by Pia Juul
I never found that the words people said to each other revealed to any great extent what happened between them. A single word never changed anything. A word was not an illumination that lodged itself in the brain and led a person to find a murderer. A word could never wound someone fatally. Love couldn’t die on account of a mere word. One word would always be followed by another that compounded or expounded, repaired or derailed. Not even that second word would be decisive. Not in a good way, at any rate. There were times when I lost the inclination to speak. Silence felt simple and straightforward – but also indicated a lack. Silence acted on a person like a prison or a cramped cell. My mother had the ability to repeat my words in such a way that I both recognized myself and realized that she had completely misunderstood. ‘But you said you were afraid of him!’ she once claimed, referring to a former teacher of mine. Her voice was high-pitched, almost triumphant. She wiped her lips with a napkin. It wouldn’t have helped if I had retold the story more accurately or slanted it differently. She drew her own conclusions. That’s just one example. Other people behaved just like her. Me too. I wasn’t any different.
As soon as I got home, I rang Pernille on my mobile. Halland’s jacket was still on the peg in the hall. At first she expressed reluctance. ‘I’ve already told you,’ she said.
‘But he was having his post redirected!’
‘I’ve no idea why he did that.’
‘Why didn’t you ever come to see us?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I never needed to, not with him coming here so often. You sound so angry. It can’t be my fault, surely?’
‘Why did he want to be present at the birth of your baby?’
‘He offered to be there, that’s all. Perhaps because he didn’t have any children. How should I know? Perhaps he just wanted to see a baby being born. I appreciated the offer, since I had no one else to turn to.’
‘Oh, what rubbish!’ I barked, and hung up.
What now? A book to read. Find a book. Wolf, maybe. Something melancholy and meditative. Something beautiful. Lying down on the sofa, I turned to page 47. The rest is silence. Yet again, I realized that our lives take place inside our minds. I felt better already. My hands stopped shaking.
31
‘Say something, Pierrot!’
Children at the Tivoli Gardens
Afterwards. Of course, afterwards you always know what you should have said. I went barging into Inger’s house without realizing that the electricity was off there too. I made straight for the sound of her voice. Four candles burned in a holder in the kitchen. The man sitting opposite Inger was Brandt. I flung myself at him, almost going down on my knees, my hands clutching wherever they could get a grip. He didn’t get up.
‘Brandt!’ I shouted out, only to remember immediately that he had said, ‘Can’t you stop calling me Brandt now that Halland’s dead?’ We must have been sitting in a car when he said that. When could that have been? But everyone called him Brandt, even Inger.
I didn’t say, ‘Where have you been?’ or ‘Are you all right?’ or ‘What happened to you?’ Instead I started wailing, ‘Why? Why did he have to die? It doesn’t make sense. You remember how ill he was!’ Slumping across Brandt’s knee, I wept. It took me a while before I realized that he wasn’t responding. Gripping my shoulders, Inger persuaded me to stand up. ‘Be gentle. He’s only just arrived. He hasn’t said a thing. Come and sit down.’
The three of us sat in the flickering light, staring into each other’s shadowy faces. I studied Brandt’s unshaven skin. He didn’t return my gaze. Now the real questions began to surface. I wanted to ask them. But then I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t locked my door. The candle wax was dripping. There was a draught. Had I forgotten to shut Inger’s door? Had I shut my own? I should check.
‘When did you get back? Where have you been?’ I asked Brandt.
He didn’t reply.
‘Have you rung the police?’
Brandt turned his head. ‘That despicable man…’ he muttered.
‘What man?’
Raising his hand, he pointed at me. ‘Why didn’t you come?’
‘Where to?’
‘You promised!’
‘Promised what?’
‘Down there.’ He stared straight past me. He spoke with great effort.
‘He told you… to go down there!’
‘What’s he talking about? Down where?’ I asked Inger, then looked back at Brandt. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Despicable!’ he said.
