by Jo Nesbo
‘Now, you nignog!’
My heart starts beating faster, but not so much because he’s trying to offend me. I don’t know whether the guy’s a racist or is just trying to get at me in the way he thinks will hurt and provoke me most, the way he would have called me dwarf if I was short, or porkie if I was fat. I don’t care what his prejudices are; my heart is beating faster because I’m afraid. Because in the course of just a few seconds this overgrown child standing in my shop has crossed a line, meaning probably he has problems with his self-control. I can’t see anything in his pupils or his body language to indicate that he’s high on something, the way the soldiers often were, although of course anabolic steroids could be in there somewhere. My ex-husband says that, because I’m a chemist, I’m always trying to explain the world by reference to chemistry. Like that proverb about the man with the hammer who sees every problem in terms of nails.
So, yes, I’m scared, but I’ve been more scared. And I’m angry, but I’ve been angrier.
‘No,’ I say calmly.
‘You sure?’
He takes something from the pocket of his nice, warm Moncler jacket.
A red Swiss Army knife. Flips out the big blade. No, it’s the nail file. Raises his hand, sticks his middle finger up in the air and starts to file a nail, laughing in my direction. One of his front teeth has a big dark stain on it. Could be from methamphetamine, which contains chemicals such as anhydrous ammonia and red phosphorous that eat up the enamel. But of course it could just be a case of bad dental hygiene.
He turns to the woman behind him. ‘Hey, missus – OK by you if I do a bit of shopping?’
The woman stares open-mouthed at the knife and looks as though she’s trying to say something, but not a sound comes out. Instead she nods, quick as a woodpecker, and makes noises like she’s having trouble breathing. Above the mask her glasses mist over.
The boy turns back to me. ‘There, see? Come on.’
I take a deep breath. Maybe I’ve underestimated the boy. At least he’s street-smart enough to know that the CCTV cameras in 7-Eleven shops record pictures but not sound, so that in a court case there would be no indisputable proof that he’d actually said ‘nignog’ or anything like it that could be called hate speech. Unless the elderly lady behind him has better hearing than I think. And there’s no law against filing your nails.
I turn slowly and take down the packet of snuff, thinking the situation over.
* * *
—
As I say, I’ve been standing in lines since I was born and I can remember them all. The food lines I stood in with Mamma when I was little. The line around the UN lorries when the fighting first started. The line at the health station where my sister was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The staff line at the university toilets because the chemistry department didn’t have separate toilets for female students. The line of refugees leaving town when the war broke out. My sister and me in the line to board the boat and take the places for which Mamma had sold everything we owned. More food lines in a refugee camp where the chances of being raped were about as high as they were back home in the war zone. The line and the waiting to be sent to another country, to a refugee centre that held out hopes of a better life. The line to be allowed to leave the centre, get a job and contribute to this country that has taken us in and that I love. I love it so much that one of the three pictures hanging above the bed in the little flat my sister and I share was of the king and queen, along with Mamma and Madame Curie, my two other heroes.
* * *
—
I put the tin of snuff in the counter and the boy holds his credit card over the card reader.
As we wait for the card reader to confirm the purchase I open a drawer on my side of the counter. Inside is a box of fresh masks. I open the little bottle standing beside the box, take out a mask and drip a drop onto it. While doing this I’m thinking about my sister. She took down the picture of the royal couple yesterday. She said they’d cut in line. A newspaper wrote that the king and queen had already had the vaccination the rest of the country was waiting for. Without going public about it the government had offered the royal couple first place in the lifeboats, before it was their turn according to the rules that applied for the rest of the population.
And the two in the picture had accepted. Two people whose only real duty was to be symbols, to unite the country in times of war and crisis, had been given the opportunity to perform that duty in a really meaningful way, by showing a good example to people when it came to following the call from the authorities to show solidarity and discipline and to wait patiently in line. But the royals, the privileged royals, didn’t take the opportunity. Instead they took the opportunity to jump the line. I asked my sister whether she wouldn’t have done the same thing. She said yes. But that she wasn’t the ship’s captain. I said perhaps the royals did it to show a good example, to show people it was safe to be vaccinated. My sister said I was naive, that this was the same excuse the Algerian captain had used when the boatload of refugees capsized and he was the first into the lifeboat.
The card reader confirms the purchase.
I take the mask out of the drawer and offer it to him.
He looks at me uncomprehendingly as he stuffs the tin of snuff into his jacket pocket.
‘You’ll need it on the train,’ I say. ‘It’s mandatory now.’
‘I don’t have time to –’
‘It’s free.’
With a mocking smile the boy grabs the mask and runs off.
‘Now it’s us,’ I say with a smile to the elderly lady.
* * *
—
It’s almost eleven in the evening by the time I get home to our one-room flat. It’s ice-cold, because I only turn the radiators on at night, when I’m home, and when the electricity is cheaper.
I’m tired and I don’t turn on any of the lights, just the little TV set. I keep the sound low. I don’t see my sister, but she’s sitting somewhere in the dark and her voice fills the room. She says it’s dangerous where I work. That two months ago a woman died on the train and in her blood they found traces of an organophosphorus compound used in insect sprays, not unlike sarin. And now the same thing has happened to this boy. My sister points to the TV screen where a news anchor looks gravely into the camera.
