These two telephone lines with a call rate of thirty Danish kroner per minute to respectively the Light of the Oracle and the Holistic Chain were Pirjo’s pension savings, and for that reason she was the only person from the nature absorption assembly who Atu allowed to run their own business while being associated with the Nature Absorption Academy.
But Pirjo had altogether secured many privileges for herself, all of which she’d earned because Atu had lots of things to be thankful to her for.
“And one last thing, Lionel: What do you really want to get out of your singing talent?”
He hesitated for a moment and hesitation always made Pirjo frown.
“You want to make music because it’s an important part of you, isn’t that right?”
“Yeah, that too.”
So, that’s the way it was. It was just the usual. “You want to be famous, perhaps?”
“Yes, I think so. Who doesn’t?”
She shook her head. There were nineteen to the dozen of this type of idiot these days.
“And what will you do with this fame? Is it because you want to earn lots of money?”
“Yes, please, that would be great. But it’s more the girl thing, I think. You often hear that it’s easier for singers in that area.”
Okay, it was even one of those as well. He would truly be worth his weight in gold.
“So you don’t find it so easy with the opposite sex,” she attempted to say with some empathy. “You live alone, then, I assume.”
Did he giggle?
“Hell no, I’m married.”
It gave Pirjo a start, as if he’d pressed a button directly linked to the nerve endings in her spine. Equal measures of distaste and chemical reaction hit her brain. She’d spent years trying to fight that vulnerable side of herself, and at the moment not a day went by without it rebounding.
“You’re married, you say?”
“Yes. We’ve been married for ten years.”
“And your wife is totally aware of the scope of your plans, is she?”
“Scope? No, hell no. She just likes it when I sing.”
Pirjo looked at her arms for a moment. Sometimes there were goose bumps and other times her forearms went bright red as if from an allergic reaction. Just now it was both.
This idiot should just get out of her life here and now.
“Lionel, I’ve become aware that I won’t be able to help you.”
“What! I’ve just spent thirty kroner a minute talking with you, so you’ll have to. It’s on your website.”
“Okay, Lionel, fair enough, you’ll get your money’s worth. Do you know the Beatles song ‘Yesterday’?”
She could almost hear him nod.
“Sing the first verse for me.”
A minute went by and then it was over. She hadn’t listened. Judgment had already fallen.
“Lionel. It’s a shame for your wife that you’re such a pig but you’re lucky that she encourages you to sing, because your talent is completely and utterly insignificant. I have pets that can hit a tone better than you and I know deaf-dumb people who can talk better English. So be glad that I’m sparing you the biggest failure of your life, because no matter what happens, you can only ever manage to scare women off with that pathetic bleating.”
Then she replaced the receiver, calmly and gently, as she breathed openmouthedly. She’d overstepped the mark but it wasn’t anything the idiot would shout about. Pirjo turned around with a start.
The sound of a click behind her made her immediately purse her lips. She closed her eyes and felt the sweat oozing from her armpits and the pulse in her neck begin to thump.
And even though she didn’t want to, that was the way she reacted when Atu locked the door between her office and the atrium so he wasn’t disturbed with his latest conquest.
Always the way. Several times she’d considered moving her office. She had even tried to encourage him to move his quarters to another part of the academy, but things remained as they always had been.
It’s more practical this way, dear Pirjo, he’d say. Key decisions and actions, key supply lines, all in one building. A few steps from administration to you or to me. Everything just around the corner. Let’s not change that, he’d continue.
She looked again at the door to the atrium, rubbing her arms, and ignored the telephone when it rang again. She ignored the disciples who waved to her through the window from the square in front. And finally she tried to ignore the image of the man who’d obsessed her for years and who right now was fondling another woman in the room next door.
But Pirjo couldn’t ignore the clicking sound from the door because she detested it. It made her short-circuit. The warning that he’d shortly be lying beside another woman than her in full swing, or almost worse, that he was finished with her now and had unlocked the door. From an inner peace she exploded to wild revolt in one second and the discomfort was enormous.
But why couldn’t she just accept it? Through the years the sound had always been there; Atu had never tried to conceal it from her. But did he know what it did to her, that ultimate sound of distance and exclusion and ridicule? The bitter sound of degradation. And if he did know, would he try to spare her it? She doubted it.
That was why she always ended up covering her ears, chanting to find the balance in her body.
“Horus, born of a virgin,” she began. “Guide for the twelve disciples, raised from the dead on the third day, free me from my despondency, let jealousy fade, let the rain of new temptations stop, and I will offer a crystal that refracts the sun in all colors in your honor.”
After that, she stood for a while breathing deeply. And when the stomach cramps let up, she thrust her hand in her pocket and grabbed one of the small stones, went over to the window at the back of the room, opened it, looked out over the Baltic Sea toward the Swedish island of Gotland in the distance, and threw the glistening crystal as far out to sea as she possibly could.
