by Geir Tangen
“Of course we had to rescue you over there at the bar. You were about to collapse under the bar, but the bartender still kept serving you. Funny place, this,” the man said, turning from right to left to see whether he had the full attention of his journalist colleagues. He did.
Viljar tried to say thank you, but his tongue seemed to have curled up, and it came out more a grunt than a word.
The man from East Norway changed position and sat cross-legged on a chair across from Viljar. “Since you evidently know all about this case, and carry on correspondence with Jack the Ripper, do you by any chance know what happened early today?”
“Yes.” Viljar tried to smile, which turned into a distorted grimace.
The man from East Norway winked at the other journalists around the table and pulled his chair right next to Viljar. He leaned forward to pick up everything. One of the other dogs started fumbling feverishly with the recording function on his cell phone. They probably sensed easy prey and were ready to go on the attack. Viljar’s peculiar smile had stiffened, and he looked dully at the attentive group.
“Yes, tell us then…” The man from East Norway shook his shoulder to get him started.
“What happened early today,” Viljar began, but then it seemed as if the words stopped in his mouth.
He collected himself and opened his mouth again. “What happened was that I, in my fucking egotism, was blind that I was putting others in danger.”
The man from East Norway and the other four around the table looked a little uncertainly at each other. Was there something we didn’t catch earlier today?
“The woman who was killed was my very best friend for several years. She was an amazingly good person and … and…”
Viljar choked up again. The tears came, filling his eyes, and the words wouldn’t come in the right order.
“She worked with Viljar as a journalist at Haugesund News.”
A loud and clear voice made itself known from behind them. A moment later, the person in question was standing in front of the journalists. He placed a big, sturdy fist on Viljar’s shoulder and looked down at the group sitting around the table. “Viljar here is in fucking bad shape, as you see. He lost a close colleague and friend today, and I think it’s completely shameless of you to start pumping him for information in the state he’s in now.”
The man from East Norway stood up and was about to take hold of the uninvited guest.
“Take it easy, damn it. I can smell a rat, and just because you have a byline on the TV 2 News Channel doesn’t mean you can carry on like this. One phone call from me, and your boss will find out that you’re sitting here drunk, luring information out of a witness who is dangerously close to being in a coma. That sort of thing isn’t nice, and you and the rest of your wolf pack know that perfectly well.”
Viljar felt himself being lifted up from the chair. He looked like a cat that had been picked up by the scruff of its neck.
“Now, I’m taking young Ravn Gudmundsson here with me,” said a dark voice. “He’s had enough, and suffered enough for today. If you want to know anything, you can ask him tomorrow morning. Right now, there’s as much credibility in what he’s saying as there is at an after-party in a hotel room after a rock concert.”
Outside Captain’s, Viljar was lying in the ditch, moaning. He didn’t seem to notice that he had his hands in his own vomit as he tried to stand up. Finally he got help from his rescuer. They moved on. Arm in arm down the steep hill on Strandgata from the IMI cemetery to the crossing at Kaibakken. They even walked past a police car parked outside the Egon restaurant without the policeman recognizing the dead-drunk figure. He was on the lookout for a killer, not a drowned doormat being dragged through the streets by a buddy.
Four years earlier …
Torvastad, Karmøy
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
It was when his father was silent and serious that Jonas felt afraid. Although he was almost always silent, he usually had a sense of piety about him. A gentle expression, and kind, friendly eyes. On rare occasions, dead seriousness took over. Then he got a distant expression, as if he weren’t present in the room. The bushy eyebrows turned down and settled ominously close to his eyelids. His face turned gloomy and strained, and he moved with abrupt, staccato movements. At these moments, the family knew that they would be wise to keep their distance. It was like that too this particular day. His mother quickly started to take her precautions, and asked Jonas and his little sister, Ine, to go with her into Haugesund to shop. His father hadn’t said anything, but with a firm movement, he held Jonas back when he was about to go out the front door.
“Not you,” he said. “Not anymore.”
His mother looked anxiously at Jonas, and Jonas himself wanted more than anything to run out the door before it was too late. His father’s hand on his shoulder and those two simple words made that choice an impossibility. He was the head of the family. There was nothing to discuss. When his mother and sister had left, his father let go of Jonas’s shoulder. Without saying anything, he went into the living room and sat down on the armchair. Demonstratively picked up the Bible and his reading glasses. Jonas did not let himself be affected by the scene. Instead he waited patiently on a spindle-backed chair over by the window.
After a while, André Ferkingstad got up from the chair. Reserved and sullen, he walked calmly over to the veranda door. Locked it. Then he did the same with the hasps in the kitchen window. Turned without giving his son a single glance and went out in the hall. Jonas could hear the front door being locked. His heart became a hammer. It thundered in his chest. Something was about to fall to pieces. The taste of blood in his mouth. He bit his tongue, but felt no pain. What the hell do I do now?
His father stopped by the door between the hall and the living room. He spoke quietly, but the silence around them was so complete that Jonas would have heard him if he’d whispered.
