I nodded.
The Fisherman led me out into the shop. I walked over to the door and wiped the condensation from the inside of the glass.
There was a figure standing over by Opera-passasjen. He hadn’t been there when I arrived. There could be hundreds of reasons why a man would be waiting out there in the snow.
“Have you got a telephone number where— ?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll let you know when I need them. Is there a back door?”
—
On my way home through the back streets I reflected that it hadn’t been a bad exchange. I had two men, I was still alive, and I’d learned something new. That T. S. Eliot had written that line about loneliness. I always thought it was that woman, whatever her name was? George Eliot? “Hurt? He’ll never be hurt—he’s made to hurt other people.” Not that I believe poets. No more than I believe in ghosts, anyway.
CHAPTER 10
Corina prepared a simple meal with the food I’d bought.
“Nice,” I said when I’d finished, wiping my mouth and pouring more water into our glasses.
“How did you end up here?” she asked.
“What do you mean, end up?”
“I mean…why do you do this? Why don’t you do whatever your father did, for instance? I presume he didn’t—”
“He’s dead,” I said, draining my glass in one go. The food had been a bit too salty.
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that, Olav.”
“Don’t be. No one else is.”
Corina laughed. “You’re funny.”
She was the first person ever to say that about me.
“Put a record on, then.”
I put the Jim Reeves record on.
“You’ve got old-fashioned taste,” she said.
“I haven’t got many records.”
“I don’t suppose you dance either?”
I shook my head.
“And you haven’t got any beer in the fridge?”
“Do you want beer?”
She looked at me with a wry smile, as if I’d said something funny again.
“Shall we sit on the sofa, Olav?”
She cleared the table while I made coffee. I thought that was quite nice. Then we sat down on the sofa. Jim Reeves was singing that he loves you because you understand him. It had got a bit milder during the course of the day, and outside the window big fat flakes of snow were drifting past.
I looked at her. Part of me was so tense it wanted to sit on the chair instead. A different part just wanted to put my arm round her narrow waist and pull her to me. Kiss her red lips. Stroke her glossy hair. Squeeze her a bit tighter, so hard that I feel the air being squeezed out of her, hear her gasp for breath, her breasts and stomach pushing out towards me. I was feeling light-headed.
Then the needle slid across to the middle of the record, lifted up and swung back as the vinyl slowly stopped turning.
I swallowed hard. Felt like lifting my hand. Putting it on the skin between her shoulder and neck. But it was shaking. Not just my hand, but the whole of me, like I’d got flu or something.
“Listen, Olav…” Corina leaned over towards me. I couldn’t work out if the intense scent was mostly perfume or mostly her. I had to open my mouth to get more air. She picked up the book from the coffee table in front of me. “Would you mind reading out loud to me? The bit about love…”
“I would…” I began.
“Go on then,” she said, curling her legs beneath her on the sofa. She put a hand on my arm. “I love love.”
“But I can’t.”
“Of course you can!” she laughed, putting the open book in my lap. “Don’t be embarrassed, Olav, read! It’s only me….”
“I suffer from word-blindness.”
My blunt statement brought her up short and she blinked at me as if I’d hit her. Hell, I’d even surprised myself.
“Sorry, Olav, but…you said…I thought…” She stopped, and silence descended. I wished the record had still been playing. I closed my eyes.
“I read,” I said.
“You read?”
“Yes.”
“But how can you if you can’t…see the words?”
“I see them. But sometimes I see them wrong. And then I have to look at them again.” I opened my eyes. Her hand was still on my arm.
“But, how…how do you know you’ve seen them wrong?”
“Mainly because the letters don’t form words that make any sense. But now and then I just see a different word and don’t realise my mistake until much later. Sometimes the story I get into my head is completely different. So I sort of end up getting two stories for the price of one.”
She laughed. A loud, bubbly laugh. Her eyes twinkled in the semi-darkness. I laughed too. It wasn’t the first time I had told someone I was dyslexic. But it was the first time anyone had continued to ask questions. And the first time I had tried to explain it to someone who wasn’t my mum or a teacher. Her hand slid off my arm. Sort of unnoticed. I’d been waiting for it. She was slipping away from me. But her hand slid into mine instead. And squeezed it. “You really are funny, Olav. And kind.”
Along the bottom of the window the snow had started to settle. The snow crystals hooked onto each other. Like the links in a piece of chain mail.
“So tell me, then,” she said. “Tell me about the love story in the book.”
“Okay,” I said, and looked down at the book on my lap. It was open at the page where Jean Valjean forces himself on the ruined, doomed prostitute. I changed my mind. And told her instead about Cosette and Marius. And about Éponine, the young girl who was raised into a life of crime, and was hopelessly in love with Marius, and who ends up sacrificing her life for love. Other people’s love. I told the story again, this time leaving out none of the details.
“Oh, how wonderful!” Corina exclaimed when I had finished.
“Yes,” I said. “Éponine is…”
“…that Cosette and Marius had each other in the end.”
I nodded.
