I leaned over to Jakob and shouted: ‘Which circle of hell are we in?’
‘One of the lowest, I fear.’
‘See anyone we know?’
He shook his head. ‘Only faces.’
‘No bodies?’
‘Only duplicates.’
I leaned back and sipped the lukewarm fizz. But it didn’t release any arias in my brain.
So we sat there, as conspicuous as the wallpaper. Partners swapped, the music changed from light hysteria to dark sludge, the bar slowly emptied and the room became more and more crowded, and no one noticed us. No one asked us to dance, no one came over to chat us up and no one asked us to stamp their cards. In the end I had to get up to be sure I hadn’t become invisible.
There was no such thing as a safe passage. I met obstacles, ravines and deep crevices, mounds of flesh and mind-numbing stenches wherever I turned. Fingers stroked my shoulders, a fingernail scratched my neck, for an instant a hand of unknown origin held my crotch, and fizzy water and stronger drinks splashed over my jacket and shirt. When finally I returned to my starting point, I was at least sure of one thing: I wasn’t invisible. And another: all you had to do here was go out and help yourself. There was something for every taste – plus a bit more.
Jakob motioned towards the door. ‘Now the musicians are coming in after their gigs.’
I followed his eyes and my heart began to beat below my belt. Across the floor of dancing bodies, chattering mouths and practised hands, of dresses or lack of same, of varied hair styles and tie disasters, I stared like an X-ray machine straight into the golden-brown eyes of Bella Bruflåt. As if in a dream, she opened her mouth, ran her tongue infinitely slowly over her lips, sent me a sultry smile and began to hack her way through to me as if using a machete.
‘What now?’ I heard Jakob say behind me, from a great distance, as I began to push through the crowd towards her like a man possessed.
Semi-conscious, I glimpsed another face in the doorway over one of her shoulders. It was Stig Madsen – the ubiquitous Stig, a Stig with brooding agitation written across his face and eyes pointing in the same direction as mine, the only difference being that he saw only her neck, which for that matter might have been exciting enough.
Then we met. She was clad in leather, reddish-brown, a kind of boiler suit with a zip from her neck down to between her legs, a tight belt around her waist, tight-fitting in the right places, loose in the others.
She wrapped her arms around my neck, squeezed up against me, looked into my face and asked: ‘Haven’t we met before?’
‘Yes, but it must’ve been in Babylon,’ I said.
‘Oh – not more recently?’
‘It must’ve been last night then, in your dressing room with Johnny Solheim.’
Her eyes cleared for a second. ‘Ah, so it was.’ Then the veil descended again, she caressed my neck with a finger and pressed her stomach against a soft spot in my soul.
I felt like a tight-rope walker without a balancing pole. Or else the pole was too small. Or the rope was too taut. If the place hadn’t been so crowded I would have missed my footing, my knees would have given way and I would have fallen with my face in her lap, because now we were balancing without a safety net. That was how it felt.
She raised her face to mine again. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Varg.’
‘Varg?’ She came a touch closer as though she still couldn’t see me clearly enough. ‘Varg as in wolf? But it’s a protected species, isn’t it?’
‘The occasional one … is captured,’ I said.
‘My name’s Bella.’
‘I know.’
‘Though actually it’s Belinda.’
I tilted my head. ‘Bella Linda, Belinda … Isn’t that … tautological?’
‘Belinda Bruflåt … It flows, doesn’t it?’
‘It sounds like the name of a pop singer from Landås, many years ago.’
She laughed, a low chuckle, like a cat sneaking under a fence at night. ‘I am from Landås.’
‘But not many years ago?’
More laughter, brighter, as if the cat was rubbing against a moonbeam. ‘No. Only twenty-four.’
I hesitated. ‘Then you don’t even reach up to … my belly button.’
She smiled ambiguously. ‘Do I need to go any further?’ Then she lowered her face again and into my neck.
I looked over her head. Beside us Cleopatra was still dancing with the man with the ski-jump chin. I could see her profile now: white and etched into the moving background. There was something familiar about her that took me aback. Then her partner swung her around and she was gone.
