by Jo Nesbo
When I returned to the hotel I saw that the bin had been emptied. I went up to our room, lay down on my bed, closed my eyes and listened to the sounds coming through the window. It was something I’d noticed before, the way both natural sounds and the noises of cities and towns could change over the course of a day, as though following regular cycles ordained by routines, communal activities and daylight. Right now there was the shivering sound of a grasshopper or cicada, caused by the vibration of a membrane, a frenetic mating signal the male of the species was created to make and therefore could not help but make, a slave to his own sexual instincts.
When I awoke the room was in darkness, I had the taste of ashes in my mouth and what I had been dreaming slipped away from the grasp of memory. But there had been something about a flying carpet.
I looked at my watch. Eight thirty. The table was booked for nine. I checked my phone. Nothing from Peter. I called him, no reply. I sent an SMS consisting of a simple question mark. I waited ten minutes, then dressed and went out.
At five minutes past nine the taxi dropped me off outside the Arzak. It was on the ground floor of what appeared to be a residential block. The restaurant’s name was on a narrow, arched awning above the entrance. There was no flashing sign, nothing displaying the three stars in the Michelin guide. I sent a text to Peter, said I hoped everything was OK, that I was outside the Arzak and was going to go in and wait at the table in case he was on his way.
This time the answer came at once.
Don’t. Go back to the hotel now, I’m coming straight from the hospital and I’ll meet you there. I’ll treat you to the Arzak some other time.
I shoved the phone into my pocket and looked down the road for a taxi, but there wasn’t a car in sight. I decided to enter the famous restaurant, explain the situation and perhaps get them to book a taxi for me. I was greeted by a maître d’ wearing a red waistcoat. I offered my apologies for the fact that Peter Coates and companion were unable to come this evening, but that Coates had had to make a hospital visit. The maître d’ glanced down at the evening’s seating plan that was in front of him as I looked around. The restaurant was simply but tastefully furnished, stylish and homely at the same time. My parents would have liked it here if they could have afforded it, and maybe that’s why I had the odd feeling of having been there before.
‘But Mr Coates and companion are here, sir,’ the maître d’ said in a thick Spanish accent.
My mouth was gaping. He looked up at me.
‘If there has been a misunderstanding, perhaps you want to talk to him, sir?’
‘Yes,’ I said without thinking. ‘Yes, thank you.’
As I followed him I regretted it. The whole thing was obviously a misunderstanding; either the maître d’ had gone cross-eyed or someone had taken our reservations. Anyway, there was nothing I could do about it now. I glanced down at my phone and Peter’s message to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood. When I looked up again and caught sight of her it seemed so obvious I was astonished it hadn’t occurred to me before, at the same time as it was a complete surprise.
Peter sat with his back to me, and from his body language I could see he was talking animatedly about something, no doubt about our limited conceptions of space and time. She was silent. Her gaze wandered up past his shoulder and found mine. It was as though an electric shock passed through her. And through me. She was wearing a plain black dress. The eyes, or perhaps it was just the pupils, seemed almost unnaturally large and dark in the rather wide face. The mouth was wide too, with generous lips. But the rest was small. The nose, the ears, the shoulders, and there were no breasts visible beneath the fabric of her dress. Perhaps it was that slender, girlish young body that had made me suppose she was younger than I now saw she was. She was probably about the same age as Peter and me.
Her gaze held mine. Maybe I had awakened some dormant memory of the moment she looked at me under the water. She didn’t look ill at all. Peter was still deep in his description of a reality he believed to be more real than the one which the three of us currently inhabited, but I knew it was only a matter of time before he noticed the expression on her face and turned.
I can’t explain all the thoughts, the half-thoughts and beginnings of thoughts that then collided with one another and made me respond as I did, but I wrenched my gaze from hers, let it wander further as though it had not found what it was searching for, then turned on my heel and quickly left.
* * *
—
I pretended to be asleep when Peter let himself into our room at half past midnight.
He stood listening in the doorway, then silently undressed and got into bed without turning on the light.
‘Peter?’ I murmured as though I had just woken.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t let me go.’
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘How is the girl? Miriam, isn’t it?’
‘Still very weak, but she’ll be all right.’ In the darkness he made a yawning noise. ‘Goodnight, Martin, I’m all in. Again, my apologies. We’ll find a good restaurant in Pamplona.’
I was on the point of telling him. That I’d seen them in the restaurant. Expose him in triumph, make him laugh about it too, tell him that of course I appreciated his priorities, that naturally when he had obtained a table at the best restaurant in the world he took along the girl he was hoping to marry. Should bloody well think so too. That in potential life-changing situations like that, loyalty to your pals had to go by the board. And anyway this particular pal hadn’t shown any particular interest in gourmet restaurants four months ago.
