The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

by Jo Nesbo

  There was a coughing from the darkness. Kopfer and I were the only ones in the company boardroom, the other eleven chairs for the time being unoccupied. And yet he’d seated himself some distance away from me.

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Jason, but what this boils down to is a chemical formula. A long one, certainly, but all the same, a formula.’

  ‘The formula contains one hundred and fifteen symbols,’ I told him.

  ‘And this is not written down in some scholarly paper or on a computer, it’s only –’ in the darkness I caught a movement, as though he were tapping his index finger against his temple – ‘in your head.’

  ‘Everything from El Aaiún has been shredded, including the memories of those who did not have A-code clearance. Which means, everyone except me, Bernard Johansson and Melissa Worth.’

  ‘Melissa…?’

  ‘Worth. The laboratory head.’

  ‘OK. But I hope you realise the board is not going to stake the whole of the company’s future on the fact that you have managed to prolong the lives of a handful of mice by a few months.’

  ‘They’re still alive,’ I said. ‘In human terms that means they’re over a hundred and fifty years old. All ten of them.’

  ‘Or risk ending up with nothing because you’ve forgotten the formula or been killed in a traffic accident. It is highly unusual not to have proper documentation of the work.’

  ‘But we do, Kopfer. I have signed an agreement that in the event of something unforeseen arising, you can use the bio-memory downloader on me.’

  He snorted. ‘Bio-memory downloaders don’t exist any more.’

  ‘At least one does.’

  ‘Exor?’ He snorted. ‘Do you know what it costs to use it, and how long it takes to do a complete search of even a single adult human?’

  ‘Yes, and I know the rumours about it rusting somewhere in the ruins of Paris. But it works, and the army has people with the technological know-how to operate it. So as long as you have my brain, you’ll find my formula in there. Actually, you don’t even need the entire brain – a fragment will do.’

  Ludwig Kopfer grunted something, and I saw him raise his arm to look at his watch. He’d gone back to using the kind of analogue watch with a radioactive content that had been banned in the 1960s once they discovered improved and less carcinogenic ways of making the hands luminous, a discovery that had since been lost. ‘Let’s see what the board has to say, Ralph. I’ll call you after the meeting.’

  * * *

  —

  At eleven o’clock that evening Klara and I sat on the sofa drinking white wine and watching Titanic on TV. It’s strange to think that a ship that sank over a hundred and fifty years ago is still lying on the bottom of the ocean. And that there was once a time when it was still possible to make films like that. When progress in technology, knowledge and civilisation was something that was taken for granted. Most had obviously forgotten the dark middle ages, in which, among other things, we had forgotten how to make concrete.

  Klara wiped away a tear, the way she always did every time Leonardo DiCaprio gave Kate Winslet that last kiss. Klara had told me that the reason she cried was because they had just met each other, the loves of their lives, and only had these few hours and days together as they headed towards inevitable catastrophe.

  Klara had entered my life and our house when I was eighteen years old. She came with my brother Jürgen, three years older than me, who proudly presented his new love to the family. Klara had curly blonde hair, a lively personality and a smile that could melt a stone. Polite, helpful, sympathetic, easy company, the whole family fell for her at once. But not, of course, in the same way I did. Klara had an innocent charm, she had no agenda, she didn’t play little games, and yet just occasionally I sensed a touch of some darker, passionate depth behind those flashing blue eyes when she laughed in my direction. But I never dared to think that it might be related in some way to me. In the first place, I was a loyal brother. Secondly, I was not the kind who was used to arousing this type of feeling in women. The exception had been a couple of colleagues who, I presume, fell for what they took to be a certain intellectuality and a pleasing calmness, perhaps allied to a degree of self-irony and an almost self-negating tendency to be of service. Whatever, throughout Klara’s marriage to my brother she and I adhered strictly to our allotted roles as brother- and sister-in-law. For twenty years I hid my undying love for her, and she did the same. I offered my sympathies when it turned out she and Jörgen couldn’t have children, and I exaggerated my concern when Jörgen fell ill. Just ten years earlier there had still been medicines on the market that could have saved him, and I know that through my connections in medical research, or via some illegal channel, I could probably have managed to get hold of something from the reserves stockpiled for central figures in the worlds of politics, research and the military. But I did not make the attempt, telling myself by way of an excuse that not only would I risk going to prison but that it would also be immoral and egotistical of me to take care of my own family like that when there were others in need who were much more important for the future of society.

  In the days and weeks and then months that followed Jörgen’s burial I hardly left Klara’s side. We did everything together. Ate, read, went to the cinema, went walking. Travelled to Vienna and Budapest where we visited restaurants, cafes and museums, including the museums of technology that documented the naive faith of earlier generations that the future was heading only one way. During the evenings we walked the cobbled streets of these decaying cities, hand in hand, talking of everything and nothing. We were both approaching fifty, but while I still had a full head of dark hair, Klara’s had turned silvery grey, and her bright smile and shining eyes were framed by deep furrows. I attributed the early onset of these signs of ageing to grief at the loss of her husband.