I couldn’t see Stig Madsen. Slowly I manoeuvred us around so that I was facing the opposite direction. There he was. He had joined Jakob and was standing by the chair in which I had been sitting, glaring at me with an expression like a discordant guitar solo.
I swung around and let them see us from the side. In a way I saw myself side on too, dancing with Belinda Bruflåt, her soft undulating leather against my angular body as my hands slowly slid down her arms to her elbows, on to her slim waist, up to her shoulder blades, which felt like the spread wings of small birds, and down again to her waist – and a bit further. My hands rested there, above her bottom, and I carefully pressed her a few millimetres closer. A faint whimper came from somewhere deep inside her and at once her face turned up towards me again. Her eyes were ablaze as she quickly stood on her tiptoes, kissed me softly on the lips and said: ‘I just have to … go out. Will you … wait for me here?’
I nodded. ‘But not in the middle of the floor?’
‘No, here. Is that alright? You won’t go?’
I shook my head. I wouldn’t go even if doomsday arrived and they shouted that the last bus was going to the terminus. I wouldn’t go; I had gone too often. Once again she kissed me, more softly this time and for longer. Then she slipped away, disappeared in the billowing sea of faces, bobbed up and down like a bottle, before leaving through the exit, stopped, a hand on the doorless frame, blew me a kiss, waved and was gone.
I was left there, as disorientated as a spinning top, unsure where to go: back to Stig Madsen and Jakob, after her to the door or just to the side somewhere?
I chose a fourth option and went to the wall to the south-west of Jakob and Stig, but with an eye on the exit to the north where new faces were arriving all the time, surveying the crowd, then deciding to join them or try their luck on the floor above.
Jakob called me over: ‘Hey, Varg. Don’t you go too. Come here.’
I turned and stopped watching the exit as I made my way through. Jakob was staring at me with some kind of tense amusement. Stig scowled, flattened his thinning hair over his balding head, snorted into his Sergeant Pepper moustache and nervously shifted his feet as he watched the door.
‘Hello,’ I said to him. ‘We meet in the strangest places, don’t we.’
He didn’t answer. ‘Where was she off to?’
I looked at him as though I didn’t understand what he meant. ‘Eh? Belinda, do you mean?’
‘Bella. Where did she go?’
‘She said she just had to … go out.’
‘To powder her poodle,’ Jakob said.
Stig snorted and grimaced.
Jakob said: ‘Isn’t Johnny coming?’
Stig looked past him. ‘Ye-es. He said he was. But he had to do something first. We should just go ahead.’
Revealingly, Jakob eyed the door. ‘Has he got someone at the moment? Our Johnny?’
Stig snapped: ‘Not as far as I know. Just the same old harem.’
‘He hasn’t changed then, in other words?’
Stig looked at me. ‘How long’s she been gone now?’
I hesitated. ‘Four minutes. Five? Six?’
‘You have to think there’ll be a queue,’ Jakob said. ‘And if so she may’ve tried upstairs. But I can understand why you’re nervous. You can’t reckon on a girl like Bella passing thr
ough these rooms untouched by human hand.’
Stig glowered at him. A muscle in his jaw was churning. ‘I’m not worried.’
But time passed. It was ten minutes now and while we were waiting it quickly became a quarter of an hour.
This situation was familiar. In multiple flashbacks I saw women I had asked to dance and who had said no, women I had asked to dance who had pretended not to see me but had stood up with a smile and said yes to the man who had emerged from behind me, women who looked through the bus window and said, when I told them I was in love with them, they didn’t believe me, and women who had left me on the dance floor, as Belinda Bruflåt had just done, and never returned. Unlike Stig, I was not worried. It was a waste of energy. Inside me there was only certainty. I had been here before.
I looked at Jakob. Something had happened. His face was full of loathing; his eyes were stiff and glassy.
I followed his gaze. It was directed at Cleopatra and her beanpole. ‘What is it, Jakob?’