I would actually have said that, because Peter had shown more consideration than the situation required. Had he not, after all, been willing to lie to me and deceive me? Gone to all that unpleasant bother just so that I wouldn’t feel hurt? But of course I didn’t feel hurt! Well, yes, slightly. Hurt to think that he had so little faith in my consideration for him that I wouldn’t completely understand when he preferred the company of the person who could be – if he played his cards right, in the small amount of time he had at his disposal – the love of his life.
But I didn’t say it. I don’t know why not. Maybe it was because I felt as though he was the one who should be doing the talking, and not leave it up to me to expose the lie. Anyway, the seconds ticked by. And at a certain point it was just too late. If I said something now it would no longer be something we could laugh about and he would lose face. Because in the course of those few seconds I had lied too. And in doing so, in pretending I knew nothing, I’d allowed him to develop the lie, to involve himself more intricately in it. If I exposed him now if I would drive a wedge of suspicion between us.
I closed my eyes. It was confusing. Very confusing.
I saw her eyes on the insides of my own eyelids. What did she know? About me, about Peter? Had she seen through the fiction that it was he who had saved her? Did she remember me? Was that what I had seen in her gaze? And if so – why hadn’t she told him that she had seen me in the restaurant? No. No, she couldn’t possibly remember, she had hardly been conscious. After a while I heard Peter’s breathing, deep and even. And I fell asleep too.
* * *
—
Next morning Peter and I checked out, took a taxi to the railway station and boarded the train to Pamplona. It was packed, but fortunately we had tickets booked in advance. The journey inland and up to the heights took an hour and a half. We disembarked a little after nine, the air still cool, cooler than in San Sebastián though the sun shone from a cloudless sky.
We found the place where we were going to stay, a private house which, like so many others in the town, rented out rooms to tourists during the San Fermín festival.
The festival offered a wide range of activities, and I had read that for many Catholics and local people it was the religious processions, the folk dancing and theatre performances that were most important part of
it. For aficionados of blood sports it was Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon, the bullfighting at the Plaza de Toros de Pamplona. For everyone else it was the bull running that took place every morning through the narrow, cobbled streets in the old part of town and ended up at the bullring.
Peter and I had agreed that we would do the bull running twice over the nine days the festival lasted, since we reckoned that the second time – when we knew what we were in for – would be very different from the first. Or as Peter put it: ‘It’ll be like two first times.’ I hadn’t thought about that, that there is also a first time for experiencing something for the second time.
After meeting our hosts and settling into our two small but clean rooms we went out to breakfast before Chupinazo, the ceremonial firing of a rocket from the balcony of the town hall at midday that marks the start of the festival. We stood in the square along with thousands of cheering, singing people, many of them wearing the white shirts and trousers and red neckerchiefs we had seen in photographs. The atmosphere was so electric that for a while I forgot all about what had happened in San Sebastián.
Our lodgings were less than a hundred metres from the town hall square, and yet it took us twenty minutes to make our way through the crowds that almost blocked the narrow streets. And we heard more languages here than we had done in San Sebastián. Outside a bar where the clientele had spilled out into the street we were offered wine for no other reason than that we had each bought our red neckerchiefs and Basque caps from a street vendor.
‘I’m happy,’ said Peter after we’d downed the sweet sangria, exchanged promises of eternal friendship with our new Spanish friends and moved on. I had, of course, noticed how he had been checking his phone every five minutes since early in the morning, but made no mention of it. After a short sleep we headed out again to eat churros and drink brandy. We followed the music, the stream of people and tried our hand at speaking all the languages we heard spoken around us. At some point around midnight we found ourselves in a small marketplace with a fountain where several young men formed a human pyramid from the top of which one of them dived, five metres above the cobblestones. He was caught by a human safety net consisting of six or seven other boys and girls. They repeated the feat, people cheering loudly every time, and suddenly I saw Peter standing up there. He spread his arms sideways, kicked off and dived. But when he crossed his own centre of gravity and his head was pointing directly downwards I felt as though the heart inside me stopped beating. There was a gasp from the watching crowd. Peter disappeared behind the ranks of people in front of me. Silence. And then once again the cheering rose up to the star-strewn sky.
‘You’re crazy!’ I yelled as Peter appeared in front of me and we hugged each other. ‘You might’ve been killed!’
‘Peter Coates has already died a million times,’ he said. ‘If he dies young in this universe, he’s still got countless others in which things can turn out well for him.’
* * *
—
I tried to hold on to that thought the next morning as, together with a group of other young men, most of them wearing white, we stood in front of a little statue in a niche in the wall of a house. We listened as a prayer was offered to the figure, who apparently represented the patron saint of San Fermín. It was now seven thirty, and on the way out of our house we’d seen people, young men mostly, sleeping off the night’s drinking on the cobbles around the walls of the houses, huddled close to one another for warmth in the cool mountain air of the night. Now they were on their feet and ready for the day’s bull run. The prayer consisted of a single sentence in Spanish and was for blessing and protection from the bulls. Peter and I joined in as best we could.
