Broken

by Karin Fossum

  He lowered his head. He could not fight this creature and her logic; he could not find the words or the strength. Wearily he went out into the hall where his coat hung. He found his wallet, opened it and took out the notes.

  'Six hundred,' he muttered and went back. She instantly snatched them from him.

  'You're a star!' she declared and kissed his cheek. She went out into the hall. 'And I'll take one of the keys for the new lock. If that's all right with you.'

  Alvar was gobsmacked. He could not believe his ears; she spoke these words so casually that it took his breath away.

  He ran out into the hall; she already had her hand in the key cupboard.

  'You can't just help yourself like that,' he stammered and yanked the key from her. In the confusion he accidentally scratched her hand. Her eyes bored into him. Her jaw dropped.

  'This is my flat,' he continued, 'and I need to have some control over who comes and goes here.'

  'But you never get any visitors,' she argued.

  'All I'm saying,' he said feeling like a complete idiot, 'is that I would like to be in charge of my own home.'

  'But you are, aren't you?' she objected with big, wide eyes. 'All I'm doing is sitting on the sofa while you get on with whatever you're doing.'

  'Yes, but you know, a key,' he said, 'a key might get lost, I need to have a certain amount of control.'

  Her head dropped to her chest, an ominous silence followed.

  Alvar had to look down too while he struggled to find the words.

  'It's nice that you pop in every now and again,' he said cautiously. 'But there needs to be some order. And you know, you don't give a key to just anyone. Only to close friends.'

  That was when she lifted her head and looked him straight in the eyes.

  'So I'm not a close friend?' she said pitifully. Her lower lip quivered. 'I'm an unwanted friend, is that what you're saying?'

  'No, no,' he protested fiercely, 'but we don't know each other all that well. Not yet.'

  She tilted her head as she considered this. 'So what you're saying is that after a while when we know each other better, then I can have a key?'

  He was struggling to keep up with her, let alone be ahead.

  'Yes,' he shrugged. 'Something like that.'

  'How much time are we talking about?' she asked him directly.

  Again he shook his head in confusion.

  'So how long does it take before two people have become good friends?' she insisted.

  'Well, that depends, I'm not really sure, I don't have a lot of experience,' he admitted.

  'I think of you as a friend,' she said quietly. She lowered her head gain. 'But I was wrong.' She turned away from him, turned her back on him. 'I always end up getting rejected,' she whispered, hurt.

  'But I'm not rejecting you,' he assured her, 'I'm just saying that I need more time!'

  'That's easy for you to say. You're not going down the drain like me and I haven't got time. This might be the last time you ever see me!'

  He took one step forward. He raised one hand and wanted to place it on her shoulder, but he was afraid.

  'Now don't be like that,' he comforted her, 'I'm sure you'll be all right, you always are.'

  'You might end up regretting saying those words,' she said. 'People like me drop dead all the time. You know that, we're at risk. You'll probably just breathe a sigh of relief, lock your door and lie down on your sofa and forget all about me.'

  'Oh no,' he said quickly. 'Not at all, don't think like that. I'd be beside myself if anything happened to you, I really mean that.'

  'So you do care about me a little?' she said softly.

  'Of course,' he said firmly.

  'But not enough?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Not enough to give me a key?'

  Alvar went totally quiet. It dawned on him that he had run out of words, that he would never win this battle. So he held out his hand and gave her the new key. She instantly closed her fingers and gripped it. A second later the front door slammed.

  He stayed in his armchair for a very long time.

  The television was droning on in the background, but he did not even notice it. She is like a pebble in my shoe, he thought, every single step I take hurts. She is like burdock, you cannot pull it off without hurting yourself, she is like an itch that gets worse and worse. She spreads likes a disease, she grows like a tumour, she makes me want to scream. His vicious thoughts frightened him. He was not a violent man, not at all. He was angry with her, but his anger instantly ricocheted back on himself. He felt faint when he thought about his own incompetence. He would never hit her, he did not know how to argue, he had never been taught how and he never felt the desire. And yet he could still feel pressure building up inside his chest. He listened carefully to it. Yes, it was a roar, there could be no doubt. He had never heard himself roar and he was terrified of letting it out. He imagined a wild animal in there baring its teeth, hurling itself against the bars of its cage, desperate to get out. Then he started to sob. It was a dry, pathetic sob and it made him crumple as he sat there in his armchair. Alvar Eide is sobbing, he thought, my life has become so dramatic that I have lost my self-control. He dried his tears, but he was unable to get up from his chair. A sherry, he thought, that's what I need to calm my nerves. He pulled himself together and made himself go into the kitchen to get the bottle. His hands were shaking, the tears were flowing. He felt like a nervous wreck. And all because of a girl of forty-odd kilos. He found a milk glass and filled it almost to the brim. Raised it to his mouth and drank. He leaned against the worktop gulping sherry, and suddenly he had to laugh. He observed himself through the eyes of another. A lonely man reduced to drinking sherry from a milk glass with tears streaming down his face, just because some girl had been to his home. The whole business was so demeaning it made him cringe. He continued to laugh, louder now, it began to resemble a kind of braying, sounds he did not know he was capable of making filled the whole kitchen. Every now and then he would pour himself another sherry, swigging it as if it were juice, followed by more outbursts of his braying laughter. With his free hand he gripped the worktop tightly.

