Death By Water

by Damhaug, Torkil

  – I don’t think I can.

  Dahlstrøm stood up, looked out of the window. The day had begun to turn grey. He stroked the thin wisps of hair back over his head, went out into the kitchen, returned with the coffee jug and refilled their cups.

  – Mailin was skilled. She helped a lot of people. She meant well. A thoroughly good person. But she’s something more than that to you, Liss. Something far more than a human being.

  Liss looked down. Regretted what she had said.

  – She’s an image of everything that’s good in life. You needed that image. It might be that you’ve reached a point now where you’re going to have to live without your guardian angel. And maybe that’ll be better for you.

  What he said was quite right. Every single word. And yet she shook her head, suddenly frozen.

  – I’ve killed someone.

  Dahlstrøm leaned towards her. – You had no choice, Liss, if you were to survive yourself.

  – I’m not talking about Viljam. I killed someone else.

  She closed her eyes. For an instant she was sitting high above the ground; she let go the reins, was tossed up into the air and came hurtling downwards … She didn’t dare to look at him. Finally she noticed that he had leaned back in his chair.

  – Is this something you want me to know, Liss?

  She couldn’t answer, but realised that he was giving her a choice. It might remain unspoken, unsaid.

  – His name was Zako. He lived in Amsterdam. We were a couple, in a way.

  She spoke with lightning rapidity, as though it was a matter of urgency to close off that road ahead on which she could walk alone.

  Tormod Dahlstrøm said nothing. He sipped some coffee, put the cup back into the saucer so softly that the chink of porcelain was almost inaudible.

  How long she sat there telling her story she didn’t know. She felt as though she were anaesthetised. Her body was numb, time stopped, the only thing in the room was her voice. First she told him the most important facts. Then she started again, in more detail. Not once did she look up. If she met his eyes now, her story would recoil on her, it would turn inside and explode everything it encountered.

  When she fell silent, he once again crossed his legs. She could see his foot dipping up and down once or twice, then still, then dipping again.

  – It sounds as though I’m the first person you’ve told all this to.

  She felt herself nodding. He was the only one who knew. If there was a single person she dared give so much power to, it had to be Dahlstrøm. Only now did she fully understand why she had come to him. His reaction would decide what she must do once she left that room.

  – I don’t think you want advice from me, he said. – It’s enough that I know about it.

  She tried to work out if that was right. His mobile started to vibrate. It was on the desk behind him.

  He stood up and looked at it. – I have to take this.

  She stood up too.

  – You mustn’t go now, Liss.

  – No, she said, I mustn’t.

  He disappeared out into the kitchen, closed the door behind him. She could hear his voice through the wall, not the words, but a low note that made her feel calmer again. Suddenly overcome with gratitude that a man like him existed. Mailin must have felt the same sense of calm when she talked to him. Mailin too needed someone to help her carry her load.

  She strolled over to the window, looked out. The grey was denser now, but it was moving, and the light behind it was sharp. The snow in the garden was wet and covered in twigs and autumn leaves. The property ran up towards the forest, where it was framed by trees that swayed mightily in the wind. One window was open slightly and through it she could hear the sound, the way they moaned.

  The sideboard was covered in family photographs. She recognised the daughter she had met in the doorway, wearing a white frock with bows on it and a satchel on her back. Another was of Dahlstrøm, taken a few years earlier, the hair thicker, the face firmer. But with that same calm gaze. Constitution Day, 17 May. He was wearing a suit and tie, and a boy that looked like him was sitting on his shoulders waving a flag. The next picture was of a dark woman with wavy hair. There was something Greta Garbo-like about her face. It was a black-and-white picture, and Liss guessed this was Dahlstrøm’s mother. Another photo showed the same woman wearing a long, waisted frock. A man with dark, slicked-back hair had his arm around her. He too had deep-set eyes and a chin that jutted even more than Dahlstrøm’s. Liss picked up the photo and held it to the light. It struck her that she was surprised that Dahlstrøm had parents, as though she had been thinking of him as belonging to a completely different species.

  At that moment he came back in. She was startled, didn’t have time to put the photo back. It didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest.

  – Are you interested in family histories?

  She gave it a moment. – It’s interesting to see who we get what from.

  – Who do you resemble most? he asked.

  – My father, she answered without hesitation. – I get it almost all from him. And his mother, my grandmother. If I showed you pictures of her, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between us.

  – Are you like her in other ways too?

  She found a lock of hair and began twisting it. – My grandmother on that side was strange. No one understood her. I’m sure she felt she didn’t belong in this world. She died in the mental hospital, Gaustad. Liss avoided saying her name.

  – You say that as though there was a sort of forewarning in it. There was a question somewhere inside his observation.

  – Maybe … She wriggled away from it. – Isn’t your life also determined by who your parents and grandparents were?

  – To a certain extent, he answered. – My father wanted me to be somebody, preferably a doctor. He had no views on psychiatry, there’s not much prestige in it. He ran a gents’ outfitters, as people used to call them in those days. He spent more than sixty years dealing with clothes, and in his eyes I had taken a big step forward. At the deepest level, that was what life was about for my father, to help the next generation take another step up the ladder.