Corina squeezed my hand. She hadn’t let go of it once. “Tell me about the Fisherman.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “He’s a businessman.”
“Daniel says he’s a murderer.”
“That too.”
“What’s going to happen once Daniel’s dead?”
“Then you won’t have anyone to be afraid of. The Fisherman doesn’t wish you any harm.”
“I mean, will the Fisherman take over the whole thing?”
“I suppose so, he hasn’t got any other competition. Unless you were thinking…?” I did my best to give her a wry smile.
She laughed out loud and gave me a playful shove. Who would have guessed I was a comedian deep down?
“Why don’t we just run away?” she asked. “You and me, we’d manage fine, the pair of us. I could make the food and you could…”
The rest of the sentence was left hanging in the air like a half-finished bridge.
“I’d be happy to run away with you, Corina, but I haven’t got a krone to my name.”
“No? Daniel always says he pays his people well. Loyalty has to be bought, he says.”
“I’ve spent it all.”
“What on?” She nodded past me, meaning the flat, to suggest that neither it nor anything in it could have cost a fortune.
I shrugged again. “There was a widow with four kids. I was the one who made her a widow, so I…well, I had a moment of weakness and put what her husband had been promised to fix someone in an envelope. And that turned out to be everything I had. I never knew the Fisherman paid so well.”
She gave me a sceptical look. I don’t think it was one of Darwin’s six universal facial expressions, but I knew what she meant. “You…you gave all your money to the widow of a man who was going to kill someone?”
Obviously I’d already worked out that what I’d done had been pretty stupid, even if I had felt I got something out of it in exchange. But when Corina put it like that
, it sounded completely idiotic.
“So who was he going to kill?”
“Don’t remember,” I said.
She looked at me. “Olav, you know what?”
I didn’t know what.
She put her hand against my cheek. “You really are very, very unusual.”
Her eyes looked over my face, taking it in, bit by bit, as if she were consuming it. I know that’s the moment when you’re supposed to know, when you’re supposed to read the other person’s thoughts, realise. Maybe that’s true. My being dyslexic might explain it. My mum used to say I was too pessimistic. Maybe that’s true as well. Either way, I was pleasantly surprised when Corina Hoffmann leaned over and kissed me.
We made love. It’s not out of modesty that I choose this romantic, chaste euphemism instead of a more direct, instrumental word. But because making love really was the most fitting description. Her mouth was close to my ear, her breath teasing me. I held her incredibly carefully, like one of the dried flowers I sometimes found in the pages of books from the library, so brittle and fragile that they dissolved under my fingers as soon as I touched them. I was scared she would disappear. At regular intervals I raised myself up on my arms to check that she really was still there, that it wasn’t just a dream. I stroked her, lightly as a feather, and very gently, so as not to use her up. I held back before entering her. She looked at me in surprise—she had no way of knowing that I was waiting for the right moment. And then it came, the moment, the melting together, this thing that you might imagine to be trivial for a former pimp, but which was nonetheless so overwhelming that I felt my throat tighten. She let out a low, drawn-out groan as I pushed into her, incredibly slowly and carefully, as I whispered something tender and idiotic in her ear. I recognised her impatience, but I wanted it to be like this, wanted it to be something special. So I took her at a measured pace, and with hard-fought self-control. But her hips began to roll like sharp, quick waves beneath me, and her white skin shimmered in the darkness. It was like holding moonlight. Just as soft. Just as impossible.
“Stay with me, my love,” the breath in my ear panted. “Stay with me, my love, my Olav.”
—
I smoked a cigarette. She slept. It had stopped snowing. The wind which had been playing a mournful tune on the guttering had packed up its instruments. The only sound in the room was her even breathing. I listened and listened. Nothing.
It had been just like I had dreamed it would be. And hadn’t believed it could be. I was so tired that I had to get some sleep. But so happy that I didn’t want to. Because when I fell asleep, this world, this world that I had never much cared for until now, would cease to exist for a while. And, according to that Hume guy, the fact that I had until now woken up every morning in the same body, into the same world, where what had happened had actually happened, was no guarantee that the same thing would happen again tomorrow morning. For the first time in my life, closing my eyes felt like a gamble.
So I went on listening. Keeping watch over what I had. There were no sounds that shouldn’t have been there. But I carried on listening anyway.
CHAPTER 11
My mother was so weak. That was why she had to put up with more than even the strongest person could have handled.
For instance, she could never say no to my bastard of a father. Which meant she had to put up with more beatings than someone banged up for sex offences. He was especially fond of throttling her. I’ll never escape the sound of my mum bellowing like a cow in the bedroom each time my father let go long enough for her to catch her breath, so that he could start strangling her all over again. She was too weak to say no to drink, which meant she downed enough poison to fell an ox or an elephant, even though she was only small. And she was so weak when it came to me that she gave me everything I ever wanted, even when she really needed what she was giving me.
People always said I was like my mum.
Only when I was staring into my father’s eyes for the last time did I realise that I had him inside me as well. Like a virus, an illness in my blood.
