The Kingdom

by Jo Nesbo

  You forgot to add that you personally would end up with a very black mark against your name, I thought. But when I looked at Olsen I could see that the despair in his face and voice were genuine.

  ‘So what can you do?’ he sighed, opening his arms wide.

  ‘Make sure the girl gets away from her father,’ I said. ‘By moving to Notodden, for example.’

  He turned his gaze away from mine. Fastened it on the newspaper stand, as though there was something of interest there. Nodded slowly.

  ‘In any case, he’s lodged a complaint against you, and I need to do something about it, you realise that? The maximum penalty is four years.’

  ‘Four years?’

  ‘His jaw is broken in two places and he risks permanently impaired hearing in one ear.’

  ‘Then he’s still got one left. Whisper to him in his good ear that if he drops the summons then at least this business with his daughter won’t become public knowledge. I know, and you know, and he knows that the only reason he’s taking out this summons is that if he didn’t it would look like there was something in what I accuse him of.’

  ‘I understand your logic, Roy, but as the sheriff I can’t turn a blind eye to the fact that you’ve incapacitated another man.’

  I shrugged. ‘Self-defence. He attacked me with the hammer before I even touched him.’

  Olsen gave a short laugh that never reached his eyes. ‘And how are you going to get me to believe that? That a Pentecostalist who’s never been in trouble before attacks Roy Calvin Opgard, a guy known throughout the village as someone who likes nothing better than a punch-up?’

  ‘By using your head and your eyes.’ I placed my hands flat on the counter.

  He stared. ‘And?’

  ‘I am right-handed. Everyone I’ve ever had a fight with will tell you, I knocked them out with my right. How come there isn’t a scrap of skin on the knuckles of my left, while my right is completely untouched apart from that finger? Explain to Moe how this whole thing is going to look, not just his daughter but the grievous bodily harm, when it emerges that he was the one who attacked me.’

  Olsen stroked his moustache intently. Gave a nod. ‘I’ll have a word with him.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He raised his head and fixed me with his gaze. I saw a flash of anger there. As though with my thank you I was making fun of him. That he wasn’t doing it for my sake but his own. Maybe for Natalie’s and the village’s too, but at any rate, not for me.

  ‘The snow won’t last long,’ he said.

  ‘No?’ I said casually.

  ‘The forecast is for mild weather next week.’

  * * *

  —

  The council meeting started at five o’clock. Before he left, Carl, Shannon and I ate a meal of mountain trout with potatoes, cucumber salad and sour cream which I served in the dining room.

  ‘You’re a good cook,’ said Shannon as she cleared the table.

  ‘Thanks, but that’s actually about as simple as it gets,’ I said, listening to the throb of the Cadillac’s engine as it faded away.

  We sat in the living room where I served our coffees.

  ‘The hotel is first up on the agenda,’ I said with a glance at the clock. ‘So he’ll probably be in action pretty soon. We’ll just have to cross our fingers and hope he manages to klare brasene.’

  ‘Klare brasene?’ said Shannon.

  ‘You haven’t heard that phrase? It means overcome the difficulties.’

  ‘What are braser?’

  ‘No idea. Something maritime. Not my scene.’

  ‘We must have some wine.’ Shannon went out to the kitchen and returned with two glasses and a bottle of sparkling wine that Carl had kept in the fridge to cool.

  ‘So, Roy, what is your scene?’

  ‘My scene?’ I said, watching as she opened the bottle. ‘I want my own service station and...well, I guess that’s actually about it.’

  ‘Wife? Kids?’

  ‘If that’s what happens then OK.’

  ‘Why have you never had a girlfriend?’

  I shrugged. ‘I guess I just don’t have what it takes.’

  ‘You mean you don’t think you’re attractive? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘I was sort of half joking, but yes.’

  ‘Well then, let me tell you that’s not true, Roy. I’m not saying that because I feel sorry for you, but because it’s a fact.’

  ‘A fact?’ I took the glass she offered me. ‘Aren’t things like that subjective?’

  ‘Some things are subjective. And the sum attractiveness of a man is probably more in the eye of the woman doing the looking than is the case the other way round.’

  ‘You think that’s unfair?’

  ‘The man is maybe freer because less importance is attached to his appearance, but then more importance is attached to his social status. When women complain about being judged on their looks, men ought to complain about the pressures of status.’

  ‘And if you possess neither beauty nor social status?’

  Shannon had kicked off her shoes and drawn her feet up onto the chair. She took a long drink of wine. Seemed to be enjoying herself.

  ‘Just like beauty, status is measured using differing weights and differing scales,’ she said. ‘A dirt-poor painter who’s a genius might have a whole harem of women. Women are attracted to resourceful men, men who stand out from the crowd. If you possess neither beauty nor status then you have to compensate by having charm, or strength of character, humour or some other quality.’

  I laughed. ‘And that’s where I score, is that what you think?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers and thanksafuckingmillion,’ I said and raised my glass. The tiny bubbles fizzed and whispered something to me, though I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘So with Carl, what was it you fell for? The looks, the status or the charm?’ I said, noticing to my surprise that my glass was almost empty.