  Something struck her. She didn’t know where it came from. She was still standing there with the photograph of his parents in her hand. She lifted it up and stared at the well-dressed man with his arm round this woman who was looking not into the camera but beyond it, smiling, if that was what she was doing.

  Mailin’s document on the CD, she thought. There was something about Jacket’s father there.

  – I read everything I could find on the net about Elijah Berger … His father didn’t sell clothes. He was a pastor in the Pentecostal church.

  Thoughts that had been lying jumbled up and separate from each other suddenly whirled together. She turned towards Dahlstrøm and heard herself whisper: – Jacket.

  She glanced up at his face. It stiffened, the eyes narrowing in the depths beneath the forehead. And then she knew it. – They called you Jacket where you grew up.

  – That is correct.

  She felt she didn’t have enough air. Viljam never said that Berger was Jacket, she was the one who had come to that conclusion. Viljam said he would rather die than reveal Jacket’s true identity …

  Dahlstrøm’s gaze didn’t waver. To avoid it, she closed her eyes. The shame surged through her. Apologise to him, she thought. Dahlstrøm is a good person. Apologise to him, Liss, for what you’re thinking. Was there any way she could get out of here without looking up, just turn and run for the door without having to meet his gaze again? What will be left of me, Mailin?

  – You told me a story from Amsterdam, Liss. You made a mistake and the consequences were terrible. I listened to you until you had finished. Now I want you to listen to me.

  – How long was he lying in the water before he died? she murmured.

  She was still standing with the picture of his parents in her hands. Didn’t dare to put it down.

  –
Spring thirteen years ago, he began, and from the corner of her eye she could see that he had collapsed a little, placed one arm on the sideboard and rested his head in his hand. She didn’t want to hear, but couldn’t tear herself away.

  – I stopped him when he was going to drown himself. I saved him. And he saved me …

  Reciprocal help, she thought in disbelief. Is that what you call it?

  – You had sex with him, she managed to say.

  The shame continued to stream through her, hitting in bursts.

  – Only the once. Or just a few times. Carefully. On his conditions. He was proud of it. I did everything I could to help him, Liss. Please understand that. He couldn’t keep on coming to me, but he wouldn’t let go.

  She noticed a current deep down in his voice. She could let herself be carried along by it, wherever he wanted. She could throw herself at him and let him do what he wanted. Or hit him with a stone. Until he lay on the floor bleeding from the eyes, unable to rise any more.

  – Ylva Richter, she said. – You knew that he had killed her.

  He shook his head slowly. – You must believe me, Liss. I no longer had any contact with Viljam. Eight years went by without my seeing him. One day he showed up in my office. He stood in the doorway, wouldn’t sit down. He was standing on the brink of a precipice, staring down. I couldn’t begin treating him, but I knew someone who was unusually talented.

  She was struggling to comprehend what he was saying. – It was you who referred him to Mailin.

  Only now did she raise her eyes. His face looked grey, and the lines on his forehead sunken, squeezing it.

  – Mailin found out. She realised that you were Jacket.

  – My dear Liss. If you only knew …

  His voice grew thicker. Still that need was there: lean into him, let him put his arms around her, carry her away. But it was vanishing. The other thing was overtaking now. If she let it loose, it could fill the whole room, crushing everything that stood in its way.

  – Had you not destroyed Viljam, he would never have killed Mailin. She said it without raising her voice, and the fact that she did so made her anger manageable and she was able to control it. – You killed Mailin.

  Then he said: – There is a limit to how much guilt you can ask one person to assume, Liss. Once that is reached, you have to stop pouring, or the person goes under. If I manage to stay afloat, I can help many people. If I don’t, they’ll find that they’re alone again.

  She felt his hand on her shoulder.

  – You told me of your fatal mistake, Liss. I’ve told you mine. It’s possible for us to say that we’re quits. That we have something that binds us together. That there are two of us to share the burden as we walk down the road.

  She looked at him. Saw no sign of grief in his eyes, or regret. And there was no passion in what he was offering her either. It was a partnership. Start a firm, with themselves as joint owners, for the transporting of corpses.

  She moved her gaze to the window. The wind swirled up a rain of dead leaves and then laid them down again, making a pattern.

  Without saying anything more, she turned away from him, crossed the living room and found her own way out.

  As I sit here in the living room looking out on the winter afternoon, I continue our conversation in my thoughts. How could you who knows everything about a child’s needs allow yourself to do something like that? you ask. And again I try to tell you about that spring thirteen years ago, before the trip to Makrigialos. I had patients, I had TV programmes, I had regular columns in newspapers and magazines. Everyone had a piece of me. And I had something for everyone. Then came that day in early April. When I let myself into the living room, Elsa, the woman I was married to, was sitting in that chair you have just vacated. She asked me to sit down on the sofa. Then she said: ‘I’m moving out, Tormod.’ I didn’t believe her. Ours was a good marriage. Our children were happy. We did things together, she and I, even still had a sex life after almost twenty years. ‘It’s not true,’ I said. But three days later, she was gone. I walked into a storm. It was everywhere, around me and inside me. I didn’t know if I could survive it. Then suddenly it was gone.

