That was a quick bath, she says, looking at the mobile in Beate’s hand.
He’s not answering, Beate says, and starts to cry.
Beate sits at Bea Britt’s kitchen table. How is she able to eat? The tears flow but the jam fills her mouth. Strong and sweet, with big clumps of strawberry that Bea Britt bought at the pick-your-own farm last summer. She makes all kinds of buns. These ones are wholemeal, with pumpkin seeds on top and wholegrain inside. With the different tastes and consistency as she chews, Beate finds herself not thinking of anything other than what is in her mouth. Soft yeast, leavened bread, chewy seeds, sweet runny red taste, salted butter sliding over her tongue. She eats four halves, all with jam. As she gets up from the table to place the plate on the worktop, she starts sobbing once more. It was only while she was sitting eating that she was able to keep her anxiety in check.
Bea Britt walks into the kitchen with Beate’s mobile in her hand. It is ringing, Erik and the heart symbol she has saved beside his name is glowing on the display.
I was asleep when you called earlier, he says. I cried myself to sleep. I thought you didn’t want me any more. Do you think I’m childish? That I don’t take anything seriously enough?
No, no, no, she says, but is that a warning sign, she thinks at the same time, something I need to watch out for? Is that maybe how he is, laddish and superficial? Seeing as he asks?
Can I come round? she asks, I’ll come over now if that’s okay.
But I’m on my way to you, he says, I’ve just hopped off the number twenty bus in Thomas Heftyes gate.
She asks him to wait for her in the park by the block of flats, at the top of the hill, there is a bench there, and she will get a taxi.
She does not want him to come to Bea Britt’s and meet her yet, does not want Bea Britt to see who she is having sex with, does not even want Bea Britt to imagine that she has sex with anyone. Things should be just as usual at Bea Britt’s. And they are. Bea Britt walks her to the door as normal, stands in the doorway and waits until Beate has closed the gate behind her. They wave to each other. But Bea Britt looks sad, and Beate feels she is doing something wrong by leaving. What is it that is so wrong all the time? Nothing is how it used to be.
She sees his back as she walks up the hill. It is almost like looking at herself. He does not turn around until she draws very close. That childish look on his face. Maybe it is something that will begin to annoy her. No, no, do not think like that. Do not think, just kiss. Hair, fingers, nose against neck, lips, teeth, bone. Chest, ribs, hips. Tears, spit.
I love you, she says. And she means it. For ever. No matter what happens. Right now she means it. Love is the word that fits the feeling. Erik is the opposite of a stranger, the opposite of unfamiliar. He is like her. Or else they are both just as unfamiliar.
25
His name is Lars Erik Berg. I found him on the Red Cross website, standing in the centre of a group photograph of volunteers on a training exercise in the forest. They were wearing yellow vests and holding long sticks. The accompanying text said that their task had been to search for a missing child. He was smiling in the picture. It was after all only an exercise and they found the child ‘alive’, it said. The doll was about the size of a four-year-old and had blonde hair and a red woollen hat. She had ‘fallen asleep’ at the foot of a tree, in high grass. The volunteers’ names were not underneath, but as I moved the cursor across the picture to rest on his face, a yellow box with his name in it popped up. Lars Erik Berg. There were only three results for Lars Erik Berg in the telephone directory online, and after checking old tax registers against addresses, I found him. In an apartment building on Jacob Aalls gate. Born in 1960. I studied the photograph of the building on Google Maps and worked out that there could not be more than six households at the address. Several of the residents had the same surname, but no others were called Berg. He might live alone. But there were also the names of other ostensibly single men listed at the address. Maybe he was a homosexual and had a male cohabitant. That was also a possibility. But only one of the men at the address was the same age as him, the other two were more than twenty years younger. And he looked at my breasts. My collarbone, my lips and eyes. Or was I wrong? Perhaps he liked me because I was a writer, not a woman, not because I struck him as attractive. I had experienced that before. I thought there was something there, a connection, only for it to turn out to be nothing, other than in my head. A look that meant less than I imagined. A friendly person whose friendliness extended to everyone, not just me in particular. I was not special, nor could I be, not to anyone other than the children, because the children had no choice, I was the only mother they had. Lars Erik would not have anything to do with me. His slender body, long arms, deft hands. I pictured his hands while he was speaking. Gesturing, animated.
