The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘Don’t you think I’ve been punished, Franz?’ I closed my eyes. It didn’t really matter if he let go of the rope or not, I had made my confession. Naturally he couldn’t give me any kind of absolution. But he could – we could – give each other a story that said that we were not alone, not the only sinner. It doesn’t make it forgivable, but it makes it human. Turns it into a human failing. The failure is always human. And that at least makes me human. And Franz too. Did he understand that? That I had come to turn him into a human being? And myself too? That I was his rescuer, and he mine? I opened my eyes again. Looked at his hand.

  * * *

  —

  By the time we headed back down it was so dark that Franz had to go first with me coming along close behind. As I concentrated on following in his footsteps along the narrow, steep track I heard the surf muttering and snorting beneath us, like a beast of prey disappointed that its prey has got away.

  ‘Careful here,’ said Franz, although I still stumbled against the large loose rock he had stepped over. I heard it rolling down the mountainside but said nothing. An optician once told me that among the most predictable statistics regarding the human body is that by the time we’re approaching sixty our eyes have lost something like twenty-five of their sensitivity to light. So my sight was worse now. But it could also be that my sight was better now. At the very least I understood my own story better. We walked on, and as we rounded the point I saw the lights from the houses down on the beach.

  Franz got me down from Where Eagles Dare by using his feet and the rock face to approach a little closer to the first bolt, at the same time hauling in enough rope to enable him to grab it and tied a knot in the end. With a bit of scrabbling and swinging I managed to scramble onto the protruding lip of the ledge just as the last of the daylight faded.

  As soon as we reached the turning circle and were inside the car Franz called Helena.

  ‘We’re both fine, darling, the climbing just took a little longer than expected,’ he said. Pause. A smile spread over his face. ‘Tell him Daddy will be home soon and I’ll read to him. Tell him I love you both.’

  I looked out to sea. Sometimes it seems as though life is full of impossible choices. But perhaps that’s because we don’t recognise the easy choices as choices. It is the dilemmas, the unmarked crossroads that occupy our thoughts. At Oxford, in a discussion about Robert Frost’s famous poem ‘The Road Not Taken’, I once maintained, not without a certain youthful arrogance, that the poem was clearly in praise of individualism, advice to us young to take ‘the one less travelled by’ because ‘that has made all the difference’, as the poet says in the final two lines. But our sixty-year-old professor smiled and said it was precisely this kind of naive, optimistic misunderstanding that has dragged Robert Frost’s poem down to the level of Khalil Gibran and Paulo Coelho and made it so beloved of the masses. That the poem’s weakness is the final verse, because it is ambivalent and can be read as a failed attempt to sum up what the rest of the poem is actually about; that you must choose. That you know nothing of the road, not even which of them is ‘less travelled by’ since, according to the poem, these seem to be the same as far as the eye can see. And that you won’t even know where the one you didn’t take leads to. Because – as the poet says – the road you travel leads to new roads and will never return to this particular crossroads. Therein lies the poetry, our professor maintained. The melancholy. The poem is not about the road you took, but about the one you didn’t take.

  ‘The title makes that very plain,’ said the professor. ‘But the world, and we as individuals, interpret everything according to our needs. The victors write the history of the war and cast themselves as the ones with right on their side. Theologians read the Bible in such a way as to give the Church as much power as possible, and we use a poem to tell ourselves that we don’t need to feel that we have failed, even if we never lived up to our parents’ expectations nor followed in their footsteps. The actual progress of the war, the actual biblical text, the poet’s actual intentions are secondary. Am I right or am I right?’

  Franz put the phone back in the mid-seat console. But he didn’t turn on the ignition. Instead he sat there looking out at the sea, like me.

  ‘I still don’t understand it,’ he said. ‘I mean, you’re a policeman.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not a policeman for the simple reason that I never was a policeman, I just worked as one. You’ve got to understand that in the story about me, I am you, Franz. Julian betrayed you the way Trevor betrayed me. And the disease of jealousy made killers out of both of us. Life imprisonment in Greece means you can get released on parole after sixteen years. I’ve served more than twice that. I wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to you.’

  ‘You can’t even know whether or not I feel regret,’ said Franz. ‘Maybe I didn’t need to confess to find peace. And as for you, you could have gone to a priest and confessed.’

  ‘I had another reason for coming,’ I said.

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘You’re the road I never took. I had to see it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You chose her, you chose the one who – innocently or not – was the reason you killed your own brother. Is it possible to live with that? That’s what I wanted to know. Can you live in happiness with the one you killed for in the shadow of that gravestone? I have always believed that was impossible for me.’

  ‘And now that you’ve seen the other road and know that it’s possible, what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘That is another story, Franz.’