  That was when things became difficult. Getting up in the morning. Washing, getting dressed. Not to speak of going to the shops. Or taking the kids to after-school activities. I had been tossed aside, washed up in another landscape. Complete stillness. Utterly dead. No trees, no colours, nothing but that huge black sun up there, sucking all the light into itself. All I heard was the sound of my own footsteps as I trod through the ashes. A friend and colleague, well intentioned, perceptive, came to talk to me, friendly and cautious at first but then tough and decisive. One day early that autumn, he tossed a few clothes into a suitcase and drove me out to Gardermoen in his car. He’d booked me on a holiday. He was actually supposed to come with me, but something happened at home, illness, and he had to cancel at the last moment.

  You can’t make me believe the relationship between you and Viljam was reciprocal, you say, that you were equals.

  We were, Liss. In the beginning. But Jo, as I still think of him, bonded with me. He clung to me as if it was a matter of life and death. He worshipped me. And wouldn’t let me be anything else for him but the god that he needed.

  And Ylva, you ask, how could you fail to know who had killed her?

  I saw no connection. I want you to believe me, Liss. A girl in Bergen named Ylva. A front-page picture in the newspapers. Maybe she resembled someone I’d seen at a holiday resort many years previously. Maybe not … Of course I would have seen the connection if I could have faced looking for it. Because we often talked about her. I had to build up a picture of her in his imagination. Teach him how to approach her. She was a symbol of womanhood. I guided his desire in that direction, towards her, towards a girl his own age. Not Ylva in a literal sense, but Ylva as an image.

  Do you understand me, Liss? Tell me you understand me.

  You aren’t here any more. All that remains in the room is the sound of your footsteps crossing the floor. The sound of the door closing. The sound of the last words you said to me: You killed Mailin.

  Maybe you know that whatever happens now is entirely up to you. Wander like a blind person. The unending drought. Or chance upon a few drops of water. A peace that passeth all understanding.

  She reached Frognerseter Way and carried on down through the smell of cold exhaust. It started snowing again, but the wind had dropped by now. She passed the metro station, continued along the banks left by the snowplough. Her feet were still painful from the chilblains after being frozen at Morr Water. A steady stream of cars came towards her, splashing dirty snow over them.

  She turned off when she reached the Riks Hospital and stamped her way along the road that twisted by Gaustad. The country’s first insane asylum, she knew that. Had stood there for more than a hundred and fifty years. Her father’s mother had been locked up in there for a few months before she died. Had she done it to herself? Had she twisted bed linen and clothes together into a rope and fastened it to the light fitting in the ceiling, looped it around her neck and kicked away the chair? No one talked about it; what happened had been deleted from history by silence. What was left of her? A few black-and-white photos of a beautiful woman, strange and distant.

  On the path leading towards the lake at Sognsvann, the snow lay deep. Liss kept on walking. Heard the sound of her own footsteps. At one point she stopped and turned round, studied her tracks through the dense, driving snow. Soon they’ll be gone, she thought, and the thought latched on to another: He caught me just before I smashed to pieces. He threw me down, but never dropped me once.

  By the time she reached the lake, she had made up her mind. She didn’t carry on up into the woods but took a right turn and headed across the car park. She stopped outside the entrance to the sports academy and sent a text message.

  It took three minutes for Jomar Vindheim to come running down the steps.

  – Sorry if I
interrupted your lectures.

  He stood there open mouthed, staring at her.

  – Thought you ought to see the one-eyed troll after all, she said. – Because I’m sure you like going to freak shows and stuff like that.

  He stepped closer. For the second time he laid a hand on her cheek. This time she didn’t take it away.

  – There are two things I want to ask of you, Jomar.

  – All right, he said.

  – The first is that you take me home to your flat. Treat me the way you were going to that night we were supposed to be going out.

  He stood there looking down into her good eye. Maybe he was searching for a code there, something that might explain what was happening.

  – Liss … he said finally.

  – I’ll tell you the other thing later, she interrupted. – My only condition is that you don’t talk about your grandfather. Not a single word.

  He was thinly dressed, wearing only a T-shirt, but he put his arms around her as though she were the one who needed warming.

  She stood naked by the living-room window on the ninth floor, trying to make things out through the driving snow. On a clear day I bet you can see a long way from here, she thought. The whole city and out over the fjord, down to Drøbak, maybe further …

  Mailin hadn’t said anything to their mother about those nights at the house in Lørenskog. She’d wanted to protect her. Now there’s no one who knows what happened, thought Liss. No one but the person who went away and never came back. And me, who cannot bring it to the surface … That was where she must live from now on, in the place between what she could not remember, and what she would never be able to forget.

  She heard Jomar getting out of the bed. He came into the room, crossing the floor. Hands around her from behind. They smelled of something that reminded her of sap, not too sweet, not too strong. It would be possible to learn to like these hands.

  – The nurse at the hospital said you should be my girlfriend.