The Kingdom

by Jo Nesbo

  They just stared at me. Then the cheering began.

  ‘This evening...’ I shouted, and the racket immediately died down. ‘This evening we’re the second worst in the county, so the bar is only going to be open for one hour. After that everyone will go home and charge their batteries ready for tomorrow, because it’s tomorrow – and not the day after – that we start climbing up that list.’

  * * *

  —

  I lived in Søm, a quiet residential area on the east side before you cross the bridges over to the town side. I rented a spacious three-roomed apartment, of which I only had furniture enough for two. I figured that by now the rumours about Carl having been abused by Dad were spreading like wildfire through Os. That the only one who hadn’t heard them was Carl. And me. Though she had waited fifteen years, when Grete made up her mind to tell people what Carl had confided in her I was the first one she told, and by now she must be having one field day after another in her hair salon. If Carl found out, he would probably be able to handle it. And if he never heard anything that was probably OK too. In any event, the responsibility and the shame were above all mine. I couldn’t take it. I was weak. But that wasn’t the main reason I’d had to leave Os. It was her.

  By night I dreamed of Shannon.

  By day I dreamed of Shannon.

  Eating, driving between work and home, serving customers, working out, washing clothes, sitting on the toilet, masturbating, listening to an audio book or watching TV, I dreamed of Shannon.

  About that sleepy, sensual eye. An eye that expressed more feelings, more warmth and cold than other people’s two eyes put together. Or about a voice that was almost as deep as Rita’s, and yet completely different, so soft you felt you wanted to lie down in it like a warm bed. About kissing her, fucking her, washing her, holding her tight, setting her free. About the red hair that glowed in the sunlight, about the tense bow of her spine, laughter that contained an almost imperceptible predatory snarl, as well as a promise.

  I tried to tell myself it was the same old story all over again, about Mari, about falling in love with my brother’s girl. That it was some kind of fucking sickness or short circuit in my brain. Driving yourself crazy over what you can’t have or shouldn’t have. And that if by some miracle Shannon wanted me too, that would just be a repeat of what happened with Mari. That love would dissolve, the way the rainbow you see stretched above the mountain top disappears when you drive. Not because the love was delusory, but because rainbows need to be seen from a particular angle – from outside – and from a certain distance – not too close up. And if the rainbow should happen to be still there when you reach the top of the mountain, you’ll discover there’s no pot of gold at the end, just tragedy and shattered lives.

  I told myself all of this, but it didn’t help. It was like fucking malaria. And I thought that maybe it’s true what people say, that it’s the second time you catch jungle fever that it does you in. I tried to work it away, but it kept coming back. I tried to sleep and forget, but was woken by screams from the zoo, even though that was impossible, the place was almost ten kilometres away.

  I tried going out, someone recommended a pub in Kristiansand, but I ended up sitting alone at the bar. Hadn’t a clue how to approach people, and no desire to either, it was more a case of thinking I ought to. Because I don’t get lonely. Or rather yes, I do, but it doesn’t bother me, at least not to mention. What I was thinking was that maybe women would help, that they might be a remedy for the fever. But none of them looked at me for more than a second. If it’d been the Fritt Fall at least after a couple of beers someone would have asked who you were. But they probably saw it in that single second, that I was a country bumpkin out for a night on the town and not worth the bother, as people say. Maybe noticed the way my middle finger stuck out when I picked up my glass. So I gulped down the rest of the beer – a pale lager, Miller’s, American dishwater – and took the bus home. Lay in bed and heard the apes and the giraffes screaming.

  * * *

  —

  It was when Julie called with some technical questions about the stocktaking that I realised Grete had kept her mouth shut about Dad’s abuse. After I’d explained the technicalities to her I asked her for the latest gossip. Which she provided, although somewhat surprised, I noticed, since I’d never shown any interest in that kind of stuff before. When it turned out to be uninteresting stuff I asked her straight out if there were any rumours involving our family, anything concerning Carl and Dad.

  ‘No – why should there be?’ she asked, and I could hear that she really had no idea what I was talking about.

  ‘Just ring if there’s anything else you want to know about the stocktaking,’ I said.

  We hung up.

  I scratched my head.

  Maybe it wasn’t so strange that Grete hadn’t been spreading the news about Carl and Dad. She’d kept her mouth shut for all these years. Because in all her craziness she was most of all crazy in love, just like me. She didn’t want to hurt Carl, and for that reason she would continue to keep her mouth shut. But then why had Grete told me what she knew? I remembered her question about how had I saved Carl. What did you do, Roy? Was it a threat? Was she trying to tell me she had worked out who was to blame for Mum and Dad going over the edge into Huken? That I mustn’t do anything that got in the way of her plans for Carl?

  If so, then it was so crazy the mere thought of it made me shiver.

  But what it did mean was that I had one reason less to stay away from Os.

  * * *

  —

  I didn’t go home at Christmas.

  Nor Easter either.

  Carl called and kept me updated on the hotel.

  Winter had arrived earlier than expected and the snow had lain for a long time, so they were behind schedule. They’d also had to make some adjustments to the drawings after the council had said they wanted to see more timber and less concrete.