  ‘The insecurity,’ she said. ‘The kindness. That’s where Carl’s beauty lies.’

  I raised my right hand to wag a warning index finger but being unable to bend the bandaged middle finger had to use my left instead. ‘You can’t advance that kind of Darwinian theory of reproduction and at the same time claim to be an exception to it. Insecurity and kindness won’t do.’

  She smiled and replenished our glasses. ‘You’re right, of course, but that’s what it felt like. I know my rational animal brain must have been looking for someone to father my offspring, but what my scatterbrained humanity saw and fell in love with was this vulnerable beauty of a man.’

  I shook my head. ‘Appearance, status or other compensatory qualities?’

  ‘Let me see,’ said Shannon, holding up her glass to the light from the table lamp. ‘Appearance.’

  I said nothing but nodded and thought of Carl and Grete in the woods. The ominous rubbing of her jacket before it tore. There was another sound there too. A squishing sound. Like a cow in a bog. A soft breast. Julie. I forced the thought away.

  ‘Of course beauty isn’t an absolute quality,’ said Shannon. ‘It’s what we, each of us as individuals, say it is. Beauty is always in a context, it’s in relation to our previous experiences, everything we’ve sensed, learned and put together. People in countries all over the world have a tendency to think their own national anthem just happens to be the best in the world, that their mothers are the best cooks, that the most beautiful girl in town is also the most beautiful on the planet, and so on. The first time you come across music that’s new and strange you won’t like it. That’s to say, if it’s really strange. When people claim to like or even love music that’s completely new to them, it’s because they like the idea of the exotic, it’s
stimulating, and what’s more it gives them the feeling of possessing a sensitivity and a cosmic understanding that is superior to their neighbour’s. But what they really like is what they unconsciously recognise. In the course of time that which was once new becomes a part of their experiential basis, and the conditionally learned, the indoctrination into what is lovely and what is beautiful, a part of their aesthetic sense. Early in the twentieth century American films began teaching people all over the world to find beauty in white film stars. And in time black too. Over the last fifty years Asian films have done the same for their stars. Although it’s like music, their beauty has to be something the public recognise, an Asian mustn’t be too Asiatic, but have a similarity to an established idea of beauty, an ideal which is still white. Seen from that perspective, the word sense when used of aesthetics is, at best, imprecise. We are born with vision and hearing, but in aesthetics we all start from a clean sheet. We—’

  She stopped abruptly. Smiled fleetingly and raised the wine glass to her lips, as though realising she was lecturing to an audience that was probably not interested. We sat a while in silence. I coughed.

  ‘I read somewhere that everyone, even the most isolated tribes, like symmetry in a face. Doesn’t that suggest that some things are congenital?’

  Shannon looked at me. A smile glided across her face and she leaned forward in her chair.

  ‘Maybe. On the other hand, the rules governing symmetry are so simple and strict that it’s not surprising we share the taste for it all over the world. The same way belief in a higher power is something that’s easy to turn to, which makes it universal but not congenital.’

  ‘So if I was to say that I think you’re pretty?’ The words just slipped out of me.

  At first she looked surprised, then she pointed to her droopy eye, and when she spoke now her voice wasn’t warm and dark, but had a harsh, metallic ring to it. ‘Then it’s either a lie or you’ve failed to comprehend the most elementary principles behind the idea of beauty.’

  I realised I had crossed some kind of line. ‘So then there are principles?’ I said, trying get back over on the right side again.

  She gave me a look as though trying to decide whether to let me get away with it or not. ‘Symmetry,’ she said at last. ‘The golden ratio. Shapes that imitate nature. Complementary colours. Harmonising notes.’

  I nodded, relieved that the conversation was back on the rails again but knowing I’d have a hard time forgiving myself for that slip.

  ‘Or in architecture, where you have functional shapes,’ she went on. ‘Which are actually the same as shapes that imitate nature. The hexagonal cells in a beehive. The beaver’s regulatory dam. The fox’s network of tunnels. The woodpecker’s hole of a nest which becomes a home for other birds. None of these are built to be beautiful, and yet they are. A house that’s good to live in is beautiful. It’s actually as simple as that.’

  ‘How about a service station?’

  ‘That can also be beautiful, provided its function is something we regard as praiseworthy.’

  ‘So then a gallows...?’

  Shannon smiled. ‘...can be beautiful as long as the death penalty is regarded as necessary.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you have to hate the condemned person to think like that?’

  Shannon licked her lips, as though testing the notion. ‘I think it would be enough to find it necessary.’

  ‘But a Cadillac is beautiful,’ I said, pouring more wine. ‘Even though compared with modern cars its shape isn’t especially functional.’

  ‘It has lines that imitate nature, it looks as if it was built to fly like an eagle, bare its teeth like a hyena, glide through the water like a shark. It looks as though it’s aerodynamic and has room for a rocket engine that could launch us into outer space.’

