by Helene Flood
I blink. Breach of the agreement?
“What do you mean?” I ask him.
“What I mean is this: did you or did you not have an extramarital affair two or three years ago?”
The quiet of the room is uncomfortable as I draw breath. They’ve spoken to someone. I didn’t think Sigurd had told anyone about it, but he might have confided in Thomas and Jan Erik. Thomas might have told Julie, in which case there’s probably several people who know – she would have been far too excited at the idea of such a secret to keep it to herself. They must have spoken to her.
“That’s right,” I say, looking at my duvet over in the corner, the sad remains of my bed. “Sigurd and I were going through a difficult period. I did something stupid; one single, isolated night. He found out about it. He was angry. For a month I thought he was going to leave me, but then he decided to forgive me instead.”
“Hard thing to forgive,” Gundersen says.
“Yes, perhaps.”
“It must have cost him quite a bit.”
“I’m sure it did.”
“How was your relationship after that?”
“You know,” I say, “afterwards it was better. We took better care of each other. Understood that we could have lost each other.”
“Now listen,” Gundersen says, “I’m divorced, as I’ve said, so I’m not going to claim to be an expert on marriage, but that’s something I don’t understand. One party has been with someone else, and the other party forgives them. Can you explain it to me – as a psychologist? Wouldn’t you want to punish the other person in a situation like that? You know, mess around with someone else yourself? Or throw them out? Send naked pictures of them to their boss? Something like that?”
Now it’s my turn to shrug. I’m being put under pressure, and this time I don’t know whether I can simply breathe and start again.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I would think it depends on the person.”
“And Sigurd?”
“He was angry with me. He was busy studying at the time, and finished his thesis almost without speaking to me. When he’d handed it in he went away for four days without even telling me where he was. Then he came home and said he wanted to try again.”
“Again?”
“Yes. He wanted to be with me. We bought an apartment and got engaged.”
“Well, look at that!” Gundersen says. “A happy end to an unhappy situation. Where was he for those four days?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“Can’t you imagine the situation I was in? I couldn’t ask anything of him. I was just relieved he still wanted to be with me.”
“But you must have had some idea?”
I shrug again.
“I thought he’d been to his father’s old cabin at Krokskogen. He liked to go there to think, and it was almost always empty. And the key with the garnkule was gone.”
Gundersen nods.
“And now it turns out he’s been to Krokskogen again. What was he thinking about this time, do you think?”
“I don’t know. Honestly. I have no idea.”
“Might property and finance worries drive a man out into the forest?”
“I don’t know.”
“But what do you think?”
I sigh. I haven’t eaten anything since the dinner Annika forced me to take a few bites of yesterday, and I’m starting to feel it in my head.
“I don’t know what to think. He was having a bit of a hard time with some projects at work, and the renovations were taking time, but other than that he was happy. I don’t know what else to say. He invited me out for a surprise dinner on my birthday just over a month ago. There wasn’t anything – how shall I put it – strange about his behaviour.”
“I see,” Gundersen says. “It’s a hard nut to crack, this one.”
“Do you have any suspects?” I say.
He looks down at his hands again, seeming to smile at them. The tips of his fingers have a slight orange tobacco tint. Even from where I’m sitting I can see that they must smell bad.
“It’s a little too early for that,” he says. “We’re still exploring the lie of the land, you might say.”
Then he looks up at me, clear-eyed and compelling, a man so strong it’s difficult to oppose him.
“Look, can I be honest with you?” he says – as if I might object to this.
“Yes,” I say, unnecessarily.
“I want to believe you, Sara. I do. You’ve inherited a house, but, well, that applies to almost everyone who loses a spouse, and you seem candid enough. But I just can’t understand this thing with the voicemail message. I mean, if I imagine it – O.K., I’m you – I’ve been to the gym, I’ve come home, I’ve received a phone call telling me Sigurd isn’t where he’s supposed to be. O.K. I have this voicemail in which he tells me he’s somewhere he demonstrably isn’t – that he’s with people who say they haven’t seen him today. I have this indisputable evidence that he’s lying. And then I delete it. Now, why on earth would I do that? Even if I’m not thinking of the situation as involving any crime, even if it doesn’t occur to me that I may need to prove my innocence at some point, it’s still evidence that he lied. Wouldn’t I want to keep the message so I could confront him with it, if nothing else? I just . . . I just don’t get it, Sara.”
I close my eyes; my ears are ringing again. This overwhelming exhaustion. For a moment I wish I could go back to Saturday, when I still believed, was still certain, that Sigurd would come home and explain this whole mess.
“I’ve already told you,” I say, my eyelids almost closed. “I’d had a bit to drink. I was angry at him. I didn’t think, I mean, at the time I couldn’t even imagine that would be the last I’d ever hear from him.”
And then the tears spring into my eyes. The message, Sigurd’s lie, was his final greeting to me. Never again would I hear his voice. “Hi, love.” Never again would I see his smile, hear the sound of his key in the front door. It’s just me now.
