by Jo Nesbo
I could feel myself clutching the phone so hard that my damaged middle finger was throbbing. Carl had been talking about logistics, the solution to that old fairy-tale riddle about the goat in the rowing boat and the sack of oats. I started breathing again.
‘OK,’ I said.
We ended the call.
I stared at the phone. He had been referring to the logistics, hadn’t he? Of course he had. Maybe we Opgard men didn’t always say everything that was on our minds, but we didn’t talk in riddles.
* * *
—
When I got back to the farm Carl was sitting in the living room and offered me a drink. Shannon had gone to bed. I said I didn’t really feel like a drink, I was tired myself and would be going straight to work as soon as I was back in Kristiansand.
In the bunk bed I tossed and turned in a sleepless dreaming state until seven o’clock and then got up.
It was dark in the kitchen and I jumped when I heard the whispered voice from over by the window. ‘Don’t switch on the light.’
I knew my way blindfold around that kitchen, took a mug from the cupboard and poured coffee from the warm pot. I didn’t see the swelling until I crossed to the window and that side of her face was lit by the snow outside.
‘What happened?’
She shrugged. ‘It was my own fault.’
‘Oh yeah? Did you cross him?’
She sighed. ‘Go home now, Roy, don’t think about it any more.’
‘Home is here,’ I whispered. I lifted my hand and laid it carefully on the swelling. She didn’t stop me. ‘And I can’t stop thinking. I think about you all the time, Shannon. It isn’t possible to stop. We can’t stop. The brakes are gone, they’re past repair.’
I had raised my voice while speaking, and she glanced automatically up at the stovepipe and the hole in the ceiling.
‘And the road we’re on now leads straight over the edge,’ she whispered. ‘You’re right, the brakes don’t work, so we need to take another road, one that doesn’t take us closer to the edge. You need to take another road, Roy.’ She took my hand and pressed it against her lips. ‘Roy, Roy. Get away while there’s still time.’
‘Beloved,’ I said.
‘Don’t say that,’ she said.
‘But it’s true.’
‘I know it is, but it hurts so much to hear it.’
‘Why?’
She made a face, a scowl that abruptly banished all the beauty from her face, and made me want to kiss it, kiss her, I had to.
‘Because I don’t love you, Roy. I want you, yes, but it’s Carl I love.’
‘You’re lying,’ I said.
‘We all lie,’ she said. ‘Even when we think we’re telling the truth. What we call true is just the lie that serves us best. And there are no limits to our ability to believe in necessary lies.’
‘But you know yourself that isn’t true!’
She laid a finger against my lips.
‘It must be true, Roy. So leave now.’
It was still pitch-dark as the Volvo and I passed the county sign.
* * *
—
Three days later I called Stanley and asked if I was still invited on New Year’s Eve.
50
‘SO PLEASED YOU COULD COME,’ said Stanley, squeezing my hand and giving me a glass containing some sort of yellowy-green slush.
‘Merry Christmas,’ I said.
‘Finally – someone who knows when to say “merry” and when to say “happy”!’ he said with a wink. I followed him into the room where the other guests had already arrived.
It would be going too far to say that Stanley’s house was luxurious, since there were no such houses in Os, with the possible exception of the Willumsens’ and the Aases’. But while the Aas house was furnished with a mixture of peasant common sense and the self-assured discretion of old money, Stanley’s villa was a confusing mix of rococo and modern art.
In the living room, above the calf-legged chairs and round table, hung a large crudely painted picture that resembled the cover of a book with the title Death, What’s in It for Me?
‘Harland Miller,’ said Stanley, who had followed my gaze. ‘Cost me a fortune.’
‘You like it that much?’
‘I think so. But OK, there may have been a touch of mimetic desire involved. I mean, who doesn’t want a Miller?’
‘Mimetic desire?’
