Yours Until Death

by Gunnar Staalesen

  She nodded and shrugged at the same time.

  ‘Every other month?’

  She nodded. Crookedly.

  ‘And maybe Johan sees him? Because it’s Johan he comes to see, isn’t it? To see how he is?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘But Johan thinks he’s just one of your usual – boyfriends? You’ve let him see his father again and again all these years – but you’ve never had the guts to tell him that that was his father?’

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘It wasn’t –’

  ‘It wasn’t his business? His own father wasn’t his business?’

  ‘It wasn’t his own father – not after he dumped me that way. He – he could have left his wife. He didn’t have to dump this on me. It wasn’t the way I told you it was the last time you were here, Veum. It wasn’t the way I’ve told it to everybody who’s ever asked.’

  She managed to sit up. Hands on her knees and that large head bobbing like a toy between her shoulders.

  ‘I’ll tell you about it. You’re a good guy, so I’ll tell you the truth about … It wasn’t just a pick-up at the Starlight Ballroom. It was – it was the only real love affair I’ve ever had. The only one I can still remember. And it’s alive. It’s the only one that still wakes me up at night because I’ve been dreaming about him.

  ‘And I loved him, Veum. And he – he never told me he was married. He wasn’t wearing a ring when I met him and we … And I believed every word he said right up until – until I got pregnant with Johan. And then he came clean. Told me he was married and that his wife was also pregnant, and that we …

  ‘He said he’d help me, but he couldn’t marry me. And I loved him. I loved him so much I couldn’t say no. To anything. So I let him buy his freedom, if that’s the right word. I let him buy me this flat and the one I lived in before this. I let him pay for raising Johan. Schools. Like that. And I even let him visit. See his son. And he’s come here since Johan was six months old.’

  ‘And you two let Johan grow up like this? Without answering the most important question of his life, without giving him the stability a father gives a kid? Or can give.’

  ‘It was – well, he wanted it that way. He didn’t want to risk Johan’s suddenly showing up at his door when he was older and causing – problems.’

  ‘And you went along with that?’

  ‘I told you! I loved him!’ Her voice was wild with feeling. Then it died into a whimper. ‘I still love him.’

  I didn’t say anything. I felt so out of it sitting there in that room as the twilight grew steadily darker. The empty bottles shone a little and, on the other side of the coffee table, a woman weighing one hundred and twenty kilos was confiding her life’s best-kept secrets to me.

  Her voice was softer now. ‘But where he was concerned? It was just fun-and-games. He – when he came to see us those first years, he and I still, he still wanted … I was younger. Better looking. Not so – heavy. But it’s been years now since he’s so much as kissed me. It’s almost like – a normal marriage now. It’s been over for him for years. If there ever was anything really there. But it’ll never be finished for me until I am. Finished.’ She searched for me in the darkness. ‘Love’s a funny thing, isn’t it, Veum? I mean, that it seldom manages to hit the same two people at the same time?’

  I nodded. She was right. If these past days had taught me anything at all, it was that. That love’s a lousy marksman and seldom hits two bullseyes in a row.

  ‘Too many marriages are garbage,’ she said. ‘I’m glad I’ve been spared that anyway. I haven’t had to live with half-truths, half a love or half … half everything.’

  Another thing I’d learned from all this. People who have got to live alone always have a good excuse or some kind of rationalisation. It’s the only way they manage to survive.

  I found the thread again. ‘And you weren’t being entirely honest when you said he was a sailor, were you? Not entirely.’

  ‘No. You’re right.’

  ‘He was a naval officer.’

  She nodded heavily.

  ‘And his name’s Richard Ljosne.’

  She scowled. ‘How did you find that out, Veum?’

  ‘He told me himself – indirectly. Or else I jumped to some hasty conclusions which turned out to be not so hasty.’

  I stood up. So now I knew. Without being entirely sure of what it told me or whether it told me anything. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe when you start nosing around in people’s backgrounds, their pasts, you always find a few skeletons in the cupboard. Everybody’s got them.