‘Who is?’
‘I want to go home!’
Inger stood up and peered out of the window. ‘I’ll take you home when the power comes back on.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ I said. ‘I thought they’d turned off the electricity because we hadn’t paid. I may have left the door open. Let me pop back and see.’ I wanted to be on my own. Brandt was acting so oddly and I didn’t understand what he was saying. He looked at me. ‘I don’t understand what you are talking about,’ I said.
32
In favorem tertii: in favour of a third party
Legal term
The front door is ajar.
I push it open. Something comes hurtling out and nearly knocks me over. It lets out a yelp and makes off past Brandt’s house. A dog. The power still hasn’t come on. ‘Is anyone there?’ I call out. Why should anyone be there? Is there a monster in the darkness?
‘What are you doing?’ I ask. A dark figure is sitting in a corner on the floor. He clears his throat.
‘Abby says… you don’t seem to be grieving.’
‘Does she indeed?’
‘Says you’re flitting about, drinking and dancing. Flirting, and kissing the neighbour.’
‘That’s not what Abby says at all.’
‘You’re drinking again.’
‘I don’t drink.’
‘You’re not grieving.’
‘Abby wouldn’t know.’
‘Are you grieving?’
‘What’s it to you?’
I attack the monster. We roll around on the floor. He is on top, I’m underneath, then we switch places. The windows are illuminated by the white summer night, but on the living-room floor we are in darkness. I catch a glimpse of the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t look familiar. He’s hurting me. Are we fighting? ‘Oh!’ I exclaim. My index finger brushes the back of his neck and I’m no longer in doubt. I know who he is now. I’m not afraid. I’m not dreaming. I’ll need to pull myself together in a moment. Then I’m hugging him from behind, unable to tell if he is asleep. I awake with him crawling across my face. I pretend to be sleeping. He is standing at the window. The sky gives out its pale light, though it is still night. He snuggles back down with me, top to tail. What’s he up to? Taking hold of my foot, he tries to open his mouth wide enough to take the heel between his lips. That is how we lie, my heel in his mouth, me pretending to be asleep. What does he want, I ask myself. ‘Leave,’ I whisper. ‘It’s better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.’ His voices trembles as he scrutinizes me. ‘Oh, stop it,’ I say. ‘Go home.’ ‘But I’ve waited all this time.’ ‘For what?’ ‘For you.’ ‘What a shame,’ I tell him.
33
As gently as possible, she prepared her brother for the duty he must soon perform. Charles then asked for a day off work, she packed her straitjacket and together they went to the asylum where he would leave her until she recovered.
Kathy Watson,
THE DEVIL KISSED HER: THE STORY OF MARY LAMB
I went outside with the washing. Across the cold floor of the utility room and out onto the wet grass. The sun blazed on the blue fjord. Everything looked so clear, though nothing was. I hung the sheets on the line. A gentle breeze tugged at them. Early that morning, I made a start on a short story. A single page, that was all. Now I heard Inger’s voice. My name. The detective. They hadn’t seen me. I pulled down on the clothes line and surveyed them from behind the sheets. Inger’s ha
ir was streaked with grey and tousled. That surprised me. Funder looked round-shouldered. He wore a shirt as green as fire – if fire could be green. ‘Hey!’ I called. They came towards me. They were talking about Brandt.
‘Where is he?’ I asked.
‘At home, asleep. His lodger’s gone, so he’s on his own,’ said Inger. ‘All of a sudden, there he was. Out there on the bench, last night. Goodness knows where he’s been. I don’t think he’s well.’
Of course he wasn’t well.
‘He’s been held captive,’ I said.
Funder pushed his sunglasses onto the top of his head, narrowed his eyes against the sun. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Down at the harbour, in the old warehouse,’ I said.
‘First you know nothing, then you know everything.’
‘It was because I kissed him.’
Funder shook his head.
‘You kissed Brandt?’
‘I can explain.’
