by Anne Holt
By their bins.
Johanne felt the fear racing inside her, as always when she didn’t have full control over Kristiane. For a moment she stood there, not knowing whether she should run downstairs or stay where she was and see what happened. Without making a conscious decision, she stayed where she was.
Perhaps he called out to them.
At any rate, both girls looked at him, and Ragnhild’s gestures indicated that she was talking to him. He made some reply and waved her over. Neither of the girls went towards him. Instead, Ragnhild took a step back.
Johanne ran.
She raced through the apartment, out of the living room, along the hallway, out through the extension that had become the girls’ playroom, she ran, half-stumbled down the stairs and hurtled out into the cold wearing neither shoes nor slippers.
‘Kristiane!’ she shouted, trying to inject a calm, everyday tone into her voice. ‘Ragnhild! Are you there?’
As she came around the corner of the house she saw them.
Ragnhild was once again crouching down in front of the little snowman. Kristiane had spotted a bird or a plane. She was gazing up at the sky and without taking any notice of her mother she stuck out her tongue to catch the feather-light flakes that had begun to fall.
There was no sign of the man.
‘Mummy,’ Ragnhild said sternly. ‘You are not allowed outside in your stocking feet!’
Johanne looked down at her feet.
‘Goodness me,’ she said with a smile. ‘What a silly mummy you have!’
Ragnhild laughed and pointed at her with a toy spade.
Kristiane carried on catching snowflakes.
‘Who was that man?’ Johanne asked casually.
‘What man?’
Ragnhild licked the snot trickling from her nose.
‘The man who was talking to you. The man who—’
‘Don’t know him,’ said Ragnhild. ‘Look what a brilliant snowman we’ve made! And without any snow!’
‘It’s lovely. But now it’s time to come in. We’re going to a Christmas party, remember. What did he ask you?’
‘Dam-di-rum-ram,’ said Kristiane, smiling up at the sky.
‘Nothing,’ said Ragnhild. ‘Are we going to a party? Is Daddy coming?’
‘No, he’s in Bergen, isn’t he? But that man must have said something. I mean, I saw him—’
‘He just asked if we’d had a nice Christmas,’ said Ragnhild. ‘Aren’t your feet cold, Mummy?’
‘Yes, they are. Come along, both of you. Time to go inside.’
Amazingly, Kristiane started to walk. Johanne took Ragnhild by the hand and followed her.
‘And what did you tell him?’
‘I said it was absolutely the best Christmas ever – with bells on!’
‘Did he want … did he try to get you to go over to him?’
They reached the gravel path and walked along by the building towards the stairs. Kristiane was talking to herself, but seemed happy and contented.
‘Yeees …’
Ragnhild was taking her time.
‘But we know we mustn’t go up to strangers. Or go off with them or anything like that.’
‘Quite right. Good girl.’
Johanne’s toes felt as if they were about to drop off with the cold. She pulled a face as she left the gravel and put her foot on the ice-cold stone staircase.
‘He asked if I’d got any nice Christmas presents,’ Kristiane said suddenly as she opened the outside door, which had blown shut behind Johanne. ‘Just me, not Ragnhild.’
‘Oh? And how do you know he was only asking you?’
‘Because he said so. He said—’
All three of them stopped. Kristiane had that strange look on her face, as if it were turned inward, as if she were searching an archive inside her head.
‘What are you doing out here, girls? Did you have a nice Christmas? And what about you, Kristiane, did you get anything nice?’
Her voice was expressionless, and was followed by complete silence.
‘I see,’ said Johanne, forcing a smile. ‘That was nice of him. And now we need to put on our best clothes as quickly as we can. We’re going to see Grandma and Grandpa, Kristiane. Daddy will soon be here to pick us up.’
‘Oh …’
Ragnhild immediately sat down and started whining.
‘Why does Kristiane get to have her daddy when I can’t have mine?’
‘Your daddy has to work, I told you that. And you always have a lovely time when we go to see Kristiane’s grandma and grandad.’