As the years went by, there must have been many crystals washed up on the white sand.
* * *
For almost four years, Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi’s school for the study of nature absorption had had its headquarters on Öland, the elongated island off the southeast coast of Sweden, and that suited Pirjo just fine. Here, in this peaceful landscape, most things were under control, and here nothing happened other than that which Providence and the universe desired. Here, Atu’s soul was undisturbed and that meant everything to Pirjo.
It was different when he recruited new customers from the centers in Barcelona, Venice, and London, meeting all the women who found themselves out there in no-man’s-land. When they gaspingly accepted him as an oracle, a soul healer from the ocean of the northern lights and cosmic energy. When he penetrated their shattered dreams, frustrations, and lack of grounding influences in their lives, and like a cloud as light as a feather, lifted them up to the sun.
In contrast to the island, out there in the world Pirjo couldn’t really do anything other than feel alone, trapped by a deep jealousy and isolated in the feeling of insignificance.
Granted, Atu treated her in a way she’d rightly fought her way to as his extra hand and think tank, diary writer, organizer, and coordinator. But Atu didn’t look at her in the way she wanted him to.
He didn’t look at her as he did the other women.
As the years had passed, Pirjo became the last remaining disciple who’d followed Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi from the beginning when he’d been in a completely different place in life and was called Frank. But despite their long history together, and their cooperation and intimacy, and despite it having always been her innermost desire, he’d never made love to her, body to body.
“We two make love with our souls, my friend,” he always said. “You give me my most important orgasms, sweetest Pirjo. I obtain my most significant energy from your
gentleness and the great insight of your soul.”
She hated Atu when he said things like that because she was neither gentle nor chaste. Nevertheless, she understood him. Over time they’d become more like brother and sister in spirit than anything else, and it was infinitely far from what she needed. She wanted to feel him like his other women felt him. To feel soft, moist, and penetrated by his lust and passion. If he’d lain with her just once in all these years and lusted after her as a wild and sexy woman, it would’ve been different. Just one single time and she wouldn’t have to obsess anymore that it was never going to happen.
But for Atu she was nothing more than the vestal, the untouchable. The virgin symbol who guarded over him, his business, and everything. It was the way he had decided it should be, not Pirjo.
And virgin she still was in some ways, now, at the age of thirty-nine. At least in her relationship with Atu. If she was going to make love to him, and if there was going to be a baby as a result, for which she had a burning desire, it would have to happen very, very soon.
She clenched her teeth and imagined the woman in the atrium. She’d been picked up by Atu a couple of months ago in Paris. This Malena Michel had stood before him in towering heels and a tight, yet innocent, white dress and explained that her parents were Italian but that she had emigrated to France when she was six, and that she felt that her entire past and origin at that very moment melted together with the words he so generously ladled out. That she could feel that she had come into this world solely for Atu’s sake, and that she would serve him in everything he desired.
Nobody understood how much it hurt when he fell for such a saccharine speech, or how undeserved it not only felt but in reality also was.
The consequence of all this was that Malena was now here with them, never more than a few meters away, and totally caught in the net of his charisma. And it wasn’t the first time either that he had a woman like her among his disciples. On the contrary, it happened more and more often as the years went by, and Pirjo had just about had her fill.
Just a few weeks ago they’d been in London, recruiting disciples and participants for their fall course, when a beautiful young black woman had fainted.
In an unusually insistent manner, which Atu normally didn’t exhibit, he asked Pirjo to ensure that the woman was taken to his private quarters to rest. What subsequently happened behind the closed door she couldn’t say, but Atu had had a new look in his eyes that neither his Parisian floozy nor Pirjo felt comfortable with as they took the plane back.
Now a letter lay in front of Pirjo from the very same woman, stating that she wished to participate in Atu’s next nature absorption course on Öland, which according to the website started in a week.
It was definitely bad news. The only thing that might momentarily console Pirjo was the thought that the French slave girl would, as a result, slip out of Atu’s intimate sphere.
Apart from that, Pirjo knew instinctively that this time it could all go very badly. She’d noticed how the black woman had made an impression on Atu, and it was a very long time since that had happened to such a degree; Pirjo had seen to that.
No, there was no doubt that this woman could have significantly more power over Atu than was good, if she was given the opportunity.
So Pirjo was on guard.
On guard and much more.
8
Thursday, May 1st, 2014
The breakfast table had been set for three people by the window overlooking the harbor area. Rose was already sitting with her eyes lost somewhere out over the sea where the eye could never quite reach.
“Good morning,” Assad tried bravely. “Well, you’re looking pale in a bit more of a babylike way today, Rose. So at least we’re making progress, as the camel said to the Arabian camel when it grumbled about being whipped.”
Rose shook her head and pushed the plate away.
“Shall I grab you something from the pharmacy?” Assad suggested.
The same shaking of the head.