He raised a finger. ‘I’ll be over in a minute,’ he said.
‘Good,’ I said.
Troels lay on the sofa. I handed him a cup of coffee and sat down. ‘How can anyone be so jealous at your age, and for what?’ I asked him. ‘You must have lost your mind. You do realize you could go to jail?’
He said nothing.
‘Where are you staying anyway?’
‘I’m sleeping in the warehouse. I bought it.’
‘You bought it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought I was over you, but I know you too well,’ I said. The muscle of his cheek twitched. ‘I lay in bed with my laptop this morning and wrote the first page of a story about you. I’m calling it “The Clerk”’
‘Is that what I am?’
‘In your own way. Stay there and I’ll read to you.’
Cheek trembling, he closed his eyes. I read:
It looked as if someone had committed a murder on that bed. Before leaving the tiny room, I leant against the door frame and contemplated the sheet. A piece of evidence, soiled with blood and excrement. Then came a creeping sense of satisfaction. Outside snow fell. The solicitor made his way gingerly over the icy flags from next door. He gave a shudder and failed to notice when I waved to him through the window. If only he knew. That the clerk had forced open the little window that night. That he had frightened the life out of Miss Jensen and given it back to me.
The clerk was a young man of vigour. Stark naked and smeared with blood, he had staggered out into the hallway in the night to find a shower and had found Miss Jensen instead. Miss Jensen with her weak heart. I lay in the bloodbath and considered his distinguished profile in the half-light, chewing at a corner of the duvet, weeping as I laughed. I shall never forget her scream. Or his bashfully energetic presence when he returned wet and clean to the bed. He has no idea who I am. It puzzles me rather that he doesn’t want to know. On the other hand, I know best how little there is to know, and refrain from making a spectacle of myself.
I giggled.
Troels turned and gave me a wounded look. ‘The story does not come across as the work of a grieving widow. More like that of a teenager, if you ask me. Abby’s right. You’re not grieving at all.’
‘That’s something else entirely.’
‘It’s not even about me.’
‘Yes, it is. Metaphorically. About the time when I knew you, when you were young and happy.’
‘That’s a long time ago.’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps the story is more about you than me.’
‘No. It’s about you.’
The doorbell rang. ‘Goodness!’ I said, and jumped to my feet. ‘That’ll be the police.’
34
So there I was, wondering why old Handel or his scriptwriter couldn’t say a thing once and let it go at that. Every line in The Messiah seemed to be repeated again and again.
John Mortimer,
RUMPOLE AND THE BRAVE NEW WORLD
Wednesday morning.
The sparrows chirped.
I had forgotten to take the sheets in and now they were damp with dew. Brandt sat in his wicker chair with a blanket around him.
‘Hello!’ I said, as kindly as I could, and stepped through the gap in the hedge. ‘Feeling any better?’ Shrugging, he pursed his lips as though tasting something bitter. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. I put my hand against his cheek. He recoiled slightly, but then leant into my palm with a sigh.
‘My daughter came to see me!’
‘Did she?’ His face brightened.
‘She was quite taken with your lodger!’
Nodding, he looked past me. ‘But was she taken with you?’
A good question.
‘She sent me a postcard.’
‘Well, I never!’ He sounded like an old woman.
‘My cousin doesn’t want to know me any more. She wrote to me too – a whole letter. I forgot to tell her about Halland’s funeral, so now she wants nothing to do with me.’
‘How could you forget to tell your only female friend?’
‘She says I think only about myself.’
‘She may be on to something there,’ said Brandt. ‘You don’t seem to be interested in how I’m faring either.’
‘I’m too embarrassed to ask.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘You never do.’
‘Don’t I?’
‘Don’t pretend!’ he snorted. He looked like an old woman too.
‘Your lodger was very concerned.’
‘His name’s Joachim. Why can’t you call him by his name? Anyway, he’s gone home now and he’s taken my sister’s dog with him. The lady is not amused.’