‘Sorry. René Girard. Philosopher. He called it that when we automatically desire the same things as people we admire. If your hero falls in love with a woman, your unconscious goal becomes to win that same woman.’
‘I see. Then which one are you actually in love with, the man or the woman?’
‘You tell me.’
I looked around. ‘Dan Krane’s here. I thought he was a regular at Willumsen’s New Year’s Eve party.’
‘Right now he’s got better friends here than there,’ said Stanley. ‘Excuse me, Roy, I need to fix a couple of things in the kitchen.’
I circulated. Twelve familiar faces, twelve familiar names. Simon Nergard, Kurt Olsen. Grete Smitt. I stood there, rocking on my heels like a sailor, and listened to the conversations. Turning the glass in my hand and trying not to look at the clock. They talked about Christmas, the highway, the weather, climate change and the forecast storm that was already drifting the snow outside.
‘Extreme weather,’ someone said.
‘The regular New Year’s Eve storm,’ said another. ‘Just check in the almanac, it comes every five years.’
I stifled a yawn.
Dan Krane stood by the window. It was the first time I had seen the controlled and always correct newspaper man like that. He spoke to no one, just watched us with a curious wildness in his gaze as he downed glass after glass of the strong yellow slush.
I didn’t want to, but I went over to him.
‘And how are you?’ I asked.
He looked at me, seemingly surprised that anyone at all should address him.
‘Good evening, Opgard. Are you familiar with the komodo dragon?’
‘You mean those giant lizards?’
‘Precisely. They’re found on only a couple of small Asian islands, one of them is Komodo. About the size of Os county. And they really aren’t that big, not as big as people believe anyway. They weigh about the same as a grown man. They move slowly, you and I would be able to run from it. So for that reason it has to use ambush, yes, cowardly ambush. But it doesn’t kill you there and then, oh no. It just bites you. Anywhere. Perhaps just an innocent nibble on the leg. And you get away and think you’re saved, right? But the truth is, they injected you with poison. And it’s a weak, slow-acting poison. I’ll return to the subject of why it’s weak, here I’ll mention only that it costs the animal an enormous amount of energy to produce the poison. The stronger the poison, the more energy. The poison of the Komodo dragon prevents the blood from coagulating. So you’ve suddenly become a bleeder, the wound in your leg won’t heal, nor the inner bleeding from the bite either. So no matter where you run to on that little Asiatic island, the Komodo dragon’s long, olfactory tongue picks up the scent of blood and comes slowly waddling after you. The days go by, you grow weaker and weaker. Soon you can’t run any faster than the dragon, and it’s able to give you another bite. And another one. Your whole body is bleeding and bleeding, the blood won’t stop, decilitre by decilitre you’re being emptied. And you can’t get away of course, because you’re trapped on this little island and your scent is everywhere.’
‘So how does this end?’ I asked.
Dan Krane stopped and stared at me. He looked offended. Perhaps he interpreted the question as a desire to get his lecture over with.
‘Venomous creatures that live in small places from which prey, for practical or other reasons, cannot escape, don
’t need to produce precious, quick-acting poison. They can practise this form of evil slow torture. It’s evolution in practice. Or am I wrong, Opgard?’
Opgard didn’t have much to say. I realised, of course, that he was talking about a human version of the venomous animal; but did he mean the enforcer? Or Willumsen? Or somebody else?
‘According to the forecast the wind is going to drop during the night,’ I said.
Krane rolled his eyes, turned away, stared out of the window.
Not until we were seated at table did the conversation turn to the subject of the hotel. Of the twelve sitting there, eight were involved in the project.
‘Anyway, I hope the building’s securely moored,’ said Simon, with a glance towards the large picture window that was creaking as the wind gusted.
‘Oh it is,’ a voice said with great certainty. ‘My cabin’ll blow away before that hotel does, and that cabin’s been standing for fifty years.’
I couldn’t contain myself any longer and looked at my watch.