  ‘Will I get to hear it some day?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  * * *

  —

  Franz drove me to the airport two days later. We didn’t talk much during that time; it was as though both of us were empty. Most of my conversation had been with Helena and Ferdinand, and on my last evening Ferdinand insisted I tell him a bedtime story. I saw no sign of jealousy in Franz as he stood in the doorway, smiling contentedly, probably amused at the way little Ferdinand was already bossing me about. So once Ferdinand had kissed his parents goodnight I sat on the side of his bed and told him the story of Icarus and his father. But, just as my father had done, I made my own version of the story, this time with a happy ending in which both of them got away from the prison on Crete.

  There was a downpour just as we pulled up in front of the terminal building and we sat in the car to wait it out. Palechoa was swathed in grey cloud. Franz was wearing the same flannel shirt as when I had seen him for the first time, at the police station five years earlier. Maybe it was the shirt that made me notice but now I could see he was getting older too. He sat with both hands on the wheel, looking out through the windscreen as though summoning up the courage to say something. I was hoping it wouldn’t be anything too big and dark. When he did finally begin he spoke without looking at me.

  ‘Ferdinand asked me this morning where your children and their mother were,’ said Franz. ‘When I said you didn’t have any, he asked me to give you this.’ Franz pulled a worn little teddy bear up out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me.

  His gaze met mine. We both laughed.

  ‘And this,’ he added.

  It was a photograph they had evidently printed out on photo paper. It showed me swinging Ferdinand round just the same way I had seen his father do.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘I think you’ll make a good grandpa.’

  I looked at the picture. Helena had taken it. ‘Will you ever tell her? What really happened?’

  ‘Helena?’ Franz shook his head. ‘In the beginning I could have done, ought to have done, of course. But now I no longer have the right to spoil the story she believes in. Because, of course, she has based a life and a family on it.’

  I nodded. ‘The story,’ I repeated.

  ‘But…’ h
e started, and then stopped.

  ‘But?’

  He sighed. ‘Sometimes I get the feeling she knows.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s something she said once. She said she loved me, and I said I loved her, and then she asked if I loved her so much that I would have killed someone I loved only a little bit less in order to have her. There was something about the way she said it. Then before I could answer she kissed me and started talking about something else.’

  ‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘And who needs to know?’

  The rain stopped.

  By the time I boarded the plane the cloud cover had broken.

  * * *

  —

  When I went to bed in my Athens apartment that evening I put the teddy bear on the shelf above the bed and took down an opened envelope lying there. It was postmarked Paris and dated two months ago. I took the letter out and read it one more time. Her handwriting hadn’t changed after all these years.

  It was late at night before I finally managed to get to sleep.

  Three months later

  ‘Thank you for a perfect day,’ said Victoria Hässel and raised her wine glass. ‘Who would have thought there was such good climbing to be had in Athens. And you with such powers of endurance.’

  She winked as though to make certain I got the double meaning.

  Victoria had contacted me a few days after I returned home from Kalymnos, and we corresponded at least once a week after that. Maybe it was the distance and the fact that we had no mutual friends and didn’t know each other very well that made it so easy for me to confide in her. Not about murder but about love. And on my part that meant Monique. Her own love life was a little richer and more varied, and when she wrote that she was going to meet her latest flame, a French climber, in Sardinia, and was planning to travel via Athens, I was genuinely not sure whether it was such a good idea. I wrote, telling her that I liked the distance, the feeling of talking to a confessor who couldn’t see my face.

  ‘I can always wear a paper bag over my head,’ she wrote back. ‘But I won’t be wearing much more than that.’

  ‘Is your brother’s flat as posh as this?’ Victoria asked as I cleared the table and carried our dishes over to the worktop.

  ‘Posher and bigger.’

  ‘Does that make you envious?’

  ‘No. I’m…’

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘I was about to say, content.’

  ‘Me too. So content it’s almost a pity I have to travel on to Sardinia tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ve got someone waiting for you, and I hear the climbing there is fantastic too.’

  ‘You’re not jealous?’

  ‘Of the climbing, or of your boyfriend? In that case it’s his job to be jealous of me.’

  ‘I was single that time in Kalymnos.’

  ‘You told me. And I’m a lucky man who’s been able to borrow you for a while.’

  We took our wine glasses out onto the balcony.

  ‘Have you come to any decision regarding Monique?’ she asked as we looked out across Kolonaki, with the sounds of the diners at the pavement restaurants rising up to us like monotonous but happy music.

  I had told Victoria about the letter I had received just after I arrived back from Kalymnos. That Monique was now a widow and had moved to Paris. And how she had written that she thought about me a lot and wanted me to go over and meet her.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m going over.’

  ‘It’ll be fantastic,’ she said as she raised her glass.

  ‘Well, I’m not too sure about that,’ I said as I put my glass down on the little table.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s probably too late. We’re different people now from what we were then.’

  ‘If you’re so pessimistic, why go?’

  ‘Because I need to know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Where the other road leads to, the one we didn’t take. Know whether happiness would have been possible in the shadow of a gravestone.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. But is it?’

