Yours Until Death

by Gunnar Staalesen

  ‘Could be,’ I said. ‘But so do the people who get in his way. It’s tough on them, too.’

  ‘Anything special in mind?’

  ‘Well. A person hears – and sees – certain things.’

  ‘Listen, Veum. I don’t know why you’re here and I don’t know who asked you to come. But if you’re here to clean things up like some kind of hero in a western, you’re talking to the wrong person. Private detectives can’t ever be social workers.’

  ‘I graduated from Social Work School myself. Stavanger. 1969. I worked in child care. Five years. Not that that necessarily means anything.’

  ‘But you don’t work in child care now. You make money out of other people’s problems. I suppose social work didn’t pay well enough.’

  ‘If you think it’s the money, you’re welcome to read my bank book. Any time. It’s as wide open as an old whore and as loaded as a temperance preacher. Don’t forget to take your magnifier. The size of the deposits’ll make you dizzy. I gave social work five years of my life and I mean gave. And I mean five years. It was before the Workers Protection Act and … okay, I had three weeks’ holiday but the rest of the time I couldn’t tell the difference between Sundays and the rest of the week. My wife couldn’t either. When I had a wife.

  ‘And after social work had used me for five years, chewed up my energies, my marriage and all that shit – then it spat me out because I made one little mistake. So it’s not the money, Våge. This is just another way of doing the same job. It’s just that this way you’re your own boss and you can’t ever afford a holiday.’

  ‘Anything more I can do for you?’ Gunnar Våge said.

  ‘I hear Joker – Johan if you insist – has a gang terrorising this neighbourhood. I hear single women, mothers, are forced up to that hut in the woods. I hear they have some pretty nasty experiences. I hear people who try to stop it get beaten to a pulp. I hear …’

  He raised his hands as if he were defending himself. ‘Hold it. Hold it. Hold it, Veum.’ He swallowed. ‘If you were a real detective, you’d stick to facts, not believe what you hear. Not depend on rumours. In the first place, the man you say was beaten to a pulp – well, that was some time ago now. A neurotic. A troublemaker. He jumped Johan outside the supermarket and beat him up.

  ‘Well, if you beat up kids you’ve got to expect them to hit back. They jumped him one evening and he did get a few bruises. That’s right. But three of the kids had to go to Casualty and he was released before they were. He moved out just after that. True. But he was evicted. Because of drinking and raising hell and because he knocked down the caretaker when he tried to cool things down. There was a warrant out for him but I never did hear what happened after that. And as for these other things …’

  ‘Yes? Well?’ I said.

  His voice was full of denial. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t believe them, Veum. Not unless I see them with my own eyes. People ought to know … Do you know what they say? They say that Våge, they say, he’s on the side of those kids. They circulated a petition a few months ago. Wanted to shut down the club. But not many signed. Most of the parents understand we need a youth club, a place for the kids to go to. If we didn’t have the club, we wouldn’t have just one gang. We’d have twenty and they’d be a lot worse than Johan’s.’

  ‘That’s very likely,’ I said. ‘But we’re talking about this one gang. And angels they’re not. Or if they are, they’re certainly not wearing kid gloves.’ I pointed to my face which was still marked by yesterday’s to-do. ‘I wasn’t pretty before, and I’m not any prettier because of the beauty treatment Joker and his gang gave me up at the hut yesterday.’

  ‘Maybe you were asking for it?’

  ‘I was doing somebody a favour. I freed a stolen little boy.’

  That shook him. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘We call it kidnapping in my part of the city. A little boy named Roar. The other day they took his bike. Yesterday they took him.’

  ‘They didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘Of course they didn’t. He certainly didn’t look as if they did, with his hands tied behind his back, a filthy handkerchief stuffed in his mouth and tear stains on his cheeks. He looked just like a toy they’d been playing with and then got tired of.’