As I follow her desultory thoughts I make myself something to eat, by which I mean I warm up the leftovers from yesterday. I don’t make anything for her. My sister hasn’t eaten since she was ten years old and died of tuberculosis while waiting in a line of patients who had been promised treatment. Last year as many people in the world died of tuberculosis as of this new infection. But of course, there’s nothing about tuberculosis on the news, because that’s not a problem here in the wealthy world.
‘Poor thing,’ says my sister with a sob as the TV shows a photograph of the boy, taken on a summer’s day aboard a sailing boat with some friends. He’s smiling broadly and I notice he doesn’t have a dark stain on his front tooth.
‘Look at him,’ she snuffles. ‘It’s so meaningless when someone dies so young.’
‘Yes,’ I say as I unfasten the top buttons of my coat. ‘Even there he’s cutting in line.’
TRASH
someone has to do the cleaning up.
Apart from the fact that I pick up the garbage here in the city I can’t think why that sentence occurred to me on that particular morning. I had the feeling it was something that came to me during the night; but I get blackouts sometimes when I’ve had too much and last night was one of those nights.
The garbage truck stopped with a wheeze and I jumped down from the rear ladder. Saw one of Pijus’s eyes in the mirror before I walked across to the bin outside the apartment block. In the old days I always used to run. That was when the bosses at head office didn’t much care if we got through the round well before the end of the stipulated time between six and on
e thirty and went home an hour or two early. Or if we managed the round for the whole week in four days so that we could have Friday off. But that was before. Now we had to follow the Oslo municipal council’s rules for regular hours of work, so if you finished early you just had to have a cup of coffee or play with your mobile phone in the office, you couldn’t just go home and screw the wife or cut the grass, if you get my meaning.
So I didn’t run, didn’t even jog, I walked. Walked shivering in the summer dawn towards the green wheelie bin, a lightweight two-wheeler, rolled it over to the truck, hitched it to the bin tipper and watched the plastic bin rise up into the air accompanied by the repetitive hymn of the hydraulics and electricity, followed by the thud as the container was whipped over and the trash hit the metal floor and the compactor began compressing it. Then I wheeled the bin back into place, being careful it was well out the way of the garage door, there had been complaints before from the residents. Fuck you, as far as I’m concerned, but recently there’d been a few too many. Not that it’s all that easy to get sacked as what they call a refuse disposal officer, but some people say I’ve got an anger management problem. OK, so I’ve got an anger management problem. So I’m worried that if the boss turns up one more time in the mess room and gives me a bollocking in front of the other guys (OK, there’s one girl, out of 150 employees) I just might punch his lights out. And that would mean my job, no two ways about it.
I sat in the passenger seat next to Pijus. Rubbed my hands together in front of the heater. Even thought it was July and summer holidays, Oslo at six o’clock in the morning was still so cold that I didn’t ride outside on the ladder until I’d built up a bit of body heat. And anyway, Pijus was a guy you could talk to and that isn’t always the case with the other guys on the trucks. Mostly it’s Estonian, Latvian, Romanian, Serbian, Hungarian and all that, with maybe just a smattering of English. But Pijus spoke Norwegian. He claimed he’d worked as a psychologist before moving to Norway, but we’ve heard that one before. But whatever he used to do, the truth was he was smarter than the rest of us (Pijus called it having a higher level of intellectual ambition), and he had a vocabulary as big and stiff as a lexicon. But it was Norwegian, and that was probably why the boss had us working together on the same truck. Not that there’s really all that much needs to be said on a garbage truck, you both know what the job involves, but the boss thought there would be less arguing and misunderstandings if the lads at least spoke the same language. And he probably also thought Pijus would be able to keep me out of trouble.
‘What is the cause of the wound on your forehead?’ Pijus asked in his stilted but somehow unimpeachable Norwegian.
I glanced at myself in the mirror. The cut ran like a crack in the ice directly above one eyebrow.
‘Dunno,’ I said, which was the truth. As I say, I have trouble with blackouts and I couldn’t remember a thing about last night, only that I woke up in bed with my wife lying with her back to me. I must have forgotten to set the alarm, just woken up out of habit but a bit later than usual, realised I was still too drunk to drive the Corolla to work and just thrown on my clothes and off out the house to catch the first bus. So obviously, I hadn’t had time to peruse my ugly mug in the bathroom mirror.
‘Have you been brawling again, Ivar?’
‘No, I spent last night at home with the missus,’ I said, running a finger over the cut. Damp. Fresh. I did remember me and the missus having a couple of drinks. Or no, actually, Lisa decided she was going to give up drinking altogether. So I had had a couple of drinks. And then a couple more, apparently.
Pijus stopped the truck and we jumped down. At this address there were two big four-wheeled bins to go out, and that needed two of us. Otherwise it’s the driver who’s the boss, he can sit and relax behind the wheel with his HGV driving licence and his wage packet three grades higher than the mate’s. But Pijus is well aware of the fact that when he came here from his shit little country I was the one who was doing the driving, and he was the driver’s mate. I lost my licence, but that’s another long and boring story about booze and a loudmouth traffic cop with a breathalyser who turned up in court with a black eye and claimed it was completely unprovoked.