There was still half an hour before the run started, so we went to a bar – Jake’s bar – for an espresso and brandy. On the counter I saw one of the newspapers that I had noticed several of the young men were carrying rolled up in their hands. I glanced through the paper, trying to pick up some of the Basque words, then gave in and studied the pictures instead. Most seemed dedicated to yesterday’s opening ceremony and the day’s bull run. Among them were photographs of what I assumed had to be the six bulls due in the streets that day, along with statistical information about them. To put it mildly they looked scary. I turned the page. As my gaze flitted across it, I stopped at one picture in particular. It was of a rug. Like the one on the floor of our room in San Sebastián. And I noticed the name of the town in the caption. I turned to Peter but saw his back disappearing in the direction of the toilet. I therefore leaned towards the man standing next to me and asked politely and in English if he could translate for me. He shook his head with a smile: ‘I’m Spanish.’
The barkeeper – busy filling a glass with brandy – must have overheard us, because he turned the newspaper towards him and studied it for a few moments.
‘The police have found an unidentified corpse at the municipal dump in San Sebastián. It was wrapped up in a rug.’
The barkeeper disappeared towards the other end of the bar, and I was left sitting there staring at the picture. It was obviously a very common type of rug because Peter had said that, when he paid the proprietor for it, it cost so little it wouldn’t have been worth trying to have it cleaned anyway.
When Peter returned he looked pale.
‘Stomach OK?’ I asked.
He nodded and smiled. He was holding his phone in his hand. During the night, going back and forth to the toilet in the corridor, I had heard the low voice coming from his room. Since he had not once during the course of our trip spoken to anyone back home I assumed the call was with her. Miriam. And I made up my mind to tell him so, after the bull run. Just in a casual sort of way: ‘Oh, by the way, I heard you talking last night. Who was it? Miriam?’ It might be enough to get Peter to start telling the whole story. Or at least relax a bit and talk the way he usually did, spontaneously and openly. Sure, he was friendly, the way he always was. But there was a watchfulness there now, a caution. I had put it down to guilty conscience combined with the effort required to make sure he didn’t reveal what had actually happened. But looking at Peter now I knew I wouldn’t be asking him about Miriam. Nor about anything else either.
Peter exhaled, long and heavy, the way an athlete does at the start of a race. ‘Shall we go?’
* * *
—
At eight precisely there came the distant boom of a cannon. That was the rocket being fired further down in the old town, the signal that the bulls had been released. Along with another fifty or so runners we were standing at a spot we had been told was well suited to first-timers. It was about halfway along the 800-metre route, and now it was a matter of keeping the nerves steady until we caught sight of the bulls, and not starting to run too early.
Two girls who had climbed up onto the barricade across the side street where we were standing started laughing down to us, showering us with sangria from two leather bottles and staining our white T-shirts red. I shouted: ‘Jake’s bar después’ – afterwards – which made them, and those standing around us, cheer loudly and blow kisses in our direction.
‘Concentrate now,’ said Peter quietly into my ear. ‘Listen.’ He looked serious. And now I heard it too. A low throbbing, like the sound of approaching thunder. Some of the runners around us, probably first-timer tourists like ourselves, were unable to control their nerves any longer and started to run. Then we caught sight of the first runners as they rounded the corner fifty metres away from where we were standing. And behind them came the bulls. The runners pressed themselves up against the walls of the houses to let the great beasts rage past them. Behind them some had fallen, others on top of them, and I saw a bull butting into the helpless pile, saw even at that distance how the white horns emerged red, and the blood spouted from the human pile, like the sangria from those leather bottles. I had been told that the bulls will attack anything lying down that moves. So if you fell, you were not to move,
not even if you got trampled.
I saw two men in white start to run.
‘Now!’ I said and set off. I ran along the walls of the houses on the left side of the street. Peter was alongside me. I half turned and saw a huge beast with enormous horns which I realised, from the white patches, was only a cow, sent out with the bulls to calm them down and show them the way. But then directly behind the cow came something else altogether. A black colossus. I felt as though my heart had stopped beating, though probably the opposite was the case and it was beating faster than ever. Half a ton of muscle, horn, testosterone and fury. And it struck me that if I gave Peter a push now, just enough to make him lose his balance, he’d slip on the smooth cobblestones, and no matter how dead he tried to play, in a matter of moments he’d be the target for the killing machine behind us.
‘Here!’ I shouted, pointing to the barricade across the side street next to us, jumping for the wooden wall and grabbing the top. Peter did the same. Eager hands held us and pulled us up and over onto the other side and down among the singing spectators. A leather bottle of wine was pressed to my lips as though it were first aid. I saw the same thing happening to Peter and we laughed, gasping for breath, laughing and gasping for breath.
* * *
—
We returned to our rooms to rest and wash off the sticky sangria, adrenaline-stinking sweat and dust. When I met Peter in the corridor to use the shower after him he was wearing only a towel around his waist and had a small tattoo on his left pectoral, an M with a heart round it.