I cry, quiet sobs. I don’t look at Gundersen, and he says nothing. For several minutes we just sit there. I cry, and he sits in silence and lets me. After a while my tears stop. I grab a tissue from the box I always keep on the table between the two chairs and dry my eyes.
“I know it’s hard to understand,” I say. “What can I say? That wasn’t how I supposed I’d confront him. I would ask him; he would answer. It never occurred to me that I might have need of the message.”
“Well,” Gundersen says. “I have to say, I’m sorry it never occurred to you. I really am.”
We sit for a while in silence.
“So do you want the patient notes?” I say.
“Yes. Thank you.”
I log on to my computer and print out what he needs. We sit there without speaking as the printer chugs away, not looking at each other, but the silence isn’t an uncomfortable one. I give him the printouts, and he confirms that I’m free to go if I wish.
“Sara?” he says to me before I leave the office. “Try to eat something, hmm? You need to keep your strength up. It’ll only get worse if you mope around here starving. Do it for my sake, at least?”
And in the moment he says this, he looks kind.
The police have our car, so I wait for the train. I’m uneasy, wandering back and forth on the platform as glimpses of what happened after I received the postcard come back to me. The long month throughout which Sigurd worked on his thesis and I waited for him to decide whether or not he would forgive me. His silence when he came home, jaws clamped together, and the way he almost couldn’t look at me – only as much as was necessary to ensure that he wouldn’t bump into me. He never looked me in the eye. I waited; he slept on the sofa. He stayed at the university, or perhaps he was staying over with friends. He came and went as he wished, and I never asked
him about anything, no longer had the right, was unable to demand anything of him. I waited. He handed in his thesis, then disappeared. I waited some more, spent the passing days in pain. Confided in no-one. I went to my Pappa’s house, spent a night in my childhood bedroom – felt comforted by my father’s ability not to wonder about what was going on in my life. I ate his home-made meatballs with gravy, listened to his spiel about the ignorance of the Research Council of Norway, and felt myself blessedly numb. Other than that, I lived my life as if nothing had happened. Went to work, came home, waited for Sigurd. Thought – knew – that things couldn’t go on like this. Sigurd would have to forgive me, or decide that he was unable to and therefore let me go. The latter was too painful to think about, and I didn’t have the strength to give him an ultimatum. Nor was it necessary – I knew that he knew. Four days later he was already home when I got back from work. He sat there on the sofa, freshly showered. A vase of sunflowers stood on the coffee table, and I knew what he had decided.
We talked about it, of course. I swore that it would never happen again. “I have to be able to trust you,” he said. I said, “It’s just you and me.” He said, “Yes, it’s just you and me.” One day that summer, Sigurd went to the jeweller’s and bought a ring.
I never wanted to be twenty-two again – I moved into my life in the present. I no longer yearned to go back to Bergen. I missed my friends, but realised they had moved on, that I was yearning for a time that was over. I had to discover new things for myself. Sigurd. My job. I called a friend from secondary school and went for coffee with her; I made another, half-hearted attempt to get to know Julie. I got a job at an outpatient clinic for children and young people. I thought, O.K., I’m not particularly social. During my time as a student I had a period in which I was always surrounded by people, but now I move in a more limited circle. That’s fine. I have Sigurd, whom I love. I have a job. We’ll have a baby. It’s more than enough.
As the train rattles into the station and I board it and sit down, I think about that – the potential baby. How the idea had died for Sigurd after just six months. Now there will never be a child. Now there is no husband, either.
“You’ve benefited greatly from your marriage,” Gundersen said. “I want to believe you,” he said. I understand. He’s on Sigurd’s side, and Sigurd’s side is not necessarily mine. I feel shaken like a rag doll after our conversation, but recognise that he’s been pleasant enough. And that the future may involve conversations in which he is not so pleasant.
Someone was in my house last night. When I woke up, they were in the loft, but there were no signs of a break-in. I’m not sure what that means, but I’ve noticed that the police team working on my property are not working to find out who was there. That the policeman who questioned me only ever asked me one question about it, and that single question was no more than a polite formality. Perhaps they don’t believe me. Maybe they think I made it up.
Gundersen says he wants to believe me, but I’m not sure whether I believe him. I draw a deep breath, feel the seriousness of all this. Now, it seems, I’m on my own.
The offices of FleMaSi Architects are situated in a quiet area, in a side street in Bislett. The young entrepreneurs paid through the nose for the attractive, light-filled premises in the building from the 1800s – premises which are cold in winter and hot in summer, but refurbished with whitewashed walls and polished parquet flooring. The premises are everything, Sigurd enthused – he was the “Si” in the name – when he showed me around for the first time. Back then, it was a single, huge space; it has since been divided into three offices and a common room that functions as a workshop and meeting room in one. Each of the three architects have their own angled drawing board, and above the main entrance hangs a sign featuring the logo they designed themselves. FleMaSi Architects. Flemming, Mammod, Sigurd. An orange rhombus containing grey and white letters. The offices are on the ground floor, and from my position on the pavement outside I can see Flemming sitting there, head bent, concentrating on his work. Mammod’s office faces the back courtyard. There is no-one in Sigurd’s office.