I put his name into the search box of a different directory enquiries service and found the same mobile number, but also the number to a landline, at the University of Oslo.
Lars Erik Berg, fellow of the university, Department of Mathematics.
I looked at the photograph and email address beside his name. Just a double click and some taps on the keyboard and I could make contact. If he replied. I saved his telephone numbers to my phone. Sending a text was also a possibility. I searched for more images of him. The urge to feel love had overwhelmed me. You are the man in my life, I thought. Because that was the face. The receding hairline, greying at the temples. A man who bowed and could blush. The cursor moving gently back and forth over his face. I thought you, I love every bone in your body.
In one of the pictures he was sitting beside a beautiful woman, younger than me, and I became distraught: is it her he loves? Not me but her. Of course there had to be a woman in his life, what was I thinking. But the cursor saved me. The name of the woman appeared in a yellow box, she was a student advisor at the department. I was relieved, then felt sick, because the student advisor was only ten years younger than him, they could be a couple all the same. Or he could be together with someone else in the department. A beautiful, successful woman. A woman at the same level. Lars Erik was too attractive for me. The leg he threw over the saddle of his bike. The checked shirt. The shirt collar. His throat. One button open. Every bone in his body. A complete person.
I could put my name down as a Red Cross volunteer? No. That would be too obvious. Pushy. Besides, I was a murder suspect, or just had been, I was involved. I was better off walking past the Red Cross building, plan a route past Hausmanns gate 7, a few times a week maybe, or as often as I dared. It would certainly increase the chances of running into him by accident. In which case I could say that I had been at the city archives in Maridalsveien. If I should run into him. Say I was checking out some addresses, carrying out research for a novel and was now on my way to buy some fruit and vegetables in Grønland, at the immigrant shops. After all, I had been to the city archives on many occasions, it would not just be a cover story. Last autumn, for instance, I attended a course in genealogy. I learnt to search the digital archives and found Granny’s ancestors. Where they lived and where they came from. I did not discover anything I had not known beforehand. There was not much there. However, the names did reveal secrets to me: that these people still took up space in the world, albeit no larger than a column on a digital register. They existed, the stories of the dead were alive but hidden away. The scanned handwriting from church registers showed me that, the succinct information in the census forms, the records of who lived at the different addresses. Robert Brodtkorb, engineer, born 1867. Granny’s uncle. Emigrated to America in 1898. He had an address in Kristiania in the last census before he left: Skippergaten 12A. Naturally the building was divided up into several flats, and Robert rented a room in one. That was the small amount of space he took up. Nobody heard from him after that.
I went down to the City Archives the following morning, but was too restless to go in and sit down. Neither was there any reason for me to do so, there was no one I needed to l
ook up. I remained standing on the pavement outside, mulling over what to do. It was so difficult to think of anything, it always was. Lars Erik would probably not be in the Red Cross building until the afternoon. If he was there at all. Because maybe I had been wrong, maybe he only went there now and again, or hardly ever did, not to the head office, no, he would not go there, he would of course go to meetings at his local branch. Or to a dedicated department for search parties, with an office somewhere else. The head office was probably just for those employed by the Red Cross, and Lars Erik was not employed, he was a volunteer.
Why did he volunteer? Was it out of love? Had he too much of it, a surplus he needed to expend somewhere? Or was it the other way around, maybe he yearned and was attracted to words like charity, humanism, care, because he was lacking in something? Did he not believe in God, but was looking for a serious love, as I was?
