by Jo Nesbo
I could see she was trying to tell me all this in a matter-of-fact way, as though it was just a curious and even comical story, but the slight tremor in her voice betrayed her.
‘I sat between two men in the back seat, and when I asked them what they were doing they said I was to marry the son of the man sitting in the passenger seat. I started crying, and the man turned and gave me what was supposed to be a comforting smile. He was all dressed up for the wedding, an overweight guy about fifty, with more gold teeth than real ones. And sweating, because it was a warm day. He said: “My boy will love you, and you will love him.” Just that simple. When we arrived, we were led into a big house. There were men standing outside – they looked as if they were keeping watch. One of them had a rifle. I didn’t know it at the time, but the man in the passenger seat was Kamchy Kolyev, head of the mafia that controls the cemeteries in Bishkek. If you want a grave you have to buy it from him.
‘There was a thin young man standing just inside the doorway. He was wearing a black suit and a kalpak, which is a traditional hat men wear at weddings and funerals. He looked almost as afraid as me and just stared. There was a crowd of people behind him, obviously wedding guests, and an old woman – I think it was his grandmother – tried to put a white shawl over me. I knew that if I allowed her to do it that meant I agreed to the marriage, because I’d heard these horror stories about ala kachuu before, I just never thought it could happen to me. But just like in all those stories I’d heard, I was so scared I didn’t dare to resist. All the guests clapped, I was given a glass of arak – vodka – and told to drink it down, and then the ceremony got under way. They had taken my mobile phone away, and someone was watching me the whole time, so it was impossible to warn anyone or run off. I cried and I cried, and the women tried to comfort me. “It’ll be better when you have children,” they said. “You’ll have something else to think about. And the Kolyev family will look after you, they’re good people, rich and powerful. You’re luckier than many of the others here in this room, so dry your tears, girl.” I asked the boy I had just that moment married why me. He actually blushed. “I saw you several times in the hotel bar,” he said. “But you’re so beautiful, so I didn’t dare to talk to you.” So when his father had forced him to pick out a girl he’d like to marry he’d pointed to me, and they checked and found I wasn’t already married. As he was telling me this I felt almost as sorry for him as I did for myself. And then it got dark outside, and my husband and I were led up to the next floor, to our bedroom, like two prisoners being led to their cell.’
Miriam gave a little laugh and the two tears – one from each eye – that rolled down her cheeks were so clear that I almost didn’t see them.
‘We were locked in, and a guard and three women – relatives of the boy – sat outside, obviously to follow what was going on inside. I pleaded with him to leave me alone, but the boy held me down on the floor and tried to take my clothes off. But he couldn’t do it, partly because he was a little shrimp and not much stronger than me, and partly because he was so drunk. But when he whispered in my ear that if I didn’t let him do it he would have to get help, I let him do it. We got into the bed, and he tried to penetrate me, but he was too drunk. He was almost in tears himself, the poor thing, said his father would kill him. So I comforted him and whispered that I wouldn’t say anything, and he thanked me. Then I made a few passionate noises for the benefit of the people outside, and he started to laugh so I had to hold a pillow over his face. When I took it away again I thought for a moment I had suffocated him. But then he began to snore. I waited until I heard the women leaving and then I sneaked out of bed. I put on the boy’s dark suit – like I said, he was small – and only the shoes were too big. I opened the wallet and took out a few soms, enough for a taxi home. Then I put his kalpak on, hid my hair inside it, opened the window, dangled from the sill and dropped down onto the grass. It was dark and had started to rain and several of the other guests were leaving. Kyrgyzstan is Muslim, but the prohibition in the Koran against alcohol isn’t taken as seriously as, for example, the marriage vow, if I can put it like that. Luckily for me. So I just walked out of the gate through the drunken guests and guards without anyone reacting. Further down the road I hailed a taxi and got home. The following day my mother and I each packed a suitcase and with the little bit of money we had we took an early flight to Istanbul.’
‘You fled?’
Miriam nodded. ‘The Kolyev family would never have accepted it if I didn’t live with the boy I had married. It’s a question of honour and respect. Without respect even Kolyev is nothing. They really have no other choice.’
‘But you’d been kidnapped! Why not report it to the police and ask for protection?’
Miriam gave a short laugh. ‘You live in another world, Martin. They are Kolyev and Mamma and I are two penniless women from Kazakhstan. In the eyes of the authorities I’m a runaway who was legally married in the presence of Kyrgyzstani witnesses and they would say it was done freely. So I would be trying to get out of my matrimonial vows.’
I was about to protest that she could also produce witnesses to the kidnapping, but realised that, of course, she was right: I was the one living in another world, the one where might is not right – at least, not always.
‘How long ago was all this?’ I asked.
‘Three months. Fled. Survived. Moved on every time we felt Kolyev’s people getting close.’
‘A lot of towns?’
