Coming to Trondheim to study hadn’t taken the direction Knut had imagined. How had he ended up here? A boy like him, a merry boy from the Briskeby district of Oslo?
14
Approximately three weeks before it happened …
Everyone else’s life moved slower than his. They spent their lives in still photos, while he was living in a motion picture. At least that’s how he felt.
But sometimes he’d meet someone and recognize that they were alive too. He could see they were experiencing things the same way he was. There was a sense of momentum in their lives, they had things to look forward to, things to laugh at. But it was rare, very rare.
Yet now Knut wasn’t sure. Maybe it was just her red hair. She’d been staring at him. That much he knew. Then she’d held up the book she had in her hand, as if she wanted him to notice the title: A Clockwork Orange by F. Alexander. Strange. He thought somebody else wrote that book. Wasn’t it Stanley Kubrick? No, he directed the film. The book made her seem more exciting. She smiled at him. Then she swiped her card and punched in the PIN code. She looked at him again as she put the bottle of wine in the bag. Knut smiled back. Then she turned and left the liquor store. He had an urge to follow her, to put down what he was buying and run after her. They hadn’t exchanged a single word. But there was chemistry between them. He’d felt it in his fingertips. He’d felt it in his toes.
He paid for his items, put them in the bag, and dashed into the street outside the Byhaven shopping center on Karl Johans Gate in Trondheim. He looked in both directions but couldn’t see her. She was gone. Maybe this was both the first and the last time he’d ever see her.
Just a little flirting, Knut thought. It didn’t mean anything. But why had he felt that she was someone special, that she was different from all the others? Was it just her hair? Red hair, green eyes. He knew he wasn’t going to forget her anytime soon. And wasn’t there something special about her figure too?
The bag of liquor was awfully heavy, as usual. He stood still, laughing at himself, chuckling out loud.
Someday I’ll meet her again. Someday.
His cell rang. It was Jonas.
“Hey,” Knut said.
“Hi,” said Jonas. “Feel like some coke tonight?”
“Shit, Jonas. Where’d you get it?”
“I have my sources.”
“Sure. Why not? It’s supposed to snow,” he said.
Cocaine. That was a new twist. He was actually careful about things like that. But what harm could it do?
* * *
“What happened?”
Jonas had inhaled it through his nostril, then sat still for a long time, breathing slowly. Suddenly he shook his head hard, before relaxing again. A white patch under the tip of his nose. Now he was stroking his pet rat.
“Hell if I know. But it’s cool. I don’t want it to stop.”
Erling had gotten higher than anyone else. He shouted wildly: “Fucking awesome!”
Jonas looked around.
“Hey, Knut. We’re not talking about you. You know that?”
“Shut up!”
“This is cooler than you.” He bellowed with laughter.
Knut Andersen Stang got up, unbuckled his belt a notch, and tucked his shirt back in his pants, acting insulted, but he wasn’t. He was used to those sorts of remarks. They didn’t bother him. He knew the other guys actually liked him.
“Where are you going?”
“I need to fuck.”
“Hell, you’re 265 pounds, but you’re always the one who ends up with the girl. How do you do it? It goes against all the laws of gravity, or something like that.”
“I don’t fixate on appearances.”
“You’ve got a point there.”
“I’ve got a sense of humor. Unlike you guys, I can laugh at myself. Not just at other people.”
“That’s how it is when you’re always the funniest person in the room.”
“Kiss my fat ass! Go ahead and snort the rest of that shit and die.”
Knut laughed so hard he was shaking. He didn’t care if they drowned in shit. He left them sitting there in that IKEA hell that was Jonas’s place and went into town, still laughing. With one of his thousand different kinds of laughter burbling inside. He was a happy devil.
* * *
He drank beer on top of the rush from the cocaine. Then a woman bought him a tequila. He bought her one in return.
“Crimes and Punishments,” he said. “That was the book that made me go into law.”
He was lying. He was in pickup mode now. Everything he said was pure bullshit. He got into law because that was the department he could get into. Not medicine, not business school, and not any other law school except here in Trondheim. And it was only a pre-law program. Eventually he’d have to get into the university in Oslo. That was the only route for a man like him.
“Have you read the damn thing?”
She nodded. She could lie too. Things were looking good for the rest of the night.
He laughed slyly and went on. All this stuff he was spouting about Dostoyevsky was something he’d once heard from a woman at the Waterfront. He was good at remembering shit like that. He had the memory of an elephant. That made it a lot easier for him to talk about things, even if he really didn’t have a clue about the topic. He was going to make a good lawyer.
“Raskolnikov. I’ve always thought he knew the whole time. He knew before he bashes in the old woman’s head. He’s going to get caught. He knows that, and it’s what he wants. The crime is really just a means to the punishment. He needs to be punished. Otherwise he’s finished. Raskolnikov’s greatest wish is not to be something great but to be something small.”
He laughed, feeling wise and cunning. He’d never read the book.
She nodded.
“How about another one, Shakespeare?”
“Not Shakespeare. Dustoflesky, if you don’t mind,” he said.
Now it was her turn to laugh. She had nice dimples. She was thinner than him, but no sylph.