I had to go through with my plan, whether he turned up or not. Now that I had come so far, yes, who could have pictured it, that I would one day be standing at the bottom of Maridalsveien and be madly in love. Besides, he might call in by chance. Perhaps he had meetings with someone in administration now and again, and there was as much chance of it being today as any other. In which case he would likely arrive after lectures were finished, but before people went home from work, perhaps around half past three, and that was still a few hours off. I walked along Thors gate to the Oslo public library to give myself a purpose, but could not face going in once I got there. What did I want with books now? This was the litmus test. Was I anything at all without books? Almost nothing, as I walked the streets, down Akersgata, to the right through Citypassasjen, past Det Norske Teatret, to the left on Universitetsgata and across to Karl Johans gate in the direction of Egertorget before again turning onto Akersgata and walking the same streets back towards the Red Cross. I had a pain in my stomach the entire time, an aching knot, and I realised I might be facing a case of the runs at any moment. The more I thought about it, the worse the pressure, so I went into a coffee bar in Hausmanns gate to use the facilities.
By the time I had emptied my bowels it was still only half past two. I decided to stay put in the coffee bar while I waited, and bought a chai latte. All the high chairs at the window were taken, so I had to sit down at a table in the middle of the premises. I did not know where to fix my gaze, everything in there seemed so chaotic. People and movement, the hissing of the steamer, the sound of tables being bumped, the scraping of chair legs, I do not have the head space for it. I closed my eyes and took small sips of the chai latte. The milk and sugar made me queasy and thirsty, so I opened my eyes again and began perusing a newspaper that lay there. It was impossible to read properly without glasses, I was not twenty-five any more, still I could not remember how I had become twice as old, had that really happened? Anyway, I was too nervous to concentrate on reading, because it was getting close to the time I could walk past the Red Cross building.
Was it perhaps spirituality that I lacked? Was that what Lars Erik Berg was also seeking, a spiritual communality? Not love necessarily, because not everything is about love. But then neither is love merely spiritual. Or how is it, can they really be separated from one another? So confusing, so much confusion in so short a life.
To prevent and alleviate human suffering it said in the preamble to the founding statute of the Red Cross. Compassion. Yes, maybe that was it: Lars Erik believed in compassion. A human communality. If not he would surely have sought out religion instead?
I needed to pee from all the tea and went into the ladies, but as I pulled down my trousers and knickers I broke into a fit of tears so intense that I could not hold on until I was sitting on the toilet, and most of it ended up on the seat, over the floor, on the waistband of my knickers and the backs of my legs. I dried it up as well as I could while continuing to cry. He was everything I wanted. But I could not have it, could not, not me! His leg over the crossbar. His long back. Defined biceps, smooth skin. He bowed to me.
I had no right to walk here, I was acting under false pretences, I was, he would realise as much. If he saw me. My heart was beating erratically and I had a tingling in my calves and the backs of my knees, it was blood flowing too quickly, dark and keen. I stood at the intersection of Storgata and Hausmanns gate waiting for the green man. I was still on safe ground, there were many people passing to and fro, anybody could have a reason for being around here, including me. On the other side of the traffic lights and along the pavement on Hausmanns gate it was worse. It was unlikely I should happen to be walking down here, just two days after running into him last. Nevertheless, I walked slowly down towards the Red Cross building. A pennant bearing their logo flew on the roof. I looked at the entrance with its high doors, hoping.
A man was standing outside the entrance, smoking. A familiar body and I gave a start, as if some part of me thought it was Lars Erik, even though I had immediately recognised Vegard Hagen, my old neighbour from Torshov. I was actually aware that he had a high-up position in the Red Cross, so it was not so strange to see him standing there, and far more likely than seeing Lars Erik, but all the same it took me a few seconds to readjust.
Vegard nodded at me, but it would probably be unnatural for me to stop, it had been so long since we lived in the same apartment building, and even then we scarcely spoke, exchanged no more than a few words at annual meetings and voluntary clean-ups.