  I handed her the bottle. ‘Here you are, Fru Pedersen. It’s a long time until morning.’

  She took the vodka and glared at it. ‘Too many long nights, Veum. Too many bottles.’

  I nodded. It was an epitaph I could use myself one of these days. ‘Take care of yourself. See you.’

  ‘Take care, Veum. Thanks for coming. Always nice to see you. Find your way out?’

  ‘Umm.’

  The bottle lay between her thighs like an exhausted lover. I left. There was nothing more we could give one another. I’d asked my questions, she’d answered them. And I moved on. I was a swarm of locusts. I consumed everything I found. I left lives picked clean and nights emptied of their secrets behind me. I was the sun. I left a trail of scorched fields, dying forests and blasted lives behind me. But if the sun kills, it also gives life. Rain always follows a drought, winter always gives way to spring. But drought and winter always come first. The truth always demands first place in the queue. I cautiously left Hildur Pedersen’s life behind me.

  Nothing more to do now. I was eaten up and burnt out myself.

  I walked stiffly to the car park and my car. Put the key in the ignition, let in the clutch, turned the key.

  No reaction, just an unwilling grunt.

  I tried again, a little more violently. ‘Come on!’ I growled. Then I leaned my face against the windscreen. I should have caught on. The car wasn’t just stone dead. It had been murdered.

  The shadows came alive around me. There were a lot of them this time. Not just five.

  38

  There were too many of them.

  For a second I considered locking the car door. But then they’d just break the windows, slash the tyres, bash up the bonnet. Turn the car into a bigger wreck than it already was.

  They came closer. Circled around the car. Dark oblong shadows with staring pale faces. Some were armed with steel pipes, bicycle chains and other charming weapons.

  I’m not a brave man, just a little rash now and then. I began to sweat. My stomach turned queasy and my legs were weak.

  They waited quietly in their circle around the car. The distances to the nearest high-rises seemed greater than those in the Sahara, and those winking lights as far away and as unreachable as the summit of Everest. Except for that lynch mob around my car, the car park was as empty and deserted as the Pacific. I felt as if even the Lyderhorn was leaning forward expectantly. Just like them.

  I got out of the car. Fast. There were twelve or thirteen of them and my only chance was to hold them at bay by talking. Find an opening and get out of there as fast as I could and hope to all the gods that it was fast enough.

  But Joker had learned. Before I could open my mouth, I heard him say, ‘Get him!’

  And they got me.

  They came on so fast I hardly had time to put up my fists. I could feel fingers, fists, legs, boots and steel pipes hitting my body’s tender spots. A bicycle chain cut through my clothes and slashed my underarm. I was thrown, slammed into the car on my way down and was kicked in the chin before I hit the pavement. I felt a knee in my stomach and fists hammering my chest.

  I aimed a blow upward, hit something hard. Saw something soft, swore, and was kicked in the groin. Heard ugly singing inside me. Somebody laughed. I could hear them cursing.

  I curled up. Covered my head with my elbows, bent my head down as far as I could, and pulled my thighs up
over my most vulnerable parts.

  My eyes were streaming. I couldn’t help it. I was crying as much from fury and humiliation as from pain and fear. Is this it? I thought. So undignified? So unfair?

  I passed out. The hard ground relaxed under me, as open and soft as a feather bed. A wonderful warmth spread through my body. A warmth that burned away all the pain, a great numbing warmth.

  They’d begun to let up now. A last boot in the small of my back, a contemptuous kick at a helpless leg, a gob of spit in my face. It wasn’t just tears wetting my face now. It was something stickier, more viscous.

  Suddenly somebody was very very dose. I felt thin hard fists yanking me up. Through a shimmering red veil I could see a face shoved into mine, a pale, cold face. A priest. ‘I warned you, Veum. You’ll stay away from my mother for keeps now.’