He tore himself away, blinked and mumbled: ‘It was someone … I saw. I think I … It’s getting late. I think I’d better concentrate … on tomorrow.’
‘But who was it, Jakob?’
He immediately stared at the same couple. ‘We always called him’ – he stroked his chin – ‘Captain Hook. He’s a dentist.’
‘Captain Hook … Gro’s husband?’
He nodded.
‘Does he know about … Does he know you?’
‘I don’t think so. But I wouldn’t like to be here if he … I’m off.’
‘So Gro’s alone at home then?’
He nodded.
‘But who’s…? Do you know the woman he’s dancing with?’
He shook his head.
‘Where the fuck’s Johnny?’ Stig burst out. ‘I’m going to look for her.’
Jakob eyed me. ‘Are you going, too, Varg?’
I hesitated. ‘I think I’ll stay here a while. But I can accompany you out.’
We made for the exit, through the sea of dancing couples, like three health inspectors on a day out, and I wondered what the fire authorities would have said if they had appeared.
As I passed Cleopatra and Captain Hook I scrutinised them. His eyes were half closed and he had an enraptured smile on his lips as though he were dancing in the mermaid lagoon with Wendy. She was resting her head against his chest. She was wearing a thousand-year-old face mask of white powder, but beneath the make-up I glimpsed a bluish-grey shadow, and at once I recognised her. It was Bente Solheim in a black wig.
We reached the hall. Here there was an almighty jam. Some people were trying to get in, others were on their way out, but no one was going anywhere at all. For thirty seconds I found myself in what put me in mind of an involuntary wallbanger with a red-haired lady in suede trousers and a tight green T-shirt. I was reminded of a story I had once heard of a woman who claimed she was impregnated in the Rome Metro in the rush hour. There was a good chance of the same happening here. If the lady in suede had been willing we could have uncovered the relevant parts and done it without anyone even noticing. But she wasn’t. We were hardly on the same wavelength and all I got from her was an elbow in the stomach as we finally managed to pass each other.
It was difficult to say where the toilet queue began and ended, but Stig wasn’t one for queue etiquette. When we finally reached the only door in the flat he looked up at me and Jakob and said: ‘Make room … that way.’
We did as he said, arched our backs to the crowd, behaved like stage handlers at a Bruce Springsteen concert and fought for a square metre for him, enough for him to kick in the toilet door.
The door opened with a crash no one heard and we all three rushed in.
The woman sitting on the toilet had her skirt up and her knickers down over her knees as if to legitimise her occupation of the toilet, but that wasn’t why she was here. The disposable syringe lay like a larva cocoon on the floor, and the butterfly that had flown into her eyes was already dying.
A man in his thirties, wearing a lightweight, light-coloured jacket, the kind that has sleeves you can roll up, was pissing in the basin. He didn’t even react when we stormed in, as though he hadn’t been expecting anything else.
Stig turned away, as if in disgust. ‘She’s not here. Fuck! Let’s try the next floor.’
He pushed past us and out. Jakob stared at the scene before us and sent me a helpless look.
I stared back. Then at the woman. She was old enough to know better. She was far from dead, except from mentally, and she would be standing up and walking, as all mechanical dolls do, in a few minutes.
She just had to rest a little after the long trip. And she had the conductor with her. What was more, he was waving the flag: ‘Take your seats, close the doors.’
We closed the door after us when we left.
In the hall outside there was the makings of some elbow room and a current of fresh air, from below.
‘I’m off,’ Jakob said. ‘Home,’ he added, as if to make sure I understood. ‘Will you get in touch, by Monday at the latest?’
I nodded. ‘Talk soon. Bye.’ Then I followed Stig upwards, feeling as if I was climbing the Tower of Babel.
‘Be careful!’ Jakob shouted after me. Then he was gone.
The flat above wasn’t quite as packed, but the furnishings were the same and the music identical. The same speakers blasted out the same music, controlled by a demonic disc jockey from somewhere in the underworld. We ploughed our way through the crowd, opened the door to the vacant toilet and searched in vain.