Miriam nodded.
‘And how long will you be able to finance this flight?’
She shrugged.
‘It must be hell,’ I said.
‘The worst thing is,’ said Miriam, ‘that I’ve ruined my mother’s life. For the second time. Sometimes I’ve even wished that she’d taken the easy way out and encouraged me to accept the marriage – then at least I could have fled on my own and taken my chances. But then, of course, she knew that if she’d stayed behind, Kolyev would have used her to get to me. Whatever, the way things are, I’m a millstone around her neck. So I feel as responsible for my mother as she does for me.’
Maybe it was the association between a millstone and drowning, but a crazy thought occurred to me. That Miriam had swum out into the waves so that she wouldn’t be a millstone around her mother’s neck any more. But it wasn’t something I was going to ask her about. I looked up into the sky. We were some distance from the sea, and yet the air tasted salty.
‘You look upset,’ she said, raising her cup to her lips. ‘Hope I haven’t given you a guilty conscience or something. I didn’t mean to.’
‘Guilty conscience?’
‘I know you can’t help us. That isn’t why I said yes to the coffee.’
Of course I had a guilty conscience. But that was on account of other things. Not only had I neglected to tell Peter of my plans in San Sebastián, but I also wouldn’t be telling him when I got back either.
‘Why did you say yes?’ I asked.
She put her head on one side. ‘Because you’re Peter’s friend.’
‘Because you think Peter can help you?’
She nodded. ‘He says he wants to.’
‘Is that why you went to the Arzak with him?’
She nodded again.
‘Not because he saved you from drowning?’
She didn’t reply, merely brushed a lock of hair from her face and looked at me.
‘Did you recognise me when I walked into the Arzak?’ I asked.
‘From where?’
‘Yes, from where?’ I asked. I had no intention of breaking the promise I had given to Peter, that I would let him be the one who had rescued her. But if she remembered me, remembered those seconds under the water when we had looked at each other, then that wouldn’t be breaking any promise.
‘But you remember seeing me there?’
‘There was something familiar about you,’ she
said. ‘But it was more like…’
‘Déjà vu?’
‘Exactly. As though you were someone I had met in exactly that way, only I’d never been at that restaurant before.’
‘Like a glimpse into a parallel universe.’
‘Does that sort of thing interest you too?’
I laughed. ‘Peter says he’s going to study it. We’ll see how far he gets. But you said something on the phone. You said, “It’s you.” As though you’d been expecting me to show up. Was that another déjà vu?’
‘Perhaps. Your voice…’ She glanced out over the square, watchful. ‘I honestly don’t know. It’s really quite confusing, isn’t it?’
I took out my wallet. ‘I have to go to the police station,’ I said. ‘Want to come with me?’
‘Why?’
‘To give a –’
‘No. Why should I come with you?’
I shrugged. ‘Peter doesn’t know that I’m here. Can we agree to leave it that way?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t lie. Not to friends, at least.’
‘Is that what he is? A friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘And if he’s in love with you?’
‘If he is then it’s his problem.’
‘But then what would you do? Let him help you and your mother anyway?’
She looked at me with a kind of surprised indignation. ‘I’m not sure you and I know each other well enough for you to ask me that kind of insinuating question, Martin.’
‘You’ve just told me your most intimate personal story, Miriam. If I want to, I’m thinking I can sell the information to this Kolyev for a pretty good price. But you trust me. Do you know why you trust me?’
‘No, I don’t,’ she said, shoving her chair back from the table as though about to get up and leave.
‘You don’t trust me, or you don’t know why?’
‘The last one,’ she said curtly.
‘Instinct,’ I said. ‘You might have suspected that Peter sent me to find out what your motives are, but you know that’s not why.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘Because I love you.’
It was as though the sky had fallen inside my head. Not because it wasn’t true – I had loved her from the moment I looked into her eyes under the water. Or before that. Yes, before. What happened under the water happened for the second time. I can’t put it any other way, it was my own déjà vu. The reason that the San Sebastián clouds and sun and sky came tumbling down like that was because I said it out loud. It was like stepping outside present reality, like breaking through a glass ceiling or a fake sky, like emerging from this Truman Show reality into another one. Maybe no more real than the false one – maybe this one too had its fake sky and its hidden audience – but the two of them together were a little bit truer than just the one by itself, of that much I was certain. Miriam stood up, and when I lifted my gaze to look at her face I was blinded by the low sun and saw nothing until she was gone.
* * *
—
‘That’s that,’ said Inspector Imma Aluariz as she accompanied me from the forensic laboratory back along the corridor to the lift. ‘You should be back in Pamplona before the festival gets going again.’
I nodded. It hadn’t taken long. A long cotton bud held by a man wearing latex gloves, a swab in my mouth and – as Aluariz had summed things up – that was that.
‘Only one other thing,’ she said as she pressed the lift button. ‘You asked who the deceased was.’