‘Don’t want to. Don’t want to!’
The child pulled back and started to slide down the stairs head first, her arms stretched out in front of her as if she were swimming. Johanne grabbed her arm and pulled her up, slightly more firmly than she had intended. Ragnhild let out a howl.
The only explanation Johanne could cope with was that Kristiane must have remembered wrongly.
‘I want my own daddy!’ Ragnhild screamed, trying to twist free of her mother’s grasp. ‘Daddy! My daddy! Not Kristiane’s stupid daddy!’
‘We do not say that kind of thing in our family,’ Johanne hissed, nudging Kristiane in through the door while dragging the little one behind her. ‘Do you understand?’
Ragnhild immediately stopped crying, stunned by her mother’s fury. She started laughing instead.
But Johanne had only one thought in her head: Kristiane never, ever remembered wrongly.
*
‘We all make mistakes. Don’t get so cross about it.’
Marcus Koll Junior smiled at his son, who was studying the instructions.
‘Come over here and we can work it out together.’
The boy sulked for a little while, but eventually stomped over and threw the little booklet on the coffee table. The helicopter was still on the dining table, only half-completed.
‘Rolf promised to help me,’ the boy said, pushing out his lower lip.
‘You know what Rolf’s clients can be like.’
‘They’re rich, stupid and they have ugly dogs.’
His father tried to hide a smile.
‘Yes, well. When an English bulldog decides that her puppies are coming out on Christmas Day, then out they have to come. Ugly or not.’
‘Rolf says that bulldogs have been totally overbred. That they can’t even feed properly. Shouldn’t be allowed. Animal cruelty.’
‘I couldn’t agree more. Now, let’s have a look at this!’
He picked up the booklet and leafed through it as he walked over to the imposing dining table. He had had the instructions translated by an authorized technical translator in order to make it easier for the boy to build the helicopter. The model in front of him was so big that he now regretted his purchase. Even if the boy had an unusual talent for mechanics, this was a little over the top. The man in the shop in Boston had stressed that the toy wasn’t suitable for children under the age of sixteen, not least because it weighed almost a kilo and would constitute a risk to anyone around it the moment it rose in the air.
‘Hm,’ said his father, scratching his stubble. ‘I don’t really get it.’
‘It’s the rotor blades that are the problem,’ said the boy. ‘Look here, Dad!’
The eager fingers tried to put the blades together, but something wasn’t right. The boy soon gave up and put down the pieces with a groan. His father ruffled his hair.
‘A bit more patience, little Marcus. Patience! That’s what you should have got for Christmas.’
‘I’ve told you, don’t call me that. And I’m not doing anything wrong, there’s something the matter with the instructions.’
Marcus Koll pulled out a chair, sat down and took his glasses out of his breast pocket. The boy sat down beside him, keen to help. The blonde, curly hair tickled Marcus’s face as his son leaned over the manual. A faint smell of soap and ginger biscuits made him smile, and he had to stop himself from hugging the boy, holding him close, feeling
the glorious warmth of the son he had managed to have in spite of everything and everyone.
‘You’re the best thing in my life,’ he said slowly.
‘Yeah, yeah. What does this mean? Insert the longest batten through the unhooked ring at the bottom of rotor blade four. I mean, there is only one batten! So why does it say the longest? And where’s the stupid ring?’
The December sun filled the room with a calm, white light. Outside it was cold and clear. The trees were completely covered with crystals of rime frost, as if they had been sprayed for Christmas. Through the white branches beyond the window he could see the Oslo fjord far below, grey-blue and still, with no sign of life. The crackling of the open fire blended with the snores of two English setters, curled up together in a big basket by the door. The smell of turkey was beginning to drift in from the kitchen, a tradition Rolf had insisted on when he eventually allowed himself to be persuaded to move in five years ago.
Marcus Koll Junior lived his life in a cliché, and he loved it.