  It was on the way home from one of these trips, standing alone in the bow of a riverboat, that I told Klara how I felt about her. How I had always felt about her. She told me she had always known, and she felt the same way too. When I kissed her it was with a deep, trembling feeling of happiness, accompanied by a curious melancholy. Melancholy because it had taken us twenty years, or almost half the expected lifespan in the Russo-European Federation, to find happiness.

  Four years had passed since Jörgen’s death, but still, out of consideration for the family, we waited a further year before marrying.

  I was as happy as a man can be, at the same time as my research into telomeres, the white regions at the end of the chromosome that appear to determine the maximum potential lifespan of the human being, had come to a standstill. Maybe it was my frustration while working at the laboratory, in such sharp contrast to my joy at being with Klara, that meant I began working shorter days. Or did I have some premonition, did I recognise in Klara some of the symptoms we had encountered in the children with Hutchinson–Gilford syndrome whom we had studied, so-called progeria or hyper-ageing, in connection with our research? But I dismissed that thought; the syndrome is genetically determined, and something known about from the moment of birth.

  When Klara began having problems with her hips and came home and said that the doctor who had examined her asked if she was really only forty-nine, I gave him a call. And he confirmed that the X-rays had shown him the body of someone he thought must be in her eighties. I arranged for Klara to see a specialist, who confirmed the presence of Werner syndrome, another cause of hyper-fast ageing, but one that can occur later in life. The specialist gave Klara another five years before she died of old age, just fifty-four years old.

  Klara accepted her fate with resignation.

  I did not.

  ‘We get the time we get,’ she consoled me, though it did nothing to stop my tears. ‘And if we don’t get the longest time, what we do get is the best, right?’

  I gave up my job to spend more time with Klara, but then ch
anged my mind after a couple of months. Longevity was my special field; surely there had to be something I could do beyond simply sitting and watching my beloved crumble away before my very eyes? So I began to work longer hours and with greater intensity than ever before, at one and the same time hunter and hunted. Then the board decided that the economic downturn meant the company could no longer afford to finance something that offered little hope of short-term profits, and I was diverted to the hadesitt research programme.

  I had not told Klara about my discovery. Like the relatives of the rest of the research group, she believed I had gone to Africa to find a cure for a sexual disease. She was just glad to have me home again, and as we sat on the sofa and watched the unsinkable ship sink, I sent a stolen glance in her direction. Saw her lift the cup of tea I had made her to her lips as she wiped another tear from her lovely blue eyes.

  The telephone in the hallway rang.

  I went out and took the call.

  ‘The board is giving you the go-ahead,’ said Kopfer.

  I exhaled deeply, only then realising I had been holding my breath.

  ‘But they have certain concerns.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘They say that as long as the medical commission has no written documentation of the contents of the drug, the proceedings could be long-drawn-out, and it might take several years before they give us the go-ahead to begin testing on humans. Bearing in mind the size of the investment, the uncertainty and the time frame before the medicine starts to generate income…’

  ‘They want me to tell them the formula?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I looked at Klara in the living room, her neck bent to drink her tea. Self-delusion, naturally. By now I was used to it. For Klara’s neck was constantly bent, its elegance a thing of the past.

  ‘And if documentary proof that it works on humans already exists?’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What if I am already in a position to prove to you that the compound stops the ageing process in humans?’

  I heard Kopfer stop breathing at the other end.

  ‘Can you do that?’

  Klara put down her cup. She loved the tea I made, especially the new flavour I had brought back from Africa.

  ‘Soon,’ I said, and hung up.

  * * *

  —

  From the street below I hear loud, angry voices. Spanish, Arabic, Berber. But I can’t think about that now. Should I have brought the elephant gun with me, now hanging uselessly over the fireplace back home? No. I’m alone and have no chance to defend myself, no chance of getting away. People want to live, no matter what the cost. Or so they think. For they don’t know the price, they don’t know what the consequences will be. And the humming from the suitcase is getting stronger, more insistent. Tick-tock, the seconds pass, the walking stick approaches. Everything they can take has to go. Scorched-earth policy. Not just for Klara’s sake. Or for mine. But for humanity’s sake. I’m ashamed of myself, but this act of betrayal is the only decent thing I’ve ever done in my life.

  The Betrayal

  Kopfer continued to press me to divulge the formula, excusing himself by saying that he was under pressure himself from the board. But I remained adamant that the risk of someone leaking it for financial gain was just too great.

  ‘Ralph, making that assessment is not your call.’

  ‘Maybe so, but I’m doing it anyway.’

  ‘What I mean is that it is not your right. Your duty is to –’

  ‘My duty is to God and to the human race, Ludwig.’ I saw how Kopfer almost fell out of his chair at my use of his forename. ‘Not Antoil Med. Not even REC. This discovery is bigger than any company or any individual country. The first to get hold of this formula will try to monopolise it and use it for political gain. The only place I could have gone with this would be the United Nations, if it still existed. I’d rather die than hand over the formula.’

  Kopfer looked at me for a long time before rising from his seat and leaving.

  I stayed where I was, nervous and shaking.

