Death By Water

by Damhaug, Torkil

  Liss tossed her make-up into her bag, took her leather jacket down from its peg, let herself out of the dressing room. From the kitchen she could hear Wim talking to one of the other photographers he shared the studio with. She stole out so quietly they didn’t hear her.

  Close on midnight. Packed at the Café Alto. The quartet on the stage in the innermost recess of the cramped premises began playing a tune announced by the pianist as ‘Before I Met You’. Liss knew him. He was American and had been out with a couple of the girls from her design class. Now he sat hunched over in the half-dark, staring in what looked like surprise at his own hands as they ran up and down the keyboard.

  Rikke waved from a table over by the stairs, shuffled up the bench to make room. Zako had his back turned and was talking to a guy at the next table. Once Liss had wriggled her way in, Rikke leaned over to her. – Zako thinks you’re starting to avoid him, she said with her mouth pressed to Liss’s ear.

  Liss had to laugh. Was Rikke doing his talking for him now? Only then did Zako turn round. His eyes were shining, and it might have looked as though he was having fun, but she knew him by now. He leaned across the table, put a hand on her arm, and looked very closely at her. – Been working right up till now? she made out through the music.

  Zako was always on the alert, even when he was high. Always asking questions about what she’d been doing and who she’d been with.

  She was hungry. Hadn’t eaten since the early afternoon. She picked up a Marlboro packet, lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall. Zako still sat there studying her face as though he were seeing her for the first time. Up on stage, the bass player, whom Liss also knew through the school, was taking a solo. His head was in constant motion; he was playing with it. It looked as though he had a fishing line between his teeth with which he was pulling and drawing out notes from the massive instrument.

  A clumpy, damp-smelling joint was passed across to their table. Liss passed it on to Rikke, who was resting her head on her shoulder, girlfriend-like.

  – Need something completely different from camel shit.

  – Agreed. Come with me.

  Rikke went up the stairs first. Liss could feel Zako’s gaze on her back, at a point just below the neck.

  They let themselves into the toilet. Rikke fished an envelope out of her handbag, a mirror and a straw. Handed it to Liss.

  – Might as well have a pee while you do the honours, she said. She lifted her short skirt, yanked down her tights and slipped down on to the toilet seat.

  Liss made a line ready. Kept her hair back out of the way with one hand. Rikke held it for her. Liss bent forward, inhaled as deeply as she could along the mirror, ended up with her mouth almost down in her cleavage. Another line in the other nostril.

  – What would I have done without you? she snuffled once they had changed places.

  Rikke took her two lines, leaned up against the toilet door and watched as she peed.

  – Christ, Liss, have you any idea how pretty you are?

  Liss enjoyed hearing her say this, even though she knew she would never actually be pretty. She stood up, kissed Rikke on the mouth. Just long enough, before pulling up her trousers.

  Zako was standing there when they came out. – What’s happening?

  He was looking straight at Liss as he said this. Rikke put a finger over her mouth and disappeared down the stairs.

  – Why didn’t you come yesterday? he wanted to know.

  – Did I say I would come?

  He took her by the arm, not hard. – I know you’re pissed off about this thing with Rikke.

  She raised her eyebrows. – Why should I be pissed off? You can fuck each other as much as you like for all I care. Be my guest.

  Now he grinned. – You are pissed off. I know you.

  – Wrong on both counts, she said, smiling back at him, pulling free from his grip.

  He pressed her up against the wall, looked down into her face. His pupils were like pins, and still the eyes looked black. She wondered what he was on.

  – I’m dumping her.

  – Who?

  – I’m dropping Rikke.

  Liss couldn’t help laughing. – I thought there was nothing going on between you. And now suddenly you’re going to drop her?

  He made a face that was perhaps intended to convey the comedy in the contradiction.

  – Sorry, he said.

  – For what?

  – I haven’t treated you very well. I’ll try to improve.

  She was surprised. Had never heard anything resembling an admission from Zako before. That pride had attracted her, the way he never needed to make himself small. And now here he was asking to be forgiven. Not that he meant it. But as a tactic it was doomed either way.