“The house is locked. We are alone. Everything that happens in here has only one witness, and that is God. Is there anything you want God and me to know, Jonas? You can get it off your chest now, because God looks with mercy on those who repent, and I will too.”
Jonas gasped involuntarily. There was something threatening about his father’s apparent calm and self-control. He observed Jonas at a distance and did not move his gaze. Tilted his head a little to one side, like a watchdog who expects that the intruder will make an attack. It was impossible to act as if he wasn’t afraid. Everything about his father’s figure radiated a calculating predator. Jonas would not get away. At last he managed to clear his throat enough to get out a word or two. Not exactly well chosen, but hopefully redeeming where figuring out what it was his father knew was concerned.
“What are you talking about, Dad? Have I done something you think is wrong?”
His father came closer. Still silent, but now he had clenched his fists. Jonas could see that the knuckles were white. He moved his head calmly from side to side as if he had a kink in his neck. “I’m not the one who decides what is wrong, Jonas. It’s God. Have you done anything that violates His law? Have you, Jonas?”
Jonas noticed that he was about to empty his bladder. It was his father’s insane calm that frightened him. If he had screamed, shouted, hit the table … Yes, anything at all. Those were normal reactions that could be dealt with.
“I have a clear conscience with respect to God, Father. I haven’t sinned against a single one of His Ten Commandments, if that’s what you mean.”
André Ferkingstad stopped his son from saying anything else by holding an index finger in front of his mouth. The word “mean” came as a mumble.
“You know what we say in Abraham about the Ten Commandments, Jonas. Those were simplifications. Made so that small children could remember and understand them. You’re grown now. Why should God dictate a whole book if ten simple commandments were enough?”
His father came a step closer, and Jonas could feel his warm breath against his face as he spoke
.
“What is sin, Jonas? Yes, sin is breaking the law of God. Have you ever sinned against God? If you have taken something that doesn’t belong to you, then you’re a thief. If you have ever hated someone, then Jesus says you have committed murder in your heart. If you have looked at a person with sexual desire, then you’ve been unfaithful in your heart. Am I to understand that you are without sin in this world, Jonas? Is that the lie you stand in front of your father and say?”
The treacherous tears came without Jonas’s being able to stop them. He knew what his father was capable of when he was like he was now. That submission was the only way out to get mercy, but he couldn’t ask for that. Not this time.
“What have I done? I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Dad.”
A little streak of doubt passed over his father’s eyes, as if a spirit had passed through the room. It was only a flash, but enough to ignite hope in Jonas. His father didn’t know anything for sure. He only assumed.
“There are those in the congregation who say I should pray for you, Jonas. That I ought to recite for you. They say that perhaps you haven’t taken in what it says in the first letter to the Corinthians. In chapter six, verses nine to ten. Do you know what it says there, Jonas?”
The boy shook his head. A reflex of denial, even if he knew it perfectly well.
“Do you know what it says there?”
His father roared so that drops of saliva struck Jonas in the face. The calm mask was gone. Now both desperation and anger were seen in his face. For Jonas that was a relief. His father’s unpredictable anger was easier to handle than his calculating coldness.
His father took him by the shirt collar and pressed him up against the wall.
“These are the words of the Lord. ‘Or know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.’”
Jonas grasped the straw his father had given him by reciting the verses.
“Yes, Dad. I repent. I shouldn’t have drunk alcohol at that class party. I know it was wrong. I know I’ve sinned. I’ve prayed to God for forgiveness for my sins.”
Where the crocodile tears came from, he had no idea. Probably a result of pure terror.
The grip around his shirt loosened. His father suddenly looked surprised, just as Jonas had hoped. By admitting a different sin, perhaps he could get out of what his father thought he’d done.
“You … You drank alcohol? Was that what they meant?”
“Who are ‘they,’ Dad? The congregation? You know just as well as anyone that the congregation will wrench a sin out of every single word you say, out of every single thing you do. Do you remember what they said about Mom last winter? Do you remember? That she committed adultery because she went to the Christmas lunch at work without you?”
Jonas knew what he was doing now. The whole family was close to being excluded from Abraham when his father chose to defend his mother.
“Mother didn’t do anything wrong. I have. I had a drink, but I’ve prayed for forgiveness from God. I can’t let what the congregation might think about that bother me. I have to be called to account by Him, not them.”
His father was looking furtively at him now. It was as if all the bundled-up energy had suddenly run out of him. He looked tired. Worn out. He cleared his throat.
“Go, my son, and sin no more.”
Jonas backed out of the living room. Could almost not believe that he had gotten away. But someone in the congregation knew, and it was only a matter of time before the congregation stopped hinting to his father what he had done and instead said it flat out. When that happened, there would no longer be forgiveness or pardon in his father’s eyes. Then there would only be damnation.