‘I was just curious to…’
‘Shall we take a look at him?’
The lift doors parted in front of us and she gestured with her hand for me to enter first. She followed me in and pressed the button with (– 1) on it.
‘Forensics are down in the basement, so this won’t take long,’ she said.
‘I really don’t need to –’
‘Just to confirm whether or not the victim is someone you’ve seen before. It would be helpful for us.’
We stood in silence as the lift descended with a low rumbling sound, the kind of sound effects that, as Peter had once pointed out, people accept in films from space, even though they should know that absence of atmosphere means absence of sound.
Down in the basement we headed along a corridor. There were fewer lights, fewer people. The ceiling was lower, the temperature lower. And yet I began to sweat. My hands were clammy, my heart beating faster.
We passed through a couple of doors, Aluariz placing the card hanging on a cord around her neck against the card reader, and suddenly we were in an ice-cold room. Standing in front of us was a man dressed like a surgeon, obscuring the view of a steel bench with a light blue sheet covering what I realised must be a corpse. The way he was standing, and the short, wordless nod the two exchanged, made me realise that our entry was something they had planned. And when he jerked the sheet aside as though it were an unveiling I saw that their eyes were not on the body, they were watching me. In other words, the encounter had been set up in order to observe my response. And perhaps because I realised this I was able to moderate and hide at least some of my surprise.
‘You seem shocked,’ said Aluariz.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen a corpse before.’
‘Have you seen this person before?’
I pretended to be thinking about it. Then I slowly shook my head.
‘Never. Sorry.’
* * *
—
I left the police station after giving them my address in Pamplona and a promise to keep them informed of my whereabouts if I moved on over the next fourteen days, until the results of the DNA test were in. In the taxi on the way to the railway station I looked at my hands. They were still shaking.
The last train to Pamplona had already gone, but I knew there were plenty of buses around the time of San Fermín. But when I approached a ticket kiosk at the bus terminal I was told that all the buses were full and that the first available seat was on an early-morning bus leaving in time for the start of el encierro, the bull run. Out in the street I hailed a taxi, asked the driver how much to take me to Pamplona. He quoted a price that was way beyond my means, and when I tried to bargain he just shrugged apologetically and said: ‘San Fermín.’ So instead I asked him to take me to a reasonably priced place in San Sebastián where I could spend the night, and he waited while I bought a ticket for the 05.30 bus.
I tried two places. Both were fully booked, both said that every other place they knew of was full too. So I got the taxi driver to drop me off at the place where Peter and I had stayed. Though it had been a large double room it hadn’t cost any more than the singles I’d been looking at. I stood in the back yard, and as the proprietor opened the door of his flat he showed no signs of recognising me. Maybe that’s what happens when you see hundreds of new arrivals every year.
‘Full,’ was all he said.
I explained which room I’d been in, that just an hour earlier it had appeared to be vacant.
‘Yes, but guest looking now,’ he said in his broken English.
‘I’ll take it,’ I heard a familiar voice saying behind me.
I turned round.
Miriam was standing with the proprietor’s wife.
‘For how long?’ asked the proprietor.
‘Indefinitely,’ said Miriam, and looked at me.
‘Perdón?’
‘Sorry,’ she said without taking her eyes off me. ‘A long time, I think.’
* * *
—
‘I hadn’t expected to see you again quite so soon,’ Miriam said as we walked along the bank of the wide river that winds through the town. Its name, she had told me, was the Urumea.
‘Were you expecting to see me again at all?’ I asked.
Miriam had called her mother and
they had agreed they didn’t need to move in until the next day, so I would be able to spend the night there.
‘Well, you say you’re Peter’s best friend, so yes,’ she said.
I smiled. ‘Say? You mean a real best friend doesn’t tell his pal’s girlfriend that he’s in love with her?’
‘Peter and I aren’t a couple.’
‘Or his chosen one.’
‘I don’t like to be chosen.’
‘But maybe they’re right this time, those voices whispering in your ear that, after all, you have been lucky, and there’s no need for tears. Peter’s a nice lad. And he’s rich enough to be able to help you and your mother.’
She stopped, turned towards the river and looked across to the other side.
‘It’s not that simple,’ she said.
‘I know it isn’t,’ I said. ‘You’ve got a responsibility to your mother as well as to yourself. It’s a moral dilemma. If you want his help you have to give him hope that there might be something between the two of you. In other words you need to lie.’
She snorted. ‘Why is that lying? I can’t know right now whether or not I can love him.’
‘Oh yes, you know.’
‘Oh?’
‘Because you love me.’
She laughed, shook her head and carried on walking. I quickly caught up with her.
‘You do,’ I said. ‘You just don’t know it yet.’
‘You know what the difference is between you in the West and us out here? We can’t get enough of romantic books and films, but where you come from you think they’re true.’