  – It has nothing to do with Rikke, she said. – Or with any other girls. I don’t need you, Zako.

  As she said it, a jolt went up from her chest, passed through her throat. Her head was filled with bubbling gas. Anything could happen. And she was stronger than anything.

  – We have an agreement, he said calmly, but now there was an undertone of suppressed anger in his voice. She wasn’t the least bit afraid of it.

  – Agreement?

  – Listen here, Liss. He paused briefly, obviously so that what he was about to say would carry more weight. – All the photo shoots you’ve had, I got those for you. If you want any more of that, you need to know the right people. When it comes to fashion, Amsterdam is fucking nowhere. I know a whole heap of other people in other places. People who matter. You’re not going to end up with Wim and Ferdinand and all the other wannabes.

  – I’m hugely grateful to you, she said, stressing the hugely. – But you don’t need to worry about the future. Not mine, at least. No more sleepless nights on my account.

  His eyes grew harder. – The flat, he said. – You’re living in my flat.

  That wasn’t true. He’d helped to get it, but he didn’t own it.

  – I’m moving out next week, she said. – Found somewhere else.

  Maybe he realised that not even that was true. But nothing could hurt her in the place where she was. She started walking down the stairs.

  – Wait, he said hoarsely behind her. She stopped and turned; it cost nothing to hear what he had to say. He had one hand in his inside jacket pocket. For an instant she thought he had a weapon, a knife, a gun. Not even that thought frightened her.

  It wasn’t a weapon he was holding. She saw it was a photograph. And knew instantly that there was a new twist to the game. He remained standing at the top of the stairs, but she wouldn’t climb back up to him, instead waited for him to come down the four steps.

  – Recognise her? he asked, holding the photo at an angle so the light from the wall lamp fell on it.

  Three days had passed since Zako had mentioned Liss having a sister. Afterwards she’d thought he’d just been taking a chance. Still, she couldn’t shake the thought of what he was hinting at.

  The photo was taken at a bus stop. Mailin was leaning against a wall, looking at something just outside the frame of the picture. It was taken from the side, some distance away. She had clearly no idea she was being photographed.

  Liss held on to the banister. The light changed, pulled away but became more intense. As though it wasn’t her who was standing there. And when it wasn’t her, anything at all might happen. Maybe she was holding her breath, because there was a pain low down in her lungs, and black dots began to appear through the bright, distant light. Mustn’t react now. This was what Zako was like. Went on and on and never realised when he’d gone too far … She knew about most of what he was capable of. It didn’t frighten her. She’d taken everything into account. But not that he would get someone to go and check on Mailin. Suddenly she felt nauseous. Hadn’t eaten all day. Must eat. Must come down. Get away.

  – Where did you get that picture from?

  He wasn’t smiling any more.

  – Why are you showing it to me? she continu
ed, her voice as controlled as she could make it.

  Again he scrutinised her face. If she carried on standing there, for the very first time he would manage to strip it, layer by layer, until it was quite naked, and the slightest twitch would reveal what was going on in her thoughts.

  She turned round, went down the stairs and sat close to Rikke, put an arm around her shoulder, as though to protect her.

  She dreamed she was holding an electric drill. It wouldn’t work. She squeezed the trigger as hard as she could. Suddenly it roared into life with an explosive banging that made her hands jump. She released the trigger, but the machine wouldn’t stop.

  When she woke up, the room was still vibrating, the bed she was lying in, the walls. Then it subsided. It was a tram passing. She remembered where she was. She’d left the Café Alto late last night. Couldn’t bear the thought of going back to the flat. Maybe Zako would tag along, or appear after she and Rikke had gone to bed. It was the sort of thing he could do if he felt like it. She’d left the place without a word and booked in for the night at a hotel in Leidsestraat.

  Light seeped in through the gap below the curtains. She lay there studying the pattern on the wallpaper. Small apple blossoms moving upwards, a film that rolled and rolled up towards the ceiling. And somewhere between them the image of Mailin again. Standing by her bed in the blue pyjamas.

  Liss sits up.

  What is it?