As a rule he only came to us when he needed money. And as a rule he got what little we had. But he also realised that to maintain the fear factor—no matter whether he got a handout or not—he had to demonstrate what would happen the day she didn’t pay up. My mother would blame black eyes and thick lips on stairs, doors and slippery bathroom floors. And, as the drinking took hold, it did actually happen that she fell or banged into walls entirely of her own accord.
My father said I was studying to become an idiot. I suspect he may have had the same trouble reading and writing as I did, the difference being that he had given up. While he had dropped out of school at the earliest opportunity and hardly even read a newspaper after that, I actually had liked school, weirdly enough. Apart from math. I didn’t say much, and most people probably thought I was stupid. But the Norwegian teacher who marked my work said I had something, something behind all the spelling mistakes, something the others didn’t have. And that was more than enough for me. But my father used to ask what I thought I was going to do with all that reading. If I thought I was better than he and the rest of the family. They’d managed fine, doing honest work. They never tried to put on airs by learning fancy words and getting lost in stories. When I was sixteen I asked why he didn’t try doing a bit of honest work himself. He beat me black and blue. Said he was raising a kid, and that was enough work for one day.
When I was nineteen he came round one evening. He had been let out of Botsen prison the same day, after a year inside for killing a man. There hadn’t been any witnesses, so the court had agreed with the defence that the injuries to the man’s brain could have been caused when he tried to fight back and slipped on the ice.
He made some remark about my having grown. Slapped me jovially on the back. My mum had said I was working in a warehouse, was that right? Had I finally come to my senses?
I didn’t answer, didn’t say I was working part-time as well as going to college to save money so I could get a small flat when I started at university after my military service the following year.
He said it was good I had a job, because now I’d have to cough up.
I asked why.
Why? He was my father, victim of a miscarriage of justice who needed all the help his family could give him to get back on his feet.
I refused.
He stared at me in disbelief. And I could see he was wondering whether to hit me. That he was sizing me up. His little boy had grown up.
Then he let out a short laugh. And said if I didn’t hand over my pathetic savings, he’d kill my mother. And make it look like an accident. What did I think about that?
I didn’t answer.
He said I had sixty seconds.
I said the money was in the bank, and he’d have to wait till they opened the next morning.
He tilted his head, as if that would help him work out whether I was lying.
I said I wasn’t going to run, that he could have my bed, and I’d sleep in Mum’s room.
“So you’ve taken over my place there as well, have you?” he sneered. “Don’t you know that’s illegal? Or doesn’t it say that in your books?”
That evening Mum and Dad shared the last of her drink. They went into her room. I lay on the sofa and stuffed my ears with toilet paper. But it didn’t block out her bellowing. Then a door slammed, and I heard him go into my room.
I waited until two o’clock before I got up, went into the bathroom and got the toilet brush. Then I went down to the cellar and unlocked our store cupboard. I’d been given a pair of skis when I was thirteen. By my mum. God knows what she had to go without to pay for those skis. But they were too small now, I’d grown out of them. I pulled the snow-guard off one of the poles and went back up. I crept into my room. My father was lying on his back, snoring. I stood with a foot on each side of the narrow bed-frame, put the point of the ski pole against his stomach. I didn’t want to risk his chest, because the spike mi
ght hit his sternum or one of his ribs. I put one hand through the strap on the pole, put the other one on top, and made sure the pole was at the right angle so that it wouldn’t bow or snap the bamboo shaft. I waited. I don’t know why, it wasn’t that I was scared. I wasn’t. His breathing became more unsettled, soon he’d move and roll over. So I jumped up, bending my knees under me like a ski jumper. And landed with my full weight. His skin offered some resistance, but once the hole was made the pole thrust right through him. The bamboo stick dragged part of his T-shirt with it into his stomach, and the spike bored deep into the mattress.
His eyes were black with shock as he lay there staring up at me. I’d been quick to sit on his chest so that his arms were locked down by my knees. He opened his mouth to scream. I took aim and rammed the toilet brush into his mouth. He gurgled and wriggled, but he couldn’t move. Sure I’d fucking grown.
I sat there, feeling the bamboo pole behind the small of my back, with his body struggling beneath me. And I thought to myself that I was riding my father. Now my father was my bitch.
I don’t know how long I sat there before he stopped struggling and his body became limp enough for me to risk removing the toilet brush.
“Fucking moron,” he groaned, his eyes closed. “You cut someone’s throat with a knife, not…”
“That would have been too quick,” I said.
He laughed, and coughed. Bubbles of blood at the corners of his mouth.
“Now, that’s my boy.”
That was the last thing he said. So he got the last word after all. Because I realised there and then that he was right, the bastard. I was his boy. It isn’t true that I didn’t know why I waited those extra seconds before sticking the pole into him. It was to prolong the magical moment when I, and I alone, had power over life and death.
That was the virus I had in my blood. His virus.
I carried the corpse down into the cellar and wrapped it up in the old, rotten canvas tent. My mum had bought that for me as well. She had got it into her head that we, her little family, would go on camping trips. Cook freshly caught trout beside a lake where the sun never set. I hope she got there with her drinking.