The better to plow into, he thought.
An earth spirit, not an air spirit.
* * *
When Knut woke up the next morning, her head was resting on his shoulder. Under his buttocks he felt his cell phone vibrating. He dug it out to take the call.
“I’d rather be in hell!” he said.
“It’s a cruel world,” said Jonas.
“So you’ve come down too?”
“I know where we can get more,” he replied. “I’m going to a party tonight. Want to come?”
“Of course. What do you take me for?” He chuckled hoarsely.
“That’s my Knutie boy. Hey, listen, sorry about last night. Too much shit talking, I guess. You know how cool we think you are. You can handle it, right?”
“Forget it. I just filter out stuff like that. Want to grab a coffee?”
“In an hour? Dromedar on Nordre?”
“Sure. I just need to get rid of something that’s snoring first.”
He ended the call and lay in bed relaxing.
When am I ever going to find a girl that I don’t want to get rid of? he asked himself. But there was no rush.
* * *
“Paulaner? What kind of shit is that?” Jonas made a face.
“German wheat beer. Thought I’d give it a try,” said Knut.
“Well, keep it away from me. I’m allergic to wheat.”
“Seriously? Wheat? Don’t you eat bread?”
“You can make bread without wheat.”
“What about pasta, for fuck’s sake? Are you telling me you can live without pasta?”
“Have you ever seen me eat any?”
“No, now that you mention it. And you’re right about one thing, anyway. This beer tastes like dishwater.”
Knut had taken a swig and was now giving the bottle in his hand a skeptical look.
“Good luck with the next three!”
“Give me some of your wine, okay?”
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“What’s mine is yours,” said Jonas. “At least until I get me a woman.”
Knut went to get another glass from the kitchen. He put the bottles of beer in the fridge. I’m sure somebody’ll drink them before the party gets going, he thought. They were expecting a lot of people that night.
Good thing Jonas had bought enough wine. The bottles were dancing like crazy. All the IKEA furniture and IKEA pots and pans were dancing too. All of Rosenborg Park was shaking and rocking under their feet.
* * *
When they left, his thigh muscles were still jiggling, tight little cramps that made him feel alive, as if he had laughter in his bones. He was sweating like a pig. There would be no ladies tonight. Being fat was one thing, but sweaty was another story. Talking wasn’t going to distract any chick from noticing the sweat. But what did it matter?
They left the others behind and went to the party Jonas knew about.
Jonas had promised him more dope, and he came through. He and the guy who owned the apartment, a smiling smooth-operator type, went into another room where Jonas bought more than enough for the two of them. Now they were sitting on the floor of the living room, feeling like they were floating. They were shrieking like seagulls at each other.
“What the fuck!”
“I know!”
“This is fucking awesome, dude!”
“I know!”
They laughed so hard they cried.
Somebody had put on the wrong kind of music. The party was somewhere in the Lademoen district. How’d Jonas ever find people like this?
“I saw where he had the stuff stashed. What if we just walked out with it?”
“Rip it off from Mr. Smiley Face? Have you seen the muscle he’s got for bodyguards? You don’t fuck with people like him.”
“But it’s such good shit. Don’t you think?”
“Fuck, yeah. But Jesus H. Christ.”
“Okay, have another snort.”
He did. He took some more. And some more after that.
* * *
“Shit, you’re bad!” Jonas’s shout seemed to fill the whole empty park near the Lademoen church. “You’re a bad motherfucker!”
“Still don’t know how cool it was for a big guy like me to sneak into that bedroom. I’m not exactly hard to miss.”
“Screw it. Those junkies in there aren’t going to notice anything until morning. There must have been a hundred people in that apartment. If anybody saw you, they just thought you were going in the bathroom to jack off.”
“Jack off at this!”
He pulled a bulging plastic package out of his waistband. Half a kilo, at least. He didn’t even dare think about what the street value might be, but it had to be insane. He dangled the package over Jonas’s head, making him jump for it. Jonas finally tackled him to the ground. They rolled around in the snow, bellowing.
Then they went back to Jonas’s place, their nostrils quivering.
* * *
For several days they were careful about how much they snorted.
Then they got greedier, but also more generous, sharing the dope with anyone and everyone. They sold some of it and then spent the money on expensive restaurants and passable drinks. Focusing on anything but their law books, making only quick visits to the library reading room, attending only a couple of hazy lectures, the words flying toward them and then disappearing. Exhausted days, busy nights, a few girls, but nothing promising. Knut laughed a lot, sang a good deal, danced off a few pounds in weight, and made plenty of pithy and carefully considered remarks that were quickly forgotten.
Then came the fatal day when that rabid bitch dumped the dope down the toilet. How could Jonas have ended up in such a fight with a girl he’d met at the Student Association the day before? Something went wrong. Jonas tried to get rid of her the next morning, but he didn’t do it in a nice way, and all of a sudden she just seemed to snap. At some point in their argument the whole snowstorm landed in the toilet.
They could have lived with losing the coke if they hadn’t gotten caught. If somebody hadn’t started retracing their steps and finally caught up with them—two detectives, one fat and one thin, Laurel and Hardy on cocaine.