Stig wiped the sweat from his brow. His moustache drooped from his top lip like an impaled millipede. ‘Let’s try at the top,’ he groaned.
We tried at the top. There was a slanting ceiling upstairs. Water dripped in through a draughty skylight, which created a circular clearing in the forest of human bodies. We stood there on tiptoe, slowly getting wet hair and scanning the sparsely populated dance floor in every direction. No Belinda anywhere and no Johnny.
In the toilet we found the absolute highpoint of our tour: a man with a spindly beard, glasses on the end of his nose and port-wine cheeks was sitting on the toilet. Straddling his lap was a woman with grey highlights in her hair, a red dress drawn up around her hips and large white buttocks grinding away like two millstones on top of what must have been his stressed pecker. He looked about as happy as a prisoner facing the Inquisition. We never became more closely acquainted. Her hair and dress didn’t belong to the person we were looking for. We closed the door carefully behind us. Nothing suggested that either of them had noticed we had been there.
Back in the hall, Stig scowled furiously at me, as though it was my fault. ‘She’s disappeared.’
I shrugged. ‘Looks like it.’
‘What happened to Jakob?’
‘He left, too.’
‘So?’ He eyeballed me. Without further ado he turned his back on me and left as well.
I went down to the ground floor, fought my way to the bar and exchanged a voucher for a second bottle of pseudo-fizz. I drank and shivered. It was barely worth cleaning your teeth with.
I searched the crowd for Bente Solheim and the gentleman Jakob called Captain Hook.
I couldn’t see either of them. He who seeks will find, they say. But this wasn’t my day. There was no one to find and those who were already there had left.
After finishing the bottle I left the establishment with a final scour of the crowd. They would have been a sensation in Sodom and Gomorrah. Caligula would have felt at home. Personally, I preferred the night.
It was Sunday now. Time to go to church, to art exhibitions, or for a walk in the mountains. Time to gather strength. Time.
The dinner-jacketed doorman slammed the door behind me. The street was as deserted as one in northern Alaska and about as cold.
Somewhere I could hear the sound of running footsteps, which were then lost in the darkness.
I did a quick Ali shuffle on the crumbling
pavement. Then I started walking.
A sound brought me to a halt. It was like a groan.
I looked around.
Down some cellar steps ten metres away something moved. I heard the same sound again. That was where it was coming from.
I ran over.
For a second or two I was motionless.
Johnny Solheim was lying on his back at the bottom of the cellar steps. He was gripping the edge of the wall with both hands in a vain attempt to pull himself up.
On seeing me he opened his mouth as if to say something. But all that came out was blood.
And then his eyes went blank.
16
I ran towards the Hot Spot. Then I changed my mind and set off in the opposite direction.
I was headed for the nearest telephone box when a taxi came round the corner. I flagged it down and told the driver to contact the police, then went back to Johnny.
He was lying exactly as I had left him. The only change was a growing bloodstain on his chest under his open, black leather jacket. Two stripes of blood had run from the corners of his mouth, like a victim in a Hammer Dracula film.
I stood transfixed. Someone had jabbed a stylus into the last track of his LP and pressed it so deep into the groove that no one would ever play it again.
In the distance I heard the first sirens. Then the street was flooded with blue light while the echo of slamming car doors resounded against house walls. Uniformed officers approached at great speed. A large, freckled face I didn’t remember seeing before said something. Then his eyes looked past me and he went quiet.
After that it was all chaos, for a long time.
I told them who I was and who he was. I pointed to the Hot Spot and told them what was going on there. I said I had seen his wife inside and suggested they got someone to check if she was home yet. I gave them the names of Jakob Aasen, Stig Madsen and Belinda Bruflåt and said all three had left, long before me. I told them everything I could remember, and afterwards I repeated it all.
At four o’clock I was allowed to go. I went straight home, let myself in, had a hot shower and hit the sack.
*
I woke with a start, to someone trying to force the doorbell through the wall. It was five o’clock, either morning or afternoon, some day or other.
Fallen Angels Page 11