  I thought about it for a moment. ‘Let me show you something,’ I said.

  I came back with the bear and the photograph of me with Ferdinand.

  ‘Cute,’ she said. ‘Who’s the boy?’

  ‘He’s the son of…’ I took a deep breath to make quite sure I got this right. ‘Julian Schmid.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, so you see the likeness?’

  ‘No, but I can see the cap.’

  ‘The cap?’

  She pointed to Ferdinand’s blue-and-white cap. ‘The club colours. And that square in the front is HSV’s club badge. My club, and Julian’s club.’

  I nodded. A sudden thought flitted through my head, but I rejected it, and it disappeared. And instead thought of this: that Franz had probably already changed the Zeppelin ringtone on his phone for something a little more easy-going that didn’t reveal the real him. The same way he had chucked out his St Pauli rainbow cap and put on his brother’s clothes and accoutrements and lied to everyone around him, all day, every day. I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t that I had moral scruples. I simply didn’t have the talent or the patience to carry it out. If I went to Paris, I would have to tell Monique what I did that day in the Peak District.

  I walked Victoria back to her hotel, her departure was at the crack of dawn next day. Then I headed back home. Athens is what the English call an acquired taste. But I took a long detour through neighbourhoods rougher than Kolonaki because I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  Maybe Monique suspected all along. Maybe the remark she passed about the stain on my thigh when the seat warmers had caused the Elizabeth Arden cream to smell so strongly was just her way of letting me know. That she knew, and that she also knew that, on account of her betrayal, in some way she shared the guilt, and that our ways must part here.

  But now, late in life, it could be that we had actually found our way back to that crossroads where we had took leave of one another. Now – if we wanted to, if we dared – we could take that other road. Me, a murderer. But I had served my time, hadn’t I? I was able to feel good about Franz and about his happiness. Might I also be able to feel good about my own?

  At a corner I couldn’t recall ever having passed before a stray dog sauntered across the street, glancing neither to right nor left. It looked as though it had caught the scent of something.

  THE LINE

  i hate people who cut in lines.

  Must be because I’ve spent far too many of my thirty-nine years standing in lines.

  So even though there are only two people in my 7-Eleven, and the old lady is having trouble finding her purse, I stare coldly at the boy who has just pushed in front of her. He’s wearing a quilted jacket which I recognise as a Moncler because I’ve looked at one myself and realised I’m never going to be able to afford it. The coat I bought at the Salvation Army shop just before the winter came is fine. But I can’t seem to get rid of the smell of the woman who owned it before me. Who was ahead of me in the line.

  It isn’t often people sneak in lines here, unless it’s at night, and they’re drunk. In the main the people in this country are polite. The last time someone did so as blatantly as this was two months ago. A stylishly dressed woman who denied it when I accused her of cutting in line threatened to speak to my boss and get me sacked.

  The boy meets my eyes. I see the hint of a smile. He feels no shame. And he’s not wearing a mask either.

  ‘I only want a tin of General snuff,’ he says, as though the ‘only’ justified cutting in line.

  ‘You’ll have to wait your turn,’ I say into my mask.

  ‘It’s right behind you. It’ll only take five seconds.’ He points.

 
‘You’ll have to wait your turn,’ I say again.

  ‘If you’d just given it to me I would have been out of here by now.’

  ‘You’ll have to wait your turn.’

  ‘You’ll have to wait your turn,’ he imitates, exaggerating my accent. ‘Come on, bitch.’ His smile broadens, as though it’s a joke. Maybe he thinks he can talk to me like that because I’m a woman, I’m in a low-paid job, an immigrant with a different skin colour from his chalky white. Maybe he’s borrowing from a tribal language he thinks I speak. Or maybe he’s being ironic and this is his parody of being a bad boy. After a closer look at him I reject this last possibility. It’s too complex for him.

  ‘Move aside,’ I say.

  ‘I’ve got a train to catch. Come on.’

  ‘Maybe if you’d asked the person in front of you if it was OK?’

  ‘My train…’

  ‘The trains run all day,’ I say to the accompaniment of the steady rumbling from the metro two staircases below. When I started working here my little sister asked if I wasn’t worried about terrorists and sarin. In the civil war, before we got out, sarin was what everyone was afraid of. Afraid that the guerrillas would release the poison gas the way we’d heard a Japanese sect had done in the Tokyo underground sometime back in the nineties. My sister was nine years old and had nightmares every night about poison gas and underground stations.

  ‘There’s only one every fifteen minutes on my line,’ he hisses. ‘I’ve got a meeting, OK?’

  ‘All the more reason to ask her nicely,’ I say, with a nod in the direction of the lady behind him who has finally found her credit card and is ready to pay for the three items lying on the counter in front of me. The boy – I’d put his age in the mid-twenties and guess he’s a regular at the training centre, mostly weights and explosive workouts – loses the patience he clearly feels he’s been showing.