15
Approximately a week before it happened …
“Just think of this as the beginning of a tragedy.”
He’d introduced himself as Sving before he barged in. Just Sving. No last name.
They’d broken open the door, hitting Knut in the face so he’d ended up flat on the floor. Then they hit him with something heavy. He didn’t see what it was. It knocked him out for a while. Long enough for them to hang him from a hook by his feet, which was the position he found himself in now. But by the time he came to, Sving was the only one left in the room. Now he was sitting at the rickety table, looking up at Knut as he hung there with his head pointing down.
“It’s meant to be a positive statement. According to Aristotle, tragedy always leads to catharsis.”
“Catharsis?”
Knut felt the pressure building inside his head as he talked. It was like all the blood in his body had collected inside his skull. How long could somebody hang upside down before passing out and eventually dying? Was it true that Roman prisoners asked to be crucified upside down so they’d lose consciousness and die faster?
Sving was still talking:
“To be honest, I don’t really give a shit about all that catharsis crap. Personally, I’m here for practical reasons. We’re missing half a kilo, and we want it back. Either in powder form or in cash. My employer is a reasonable man, and he’ll settle for a quarter of a million kroner. He even told me I didn’t need to kill anyone if the money was forthcoming. ‘We’ll just think of it as a business deal,’ he said.” Sving laughed, shrugged, and gave Knut a look that almost seemed to convey some shred of empathy.
Your employer should have thought things through before he decided to have an open house with a quarter of a million worth of cocaine under the bed, thought Knut.
But what he said was this:
“Why do you think I took the stuff?”
Sving laughed. His laughter seemed genuine, as if he really couldn’t contain his mirth.
“My second favorite thing is when people I work with give me some reason to slug them. My favorite thing is when they give me a reason to laugh. And you’ve given me both.”
The guy punched Knut in the stomach. It hurt, but no more than intended.
Sving was still laughing.
“We could keep this up for a while. I like you. I like hitting you. You’re like a high-quality punching bag. But the thing is, I’m running out of time. I’m working under contract here.”
He punched Knut again. Harder. In the chest this time, though making sure not to break any ribs.
“So why don’t we quit talking shit and move on? I know as well as you do that you were the one who took the goods. So I don’t think it’s necessary for me to waste half the morning telling you how I found out. I’m sure you’d believe me.”
“I’ll pay the money. Give me two weeks. That’s all I need.”
“See? That’s more constructive. I don’t doubt that you’ll pay up. But a week should suffice. And just to give you a little more incentive…”
Sving bent down and picked up something from the floor. His fists were no longer enough. Knut hadn’t noticed the baseball bat when they broke in, but now he realized that must have been what they’d used to knock him out.
“Say hello to Mr. Louisville Slugger, my most loyal friend,” said Sving, tapping the bat against the forehead of young Knut.
He gave Knut a slight push, making him swing backward a few inches. He felt dizzy. He was trying hard to focus as Sving launched into a brief lecture about the legendary baseball bat that had been produced from American white ash and maple trees since 1884. Did Knut know that the world’s biggest bat was outside the factory in Kentucky? Or that the baseball legend Babe Ruth had never used any bat except a forty-two-ou
nce Louisville Slugger?
No, Knut didn’t know that.
Did he know that even a skinny little girl could bash in the skull of a grown man with a well-aimed blow from this bat?
Knut got the picture.
“The thing is, either you put an end to this tragedy, or Mr. Slugger here will do it for you,” said Sving after finishing his lecture. “A spiritual or physical catharsis. You decide.”
He lowered the bat and leaned down so Knut could feel him breathing in his face. He smelled of badly digested food.
“You’ve got a week,” he said and straightened up. “And by the way, I brought in your newspaper for you.”
Knut wanted to protest, say that he didn’t get the paper, that he must have taken the landlord’s paper.
But Sving was gone.
* * *
So now he was still hanging here. For a little while longer, hanging here like a big, heavy bundle of fun. The rope tightened, making his ankles ache. Slowly he started swinging back and forth. He had to get down before he lost too much blood. His goal was to loosen the rope as he swung over to the table and be able to drop onto it. He realized the table legs would give way under his weight. His landlord hadn’t exactly filled the room with the sturdiest of furniture. It was mostly teak crap from the ’60s. But the table might still break his fall if only he could reach it.
But the exact opposite happened.
When Knut was farthest away from the table, the ceiling plaster let go of the hook with a resigned croak. Luckily the weight of his body was tilted forward, so he fell onto his stomach. He managed to use his hands to break the fall slightly and didn’t suffer any more injuries than those he already had.
* * *
Only now did he register the fact that he was naked. He had gone to open the door wearing his bathrobe, so they must have stripped it off him before hanging him upside down from the hook. He looked for his underwear from yesterday but didn’t find it before someone knocked on the front door. Everybody who came to visit him had to pass through the small outside entryway that led to his rented room. That was also how Sving had entered. There was only one person who ever knocked on his door from the main hallway in the house. That was where his bathroom was located and where another door led into the house itself. There was only one person who would even consider visiting him this early in the morning. The door opened a second later. Guttorm Gjessing’s shiny bald head appeared in the doorway.
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