I push the intercom button. Mammod’s voice answers. “Yep,” he says, friendly, informal, efficient – just as the three of them had decided to run their business.
“Hi,” I say. “It’s Sara. Sigurd’s wife.”
There’s silence for a moment.
“Hi, Sara, come in,” Mammod then says, with considerable weight in his voice. The door buzzes, and I push it open.
They come out to see me, both of them. Mammod is wearing work clothes, blue overalls flecked with paint and sawdust, holes worn in both knees; Flemming horn-rimmed glasses and a T-shirt featuring characters from an ’80s children’s T.V. show – half-hipster, half-nerd. Both are wearing stiff, grief-stricken expressions. Sigurd was their friend, but I imagine this mood is being created mostly for me. They weren’t particularly close, and their collaboration was not without its problems.
Flemming speaks first. He comes across to me and hugs me.
“Fuck, Sara – how are you holding up?” he says into my hair.
Mammod hugs me in turn, more stiffly.
“I was so sorry to hear the news,” he says.
“What happened?” Flemming says. I look at them, from one to the other.
“I have no idea. I don’t know anything.”
We sit down in the common room. It smells of woodwork; assorted large pieces of chipboard are leant up against one wall.
“Sorry about the mess,” Mammod says. “I’m working on a model.”
Flemming serves us very strong coffee, not bothering to ask whether we want any, and neither Mammod nor I say anything. We sit there, the tiny cups balanced in our hands.
“So, how are you doing?” Flemming says.
“It’s completely unbelievable,” Mammod says. “I still can’t believe it.”
“Who in the hell would want to kill Sigurd?” Flemming says. “What’s he ever done to anyone?”
They look at me with wrinkled foreheads and raised eyebrows, manifesting their incomprehension.
“I know,” I say. “It seems so absurd.”
“The police were here yesterday,” Mammod says. “Poking around the office, looking through the shelves. They took pictures of his appointment book, stuff like that.”
“They asked us about work,” Flemming says. “About whether Sigurd had any problems at work.”
They shake their heads in unison, and I take note of the question. Gundersen, of course.
“What did you tell them?” I ask. They look at each other.
“The truth,” Flemming says. “That Sigurd was a good friend, a talented architect and an esteemed colleague.”
That expression says it all, I think – “an esteemed colleague”. As if he’s speaking at a statesman’s funeral. Mammod drops his gaze, more conscientious.
“We did mention,” he says, head slightly bowed, “that there had been some difficulties. You know, with earning enough to cover our expenses and, well . . . the discussion we had in the winter. About how we wanted to run the business. Minor things, really, but – everything had to be laid out on the table. That’s what the policeman with the moustache said.”
Flemming slams a hand against the table.
“It’s ridiculous,” he says. “We only started the company in August. Of course we’ve faced challenges. It would have been a fucking miracle if we hadn’t.”
I remember their challenges, and the discussion that took place last winter in particular. Sigurd came home upset. “Flemming thinks he’s the boss,” Sigurd had said, “just because he owns the biggest share.” The company was distributed as follows: forty per cent was owned by Flemming, thirty per cent by each of the others. Flemming’s father had put up some capital. The young architect had agreed that it was a formality – reflected in the dividends, of course, but not to the detriment o
f a flat hierarchy. No single one of them would be above the others. But then, at the first disagreement, Flemming had started to assert himself. Or so Sigurd said. Mammod said nothing, avoiding conflict, not wanting to give an opinion on anything – again, according to Sigurd.
Flemming wanted them to go out and market themselves through the major architectural competitions, and to build up capital with smaller projects. Sigurd and Mammod wanted rather to work on private projects, and to aim to win medium-sized public sector jobs, so that they wouldn’t have to spend valuable time on competitions for which they might never see any return. At least, that’s what Sigurd said. What Mammod really wanted it was hard to say, but, if you ask me, I think he just wanted to work in peace. I don’t think the issue was ever resolved – I think each of them worked with what they themselves wished to work with; that further conflict would be unavoidable once money became tight. Well. It’s probably all irrelevant now.
“What did he say?” I ask them. “Gundersen – I mean, the guy from the police?”
Flemming shrugs.
“Nothing. He asked us whether we’d fallen out. I told him that we most certainly had not – that we solved creative disagreements through hard work and hard drinking. End of story.”
“Are they bothering you, Sara?” Mammod asks.
I sigh.
“They’re around. Asking me all kinds of weird questions. What we argued about, things like that. But they’re just doing their job. That’s how I try to look at it.”
They both nod, as if I’ve said something important, something right. They’re no doubt looking forward to getting rid of me. I down the rest of my coffee in one gulp.
“I just wanted to take a look around his office,” I say. “If that’s O.K.?”
“Of course,” they say eagerly, almost as one.
We get up.
“I’ll show you in,” Flemming says.
Mammod hugs me again, and goes back to his sheets of chipboard.