  Mailin puts a finger to her mouth. Then she turns and locks the door.

  Tell me what it is, Mailin.

  Her sister stands in the dark, listening. Then she creeps into bed, puts an arm around Liss.

  I’ll look after you, Liss. Nothing bad will ever, ever happen to you.

  She got up and went to the bathroom. Put her finger down her throat and emptied out the small amount that was in her stomach. Went back to bed. Wrapped the duvet around herself. The photo of Mailin at the bus stop. Must be Oslo. Looked to be quite recent. Who had taken it? She couldn’t ask Zako about it. He knew already that this was the weak spot he had been looking for. Did he realise just how weak it was? If she revealed that, she would lose control. If she gave in to fear, she would start to fear everything. She sat up suddenly, found the mobile in the bag that was hanging over the chair, slid down by the wall under the window, punched in the number. It rang three times before she got an answer.

  – Liss? Mailin’s voice was full of sleep. – Has something happened?

  Liss breathed deeply. – No, no … She glanced at the clock on the TV. It showed 6.20. – Sorry, I didn’t realise how early it was. I’ll call again later.

  – Stop it, you’ve already woken me. Was going to get up early anyway. Looks like good skiing conditions out today.

  Liss could imagine it. The ski trail emerging on to the marsh between the pine trees. The wind in the treetops. Otherwise still.

  – Wish I could go with you.

  Mailin yawned. – Coming home for Christmas after all?

  – Don’t think so …

  – Couldn’t you use a little break, Liss?

  It was scary how often what Mailin said was exactly right.

  – Break? That’s not exactly what I need.

  She did need a break. But she had nowhere to go. At least not in Norway. That wasn’t home any more. Would never be again.

  – Don’t try to change my mind, Mailin.

  She heard a grunt in the background, a man. – Is he with you, your friend?

  Mailin gave a quick laugh.

  – Angling, are we? Trying to get me to admit there’s someone other than him here? A lover? A new man in my life?

  – Is there?

  – You know how boring I am. The man lying beside me is still called Viljam. Just as he has been these last two years …

  – He’s been lying beside you for two years?

  – Ha ha. Liss, you don’t call me at six thirty on a Saturday morning to make feeble jokes. Now please, tell me what’s the matter.

  She’d lain awake half the night unable to shake off the thought that someone was threatening her sister. Something to do with Zako and that photo … Going to bed, exhausted and agitated, still wired like a high-tension cable, she had been certain something terrible had happened to Mailin. She’d wanted to ring immediately, but forced herself to wait.

  – Just wanted to hear how things are. Hear your voice, she thought, but didn’t say. – That you’re okay.

  – Any reason I shouldn’t be?

  – Well, no … But maybe you’re taking on too much work. All those people you’re taking care of.

  – Liss, there is something. Tell me what it is.

  Before she could change her mind, Liss said:

  – Why don’t I remember anything from when I was a child?

  Mailin didn’t answer.

  – Something crops up every now and then, she went on. – Pictures of some kind. Just now, for example, I saw you coming into my room. You lock the door and get into bed beside me and hold me. But I don’t know if that happened or if it’s something I imagined or dreamt.

  – It did happen, said Mailin. – At home in Lørenskog.

  – You never said anything about that, Liss exclaimed.

  A few moments passed before Mailin answered.

  – Maybe I was waiting till you asked. There’s no need to remember everything.

  Liss felt nauseous. Had to go out and vomit again.

  – Call you later, she managed to say before ending the call.

  2

  Saturday 6 December

  LISS PADDED NAKED around the flat. Checked to see if the ivy on the windowsill needed water. Brewed herself another cup of espresso. Sat by the kitchen window and looked out. The Christmas decorations in Haarlemmerdijk were pine-bedecked bows with lights hanging beneath them. Like suckling nipples on a bitch’s belly, it struck her. A large six-pointed star hung across the middle of the street. Inside it was a heart with red light bulbs glowing.