When his father died nine years ago, just before Marcus Junior turned thirty-five, he had at first refused to accept his inheritance. Georg Koll had given his son nothing but a good name. That name was his grandfather’s, and it had enabled him to pretend that his father didn’t exist when he was a boy and couldn’t understand why Daddy couldn’t come and see him at the weekend now and again. When he was just twelve years old he began to realize that his mother didn’t even receive the maintenance to which she was entitled for him and his two younger siblings. When he turned fifteen he resolved never again to speak to the man responsible for his existence. His father had wasted his opportunity. That was the year Marcus received 100 kroner in a card on his birthday, sent through the post and with five words in handwriting he knew wasn’t his father’s. He became a grown man when he put the money in the envelope and sent the whole lot back.
Severing all contact was surprisingly easy. They saw each other so rarely that the two or three visits per year were easy to avoid. Emotionally, he had chosen a different father: Marcus Koll Senior. When he was able to grasp the fact that his real father simply didn’t want to be a father and would never change, he felt relieved. Liberated. Free to move on to something better.
And he didn’t want his inheritance. Which was considerable.
Georg Koll had made a lot of money in property in the sixties and seventies. The majority of his fortune had been moved to other, much safer arenas in plenty of time before the crash in the housing market during the last financial crisis of the twentieth century. When it came to looking after his money he more than made up for his great inadequacies as a father and provider. Unlike others, he had used the yuppie era to secure his investments rather than risking them for short-term gain.
When Georg Koll died he left behind a medium-sized cruise-ship company, six centrally located and extremely well-maintained properties, plus a skilfully compiled share portfolio which had provided the majority of his very respectable income for the past five years. Death had obviously surprised him. He was only fifty-eight years old, slim and apparently fit when he had a massive heart attack on his way home from the office one day in late August. Since he hadn’t remarried, and no will was found, his entire estate went to Marcus Koll, his sister Anine and his younger brother Mathias.
Marcus wanted no part of it.
When he was fifteen years old he had returned his father’s blood money, and when he was twenty he had received a reply. His father had heard that his son was a homosexual. Marcus had glanced through the letter and realized all too quickly what his father wanted. For one thing, he expressly dissociated himself from Marcus’s lifestyle, which was a not uncommon attitude in 1984. What was worse was that his father, who had never been well in with any God, went on to paint a picture of Marcus’s future along the lines of the blackest descriptions of Sodom and Gomorrah. He also reminded him of a new and dangerous plague from America, which affected only homosexual men. It led to an agonizing death, complete with boils, like the Black Death itself. Of course, Georg Koll didn’t believe this was a punishment from any higher power. No, this was Nature herself taking revenge. This fatal disease was a manifestation of natural selection; in a couple of generations people like him would have been eradicated. Unless he changed his ways. Life as a homosexual meant a life without a family, without security, without ties, obligations and the happiness that came with being a good member of society and someone who made a real contribution. Until his son realized this and could guarantee that he had seen the error of his ways, he was disinherited.
Since the obligatory bequest to his own children was a mere bagatelle in comparison to Georg Koll’s entire fortune, there was a reality behind this threat. It made no difference whatsoever to Marcus. He burned the letter and tried to forget the whole thing. And when the estate was divided up fifteen years later, in 1999, it turned out that his father, convinced of his own immortality, had omitted to make a will.
Marcus stuck stubbornly to his guns. He still wanted nothing to do with his father’s money.
He gave in only when his grandfather, who never mentioned Georg either, managed to convince Marcus that he was the only one of the three siblings capable of managing the family fortune in a professional way. His brother was a teacher, his sister an assistant in a bookshop. Marcus himself was an economist, and when both siblings insisted that the best thing would be to set up a new company with the combined assets of their father’s estate, with all three of them as joint owners and Marcus as director and administrator, he allowed himself to be persuaded.
‘Just look at it as a bloody good joke,’ Mathias had said with a grin. ‘The bastard did Mum and us out of money all his life, and now we can live very well on the proceeds he worked so hard to keep from us.’
