Yours Until Death

by Gunnar Staalesen

  She was dressed according to the agency’s colour scheme: a dark red blouse and a green corduroy skirt. She smiled at me as she walked by. The laugh lines told me she wasn’t so young. Around thirty. But it was an unusually warm and beautiful smile. It came from the same place as that red glint in her hair and that had to be a good place. I’d have liked to spend my holidays and the rest of my life there.

  That did it. One smile as she passed and I was so dizzy I didn’t know where to look.

  I said to myself: you haven’t been in love in a long time, Varg. All too long. And I thought of Wenche Andresen and tried to hear her voice. But for some reason I couldn’t. Or imagine her face.

  That little thing delivered the big green folder to Reception, said something and walked back through the hall. Her hair floated. Freshly washed. Loose. And it floated with her down that too-short hallway. Then she went in through the same door she’d come out of. And she was gone.

  That’s how people come into your life. And that’s how they go out of it. Here and gone in a couple of minutes.

  A man came towards me out of another door. His walk wasn’t totally dynamic. Maybe it was too late in the day or maybe he’d worked there too long.

  He was well dressed. A grey-green suit nipped in at the waist. A waistcoat. Turn-ups on the trousers. He had dark blond hair and new glasses. An attractive little Wild West moustache. The kind that droops sadly at the corners of the mouth, but I recognised him from his pictures. Jonas Andresen.

  So he wasn’t telling me anything new when he said, ‘I’m Andresen. Do you want to talk to me?’

  We shook hands. ‘I do. My name’s Veum.’ I lowered my voice. ‘I’m here on your wife’s behalf. I’m a kind of lawyer.’

  He lowered his voice. ‘Step into my office.’

  He turned and I followed him down the hall.

  It was a small office with a view of the Maria Church’s twin towers and Mount Fløien. I could look straight up and see the roof of the house I lived in. It was enough to bring tears to your eyes.

  Jonas Andresen’s big black desk was covered with neat stacks of papers, publications and sketches for ads. The ‘In’ basket was considerably fuller than the ‘Out’. Alongside the baskets sat a hollowed-out plastic skull, sawn off above the ears, and it held pens and pencils in the firm’s colours: red and green. A single dark red rose, long since brown at the edges, stood in a plastic vase. The green ashtray was full. If it had been emptied that morning, he was a heavy smoker.

  There were posters on the walls and four enlarged pictures of a younger Roar, and there was a bulletin board covered with newspaper ads, pages torn from weeklies, photographs, calling cards, memos for future assignments and other assorted junk.

  Jonas Andresen sat behind his desk and waved me to a comfortable chair opposite him. He offered me a cigarette and when I refused lit his own. It was a long white cigarette. His hand shook.

  He looked questioning. ‘Well?’

  ‘Your wife asked me … It’s about some money you’ve promised her – from a life-insurance policy. She has problems. Economic ones.’

  His eyes were clear and blue through the colourless lenses. Large aviator glasses with light brown rims. He exhaled through tightly pressed lips.

  ‘Let’s get a couple of things straight first. You said you were a kind of lawyer. Are you my wife’s lawyer or aren’t you?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  He leaned forward in his chair. ‘Are you her friend?’

  ‘I can assure you …’ I said.

  He raised his hands and talked, the cigarette bobbing in his mouth. ‘Take it easy. I don’t see anything wrong with that. On the contrary. I’d be very happy if Wenche’d found herself – a friend. Someone new.’

  ‘Well, I’m not it. Not that way. As a matter of fact, I’m a private investigator.’

  His face tightened.

  ‘Your son Roar contacted me. He wanted me to recover his stolen bike.’

  ‘Roar? He hired a private investigator to find his bike? That boy!’ He laughed. Resigned.

  ‘The next day I had to find Roar.’

  He wasn’t laughing now. ‘What do you mean?’

  I told him briefly about Joker and the gang, and about how I’d found Roar bound and gagged. But I didn’t tell him how I’d had to fight my way out of the woods with Roar in tow. And I didn’t tell him I’d kissed his former wife.