  Gunnar Våge stood up and walked around the desk. ‘Listen, Veum. I’m a realist. I don’t think these kids are angels. I don’t try understanding them to death. But I do try to understand them and I know something about their backgrounds. Which aren’t pretty. Not always. And you can understand why some of them are bitter. Angry at everything around them. Take Johan for example …’

  He sat on the edge of the desk and folded his hands. He reminded me of a minister just about to tell his favourite confirmation candidate that he too had jerked off when he was young, but that it was something you grew out of when you were over ninety.

  ‘He never had a father.’ He thought that one over.

  Began again. ‘Or maybe he had a thousand fathers, if you see what I mean. I don’t think his mother ever knew who got her pregnant. There were too many of them. And there still are too many of them. And there have been too many of them all Johan’s life. People around here call her a whore. I’ve talked to her a bit about Johan. She’s a bright woman when she’s sober. Which isn’t often. And she’s the way she is because of her background. An orphanage, raped by one of the employees at thirteen, sent to a girls’ home at fifteen. Got friendly with the Germans in the last years of the war and was branded for it afterwards.

  ‘So Johan’s had his problems. And he’s not stupid. Not at all. He’s smart. Lightning-fast on the uptake. With such a mother and such a brain there’s only one way he could have gone. Or maybe two ways. He could have been an artist or a psycho. And so he’s a psycho.’

  ‘He could still be a private investigator,’ I said.

  He looked icily at me. ‘I know your type, Veum. Seen too many of them. You’re so afraid of life you build a wall of wisecracks around you. You’ve got a smart answer for all the human tragedies and you’d sell your mother for a good joke.’

  ‘My mother’s dead and I don’t know any good jokes.’

  ‘Right. Ha ha ha. You’re the living example of what I’m talking about. I think you’d better go, Veum. I don’t think I really like you.’

  I stayed put. ‘Where can I find Johan’s mother?’

  He jumped off the desk. Came over to me. Stood with his legs wide apart. ‘I really don’t think you should get involved in that, Veum. I think you can ruin more than you realise. You’re the right type. I try to do a decent job here, give the kids something. Help them. You could call me a sort of gardener and I’d just as soon you didn’t start stomping around in my flower beds …’

  ‘Not even to weed them?’

  ‘Piss off, Veum. If there’s one thing I do not like, it’s talking about myself. I won’t say I’m an idealist or anything like that, but I do try to do something with my life. I was once an electrical engineer, as a matter of fact. Had a well-paid job in industry. The private sector. High salary. I could have had a house, a wife, the whole ball of wax – if I hadn’t looked around one day and asked myself: what the hell are you doing with your life, Gunnar? Look around you. You work for one of the worst polluters on the Bergen peninsula. You wander around in these air-conditioned offices and you plan new projects, new pollution. You work out how to cram free waterfalls into new tunnels. You plan new housing developments in open parklands. And in the city where you live people need help. Real live people. Kids.

  ‘It wasn’t a political conversion. At least not directly. I didn’t become a revolutionary in the sense that I thought every revolution has to begin at the beginning – with each generation. Our generation, yours and mine, has already had it. We’re a bunch of anxiety-ridden clowns who never had our parents’ revolution or our grandparents’ Jesus to believe in. We’re a generation of cynical atheists, Veum. And you, you shit, are the prototype. Just as I was a few y
ears back.’

  He held his breath before he continued. For someone who didn’t like talking about himself he did a pretty good monologue.

  ‘So I got out of the rat race,’ he said. ‘I did what you did – went to Social Work School and began to do something. Well. Look at us. At least I go on doing what I was trained for, but you …?’ His mouth was contemptuous.

  ‘I do it, too. In my own way. In another way,’ I said.

  He studied me. ‘Do tell! Outside the establishment, right? Typical post-war individualist. A lone wolf. Outside all establishment, all the rules. You’re playing hippy too late, Veum. Ten years too late.’

  I stood up. ‘Sorry, Våge. Got to go, but it’s been great sitting here listening to you. My wife would love you. My ex-wife, I mean.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Self-pity strikes again. The telling symptom. That and alcoholism. Or maybe you’re so with it you do hash instead.’

  ‘Aquavit,’ I said. ‘Just for the record.’