  ‘Shannon’s pissed off, she doesn’t understand that if the council hadn’t got those fucking timber walls of theirs then we wouldn’t have got permission from the planning department. She tried arguing that timber isn’t solid enough, but of course that’s crap, all she cares about is the aesthetics of the place, that it’ll have like her signature on it. But you always have these kinds of discussions with the architect.’

  Maybe so, but I could hear in his voice that the quarrel had probably been a bit more violent than those one usually had with architects.

  ‘Is she—’ I coughed to interrupt myself when I realised I couldn’t complete the question in a neutral tone of voice. Not neutral enough for Carl’s ears, at least. But at least I understood she hadn’t told him about that idiotic declaration of love I’d made during the launch party at Fritt Fall, or I would have heard it in his tone of voice, because that’s a door that swings both ways. I could, for example, hear that he’d downed a few Budweisers.

  ‘Is she settling down OK?’

  ‘Yeah yeah,’ he said. ‘It takes time to adapt to something that’s so different from what you know. For example, after you left she was very quiet and taciturn for a while. Of course, she wants kids, but it’s not that easy, she has some kind of something, so it looks like the test tube is the only way.’

  I felt the muscles of my stomach tighten.

  ‘That’s OK too, but it’s a bit much right at the moment. Oh, and she’s going to Toronto in the summer, got a couple of projects there to finish off.’

  Did I hear a false note there? Or was that just something I wanted to hear? I could no longer even trust my own bloody judgement.

  ‘Maybe you should take some holiday and come up here then?’ said Carl. ‘We’ll have the whole house to ourselves. What d’you think? Party time. Like in the old days! Yeah!’

  That old enthusiasm in his voice was still infectious, and I very nearly just said yes.

>   ‘I’ll have to see. Summer is like the peak season with all the holidaymakers here down south.’

  ‘Come on. You need a holiday too. Have you had even a single day off since you’ve been there?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, counting them. ‘When is she leaving?’

  ‘Shannon? First week in June.’

  * * *

  —

  I drove home the second week in June.

  42

  SOMETHING STRANGE HAPPENED AS I was driving over Banehaugen, passing the county sign for Os, Lake Budal calm as a millpond before me. I felt myself choking up, and the road began to float away, and I had to blink hard. It was like one of those times when from sheer boredom you’re slumped in front of the TV watching some third-rate tearjerker and – because you’re quite relaxed and unprepared – you suddenly find yourself having to swallow hard.

  I’d taken four days off.

  For four days Carl and I sat around on the farm and looked out at the summer. At a sun that seemed as though it would never set. Drinking beer after beer in the winter garden. Talking about the old days. About school, friends, parties, the dances at Årtun and the Aas cabin. He talked about the USA and Toronto. About the money pouring in through a red-hot property market. About the project where, finally, they had bitten off more than they could chew.

  ‘What’s hardest to take is that it could’ve worked out,’ said Carl, adding his empty beer bottle to the row along the windowsill. His was three times longer than mine. ‘It was just a question of timing. If we’d managed to keep the project afloat for another three months, we’d be filthy rich today.’

  When it all went pear-shaped the other two partners had threatened to sue him, he said.

  ‘I was the only one who hadn’t lost absolutely everything, so they thought they could shake a bit of money out of me,’ he said with a laugh and opened another bottle.

  ‘Don’t you have a ton of work you should be doing?’ I asked.

  We’d visited the building site and had a look around. Work had begun there, but it didn’t exactly look like things were in full swing. A lot of machinery but not many people. And if you were to ask me, I’d have to say it didn’t look as though all that much had happened in the nine months they’d been at it. Carl explained they were still working on below-ground stuff, and that it had taken time to organise the roads, the water supply and sewage disposal. But that once they started work on the actual hotel building things would really speed up.

  ‘Actually the hotel is being built somewhere else even as we stand here. Module building is what they call it. Or element building. Over half the hotel will arrive here ready-made as large boxes that we then put in place.’

  ‘On the foundations?’

  Carl rolled his head. ‘In a way.’ He said it the way people say things when they either want to spare you the details because they’re too complicated to explain, or want to hide the fact that they don’t really know themselves. Carl went over to have a word with some of the guys working while I wandered around in the heather and looked for new birds’ nests. I didn’t find any. Maybe the noise and the traffic had frightened them, but they were probably brooding not far away.

  Carl returned. Wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘Want to go for a dive?’

  I laughed.

  ‘What?’ Carl shouted.

  ‘The gear is so old it would be almost suicide.’

  ‘Swim then?’

  ‘OK.’

  But of course we’d just ended up back here in the winter garden again. Somewhere between his fifth or sixth bottle Carl suddenly asked: ‘D’you know how Abel died?’

  ‘He was murdered by his brother,’ I said.

  ‘I’m talking about the Abel Dad named me after, the secretary of state, Abel Parker Upshur. He was being given a guided tour of the USS Princeton on the Potomac River and they wanted to demonstrate the firepower of one of the cannons. It exploded, killing Abel and five others. It was in 1844. So he never saw the completion of his life’s greatest achievement, the annexation of Texas in 1845. What d’you make of that?’