  She had the flat to herself. A girl in her class, someone she hardly knew, had said without a moment’s hesitation that she could stay with her till she found somewhere permanent. Now the girl had gone to Venlo to spend the weekend with her family. They had to be pretty well off if they could afford to pay for their daughter’s three-bedroomed flat in trendy Jordaan, a part of the old town where Huguenot refugees had once lived. Here the facades had been tastefully refurbished and there were no trams or heavy lorries thundering through at all hours of the day and night.

  Liss took her coffee into the bathroom. Stood in front of the mirror. She didn’t need make-up. Her skin was soft and smooth, without blemishes. But it felt good to smear a mask on. If the whole of her naked body could be coated in thin film, something she could wrap around herself when she went out, pull off when she returned home, that would leave her skin untouched … If she could do the same thing with her eyes. Put something not just on the brows and the lashes but on the pupils themselves. Cover everything that could betray her. Buy contact lenses, though there was nothing wrong with her sight. In another colour, black or brown.

  Two thin flutings from her mobile. Message from Mailin: Didn’t hear back from you. Something’s just happened that has to do with what you asked me about that morning.

  Her sister had called the previous evening. Liss was in the middle of a photo shoot and said she would call back but didn’t. Regretted revealing to her sister that this memory had surfaced. Actually there was nothing wrong with her memory; on a daily and weekly basis she could remember things perfectly well. It was what lay far back that was gone. Other people, like Rikke, seemed to have a detailed overview of their entire lives, starting with the day they got their very first pair of shoes ever. Rikke could rewind; her memory was obviously a film that could be viewed over and over again. Liss’s didn’t work like that. She could remember a few things from the holiday cabin, but not from before she was ten or twelve. Every summer and winter they had lived in the forest cabin just outside Oslo for several week
s. Weekends and holidays. They drove to Bysetermosan and then hauled a fully loaded sledge along the path to Vangen and then on to Morr Water. Or went on skis from Losby. When they got to be old enough, she and Mailin used to go there on their own, without the grown-ups. Sometimes in the evenings. By the light of the moon over Geitsjø and Røiri Waters. Up through the dark forest with their rucksacks, laughing and reverent in the great silence.

  She didn’t need to remember more than she did. Mailin perhaps thought that she mentioned that vague memory from the bedroom in Lørenskog because it bothered her. If so, she was wrong, and Liss decided to tell her next time she rang.

  It was six months since she had last seen her sister. Mailin had visited her in Amsterdam in the early summer. She’d been attending a conference. Something about child abuse. Something she was researching and she delivered a paper on. She stayed on for a few days afterwards. Liss had shown her the town. Taken her along to the school and to one of the photographic studios where she’d done a few jobs. But most things she kept from her big sister. Nothing about the parties and the coke. And she’d been careful to keep Zako out of the way. Didn’t want him to meet Mailin. Two worlds that had to be kept separated. They didn’t belong together, couldn’t exist simultaneously. And yet still the question from Mailin as Liss was driving her to the airport.

  What’s to become of you, Liss?

  It hit her so hard she couldn’t even get angry. Nothing’s going to become of me, she could have answered. That was her victory over everything she’d run away from. Over the life she would never live.

  Mailin didn’t give up.

  Remember what I said to you last time I fetched you from Central Police Station?

  Liss had been picked up several times in the last years before she left. Mailin agreed that the war in Iraq was repellent, and had shuffled about dutifully in a few of these lawful demonstrations where everything was very decorous and proper. That wasn’t enough for Liss. She was part of a group of activists that marched on the American embassy and objected to being headed off by the police. In their anger they threw bottles and stones. Several in the group were willing to go even further and give their attackers a taste of their own dirty medicine. D’you think it does any more good than peaceful protesting? Mailin wanted to know. The way she looked at it, she was working from the inside. It was one of the rare things that made Liss angry with her. If you were on the inside, you were on the side of power, or at the very best a useful idiot. Mailin wouldn’t budge: This business of fighting with the police is all about finding a superior power that is strong enough, then challenging it in order to get beaten up, which simply confirms how evil everything is. Time and again Liss demanded that she stop interferring and mind her own business. And yet, no matter what she got up to, she knew Mailin would never let her go.