I pulled out the enormous bunch of keys and found the right one. Apparently there are around 7,000 keys covering the whole of Oslo at the depot. I hope they take good care of them.
‘So you were fighting with your little wife,’ said Pijus.
‘Eh?’
‘Why were you fighting? Unfaithful? Women who have been cheated on can be just as aggressive as men. Especially if they have children. But in that case they usually turn on the intruder. That’s the way oxytocin works. The woman gets pregnant and the chemistry makes them more monogamous, more empathic and kinder. But at the same time they get more hostile in the face of potential threats.’
‘Wrong, wrong and wrong again,’ I said, and began pushing one of the bins in the yard towards the gate. ‘We don’t have kids, and I haven’t screwed anyone. And women aren’t monogamous.’
‘Aha, so she’s the one who’s been unfaithful.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I let go of my bin right in front of the gate and Pijus had to stop his to avoid crashing into me.
He shrugged. ‘That’s why you were fighting. You felt your position was threatened. Your amygdala was activated. Fight, flight or freeze. She’s small, so you chose to fight. It’s only natural.’
I could already feel the blood sort of tightening in my head. It’s a much too familiar feeling. The pressure rises and to stop my head exploding I need to open a valve, find some other way out, because otherwise it’ll burst open and little yellow bits of brain go whirling through the air and land on walls and bicycles, prams and letter boxes and some little guy trying to kid people into believing he’s a fucking psychologist.
As a rule the solution is to open my mouth and even out the pressure that way, same as when you’re on a plane. I just have to roar. Roar something.
‘My amagy…’ I began. I was calm. Pretty calm. OK, I raised my voice a bit.
‘Amygdala,’ said Pijus with a little and very fucking irritating grin. ‘Think of it like a woman’s name, Amy G—’
That did it for me.
‘Don’t talk to me like that, you fucking nazibastardcunt!’ I pushed the container as hard as I could so the bloody Latvian was sandwiched between the two bins, and I was on my way round to give him a good kicking when a voice cut through the morning air in the yard.
‘We are trying to sleep!’
I looked up. There was a woman standing on a second-floor balcony. She was probably only in her forties but she’d let herself go and looked more like fifty. I can say that because she was completely naked.
‘Shut up and put some clothes on, you dirty old slag!’ I yelled. ‘OK?’
The woman laughed, a piercing wail of a sound, raised both arms in the air, lifted one knee and twisted her hip into a grotesque glamour-model pose. ‘I’ll ring your boss!’ she shrieked. ‘This time tomorrow, gentleman, you’ll both be on the dole!’
And through the red curtain of my rage I could see it all. The boss giving me the message he’d been waiting so long for the opportunity to give me: Svendsen, you are so fucking fired!
I could feel the bin against my stomach. Pijus was pushing at the other end, nodding towards the gate, signalling that we should get out.
‘Think she’ll do it?’ I asked as the wheels rattled across the asphalt outside.
‘Yes,’ said Pijus.
‘Very fucking inconvenient,’ I said.
‘Oh yes?’
‘The Corolla’s due for its EU test and I’ve promised the missus a holiday in the Canaries this Christmas. What about you?’
Pijus shrugged. ‘I send money to my parents. They get by, but without the money they won’t eat well and they won’t be able to pay for the electr
icity.’
I helped him hook the container onto the hydraulics. ‘I shouldn’t complain, is that what you’re saying?’
‘No, I’m just saying we all have our problems, Ivar.’
Maybe we do. My problem was that when I got angry I couldn’t keep things separate any more. I should have had optical detectors that did it for me, like they have at the dump out at Klementsrud. We just offloaded into this sort of unmanned factory of a place and all the trash waltzes off on a conveyor belt with robots sorting out the big bits from the little bits and sending the organic stuff to the incinerators, the glass, plastic and metal for recirculating, and so on. If only I could learn to just let some things go.
I calmed down, and as we emptied the containers tried again to remember. What the fuck actually happened last night? All I knew was that it must have been a lot, because when I woke up I wasn’t just hung-over, I felt like I’d just run two marathons. Did I fight with Lisa? Had I – who in all the thirty years of our marriage never laid a hand on her – had I done something to her? She was lying on her side in the bed with her back to me when we woke up. That was in itself a bit weird because usually she slept flat on her back. But a fight, a fist fight? I couldn’t see that. But what I did see now, now that I thought about it, was that we had quarrelled. It was as if the echo of harsh and ugly words was only just now reaching me from the night before. And I’d used one of them again just a couple of minutes ago. Slag. I’d called Lisa a couple of things over the years, but never slag.
We wheeled the bins back into the yard. The lady on the balcony was gone.
‘She’s inside calling the boss,’ I said.
‘He’s not up,’ said Pijus. ‘Not yet.’ He looked up the facade, nodding, his lips moving as though he was counting something. ‘Come on, Ivar.’
I followed Pijus out and over to the entrance to the block, where he stood and studied the list of residents’ names.