  I shrugged. ‘Sad?’

  Carl laughed loudly. ‘At least you live up to your own middle name. Did you hear about the woman that sat next to Calvin Coolidge...?’

  I only half listened, because of course I knew the anecdote, Dad loved to tell the story. The lady sitting next to Coolidge at a formal dinner had made a bet that she’d get more than a couple of words out of the famously taciturn president. Towards the end of the meal the president turned to her and said: ‘You lose.’

  ‘Which of us is most like Dad and which like Mum?’ asked Carl.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ I said, diligently taking a couple of pulls of my Budweiser. ‘You are Mum and I’m Dad.’

  ‘I drink like Dad,’ said Carl. ‘You like Mum.’

  ‘That’s the only thing that doesn’t add up,’ I said.

  ‘So you’re the pervert?’

  I didn’t answer. Didn’t know what to say. Even when it was happening we hadn’t talked about it, not really, I would just comfort him as though he’d got a normal beating from Dad. And promised revenge without saying anything directly related to the subject. I have often wondered whether things might have been different if I’d talked openly about it, set the words free, turned them into something that could be heard, something real and not just something that happened inside our heads and could therefore be rejected as just imagination. Damned if I know.

  ‘Do you think about it?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Carl. ‘And no. It bothers me less than the ones I read about.’

  ‘Read about?’

  ‘Other victims of abuse. But it’s probably mostly those who’ve been badly damaged who write about it and talk about it. I’m guessing there’s a lot like me. Who put it behind them. It’s a question of context.’

  ‘Context?’

  ‘Sexual assault is harmful mostly because of the social condemnation and shame that surrounds it. We’re taught that we will be traumatised by it, so everything that goes wrong in our lives, we blame it on that. Take Jewish boys who get circumcised. It’s a sexual mutilation. Torture. Much worse than being fiddled with. But there’s not much to suggest that many of them suffer mental damage from circumcision. Because it takes place within a context that says this is OK, this is something you just have to put up with, it’s a part of the culture. Maybe the worst damage is done not when the abuse takes place, but when we understand that it’s beyond what’s regarded as acceptable.’

  I looked at him. Did he mean it? Was it his way of rationalising it away? And if so, why not? Whatever gets you through the night, it’s all right.

  ‘How much does Shannon know?’ I asked.

  ‘Everything.’ He put the bottle to his lips, turned it upwards instead of putting his head back. Clucking sound. Not like laughter, like crying.

  ‘Well she knows that we covered it up when Olsen went over into Huken, but does she also know I fixed the brakes and the steering on the Cadillac when Mum and Dad died?’

  He shook his head. ‘I only tell her everything that concerns me.’

  ‘Everything?’ I asked, looked out, let the low evening sun dazzle me. Saw from the corner of my eye that he was looking enquiringly at me.

  ‘Grete came up to me at the opening do last year, after the first spadeful was dug up there,’ I said. ‘She said you and Mari have secret meetings up at the Aas cabin.’

  Carl said nothing for a few moments. ‘Shit,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  In the silence out there I heard two quick cries from a raven. Warning calls. And then came the question: ‘Why did Grete tell you?’

  I had been waiting for it. It was the reason I hadn’t told him before. To avoid the question and the need to lie, to keep secret what Grete
thought she’d found out about me: that I wanted Shannon. Because if I just said the words, no matter how mad it sounded and though we both knew how crazy Grete was, the possibility would have been planted in his mind. And then it would be too late, Carl would see the truth, as if it stood printed across my forehead in capital letters.

  ‘Haven’t a clue,’ I said casually. Too casually, probably. ‘She still wants you. And if you want to start a fire in paradise and get away with it then you creep in and start at the edge and hope the fire spreads. Something like that.’

  I put the bottle to my mouth and knew that my explanation had been a little too poetic, the metaphor a bit too artificial to seem spontaneous. I had to put the ball back in his court. ‘But is that true, about you and Mari?’

  ‘Clearly you don’t,’ he said, placing the empty bottle on the windowsill.

  ‘I don’t what?’

  ‘Have a clue. Or else you would have told me before. Warned me, like. Or at least confronted me with it.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t believe it,’ I said. ‘Grete had had a few and that makes her even crazier than usual. The whole thing just slipped my mind.’

  ‘Then what made you remember it now?’

  I shrugged. Nodded towards the barn. ‘Could use another coat. Maybe you can get an estimate from one of the guys painting the hotel?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Carl.

  ‘We split it, then?’

  ‘I mean yes to your other question.’

  I looked at him.

  ‘About Mari and me meeting each other,’ he concluded, and belched.

  ‘None of my business,’ I said and took another swig of my beer which was beginning to taste flat.

  ‘It was Mari who took the initiative. At the homecoming party she asked if we couldn’t meet, just the two of us, and talk things over, clear the air. But she said all eyes were on us right then, so it was best we meet somewhere discreet, so there wouldn’t be any tittle-tattle. She suggested we meet at the cabin. We each drove our own cars there, parked in different spots, and I arrived a while after her. Pretty smart, right?’