  ‘But the form lies about the function, and we know it. But we still find it beautiful.’

  ‘Well, even atheists can find churches beautiful. But believers probably find them even more beautiful because they’re associated with everlasting life, the same way the female body affects a man who wants to pass on his own genes. Without his being aware of it a man’s desire for a female body will be slightly less if he knows that she is not fertile.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘We can test it out.’

  ‘How?’

  She smiled weakly. ‘I’ve got endometriosis.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a condition in which cells similar to those in the layer of tissue that normally covers the inside of the uterus grow outside it. It means I’m unlikely ever to have children. You agree that an awareness of something lacking in the content makes the exterior a little less attractive?’

  I looked at her. ‘No.’

  She smiled. ‘That’s your superficial, conscious self answering. Let your unconscious chew over the information for a while.’

  Maybe it was the wine that coloured her usually snow-white cheeks. I was on the point of answering when she interrupted with a peal of laughter.

  ‘Anyway, you’re my brother-in-law so not very suitable as a guinea pig.’

  I nodded. Then I got up and crossed to the CD player. Put on J. J. Cale’s Naturally.

  We listened to the album in silence, and when it was over, Shannon asked me to play the whole thing again from the start.

  The door opened in the middle of ‘Don’t Go to Strangers’ and there on the threshold stood Carl. He had a serious, resigned look on his face. He nodded in the direction of the bottle of sparkling wine.

  ‘Why did you open that?’ he asked in a subdued voice.

  ‘Because we knew you would persuade the council that what this place needs is a hotel,’ said Shannon, raising her glass. ‘That they’ll allow you to build as many cabins as you ask for. We’re celebrating in advance.’

  ‘Do I look as though that’s what happened?’ he said, staring gloomily at us.

  ‘What you look like is a very bad actor,’ said Shannon. She took a drink. ‘Get yourself a glass, sweetie.’

  Carl’s mask dropped. He gave a loud laugh and came towards us with his arms outspread. ‘Only one vote against. They loved it!’

  * * *

  —

  A halo of enthusiasm seemed to hover over Carl as he drank up most of what was left of the sparkling wine and gave a vivid description of events at the meeting.

  ‘They lapped it up, every word. Know what one of them said? “One of our mantras in the Left Party is that everything can be done better; but today, he said, nothing could have been done better.” They agreed to the zoning plans on the spot, so now we have our cabins.’ He pointed to the window. ‘After the meeting Willumsen came over to me, said he’d been sitting on the public bench and congratulated me not just for making me and my family rich but for turning the farmland of every villager into nothing less than an oilfield. He said how much he regretted he didn’t own even more of the mountain than he did, and on the spot he offered us three million for our land.’

  ‘And what did you say?’ I asked.

  ‘That maybe that was double what the land was worth yesterday, but that now the price had gone up tenfold. No, fifty-fold! Cheers!’

  Shannon and I raised our empty glasses.

  ‘What about the hotel?’ asked Shannon.

  ‘They loved it. Loved it. The changes they asked for were minimal.’

  ‘Changes?’ The light brow over her right eye rose.

  ‘They thought it was a bit...sterile, I think the word was. They want a bit more Norwegian local colour. Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Local colour? Meaning what?’

  ‘Details. They want turfed roofs, some lafted timber here and there. Two big trolls carved in wood on each side of the entrance. Stupid things like that.’

  ‘And?’

  Carl shru
gged. ‘And I said yes. It’s no big deal,’ he added in English.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Listen, darling, it’s psychology. They need to feel they’re in control, that they aren’t just a bunch of peasants being ridden roughshod over by some loudmouth who’s just come back from abroad, understand? So we have to give them something. I acted as though these concessions were going to cost us, so now they think they’ve pushed it as far as they can and they won’t be asking for anything else.’

  ‘No compromises,’ said Shannon. ‘You promised.’ Her staring eye flashed.

  ‘Relax, darling. In a month’s time, when we turn over the first shovelful of earth, we’re going to be the ones in the driving seat, and then we’ll give them some practical explanation of why we can’t use this kitschy stuff after all. Until then we let them think they’ll get what they want.’

  ‘The way you let everyone think they’ll get what they want?’

  There was a chill in her voice that I had never heard before.

  Carl wriggled in his chair. ‘Darling, this is a time for celebrating, not—’

  Shannon stood up suddenly. Marched out.

  ‘What was all that about?’ I asked as the front door slammed.

  Carl sighed. ‘It’s her hotel.’

  ‘Hers?’

  ‘She designed it.’

  ‘She designed it? Not an architect?’

  ‘Shannon is an architect, Roy.’

  ‘She is?’

  ‘Best in Toronto if you ask me. But she has her own style and her own opinions, and unfortunately she’s a bit of a Howard Roark.’

  ‘A bit of a who?’

  ‘He’s an architect who blew his own work up because it wasn’t built exactly the way he drew it. Shannon’s going to make trouble about every little detail. If she’d been a bit more flexible she would have been not only the best but also the most in-demand architect in Toronto.’