luscious Venus, no voluptuous Diana. But hers was a body you could easily fall in love with. It suddenly made you feel tender and protective.
I felt she shouldn’t have to look at my lumpy, ugly, battered face and I ran my hand across its lower half as if I could hide it.
‘I’ve seen you before,’ she said. Looking at me searchingly.
I rested my hand on the table. ‘Can’t we use first names? It’d be so much easier,’ I said.
She smiled. Cautious. ‘All right. I’m Solveig and you’re … Wait – what was it? Vidar?’
‘I almost wish it were.’
‘Oh?’ Her eyes were such a dark blue they seemed almost black. Her hair hung straight and girlish around her face: not blonde, not brown and not red, but all those colours. I agreed with Jonas. From a distance, it was the first thing you’d notice about her.
‘It’s Varg,’ I said.
She didn’t laugh. ‘Listen. It’s not going to be easy being friends,’ she said. ‘I just can’t believe everything you say, I don’t believe you’re a private detective. And now you – your name really is …?’
I nodded. ‘It really is. My name really is Varg. And I really am a private detective.’
She smiled. ‘Well, yes. I do believe you. Now I’ve seen you.’
She had a lovely face. Not classical. It was too individual. Her mouth was quite small but her lips were neither too full nor too narrow. When she smiled her cheeks curved and there was the hint of a dimple in the corner of her mouth. Her nose was straight and narrow, and she had a determined chin. If it hadn’t been for her eyes and hair, she’d have looked like any pretty woman. But her eyes said she was a very nice person and her hair …
I was looking at her hair when she said, ‘This is when you ask me what colour my hair is.’
‘Am I going to?’ I said, smiling at her.
‘Everybody does, sooner or later. Usually sooner.’
‘And what do you tell them?’
‘Sort of in-between. Or else chestnut blonde. Because they never know what to say.’
I liked her. She sat there on the other side of the little table with her back straight and she looked into her coffee cup as she talked. Now and then she’d glance quickl
y up at me, but her eyes didn’t linger on my face. They returned to search the darkness in the cup.
She wasn’t a young girl. The fine laugh-lines at her eyes said she was over thirty. And these recent days had marked her. I guessed the dark blue-grey shadows under her eyes hadn’t been so obvious a week ago, and she hadn’t had those lines of tension at the ends of her eyebrows either. Those lines reminded me of antennae. They either disappear when your grief lessens or else they stay with you the rest of your life until one day – if you’re lucky – you too leave a little circle of mourners behind.
‘Solveig …’ I said.
‘Yes?’ She looked up at once and I could hear the sudden anxiety in her voice.
‘I … A week ago – last Tuesday – Jonas and I were together at Bryggestuen, and he …’
Her eyes glistened. Her mouth trembled. Then she pressed her lips together and quickly brushed her eyes with her right hand. ‘I – I’m sorry …’ she said.
The woman behind the counter disappeared into a back room. We could hear the scrape of a chair and the loud rustle of a newspaper.
‘I don’t want to upset you,’ I said. ‘I really don’t. I’ll be honest. I asked you to meet me because I want to know more about you and Jonas. Because I want to find out who really killed him. And because I really didn’t know him very well. We only met that one time.’
‘Just – just last Tuesday?’ She looked wonderingly at me.
I nodded. ‘Yes.’ I was hoarse.
‘That was – his last day. I’ve thought about it. I’ve tried to remember everything we did that day. Everything we said to each other. But there was nothing special. It was just an ordinary day. One of your usual everyday days. And I didn’t know – we didn’t know. How can we live, Varg, if we know? Or should we live every day as if it’s our last?’ She searched my eyes. ‘Would you have done things differently?’
‘Of course. Of course I would. I think I would.’
‘Of course you would. Everybody would. But we don’t know before – before it’s too late.’ She bit her lips with her small square teeth. ‘I loved him.’
Oh God, I thought. ‘Listen, Solveig, I … Before you say any more,’ I said, ‘I want you to know you can trust me and …’
Her hand rested on mine for a few seconds. She squeezed my wrist and then took her hand away. Her voice was soft and warm. ‘I know that, Varg. I know your name’s Varg and that you’re a private detective, and that I can trust you not to repeat anything I say. I can see that in your eyes. As a matter of fact, I’ve a feeling we could have been friends in other circumstances.’
‘Jonas told –’ I said.
‘Excuse me. I interrupted you,’ she said. ‘Jonas told …’
‘He told me – about you. He said he’d never told anybody else about you. Before. I don’t know why he chose me. He was a little drunk, but …’
‘There comes a time, Varg, when all secrets have to be told. You go around knowing something nobody else knows, and there isn’t anybody you can tell. You want to. You need to. But your mother’d probably be shocked, and your best friend probably wouldn’t understand. You know you can’t talk about it to anybody. Except to the person who already is the secret.
‘But then one day you meet somebody, preferably by chance and – not to insult you – somebody you won’t meet again, or not too often. And then, finally, you talk about it. And it’s good to talk about it. Because it’s a secret love you’ve been carrying around. And you want to share it with somebody. Share the happiness of that love. Even though it’s – not legit.’
She said the last word almost as an afterthought, and there was a wrinkle between her brows. Quite thin, dark brows. Natural colour. A touch of mascara on the lashes. A thin film of pink lipstick on her lips. Otherwise she didn’t use make-up as far as I could see.