  This, he realised, is the end of the road for me.

  CHAPTER 21

  'I'm already beaten,' Alvar says.

  It is hard for him to accept this realisation, and his back is bent. His eyes shine from too much sherry and his hands are shaking badly.

  'Sit down,' I order him. 'Let's talk about it.'

  'No one in my family ever had a drink problem,' he adds.

  'Is that right?'

  'I just wanted you to know that. It's not a path I wish to take and I don't usually knock back sherry like this.'

  'I'll bear that in mind,' I reply. 'So let's say that you needed to let off some steam very badly, but that it's not going to become a habit.'

  'Thank you.'

  He lets himself fall onto my sofa. There are beads of sweat on his shiny forehead and hints of dark shadows under his eyes.

  'There's something I've been meaning to ask you,' he says in a tired voice.

  'Fire away.'

  'Is she the strong one or am I?'

  I consider his question. 'What do you think?'

  He shakes his head. 'I don't know. But I need to take my share of the blame for the situation I've ended up in. At the same time she is so slippery, like an eel between my hands. I try to find a way out, but as things stand now, I can't see it. There are times when I just feel like giving up. Leave the responsibility for everything to you. Just drift along while you let things happen, whatever those things might be. It's not as if it can get any worse, can it? Can it get any worse?'

  'What precisely are you scared of?' I ask.

  He thinks about it. 'Well, many things, I guess. Perhaps I'm scared of losing my mind. Sometimes it feels like that might happen and I'm frightened that the fragile thread that I have with the outside world might snap. Though there is no history of mental illness in my f
amily either, not as far as I know, anyway. And I'm also scared that I might act on impulse.'

  'Why is that scary?'

  'Surely that's obvious,' he exclaims. 'We can't allow ourselves to be controlled by impulses.'

  'Which particular impulse did you have in mind?' I ask.

  'The one that controls your temper,' he says darkly.

  I lean forward across the table. I look him straight in the eye.

  'Alvar. Dear Alvar. I know you, you wouldn't be able to hurt a fly.'

  'I've always thought so too,' he says, somewhat relieved. 'I've always striven to behave as calmly as possible. But sometimes I get this gut feeling. It tightens and it spreads to my arms in a horrible way. And before I know it I clench my fists ready to fight. Because everything around me is exploding and because I can't find the words, so I lose my footing and I stumble over the edge. Are you turning a peaceful man into a thug, is that your plan?'

  'No, Alvar, calm down. God knows you're a peaceful man,' I say, 'and I'm not going to tamper with this feature. Mankind's tragedy, however, is that too much peacefulness can sometimes lead to disaster. You ought to read Zapffe,' I suggest, 'he's your kind of philosopher. I've got his essays here on my bookshelf, if you want to borrow them.'

  'Thank you.'

  'Incidentally, I have always believed that you ought to judge people on the basis of their actions,' I continue, 'not on what they say, think or mean. There are plenty of people ready to shoot their mouths off.'

  'But I'm not that type either,' he says quickly. 'I don't act and I don't judge. All I'm doing is pacing up and down this labyrinth looking for the exit. Like a lab rat. A repulsive, trained lab rat.'

  'I think you're being very hard on yourself.'

  'You're the one being hard, it's your book.'

  'Our book,' I correct him. 'Don't underestimate your own part in this collaboration. I listen to you, I can be influenced. Especially at this point, when we're well into the book.'

  'It's going to be dramatic, isn't it? That's what I'm picking up from you. We've peaked and now we're going to start running down the hill. And I can't even pray because you haven't given me a God.'

  'Would you like a God?'