  He turned steadily paler and his voice was depressed when he finally said, ‘Terrible. Those bastards. I ought …’

  ‘Relax,’ I said. ‘I already have. But that’s how I met your wife. And then she hired me to talk to you. About this money. She didn’t feel she could do it herself.’ Jonas Andresen took a deep drag. ‘I’d rather not discuss it here. Could we meet somewhere – say, in half an hour?’

  I looked at my watch as if I had a busy schedule.

  ‘Is it a problem?’ he said.

  ‘No. I can manage. Where?’ Generous me.

  ‘Bryggestuen?’

  ‘Bryggestuen is fine. Maybe we could have dinner there. I will anyway.’

  He shrugged. ‘Let’s say in half an hour.’ Then he stood up and gave me to understand he had other things to do in the next thirty minutes besides sit and shrug his shoulders. He’d smoke at least three cigarettes and the slow death which waits for us the day we’re born would creep up on him half an hour sooner.

  He showed me to the door. The woman with the Afro tried a cautious smile as if she weren’t sure I wouldn’t be a client some day. And as I wasn’t yet forty, she had a little smile for me regardless.

  ‘Meet me next Tuesday behind the library,’ I said, winked at her, and left.

  18

  Bryggestuen is one of the few places left in Bergen which still have a simple, real connection with the past. Per Schwab’s large murals with their marine motifs, the houses that don’t exist any more and the ships that have been scrapped long ago, take you to a timeless world.

  The people who come here to Bryggestuen are neither loud graduate students nor the half-drunk young you find in most of the other restaurants where they’ll let you drink a beer without your being a taxpayer. Ordinary solid working people come here: people who work in the market, seamen, office people. Mostly men. It’s not one of the places you go to to pick up a girl. It’s a place you go to for a quiet drink or to eat good, reasonably priced food.

  I settled myself in one of the back booths. Ordered a beer and a whale steak. Contentedly ate and drank.

  The booths were arranged in three parallel rows. I sat in the one next to the wall. In the booth across from me, a large man in a grey coat, with a belly that hid his belt buckle, fished for his past in his glass of ale. I don’t know if he caught anything. In the booth against the far wall a young couple sat with intertwined fingers, and they looked as if they’d never part again. But they probably would after a couple of years of marriage. Or something.

  The noise of Bryggen’s traffic was muffled by the lead-glass windows. The whale steak tasted as it should. It was a good half-hour. The best in a long time.

  I was halfway through my second beer when Jonas Andresen came in and looked around. I lifted a finger. He nodded and came over. He should have been a waiter.

  He had a light coat over his arm and a black briefcase in his hand. He laid both beside him on the seat. When the waiter came, he ordered a pint of export. When the waiter served him, he immediately ordered another. ‘Just to get myself together after a day’s work,’ he said.

  We drank in silence, I with my light beer and he with his strong export. We drank the way old friends do who meet every day after work and who don’t need to talk to one another in order to be together.

  But a beer and an export later we had to talk. He’d already begun slurring his ‘s’s. ‘Don’t know how much Wenche’s told you,’ he said. ‘Or what she’s told you.’

  He suddenly looked bashful. Then he said, ‘We are on a first name basis, aren’t we?’


  ‘We certainly can be,’ I said and shook the hand he held out. ‘Jonas,’ he said.

  ‘Varg,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s right, Varg,’ I said. ‘Outlaw.’

  ‘Oh. I get it,’ he said and laughed cautiously as if I’d told a joke. Then he picked up where he’d left off. ‘I take it that she … I mean, she probably hasn’t painted an especially pretty picture of me? She can be quite … strong with her descriptions of people. Their characteristics.’ It was a tricky word but he made it. He wasn’t in advertising for nothing. ‘You married?’ He shot a sideways glance at my right hand.

  ‘No. I was.’

  ‘Congratulations. Then we’re in the same boat.’

  ‘That we are.’

  ‘Did you ever play around when you were married? Was that why …?’

  ‘No. But I had a job.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said.