  Then he let me go and I sagged to the ground. It didn’t hurt. It was soft and warm. The only thing I wanted to do was sleep and sleep …

  I heard footsteps going away. They sounded like a herd of buffalo. Then it was quiet. And then the voice was back. Somewhere above me the sharp toe of a boot, a toe sank into my side.

  The voice said, ‘And if you think you’re the only one who pussyfoots around your whore, you’re wrong. People were winning that jackpot long before you showed up!’

  A last kick and then a pair of feet going away. The thunderangel flew over a burning meadow.

  I raised my head and tried to see him. See whether he was carrying a fiery sword and wearing a halo of flames. But what was the point in raising my head?

  I lay on the ground, half aware of the smell of petrol and oil from my car. Looked up into an uneven lunar landscape of rust and hardened dirt. I was in a canopy bed whose canopy was grey, brown and black, a canopy of rotting silk edged with spiders’ webs and mouse shit. And there was a strong smell. A smell of death.

  I vomited. Slowly and gently. I was on my back. Immobile. And then I could feel it welling up, my mouth filling and running over, my injured lips opening. And then I threw up, as slowly and carefully - as if it were the tenderest, most sensitive kiss.

  And then I slept.

  39

  ‘Hello?’

  I was asleep. I was in heaven. A woman whose hair was neither blonde nor brown nor red carefully bent over me. I felt her breath on my face. Her face was beautiful and she was old enough to have acquired some laugh-lines round her eyes. Her lips …

  ‘Hello?’

  Her lips. I tried not to lose the vision of her lips. I hung on to the picture of those lips …

  ‘Hey you! Are you dead or something?’

  I opened my eyes. It hurt. It was like opening a rusty cake tin jammed shut two Christmases ago. My field of vision was edged with rust, and the man bending over me was twins. And then triplets. And then twins again.

  I firmly closed my eyes.

  ‘Hello?’

  Somebody was calling in the darkness. But where was that somebody calling in the forest?

  ‘Hello.’ That was my voice and it scared me so much I opened my eyes. The man had stopped being twins, but my voice sounded like a two-voiced men’s choir with the castrati on the left. The face bending over me was elderly. About sixty. Only sixty-year-olds these days talk to people who lie dying under old cars. ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ he repeated. Louder this time.

  I could see him clearly now. He had an old man’s moustache: white and brown. His mouth was dark and his teeth were brown. His eyes seemed black, his face white. His hair under the hat was grey-white.

  He wore a scarf and a dark heavy coat. One hand held a cane. The other hung by his side as if it weren’t his.

  I tried standing but settled for sitting. The car park whirled around me. I leaned heavily against the car and patiently waited for the universe to settle down again.

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ he said.

  I lifted a hand to my face. It felt as if I were wearing boxing gloves. I felt my face. It was wet. And tender.

  ‘You don’t look so good,’ the man above me said.

  ‘I never have,’ I mumbled.

  ‘I beg your pardon, I didn’t hear you.’

  I shook my head.

  The car park settled down. I tried sliding upwards against the car door. It was working. Slowly. But I was extremely nauseated. I must have been severely concussed. If I still had a brain. I had the feeling it was slowly dripping from my face, on to my hands and then to the ground. From ground thou art come, to ground thou shalt return.

  ‘Was it those youngsters?’ he said.

  ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I just enjoy lying around in car parks and looking up under my car. Best view in the world.’

  He nodded understandingly. ‘I can tell you’ve been beaten up. It’s a shame. Want me to call the police? Or a doctor?’

  ‘A doctor? At this hour?’ I tried to laugh.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ he said anxiously.

  ‘Only when I laugh,’ I said.

  But it also hurt when I stopped laughing. ‘Do you know anything about cars?’ I said.

  He lit up. ‘I had a Graham once. From before the war until 1963. They knew how to make cars back then.’

  ‘Well. This isn’t what you’d call a car. More like a piece of junk on wheels, but if you could help me open the bonnet …’

  I turned around. That was a mistake. One leg sort of gave way under me, and the car wasn’t where it had been. I was aware that I stood and leaned towards the ground for a minute before it spun and gave me a rabbit-punch.