  ‘And so you sit by yourself these dark winter evenings and whine because you’re lonely, right?’ He came even closer. I could smell coffee on his breath. ‘But some of us have chosen loneliness, Veum. Some of us have chosen to live alone. Because maybe it’s just as valuable. Because maybe it gives you a better chance to give yourself to what you believe in. Don’t think I couldn’t have got married. Many times, in fact.’

  ‘Many times?’ I said and tried to sound as if I envied him. Wasn’t so hard to do.

  ‘But no. I said no. When it got right down to that point in my life – that turning point – I told myself: if you’ve come this far alone, you can go the rest of the way by yourself.’ He looked around his office. ‘This is home.’ He nodded towards the emptiness behind me. ‘And the ones out there – they’re my kids. What more can I ask for if I can help them?’

  ‘A spoonful of love morning, noon and night?’ I said.

  ‘Love isn’t something a person takes or is given. Like cod liver oil. Love’s something you give – if you’ve got somebody to give it to.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. And that was that. I was out of jokes, out of all the things a post-war individualist ought to say. There was only one thing I could tell myself and that was to leave.

  I didn’t say goodbye. I think he knew I had a lump in my throat and couldn’t trust my voice.

  I was blind with tears but I found my way out. Slowly. Past a stream of red arrows.

  13

  I stood in the road for a while. Now what should I do? Was there anything more I could do about any of this? I looked down at my watch. Looked up at the high-rise where Wenche Andresen lived, at the ninth-floor balcony, at Roar’s window, at the kitchen window and at her front door. A light was on in the kitchen.

  I walked up to Wenche’s building, went in, and over to the lift.

  While I waited, a woman came and stood by me. I said hello cautiously – and she looked at me as if I’d made an obscene gesture. Perhaps people out here didn’t say hello while they waited for lifts. Perhaps they never said hello. It was a different world out here and I’d better not forget it. Then she got hold of her fear and smiled: a quick broad smile.

  She looked good. She had been beautiful. Ten years ago. But she was over fifty and those first five decades had left plough furrows on her face. Somebody had sowed and somebody had reaped, but God only knew who’d made a profit out of the crop.

  Her hair had been black but now it was striped with grey. Decorative. If you like zebras. Brown eyes but bloodshot, and her mouth was bitter – as if she’d just drunk one too many Camparis.

  She wasn’t very tall. I couldn’t tell whether she was thin or plump. She was wearing a billowy dark brown fur coat. It too had seen better days but it could still warm a frozen soul in a frozen body. Lovely legs. She must have replaced them somewhere along the way. They belonged to a thirty-year-old.

  When the lift arrived, I held the door for her. She didn’t smile. She’d already used up her quota.

  The lift was long and narrow. Like a coffin. It looked as if it had been designed to haul pianos and beds and sofas up twelve storeys. She walked all the way in and I stood by the door.

  ‘Which floor do you want?’ I said.

  ‘Seven.’ Hers was a whisky voice. Too many drinks and not enough sleep. There were bags under her eyes.

  The lift stopped between the fourth and fifth floors. The light in the ceiling blinked twice and then settled down. Just like the lift.

  The woman took a deep breath. ‘Oh dear God. Not again!’ She looked at me as if it were my fault. ‘It’s stuck.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ I said.

  I could see ten or fifteen centimetres of the fifth-floor door. The rest was concrete wall.

  Being stuck in a lift is a totally special experience reserved for people who live in so-called civilised countries. In countries where they build houses higher than five storeys. The world stops when you’re stuck in a lift. It doesn’t matter much if you’re fifty or fifteen. You feel old. Very old.

  There could be a war going on out there. The Russians or the Americans or the Chinese could have landed. There could be a power failure or an earthquake or a hurricane. People could be running around naked in the streets, carving hunks out of each other. Or a thousand tons of unicorns could be chasing virgins. None of it has anything to do with you. You are stuck.

  Claustrophobia isn’t one of my phobias but just the same I could feel my forehead and back getting a little sweaty. Nobody likes being stuck in a lift. You get stuck? You want to get out. As simple as that.