In our village there was a traditional gathering in the square just before midnight. There were no speeches, no countdowns or other formalities, it was just an opportunity for people to come together, wait for the rockets and then – in an atmosphere of carnival chaos and social anarchy – use the big community embrace at midnight to press bodies and cheeks against the person or persons who would, in the remaining nine thousand hours of the year, otherwise be off-limits. Even the New Year party at Willumsen’s would break up so that guests could mingle with the hoi polloi.
Somebody said something about it being a boom time for the village.
‘The credit must go to Carl Opgard,’ Dan Krane interrupted. People were used to hearing him speak in a slightly nasal, quiet voice. Now his voice sounded hard, and angry. ‘Or blame. All depending.’
‘Depending on what?’ someone asked.
‘Oh yes, that revivalist speech on capitalism he gave up at Årtun, that got everyone dancing round the golden calf. Which, by the way, should be the name of the hotel. The Golden Calf Spa. Although...’ Krane’s wild gaze spun round the table. ‘Actually Os Spa is pretty appropriate anyway. Ospa is the Polish word for smallpox, the sickness that wiped out whole villages as late as the twentieth century.’
I heard Grete laugh. Krane’s words were maybe what people were used to hearing from him – intelligent, witty – but delivered now with an aggression and chill that silenced the table.
Registering the mood, Stanley raised his glass with a smile. ‘Very amusing, Dan. But you’re exaggerating, aren’t you?’
‘Am I?’ Dan Krane smiled coldly and fixed his gaze on a spot on the wall somewhere above our heads. ‘This business where everyone and anyone can invest without having the money for it is an exact replica of what happened in the crash of October 1929. Those bankers jumping from the tops of skyscrapers along Wall Street – that was just the tip of the iceberg. The real tragedy involved the little people, the millions of small investors who trusted the stockbrokers when they talked in tongues about an everlasting boom and borrowed way over their heads to buy shares.’
‘OK,’ said Stanley. ‘But take a look around, there’s optimism everywhere. To be blunt, I don’t exactly see any big warning signals.’
‘But that is precisely the nature of a crash,’ said Krane, his voice getting louder and louder. ‘You see nothing until suddenly you see everything. The unsinkable Titanic sank seventeen years earlier, but people learned nothing. As late as September 1929 the stock exchange was at its highest ever. People think the wisdom of the majority is unimpeachable. That the market is right, and when everyone wants to buy, buy, of course no one cries wolf. We’re gregarious animals, who delude ourselves that it’s safer in the flock, in the crowd...’
‘And so it is too,’ I said quietly. But a silence descended so quickly that even though I didn’t raise my eyes from my plate, I knew everyone was looking at me.
‘That’s why fish form shoals and sheep flocks. That’s why we form limited companies and consortiums. Because it really is safer to operate as a flock. Not a hundred per cent safe, a whale could come along at any moment and swallow up the whole shoal, but safer. That’s where evolution has tried and failed us.’
I lifted a loaded fork of gravlax to my face and chewed away, feeling those staring eyes on me. It was as though a deaf-mute had suddenly spoken.
‘Let’s drink to that!’ cried Stanley, and when I finally looked up, I saw everyone with glasses raised in my direction. I tried to smile and raised my own, though it was empty. Quite empty.
* * *
—
Port was served after the dessert and I sat on the sofa opposite the Harland Miller painting.
Someone sat next to me. It was Grete. She had a straw in her glass of port. ‘Death,’ she said. ‘What’s in it for me?’ she added in English.
‘Are you just reading, or are you asking?’
‘Both,’ said Grete, looking around. Everybody else was engaged in conversation.
‘You shouldn’t have said no,’ she said.
‘To what?’ I asked, though I knew what she was referring to, I was just hoping I could get her to understand by pretending not to understand that she would drop the subject.
‘I had to do it alone,’ she said.
I stared at her in disbelief. ‘You mean that you’ve...’
She nodded gravely.