‘Are you sure he took it with him? There’s one loose at the moment.’
‘There are other dogs, one would assume. Sometimes I think you have a very limited horizon.’
A blackbird sang. Lots of different birds sang. A moped drove along the tree-lined promenade. Mopeds were prohibited there.
‘I feel like my life’s a total waste,’ I said.
‘If your life’s a total waste, then mine is too.’
‘But you’re a doctor. Your life can’t be a total waste.’
‘If you’re not satisfied, then you should do something about it.’
‘I wrote something yesterday, something funny. Would you like me to read it to you?’
‘No, I wouldn’t, thank you very much. Do something about your life.’
‘I’m not in the mood for soul-searching.’
‘You never are.’
‘Aren’t I?’
‘Find some friends! Sell the house! Move!’
‘Away from you?’
‘You’re bored.’
‘I’m never bored!’ Turning, I watched my sheets flapping in the wind. One time in the twilight, I had got myself tangled up in a sheet as it hung on the line, and Halland had kissed me. The thought of Halland’s kiss made me dizzy. All the times he called, ‘Come out, come out!’ and I replied, ‘In a minute!’
‘Boring!’ said Brandt.
‘Yes, I am boring.’
‘We walk in the gloaming as we sleep!’
‘You keep saying so. And anyway, isn’t that OK?’
‘Did you find out who shot Halland?’
I tried to gauge his expression to see if he was making fun of me. ‘I don’t play at detectives.’
‘Don’t you want to know what happened?’
‘To you? I know it was Troels. I really am sorry.’
‘That’s not what I meant. I was talking about Halland. About whether there are any suspects.’
‘Stop it, Brandt! It’s not funny!’
‘It’s not meant to be funny. That’s not why I’m asking!’
‘It’s police work. I don’t poke my nose in.’
He looked at me.
‘I’ve informed them I don’t want to be told anything until they know for sure.’
Deep
inside his surprising blue eyes I thought I saw a gleam.
But he would get nothing from me. I wouldn’t reveal what I thought about the police investigation. I would certainly not tell him that I preferred not to know anything at all.
‘He’s been up before the magistrate,’ he said.
‘Who, Troels? What on earth for? They don’t think he’s dangerous, surely?’
Brandt’s eyes.
‘They don’t think he’s dangerous, surely?’ I repeated.
35
Also I’ve been, at last, in the authentic inner chambers, and I must say, they don’t exist.
Robert Walser,
JAKOB VON GUNTEN
I met the detective as I walked down the hill. He pushed up his sunglasses. ‘Good thing I bumped into you!’ he said. ‘I’ve just been down at Troels’s warehouse. What a mess. He had moved in there.’
‘And now he’ll be moving out again, won’t he?’
‘He certainly will!’ Funder narrowed his eyes against the sun. ‘I’m beginning to think that he may have been mad enough to have shot Halland.’
I thought so too, so I kept quiet.
‘But there’s a lot that doesn’t fit.’
‘Like what?’ I asked politely.
‘I thought you didn’t want to hear anything until we knew for sure. Isn’t that what you said?’
‘Yes. Why did you want to speak to me now, then?’
Pushing the sunglasses back down onto his nose, he smiled and continued up the hill.
‘Where did you get that tan?’ I called after him.
Turning, he shrugged and pointed up at the sun.
I went to the library. Tucking the local paper under my arm, I bought a soft drink from the vending machine and went through the half-empty room to the deck. Right on the edge of the fjord, the deck resembled a café with parasols. Lasse sat at a table with a friend. Not looking at each other, they were immersed in their mobiles. Lasse’s was blue, an old one like Halland’s. ‘Hi, Lasse!’ I said. With a swift, seamless movement, he stuck the mobile in his pocket. Smiling at me, he revealed his regular white teeth, then tossed his head back so his hair fell into place. I sat down with my back to them.