  And we were stuck.

  The woman I was stuck with didn’t look as if she were enjoying it either. Her face had sort of expanded: eyes, nostrils, mouth. And she was breathing heavily. Her knees seemed to wobble. She braced herself against the wall with a limp white hand and held the other to her forehead.

  ‘Maybe we should introduce ourselves. My name’s Veum,’ I said.

  She looked as if she didn’t believe it. ‘I … We’re stuck. Stuck!’ Her voice sounded hysterical.

  ‘I’ve heard that when claustrophobes get into situations like this they sometimes strip. Don’t. I’m too young. I couldn’t take it,’ I said.

  She took a step back. ‘What in the world are you babbling about? Get us out of here. Out. I’ve got to get out.’

  She’d turned around so her back was against the wall. She began hammering the other one with her useless little fists. ‘Help,’ she yelled. ‘Help.’

  I pushed the button marked Alarm and heard a bell ring somewhere. I hoped it wasn’t one of those so-called ‘comfort bells’, the kind they install to reassure people who get stuck but which can’t be heard more than a few metres away. I hoped that this bell was ringing somewhere else – in the caretaker’s heaven, wherever he usually hung out – and that he was at home.

  The woman in the old fur coat had sagged to the floor. She was sobbing. I squatted beside her. ‘I’ve rung the caretaker. It can’t be very much longer.’

  ‘How long can we last? How long will the oxygen hold out?’

  ‘Oxygen?’ I looked around. ‘Long enough. I once heard about a Swedish cleaning woman. She got stuck for forty days in a goods lift in a factory. For the entire general holiday. But she survived. Of course, all she had was soapy drinking water.’

  ‘Forty days! But my God, man … Dear God! I didn’t think we’d …’

  ‘No, no, no. I only meant there’s no problem with the air supply.’

  I looked cautiously around. It was already a little close in here. Warm. But one thing was certain: the air wasn’t a problem. I sweated a little more.

  I looked up. There was no trapdoor in the ceiling like there used to be in the old days. The kind you could climb through and feel as if you were sitting in the bottom of a volcanic crater. They were always such a comfort.

  To my surprise I realised I was sweating even more now. You should never take a lift, I told myself. Lifts are for the old
and for babies. Not for big strong …

  An old rat started crawling around in my belly. I looked from wall to wall to wall of the lift. It seemed smaller now: narrower. More cramped.

  Suddenly I knew my fists wanted to beat on the walls, break them down, that my voice wanted to yell: Help! Help! I even felt faint.

  I coughed loudly to reassure myself. ‘It won’t be long before we’re out. Not long now, Fru.’

  She’d collapsed. Sat staring at the floor. Knees drawn up. She’d lost her suburban modesty. She wore black panties under the brown tights and I saw she was plumper higher up than her legs had hinted at.

  Then I looked away. I’m a decent fellow. Never take advantage of helpless women. Or maybe I’m afraid of sex? I could certainly stand there and think about it for a while, analyse myself. I’d been pretty good at it once. That was just before I’d requested treatment.

  I listened to the sounds of the building around us. Concrete transmits sounds in the strangest ways. I heard rushing in the pipes and something which reminded me of coded signals being tapped from one jail cell to another. Maybe the whole building was full of lifts with people stuck in them two by two. And nobody could get out and nobody would come and help us. Maybe this was hell.

  I looked at her again. Spend eternity – with her? I was really sweating now. I couldn’t think of one relaxing thing. I tried. I thought of summer. A white sun-dappled beach, an open blue-green sea, high blue sky. Lots of air. Air. But all the other people on the beach spoke Danish.

  I thought about beer, golden beer in full glasses topped with white fresh foam. About red-and-white checked tablecloths, an open veranda, a woman. It was Beate. So that wasn’t relaxing either. Then I thought about Wenche Andresen.

  ‘Hello!’

  ‘Hello. Hello.’ My voice worked the third time. ‘Hello!’

  Someone was beating on the door to the fifth floor.