  He’d got me started. ‘I mean – there are a lot of different kinds of playing around. With some men it’s other women, with some it’s the bottle. With some it’s their jobs. Don’t ask me which is the worst, but in my work I get the impression that most women think the worst is when their husbands go for other women.’

  ‘Right. And they never ask why. Or they rarely do, anyway. And the circumstances don’t matter either. An unfaithful man or woman, for that matter – is always the sinner. Always the guilty one. If the marriage fails apart it’s always the fault of the one who’s had an affair. Or a lot of affairs. Because nobody ever asks why it happened.’

  ‘Right. And that’s why I never take those cases.’

  He looked confused. ‘Which cases?’

  ‘Those cases. I never shadow married people to find out where they are when they’re not where they’re supposed to be – and who they’re with. Because there’s no way in hell of knowing the reason why they’re there.’

  ‘Right. But listen, Veum. Don’t think I’m sitting here – saying this to lay the blame on Wenche. Because I’m not doing that.’

  No. He wasn’t doing that. What he was doing was ordering another pint of export. I’d already stopped trying to keep up with him. Sipped my third beer.

  There was foam on his moustache and it fluttered gently as he went on. ‘That’s what she’s doing. Blaming it all on me. She can’t see any of her mistakes. Okay with me. Let her, if it makes her feel any better. But the truth is – the truth is it wasn’t a marriage. Never should have been a marriage. But we’re always too young to see it. Right, er … Varg?’

  ‘The question is, are we ever old enough to see it?’

  ‘No way. I mean right. But we were … we were too different from the beginning. I don’t know if she’s told you anything about herself. She doesn’t come from Bergen even though she sounds like it. She comes from darkest Hardanger. One of those little ribbons of land which sneak in somewhere under the mountain wall. One of those places where chance has slung together a farm with two cows. Her background’s strict, pious. When she started school, she moved in with an older sister in Øystese. That was a step forward. They’re okay – both the sister and her husband. But you can’t get away from it. The childhood environment. Jesus on the wall and only one book in the bookcase. Right? And a year’s subscription to piety’s official magazine For Rich and For Poor.

  ‘I’m a city boy. I was fourteen the first time I got drunk, and I had my first girl when I was fifteen. Stole cars and went joyriding on Fanafjeu and Hjellestad. But I landed butter-side up. Finally I went to the Business Institute. That was pretty wild. Beer parties around the clock, and chubby little students from eastern Norway who got loaded and danced half-naked on the tables. Later it was advertising with all that action. Conferences and seminars and lunches in the city with clients.

  ‘She liked to sit at home with her embroidery. Read maybe. Play records and watch TV. She liked to cook and do the laundry. Wasn’t interested in life out there. She only drank to be polite, and I had to teach her to smoke. While I was used to going out for a beer with the boys, flirting a little, coming home a little late. And not exactly steady on my feet. But what the hell difference do these differences make anyway? If people really love each other?’

  He looked at me. Depressed. ‘Well. Maybe we didn’t really. Or maybe I …’

  ‘How did you meet?’ I said.

  ‘How do people meet each other? She knew somebody who knew somebody … The old story. There’s always a girlfriend of the girlfriend of the guy you’re sharing a flat with, right? And some of these girlfriends – or one of them – some time or other has got to come from Hardanger, right?’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well. That’s how it was. She really turned me on. She was so different from all the others. She was reserved. Shy. Didn’t say much. When I’d ask her something, she’d look down and twist her fingers around in her lap. She really got to me. Really turned me on. I had to have her. Had to …’ He shrugged and emptied his glass. ‘She liked me, too. Didn’t take her long.’

  He ordered another glass. ‘Suddenly it was a new life. After years of running around like a chicken with its head cut off from one end of the country to the other, after years of hopping in and out of different beds – suddenly it was beautiful. Peaceful. Strolls on Mount Fløien on soft velvet nights. Sunday morning walks on the quays. Trips to the cinema as if we were kids. Sitting and holding hands somewhere far in the back. Wenche, Wenche, Wenche …’

  He’d almost forgotten me now and the fifth glass pulled his head even closer to the red-and-white checked tablecloth.