It was ironic, Marcus had gradually come to accept. A splendid irony.
‘Dad,’ little Marcus said impatiently. ‘What does that say? What does it mean?’
His father smiled absently and dragged his gaze away from the ridge, the fjord and the white sky. He was feeling hungry.
‘Right,’ he said, fixing a tiny screw in place. ‘There, that’s the rotor finished. Then we do this … Do you want to do it?’
The boy nodded, and slotted in the four blades.
‘We did it, Dad! We did it! Can we go outside and fly it? Can we do it now?’
He picked up the remote control in one hand and the finished helicopter in the other, tentatively, as if he didn’t quite trust it not to fall apart.
‘It’s too cold. Much too cold. As I said yesterday, it could be weeks before we can take it outside.’
‘But Dad …’
‘You promised, Marcus. You promised not to go on about it. Why don’t you ring Rolf instead and ask if he’s coming home for our special lunch?’
The boy hesitated for a moment before putting everything down without a word. Suddenly he brightened up with a smile.
‘Granny and the others are here!’ he shouted, running out of the room.
The door slammed behind him. The sound rang in Marcus’s ears until once again only the faint snoring of the oblivious dogs and the crackling of the fire filled the enormous room. Marcus’s gaze rested on the fire, then swept around the room.
He really did live in a cliché.
The house in Åsen.
It was large, but set back from the road so that only the top floor was visible to passers-by. When he bought the house he had decided to remove the ridiculous wooden panelling on the outside, along with the turf roof and the portico in front of the garage, which bore the legend Home Sweet Home, roughly carved and with a dragon’s head at either end. Just when he was about to tackle the panelling, Rolf had entered his and young Marcus’s lives. Rolf had laughed until he cried when he saw the house in all its glory for the first time, and he refused to move in unless Marcus promised to keep the more eccentric and what one might call rustic elements.
‘We’re an extended family with a twist,’
Rolf would laugh.
A little bit richer than most, Marcus thought, but he said nothing.
Rolf wasn’t thinking about the money. He was thinking about their family life, with little Marcus and a wide circle of aunts and uncles and cousins, his grandmother and friends who came and went and were almost always at the house in Åsen; he was thinking about the dogs and the annual hunting trip in the autumn with friends, old friends, boys Marcus had grown up with and never lost contact with. Rolf always laughed so heartily at the happy, ordinary, trivial life they led.
Rolf was always so happy.
Everything had turned out the way Marcus had hoped.
He had even managed to use his father’s money for something good. His father had consigned him to oblivion and regarded him as a lost soul. By condemning his son’s future, Georg Koll had paradoxically given him a new one. The first, wild years lay behind him, and Marcus had managed to avoid the disease that had brutally taken so many of those he knew, in pain and embarrassment and often loneliness. He was deeply grateful for this, and when he burned the letter from his father he resolved that Georg Koll would be wrong. Utterly and emphatically wrong. Marcus would be what his father had never been: a man.
‘Dad!’
The boy came running into the room, his arms flung wide.
‘They’re all coming! Rolf said the bulldog had three puppies and everything was fine and he’s on his way home and he’s looking forward to—’
‘Good, good.’ Marcus laughed and got up to accompany the boy into the hallway. He could hear several cars in the courtyard; the guests were arriving.
He stopped in the doorway for a moment and looked around.
The doubt which had tormented and nagged him for several weeks had finally gone. He had a sharp instinct, and had made a fortune by following it. In the early summer of 2007 he had spent weeks fighting a strong urge to sell up and get out of the stock market. He had sat up night after night with analyses and reports, but the only sign he could see that something was wrong was the stagnation of the US property market. When the first downgrading of bonds linked to the unsafe sub-prime loans came later that summer, he made his decision overnight. Over a period of three months he cashed in more than a billion in US shares at a significant profit. A few months later he would wake in the middle of the night out of sheer relief. His fortune remained in the bank until interest rates began to fall.