‘You’ve been gossiping about Carl and Mari?’
‘I have been spreading information.’
‘You’re lying!’ It just slipped out, and I glanced round quickly to make sure no one else had heard my outburst.
‘Oh yeah?’ Grete smiled sardonically. ‘Why do you think Dan Krane’s here and Mari isn’t? Or to be more precise, why do you think they aren’t both at Willumsen’s like they usually are? Babysitting? Yes, that’s probably what they want people to think. When I told Dan he thanked me. He made me promise not to tell anyone else. That was the initial reaction, see? On the outside they act like nothing has happened. But on the inside, believe you me, the split is complete.’
My heart was pounding and I could feel the sweat that had broken out under my tight-fitting shirt. ‘And Shannon, have you gossiped to her too?’
‘This isn’t gossip, Roy. It’s information I think everyone has a right to if their partner is unfaithful. I told her at a dinner at Rita Willumsen’s. She thanked me too. You see?’
‘When was this?’
‘When? Let me see. We’d stopped ice-bathing, so it must have been in the spring.’
My brain was working feverishly. The spring. Shannon had travelled to Toronto in the early summer, stayed away for some time. Come back. Contacted me. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I was so angry the hand holding the glass had started to shake. I felt like I wanted to empty the port all over Grete’s fucking perm, see if it worked like white spirit when I pushed her face down into the candles standing on a plate next to us. I clenched my teeth.
‘Must have been a disappointment for you then that Carl and Shannon are still together.’
Grete shrugged. ‘They’re obviously unhappy, and that’s always a comfort.’
‘If they’re unhappy, why are they together? They don’t even have children.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Grete. ‘The hotel is their child. That’s going to be her masterpiece, and that makes Shannon dependent on him. In order to get something you want, you’re dependent on someone you hate – sound familiar?’
Grete looked at me as she sucked at her port. Clenched cheeks, lips shaped as though kissing around the straw. I got up, couldn’t sit there any longer, went out into the hall and put on my jacket.
‘Are you going?’ It was Stanley.
‘Heading down to the square,’ I said. ‘My head needs airing.’
‘There’s still an hour to midnight.’
‘I walk and think slowly,’ I said. ‘See you there.’
Walking down the highway I had to lean into the wind. It blew right through me, blew everything away. The clouds from the sky. The hope from the heart. The fog around everything that had happened. Shannon knew about Carl’s infidelity. She’d got in touch with me prior to going to Notodden so that she could have her revenge. Just like Mari wanted. Of course. Replay. I’d crossed my own footsteps; it was the same fucking circle all over again. Impossible to break out of it. So why struggle? Why not just sit down and let yourself drift into a frozen sleep?
A car drove by. It was the new red Audi A1 that had been standing outside Stanley Spind’s house. Meaning that the person in question must be driving under the influence, because I hadn’t seen anyone there who wasn’t drinking that yellow slush. I saw the brake lights as it turned off before the square, heading in the direction of Nergard’s farm.
* * *
—
People had already started gathering in the square, mostly young, wandering around aimlessly in groups of four or five. And yet everything, the tiniest gesture or action, had a purpose, an aim, was part of the hunt. People came from every quarter. And even though the wind swept across the open square you could smell the adrenaline, like before a football match. Or a boxing match. Or a bullfight. Yes, that was it. Something was about to die. I was standing in the alleyway between the sports shop and Dals Clothes for Kids and from where I stood I could take in everything without being seen myself. I thought.
A girl broke from the group she was in, it looked like a division of cells, her walk was unsteady but she came more or less in my direction.
‘Hi, Roy!’ It was Julie. Her voice was hoarse and slurred from alcohol. She put a hand against my chest and pushed me further into the alleyway. Then she wrapped her arms tightly around me. ‘Happy New Year,’ she whispered, and before I had time to react she pressed her lips against mine. I felt her tongue against my teeth.