  There had been something sorrowing, almost suffering in that look of his. The same look I had seen on the faces of those doctors who came to us with blood samples from their patients, and we had to tell them they were suffering from hadesitt.

  * * *

  —

  I took regular blood and tissue samples from Klara, lying to her and saying I was sending them to a colleague who was working on a cure for Werner syndrome. In the laboratory I was able to see that the medicine was having the same effect as on the mice; the ageing process was not merely retarded, it appeared to have come to a complete stop.

  But the medicine also had a side effect we had first observed in the mice. Melissa reported that they were less active, that they stopped visiting the communal cage, and seemed lethargic. The only lively reaction we got from the mice was the way they bared their teeth at the research assistants when they were being fed. I don’t know to what extent African pygmy mice are disposed towards depression. Nor Klara, come to that. For a while I supposed that her abrupt changes of mood, her apathy and general lack of initiative were due to the thought that she would soon be dead. But I hadn’t noticed any of this before I began putting the medicine in her tea, and if the change didn’t exactly occur overnight it was nevertheless so rapid and obvious that I decided to reduce the dosage. With no apparent effect. On the contrary, it seemed as though her mood swings and her pessimism only increased, and that she had developed an addiction to the medicine. Melissa, too, reported that reducing the dosage of Ankh to two of the mice, which she had done on my advice, had had no effect on their behaviour. This only occurred once we started giving them antidepressants. Fortunately the same result was evident in Klara after I began putting a similar mixture in her tea.

  One day Daniel Egger, the white-haired chairman of the board, came to my office. The Egger family owned 60 per cent of the shares in Antoil Med, and I had never seen the head of the family wearing anything other than a tweed suit and trainers and carrying a walking stick, the function of which remained unclear, since Daniel Egger trots rather than strolls when walking.

  He sat down, placed his hands on the smooth top of his stick and just looked at me.

  ‘Imagine,’ he said after a while, smiling and displaying a row of teeth so pearly white you might almost think pearl was what they were made of. ‘In the brain directly opposite me now lies the solution to the question that mankind has been asking itself since the dawn of time. How to avoid death.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ I said.

  ‘But that is not the most surprising thing, Herr Jason.’ Egger produced a handkerchief and began to polish the tip of his cane. ‘The most surprising thing is that you are a scientist, a researcher who is prepared to betray the most important principle of science: that knowledge is there to be shared.’

  ‘You think Oppenheimer and his research team should have shared their knowledge of the atom bomb with Hitler and Stalin?’

  ‘Oppenheimer at least shared it with his superior, the president of the Western Confederation. And you are under the same obligation, Jason. It is the board and the head of this company which has provided you with the means to make your discovery and paid your wages. Your discovery is our property.’

  ‘My obligation is to –’

  ‘God and the human race. Kopfer told me what you said.’

  ‘Of course, I will have to reveal the formula before I die. When that time comes.’

  ‘That time –’ said Egger, pushing the handkerchief back into the inside pocket of his tweed jacket – ‘might come sooner than you imagine, Jason.’

  I noticed that two large men, both wearing suits too small for them, were standing outside the door of my office.

  I coughed. ‘Are you threatening me, Egger?’

  He looke
d blankly at me. ‘I gathered from Kopfer that you are prepared to die in order to keep your secret.’

  ‘Naturally I’m worried that the discovery might do more harm than good if it falls into the wrong hands. Three world wars have been fought for less, Herr Egger. One single life isn’t so much.’

  He sighed. ‘God and martyr. Diametrically opposed, and yet mankind’s two favourite roles. You’re trying to play them both, Jason. It’s not right. You’re welcome to play God, but you’re going to have to let someone else play the martyr.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I felt a dark foreboding.

  He smiled. ‘I think Klara Jason would make a perfect martyr.’

  It only took a second for my mouth to dry up. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘If the previous God could sacrifice His son to save mankind, you ought to manage to sacrifice your wife. Right?’

  ‘I still don’t understand…’

  ‘I think you probably do,’ said Egger, and pointed to the top of his cane. ‘You know what this is? No, of course you don’t. It’s bone from the black rhinoceros. The black rhinoceros is –’

  ‘I’ve seen pictures.’

  ‘– extinct. This is from one of the last of them. I inherited the cane from my grandfather. He had no trouble walking either. Like me, he used it as a reminder that nothing has eternal life, everything disappears, for good and ill. Or all things shall pass, as the Jews said, at least those of them who lived in the USA. But now that death is no longer a certainty, an early death is all the more bitter. Whether it’s your own or that of someone you wanted to spend the rest of eternity with.’ He looked at me, and there was ice in his grey stare. ‘You’re going to give me that formula, Jason. Here and now. If you don’t, then you’ll find when you get home to Rainerstrasse that your wife isn’t there. When you eventually do find her – if you find her – she will be crucified. And I am not speaking metaphorically. She will be suspended in a forest, nailed to a cross of wood by her hands and feet, a crown of thorns on her head, the whole works, apart from that business about resurrecting on the third day. So what do you say, God?’