  'I imagine all lost souls would. It's the loveliest fairy tale in the world,' he adds, looking sad. 'Reserved only for the few.'

  'Try to believe in yourself,' I say, 'believe that you're worth something. That you can do something. That you possess great reserves which you can draw on in times of crisis.'

  'You believe in me,' he said miserably. 'But I'm scared that I might end up letting you down. That I can't run the race you have entered me in.'

  I look at him solemnly and say sincerely, 'It has never, ever happened that one of my characters has let me down.'

  'There's always a first time.'

  'With that sort of attitude you might well be right. It takes a lot out of me too, don't forget that. I'm worn out.'

  He gets up from the sofa and takes a walk across the floor. His head is bowed, his hands are behind his back. Then he stops, he has remembered something.

  'In some strange way I actually like Lindys,' he says, somewhat surprised by his own, stumbling admission.

  'Tell me more.'

  'She doesn't give a damn about anything. She doesn't follow any rules, she helps herself to whatever she wants. She doesn't care what people think of her. She never tries to please anyone and she doesn't care about consequences. Her attitude is devil-may-care and perhaps that's a kind of freedom. She's on heroin, she lives her life one hour at a time. Whereas I, on the other hand, am trapped inside myself. I have order and control and structure, but I can't get out.'

  'And deep down that's what you want? To finally show yourself as you really are, warts and all?'

  'I never used to think so,' he says, 'but now I can see that this is what it's all about. I'm fed up with being careful. Anonymous. Correct.'

  "What do you think we would see if you finally escaped?'

  He stops. He folds his arms across his chest.

  'That's the problem, this is what truly worries me. Perhaps I have nothing to show, perhaps what you see in front of you standing here on the floor is all there is to see. Or, I might open up only to discover terrible things.'

  'Such as?'

  'Cowardice. Brutality. Panic.'

  'But no great passion,' I smile, 'no bubbling joy, no heartache, no wild and uncontrollable laughter.'

  He goes over to the window and stares out of it. His shoulders sag.

  'I can see all the way into town.'

  'Yes, it's beautiful.'

  'All the lights,' he adds, 'street lights, lights from the houses, they glow.'

  'Everything looks beautiful at a distance, doesn't it? Even when seen through shimmering, polluted air.'

  'When will the battle commence?' he asks, abruptly turning round.

  I shift slightly in my chair, 'Are you asking me for an actual date?'

  'Why not? There's no escape for me anyway.'

  'November,' I propose. 'The eighteenth.'

  'Why November exactly?'

  'I need rainstorms and fairly cool air. I need rotting leaves and muddy roads. The kind of shivering quality that characterises November. The grey, naked landscape stripped of everything that grows and comforts us, but not yet blessed with white, icing-sugar snow. A bleak time in many ways, a brutal time. It is as if everything surrenders in November and we huddle in corners and light candles. I love November.'

  'But why?' he repeats.

  'I was born in that month, on the sixth. It was a wild night, Godawful weather, when I saw the world for the first time. November is in my blood, a darkness, a melancholy. A permanent feeling of sadness. My hands are like bare branches, I have fog in my head and storm in my heart. You were born in September,' I tell him, 'and you are marked by that, the summer was drawing to a close when you were born. The holidays had ended, but the harvest had yet to come and Christmas was far away. No expectation,' I say, 'just an orderly, eventless time between bright sunshine and crisp frost. But I love all the months, each has its own tone, its own hue. Imagine this wheel. January, for example, bright blue and white and a trumpet with clear, sharp notes. February, almost identical, with the sun a little more yellow and I hear a cornet. March, grey and white, I hear a viola, there lies a faint hope in its deep note. April, yellow and white. Violins,' I say, 'with a hint of trapped despair. May, yellow and green. People dancing around a maypole. June, airy and sky blue, accordion. A big flaming bonfire, sparks flying off out into the night. July is a deep yellow, the colour of sand, the sound of a radio. August, the summer is fading, I hear a faint guitar. Then comes your month, September. It is the colour of earth and now I hear a cello. October,' I continue, 'rusty red and with a strong beat. Someone is playing an oboe. November, as I mentioned just now, bare. In November I hear kettledrums and a moaning trombone. Then we finally reach December, with candles and tinsel. And so the years pass, in an ever-recurring circle. If you live to be eighty, Alvar, you will have existed nearly thirty thousand days. Or, approximately seven hundred thousand hours, if you like.'

  He pales. 'And how many minutes is that?'