  ‘Hello? Hello!’ More than one voice now.

  My stomach was in my throat. It contracted. I vomited again.

  ‘I’m going to get help,’ a voice said. ‘Stay where you are. Don’t move.’

  ‘I’ll try not to,’ I muttered.

  The woman with that wonderful hair came back. But she was standing up now and her face was distorted: stretched on one side and shrunken on the other. It hurt to look at her. I opened my eyes.

  I lay completely still and breathed slowly. Easy now, I said, just take it easy. And then I tried standing. Very very slowly. Very carefully. Braced myself against the car. It felt like raising a flag-pole with one hand tied behind your back.

  But it worked. The ground stayed put under my feet, the car didn’t disintegrate behind my back. I gradually eased around to the front. Found the bonnet catch and squeezed it. That drained me.

  The bonnet opened with a sullen click. I was dripping with sweat and little black dots exploded before my eyes like startled pheasants taking off.

  I took a break. Then I lifted the bonnet and peered with tired sore eyes at that complicated Leyland engine.

  They hadn’t gone in for real sabotage. I tightened the spark plugs and reconnected the fuel line. Then I stumbled back to the door, opened it and got behind the wheel. Turned on the ignition. The car started like an oldster suddenly in love. It was a little sluggish at first but once it got started, you couldn’t stop it.

  I let the engine warm up, climbed out, made that endless trip back to the bonnet. Closed it and set out on the long journey back to the driver’s seat. I had to make a few stops on the way. Then I got a grip on the steering wheel and stared straight up. I was a little boy who sat there playing cars.

  Then I took a deep breath, let out the dutch, turned out of the parking place and aimed at the entrance to the road. Two wheels were against the kerb, the other two in the road. I turned on to the road, found the right-hand drainage ditch and sighted along it.

  It worked best when I dosed my left eye and drove between twenty and thirty kilometres an hour. And didn’t meet other drivers.

  The lights coming toward me were confusing. They spread out in open formation and jumped up and down like a group of disoriented UFOs. And they were brighter than I’d ever remembered.

  I had to stop five or six times to throw up along the way. I couldn’t leave the car an
d be sick on the shoulder. I just stayed where I was. But I tried to be discreet. When other cars went by I’d lean out and pretend I was checking the rear wheel, which was in fine shape.

  If it had been the rush hour I’d never have made it to Bjørndalssvingen. But I made it all the way. Didn’t miss Puddefjord Bridge and I remembered to get in the right lane after Sentralbadet.

  I never found out what happened to the old man who’d once owned a Graham. Maybe he’s still looking for help. Which isn’t so easy to find these days.

  It’s been said of Bergen’s City Emergency Room that they ought to write Abandon all hope ye who enter here in gold letters over the main entrance.

  That’s an exaggeration. Most people survive. If they show the scars from the visit for the rest of their lives, well, that’s how it is. There’s no point in complaining if they feel worse when they leave than when they came.

  They tell the story of a guy from eastern Norway, who once had to have an ankle set in the Bergen City Emergency Room. When he got back to Oslo and went for a check-up, the doctor took one look at the ankle and asked, ‘Bergen City Emergency?’ The terrified patient said yes, and the doctor called a bunch of medical students to gather round. They stared at the patient as if he were an extremely rare case. The doctor happily rubbed his hands together and said, ‘You have now learned how not to do it.’

  Obviously you shouldn’t listen to stories like these. Mostly they’re untrue. You shouldn’t read medical textbooks either. And if you don’t have to, you shouldn’t go near Bergen’s City Emergency Room.

  I parked. It was after ten so the main entrance was locked. A sign with an arrow on it directed me to an entrance by the driveway. I followed the arrow, walked up some wide concrete steps and came to a locked door and a door bell. After several misses, my finger found the bell.

  Somebody in her late thirties and dressed in white opened the door. You could bet she wasn’t married and hadn’t ever entertained the idea. She looked as if she wanted to say we don’t buy at the door. But she held it open and I wobbled in.