I will do it anyway, I thought, so I did: went over to him. Long time no see, I said.
Yeah, it is, all right, he said, and looked out at the road, but turned halfway as a woman exited the building, smiled and called out something after her about not forgetting Friday. She responded by raising her arm above her head and waving as she hurried off along the pavement in high heels. Vegard watched her go, I did too, looked at her backside in the tight jeans, how it moved. Then Vegard brought out a mobile, took a drag of his cigarette, looked at his watch and began texting. Do you still write? he asked, while looking at the display. I did not have time to reply before he looked up, put the phone in his pocket and said he had read about me in the papers recently. Yeah, the Emilie case, awful business. His gaze was fixed on an imaginary point in the air to the side of my temple while he spoke.
Oh, that. I’m not a suspect really. The police are just being very thorough. They don’t want to spook the kidnapper. Or murderer, as the case may be.
Vegard coughed and glanced at his watch again, and I realised I had expressed myself in a clumsy manner, almost puerile, but truth be told, he did not exactly do much to make the conversation flow naturally. And there was me thinking everyone in the Red Cross was empathic and inclusive. But not Vegard, maybe that was asking too much, he was only human after all. In any case, he passed no comment on it, and I began to sweat, felt a throbbing in my temples, what was I to do now, what was I supposed to say to get out of it?
So, what’s it like working here, I asked, do you enjoy it, are your colleagues nice?
Jesus Christ, how stupid. You do not work for the Red Cross for the enjoyment factor, this was going from bad to worse, I could see that by his face, how awkward I was making everything. Why was I so far from grown-up, me, who was at the centre of the Emilie inquiry and everything?
Vegard put out the half-finished cigarette with his heel, picked it up and placed it in a bin especially for cigarette ends, which had a grid top to prevent anyone throwing paper or anything else flammable into it. I need to get going, he said.
I stood for a few seconds looking through the glass doors, but all I saw was Vegard by the lift talking to a woman, and then they both laughed. I turned towards the street but no tall man on a bicycle pulled up in front of me on the pavement and smiled. Still, I had to see my plan through, and go to Grønland to buy fruit and vegetables. Not everything could be pretence and deception.
The following day I took the underground down to Vinderen and walked up Rasmus Winderens vei to the university. It would be better to meet him here, more natural for a writer,
because writers sit in university libraries working, reading books about philosophy and astronomy and what have you. So I had every reason and just as much right to frequent these environs as him. Or as Anita, for that matter. I wondered what she would say if she caught sight of me in the library, what kind of expression she would have on her face. Happy? Hardly. Embarrassed more like, not dissimilar from Vegard, something along those lines. There had to be something wrong with me. I make for an unpleasant atmosphere. It was so obvious that even I noticed it, the unease I felt within, for existing. Ugh. I did not quite know why it was like that. Anita was avoiding me in any case. Imagine if I ran into her today and she did not suggest we grab a coffee. That would be the final blow, then our friendship would cease to exist.
The first thing I did was go to the toilets and cry. I stood in a cubicle down in the basement of the library building feeling ugly and crying, because it was too late, everything was too late, the race was run, it was hopeless. He was not interested and I was not interesting. We would never be a couple. I would not be able to find him either, among all these people, in all the wide-open spaces between the large buildings.
But I did, as soon as I came up the stairs. He was on his way out of the library with some books under his arm and a green apple in his hand. He happened to turn his head in my direction and caught sight of me. He nodded, raised the hand holding the apple in greeting, but did not stop, was busy, in a hurry. I was too far away and did not think I could call out, could not run after him, no, if we were to meet it had to happen naturally. Pausing briefly outside, he spoke to a group of students, young girls, Beate’s age. He smiled and laughed, but then he was off again, raised his hand to them also, a friendly gesture from a friendly man. So close and yet unobtainable.
Only Human Page 19