Austmann high-rises, Haugesund
Saturday morning, October 18, 2014
The sun struck Viljar in the eyes, and he twisted and turned to find a position where the rays didn’t reach him. Quickly realized that it was useless. He wasn’t lying in his bed, and he couldn’t move in any direction. A heavy, syrupy brain mass tried in vain to make any connections. Viljar tried opening his eyes in the hope that it would cast light over the mystery. He regretted it immediately. Shooting pain rushed through his nerves from his eyeballs up to his head. He closed them again at once.
In despair, he tried to go back to sleep, but now the rest of his body had discovered that he was awake, with crystal clear messages on three primitive needs. A full bladder that must be emptied. A body that needed water, and last but not least … His back was about to seize up. In other words, he had to get up, and posthaste at that.
Viljar tried to open his mouth, but in the course of the night, saliva had glued his lips together, and he felt his lips crack when he forced them open with his jaw muscles. Laboriously he managed to get up into a sitting position, still with his eyes closed. Slowly Viljar got to his feet. Noted with some surprise that he was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes and shoes, and that he had spent the night on the overly short couch in the living room.
Then I’m at home anyway, he thought, staggering into the bathroom. He had to hold firmly on to the sink while he emptied his bladder. His knees were dangerously close to giving way. A quick look in the mirror confirmed what he had suspected. He had a big lump on his forehead, but he couldn’t remember what had caused the injury. When the trickling finally ended, he became aware of the rank smell of piss in the tiny bathroom. It didn’t take more than that for the vomiting reflex to take over and turn him over with his head in the toilet. With his pants to his knees and a convulsive hold around the sides of the porcelain bowl, yesterday’s final remnants came up. He noted that today would be considerably worse than previous blue Mondays. Next stop would undoubtedly be the bed.
On his way into the bedroom, Viljar became aware of something in the corner of his eye. A detail that had no business in his living room. He stopped and turned around slowly. By the black leather armchair in the living room, a pair of big shoes were sticking out from under a blanket. There was someone there! A person was lying in the chair. Completely motionless.
Viljar felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and wondered for a moment whether he shouldn’t take another turn over the porcelain in the adjacent room. Instead he steeled himself and approached the body under the blanket. All he could see were some thin strands of hair on top, and the shoes sticking out at the opposite end. The body was in a distorted and unnatural position. Some signals in Viljar’s brain reported that what was lying under the blanket was a sight he did not want to see. Nonetheless, he removed the blanket. He plopped down on the couch across from the body and shook his head.
What the hell happened? Once again, Viljar looked at the person beside him. He sighed heavily and gingerly touched the bump on his forehead. Viljar had an explanation problem, and he knew it. He looked around desperately. Dryly noted that there was little point in keeping things hidden any longer. The body was lying there, and soon he would have to account for himself. Suddenly the lifeless carcass started mumbling incoherently. Viljar shook his colleague a little.
Henrik Thomsen opened first one eye, then the other. In contrast to Viljar, it did not seem as if Henrik was equally surprised or tormented by the state of things. He even managed to produce an ingratiating grin before he sat up. The old armchair complained in protest under his weight. Thomsen looked at Viljar and shook his head. “Jesus … has the ghost come back from the dead? Is there any coffee to be had for a gentleman who spent the night in the world’s most uncomfortable armchair?”
“Spare the wisecracks, Henrik. I feel more sorry for the chair than for you. What the heck are you doing here?”
Henrik Thomsen looked at Viljar with feigned offense. “Now, then … Ingratitude is the wages of the world, I understand. For your information, you wer
e so dead drunk last night that if I hadn’t picked you up, you would have woken up in the gutter instead of here at home. God knows if you would have woken up at all.”
Viljar observed his colleague with suspicion. Staggered out to the kitchen and started the coffeemaker with trembling hands. Back in the living room, he delivered a cup of steaming pitch-black coffee to Henrik, while he patted his pockets in search of a cigarette.
“Here,” said Henrik, handing him the tobacco pouch. “You lost it on the way up the stairs last night. I brought it in. Figured you would need something to calm your nerves with today.”
Viljar took it, found a half-full ashtray that was under the table, and lit an old butt that was in the pouch. The first deep drag produced a coughing fit worthy of an eighty-year-old COPD patient.
“And the experts think that’s unhealthy. I just don’t understand it,” Henrik said sarcastically.
Viljar did not laugh.
They drank coffee in silence. It didn’t seem as if either of them had any particular desire to talk about the unavoidable. They squinted at each other like two cowboys ready for a showdown at sunup. In that case, Henrik assumed the role of Bud Spencer. Viljar was probably a trifle slower than Terence Hill, but he fired off nonetheless.
“Can you explain to me why you bothered to drag me home from the ditch last night?”
Henrik sighed heavily, as if it were a burden he had borne for a long time and which he could now finally lift from his conscience. “I know you won’t believe me, but it was actually a coincidence. I made an outing to Captain’s Cabin last night. Not because I personally frequent that place to any great extent, but my sister does from time to time, and she was the one I was looking for.”