“We know it was stupid that you saw that DVD with Habersaat, right, Carl?” Assad grunted.
Carl gave a feeble nod, thinking it would be better if the guy would put a sock in it or at least wait until after the first coffee of the day. Couldn’t he see that she wasn’t feeling any better than when she’d gone to bed?
“It hasn’t got anything to do with the film,” she said. “I didn’t have a problem watching it even though it was sickening.”
“What, then?” asked Assad as he piled crispbread on his plate.
Her eyes disappeared into the distance once again.
“Leave Rose in peace and pass me the butter, Assad.” Carl looked despondently at the already almost empty dish. “Just a little bit of what’s left that you aren’t planning to use yourself.”
He apparently didn’t hear the comment. “Do you know what, Rose? Maybe it would be good if you said what’s going on in that head of yours,” he said crunching, crumbs flying left and right. It was a good thing they didn’t share breakfast every day.
Assad momentarily fixed his eyes on the small group of demonstrators with banners in preparation for the day’s May 1st celebrations in the square in front of the Brugsen supermarket. Stronger Together, declared one of the banners.
“Do you also think Bjarke Habersaat was gay?” he said, without moving his eyes.
Carl frowned. “Why are you saying that? Do you have some information on it?”
“Not directly, no. But his landlady was definitely pettable and really not bad-looking, in my opinion.”
“Pettable,” what the hell sort of expression was that? Speak for yourself, he thought.
“What of it?”
“He was only thirty-five, a relatively young man, who she obviously didn’t have any objections to. No doubting she was ripe for the picking.” He looked at Carl like someone who’d stuck his well-formed nose in a hornet’s nest and gotten away with it. Pretty smug.
“I don’t have the slightest damn idea where you’re going with this, Assad.”
“If she and Bjarke had something going on, his room wouldn’t have looked like it did. She’d have fussed over him; you saw yourself how she was. She’d have fussed and flapped, aired his bed, emptied his ashtrays, and whipped his laundry away to have some love and affection in her life!”
“Really, you don’t say? Interesting! But in that case, I don’t see why they couldn’t have had sex in other parts of the house. It doesn’t prove anything, Assad. Your imagination is running wild.”
Assad tilted his head slightly. “Yes, you could say that. You mean, then, that they could’ve had sex among the family photos and lace doilies with ping-pongs?”
“Pom-poms, Assad. Yes, why not? But why is the question even of any importance?”
“I also think he was gay because he only had magazines under his bed with images of men with tight trousers and leather caps on the front cover. That, and all the posters of David Beckham on the wall.”
“Okay, you could’ve said that in the first place. But what about it? Isn’t it totally irrelevant?”
“Yes, it is. But I don’t think his mom liked it and for the same reason didn’t like to visit where he lived. He wasn’t a pretty boy with cookies in a crystal bowl, worshipping his mommy like a goddess or who loved to go shopping with her. He was more of the tough sort.”
Carl pushed his bottom lip forward, nodding. A possibility, certainly, whatever use it might be. As far as he was concerned, Bjarke Habersaat’s sexual preferences could involve sex with identical Andalusian twins over sixty-five, if it did it for him. Nothing could interest him less, so long as the rolls lying there invitingly in front of him were still warm.
Assad turned to Rose. “Who zipped your mouth up? You normally have an opinion about everything under the sun. Whatever’s wrong, just spit it out, Rose. I can feel it. If it wasn�
��t the suicide on the DVD that shook you up, then what? Something did.”
She turned her head toward them slowly with the same suffering and open look as June Habersaat the night before. But Rose didn’t cry. On the contrary, she looked strangely dry-eyed and composed. It was a look that expressed that this was something she wanted to be left alone with but wasn’t being given the chance to.
“I don’t want to talk about it even if I do tell you, okay? I couldn’t handle watching it because Habersaat was the spitting image of my dad.” Then she pushed her chair away and left them.
Carl sat for a while staring down at the table.
“I don’t think you should dig deeper there, Assad.”
“Okay. Was there something special about her dad?”
“Nothing other than that he was ground to a pulp up at the workplace in Frederiksværk where Rose also worked. That’s all.”
* * *
The community hall was expectedly accessible and welcoming, situated in the middle of the main street of Listed, cutting the town in two halves with the fishermen’s cottages out toward the sea and the newer additions in toward the land.
Listed Community Hall written short and sweet on the yellow façade. That sort of summed it up.
As announced in an unattractive and misplaced glass-fronted notice board, the elderly residents of Listed were offered line dancing, Nordic walking, and pétanque, while the children were offered the chance of a bonfire and baking bread over the fire, softball, and carving Halloween pumpkins. There was also a short account from the civic association about the present problems and hopes of the town. Should there be a residency criterion for the homeowners of the town? Should the bench by Mor Markers Gænge road be replaced? Was there enough money to build a pontoon bridge by the bathing area?
The Hanging Girl Page 6