‘Jonas talked about you in a way I’ve never heard a man talk about a woman before. He – it was almost contagious.’ My last word wasn’t an afterthought. It came out before I could stop it. ‘I mean, I …’
‘I’ve thought … You can imagine what I’ve been thinking since that morning the police phoned and said …’ Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘That he was dead.’ She coughed and went on. ‘I’ve thought about our time together. About the time we were given. I’ve never … They were the happiest years of my life, Varg. Absolutely. Others can call it adultery or whatever they like, but I’ve never been so happy before.
‘From those first scary feelings to the – the warmth we shared. And now to this. I remember when I first fell in love with him. There were unsettling little symptoms at first. I tried to suppress them, pull myself together. I told myself: you’re happily married, Solveig, happily married! But my God, it was like trying to stop a runaway locomotive. The next thought was obvious: was I so happily married, if I could fall in love with somebody else?’ She looked at me questioningly.
‘You probably weren’t,’ I said. ‘But can’t you love a lot of different people at the same time?’
She nodded slowly. ‘Maybe so. But not with the same feeling. And later on – a long time afterwards, as a matter of fact, because it began slowly with Jonas and me – later on when we began seriously being together, we loved each other so much there wasn’t room for anybody else. For Jonas and me – it was just the two of us.
‘He – he was the one who faced reality. While I hesitated. And that’s what I’ve thought about. I mean, it’s one of the things. Maybe I waited too long. Maybe this happened because I waited too long. If I, if we’d done what we talked about, made a break, burnt our bridges – moved to another city – then maybe he’d be alive today. My – love.’ She said that last word almost inaudibly. Then she continued.
‘Jonas always said … I believe he had quite a good – a good physical relationship anyway – with his wife. He always said that what he felt for me wasn’t primarily physical, at least, not before we’d been together. It was something romantic, he always said. But for me … I mean, my romantic feelings for Jonas were strong. I don’t mean they weren’t. But physically – for me he was … I’ve never known anything like it. He was …’
She lowered her voice. Clasped her hands together so I could see the shine of her wedding ring. It had got darker, a blue-grey dusk. You could hear the regular rush of traffic. A yellow bus stopped in front of Schøttstuene across the street.
‘He was the first,’ she said. ‘The only one who ever made me feel like a woman. Completely!’ She lowered her voice still further. ‘We – Reidar, my husband, and I – it isn’t so good for us that way.’
Suddenly she blushed as if she’d just now realised she was sitting here telling her most intimate secrets to somebody – a man – she hadn’t known half an hour earlier.
We sat in silence for a while. A customer entered. A middle-aged man who bought half a loaf of wholewheat and then left. The waitress sold it to him, then returned to the back room. On the way she glanced at the clock.
‘Do you know Reidar – my husband?’ Solveig Manger said.
‘No,’ I said.
She fished a wallet from her handbag. Opened it and took out a picture which she handed across the table. It was a snapshot of a man in high green sea-boots, bleached jeans, a checked flannel shirt, and a blue anorak. He was sitting on a rock by a river somewhere. He had thick blond hair cut quite short and a red beard, but the smile inside the beard belonged to a teacher, to little Miss Goody Two Shoes.
‘Reidar,’ she said.
I nodded. ‘Jonas said – he liked him. Said he was something or other in American literature at the university. A Hemingway specialist. Said he’d faint if he saw a live trout.’
She smiled dully. The problem with Jonas – now and then was that he could be a little categorical. Reidar’s no Hemingway, thank God. I’d never have married him if he were. But I think he’s seen more live trout in his life than Jonas ever has – had. And he is an outdoor person. That’s how we met, as a matter of fact. Up in the mou
ntains. In Jotunheimen. He – we’re good friends. We live together. And I once loved him very much. Before I met Jonas. Now? Now I don’t know. Maybe I can love him again now Jonas is dead. If he’ll have me. It’s been a shock for him too. He had no idea …’
‘About you – and …?’
‘No idea. He came home after the police talked to him. He looked awful. But he didn’t say anything. Didn’t accuse me. He just looked at me. I … That was the worst, if you see what I mean. He’s a decent man. He’d never – he’d never lay a hand on me. But I don’t know what’ll happen – to us.’
She stared into space as if it didn’t matter. As if the rest of her life stretched before her like an endless bus trip. A trip home on the bus through a blue-grey dusk which would never turn to night, never turn to dawn and which would never end.
‘Reidar wouldn’t ever understand,’ she said. ‘What Jonas and I had – nobody else could understand it. Only we could.’
‘The lovers’ privilege?’ I said cautiously.
‘Maybe so. Maybe it’s just an illusion. Maybe it wasn’t so special after all. Maybe it was something everyone experiences at one time or other – if they’re lucky.’
She emptied her cup. ‘It’s strange,’ she said. ‘It’s funny how things in life sometimes just seem to happen. Ten years too late. Jonas and I should have met ten years ago. When we were young and free. We were certainly meant for one another. Right from the start. There couldn’t have been anybody else. After a while I couldn’t imagine life – without Jonas. And he said it was like that for him too. We did something other people will say was wrong but there wasn’t anything else we could have done. We loved each other. It was love.’
I emptied my own cup down to the white layer of cream in the bottom.
‘Of course we talked about divorce,’ she said. ‘And he couldn’t hold out. Whatever you decide, Solveig, he said, I’m going to cut loose. And he did. But I – I put it off. I thought of the children. How would they react? And I have to admit it – I thought about what people would say. I thought about friends and acquaintances, about relatives. Colleagues. My family. His family. All the people who’d turn their backs on me. On us. And I thought it would take a lot of courage to stand up to all that. I wasn’t really sure I had it.
Yours Until Death Page 24