  The man at the next table had left. All he left behind him was a wet circle on the cloth. The young couple beyond him had got as far as each other’s elbows, but they still had a way to go before they completely ate each other up.

  Jonas Andresen said, ‘And then I had her. And it was as sweet as a rose just opening. Or like when a trout jumps out of the stream, hangs in the air – and lands in your arms. And then she got pregnant. And then we got married. And then we had Roar.

  ‘Suddenly there were three of us, right? And so we sat there in a fiat on Nygårdshøyden. The start of a nuclear family and nowhere to go. After six months I was already in love with somebody else. It began to break up. Pretty quickly. I mean, if I could fall in love with somebody else after only six months of marriage it tells you the lie of the land.’

  ‘What land?’ After three beers my brain was beginning to tire. I ordered another to help it think.

  ‘Never-Never Land. And I was Peter Pan and Wendy had already disappeared. She got so old, Varg. I don’t mean her looks. Jesus! She still looks sixteen. At least she did a couple of months ago. But she got so – settled. The only things she cared about were me and Roar. And that damn endless sewing. We had walls full of little embroideries. Sofas full of cushions. Tables and chests covered with darling little runners. Doilies. She even made a hand-embroidered cover for the toilet chain. And …’

  I tried to remember Wenche Andresen’s flat. ‘Aren’t you overdoing it?’

  ‘Well. That’s how it felt. As if I were in danger of drowning in all those little embroidered thingies.’

  A woman came in and sat down at the empty table. She was in her late fifties. A little smile lurked around her wrinkled mouth. It was like the wolf waiting in the woods for Little Red Riding Hood. But Little Red Riding Hood had joined Women’s Lib and flew around and burned books in bonfires in the city. So she was busy. And if she had shown up it wouldn’t have been good for the wolf because Riding Hood had taken a course in judo and knew how to handle men with hairy arms and legs.

  The woman ordered a beer and a hamburger and began eating up her own obvious loneliness bit by bit until it was gone.

  Jonas Andresen talked on without noticing anything as the foam in his moustache dried to nothing. ‘Those first dirty little affairs were like the little lies people whisper behind your back except in this case they weren’t lies. A willing colleague. A waitress you once picked up in a r
estaurant on a trip to Oslo. A friend’s wife. A recently divorced opera singer. Short cannibalistic affairs which seldom lasted longer than a few nights.

  ‘I was in love twice. Really in love, but I slept with only one of them. As if that means anything. As if sex wraps the whole thing up. As if screwing confirms or denies anything except maybe your own pride – or lack of it. But then …’

  He stopped focusing and started looking dreamy. I quickly ordered him another export. The waiter was doubtful, but he served us anyway.

  ‘Something to eat, Jonas?’ I said.

  He looked at me. ‘Eat?’ It was a word he’d never heard before.

  I tried to steer him back on to the track. ‘But then … but then you …’ I said.

  ‘Yes, then. Then I met Solveig.’

  A new pause. His face softened and his gaze was warm. He tried to sit up straight. Not so easy after five and a half exports. ‘And that was it. That. Was. It.’

  I didn’t say anything. I knew it’d take time. That maybe we’d go through five or six more pints before we reached the end of the road. But his expression told me that I’d hear it all. I’d hear the whole ‘Ballad of Jonas and Solveig’. If I were patient.

  ‘Solveig,’ he repeated. The image was no longer that of a slithering snake. It was an image of the morning sun itself that rose over the landscape. The sun that broke through the faded brown murals and sent its slanting rays across the red-brown booth, the torn tablecloth and the half-empty beer glasses.

  Just as it would send them across a wet green morning landscape. It was a sunrise somewhere between the sea and the mountains, with the sea like a moving mirror in the foreground and the mountains like high bluish promises for the future in the background.

  It was the sun that rises over the rich and the poor. Over advertising types and private investigators. It was the sun that fills us and consumes us and spits us out. Turns us into ashes after life’s volcanic eruption – after love’s sudden destroying fire.