Again she faced us, but by now the groove had deserted her. She stood with her face half-lowered, like Jeanne d’Arc in front of the tribunal: a semi-naked woman in her thirties, wearing a white lace bra and black, silk knickers with a traditional rosette at the front. She had a slim, strangely girlish, body with small breasts and narrow hips.
Jakob asked a question and she nodded.
While continuing to play with his left hand he half-stood up and passed her his glass. She drained it in one, grimaced, put down the glass elegantly, straightened up and began – as she found the melody again – to dance, a kind of jazz ballet in slow motion on top of the piano, two steps forward, one to the side. Two steps back and one to the side. At the same time she reached behind, fiddled with the bra strap, pouted like a lady of the night, ripped off the bra to reveal her breasts bobbing in front of our eyes, spun round, slipped down her knickers, spun back – and again – and again, her pubic hair a dark stripe down the middle, then she quickly crouched down, pulled up her knickers, gathered her clothes from in front of her, leaped down from the piano and ran out to a last frenetic flourish from Jakob, a concerned clap from Kari, and the minimum of applause from me.
Jakob stood up and ran after her while Kari and I fell back onto the sofa, clutching our drinks and staring silently into space. My skin was tingling with a strange kind of embarrassment and the glass felt liberatingly cold.
Two minutes later Jakob peeked through the doorway with a sly glint in his eyes. ‘Errmmm. We … are carrying on in here.’ He extended a hand. ‘The sofa’s all yours.’
‘I don’t know…’ Kari said.
But he had already gone.
‘Nor me,’ I said.
I got up, went over and picked a random record from the pile. It was a Leonard Cohen LP, Death of a Ladies’ Man. It might have seemed more than random. Soon Cohen’s hoarse voice was rasping through the room and Kari sank back into the sofa beside me.
After a while she leaned over and rested her head on my shoulder.
I wrapped my arm around her. ‘You have a daughter, you said.’
She nodded. ‘Mhm. Turid. She’s fifteen.’
‘But you’re not … Are you divorced?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m a widow. My husband died from a brain tumour eight years ago.’
I nodded empathetically. Death reaps and other men follow in the ploughed furrows. After the first frosts are past.
And Cohen sang.
After a while she looked up at me with a strange expression in her bright eyes. She studied my face for a moment. Then she whispered: ‘If you want, we can…’
I wanted and we could.
She had pendulous breasts, supple hips, a golden tuft between her legs, dry skin on her back and a passionate way of making love that allowed us to forget the chaos around us, all the books and the sheet music, our clothes that had fallen on the open newspapers, our shoes wedged between piles of books and journals and the not exactly comfortable baroque sofa, on which you probably needed to wear crinoline to be able to make love without getting blisters.
It was only in the ensuing silence that we heard the monotonous click of the stylus running on the inside grooves of the record. Cohen had long been silent. ‘That’s no way to say goodbye,’ I mumbled, got up, went over and lifted the stylus, switched off the record-player and returned to Lady Midnight from Landås.
*
I woke to her getting dressed in the middle of the night. ‘I’m afraid I have to go home,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’ll ask if Gro’s coming, too.’
New sounds from the hall suggested that Gro had probably had the same idea. She looked in, gave a long whistle when she saw me lying on the sofa in the altogether, mumbled something about ‘one good turn deserves another’ and then they were gone, Kari with a peck on my cheek, Gro with a hurried wave from the doorway. The hall door slammed and immediately afterwards Jakob shuffled in, wearing a T-shirt and underpants and scratching his head, and said: ‘The kids won’t be disturbing us anyway. We can get a bit more kip.’
He went over to the wall cabinet. ‘I think I need another drink. That was just like in the old days. You want one?’
I nodded. We had drunk spirits last night. Brandy. ‘How long have you known them?’
‘The fans? Oh, since … Much too long. I was in Gro’s pants even before she was sixteen.’
I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. ‘Oh?’
‘Yes, that’s just how it used to be. When we played at dances. Teenies hung around the stage and if you wanted to dip your wick all you had to do was beckon.’ He took a deep draught, his mouth half open, and looked pensive.
I was deeply uncomfortable now. And not because of the baroque sofa.
‘What about Kari, did you bed her, too?’
‘So you liked her, eh?’
I didn’t answer.
‘I can reassure you on that one. The answer’s no. Gro would never … They were girlfriends, you see.’
I nodded.
‘There was something special about Gro. We were on the same wavelength, even after the first time. Which we’ve kept going, right up until today.’
‘But at that time, when she was…’ I had to pause; ‘…fifteen, that was before you got married?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘You saw each other even afterwards?’
He looked at me, made a vague gesture with his head, then nodded. ‘Now and then, yes. Not often. The last time was several years ago.’
‘Where’s she now?’
‘Gro? Walking the plank at Captain Hook’s, I imagine.’
‘I meant your wife.’
‘Ah, my wife.’ His eyes took on a faraway look again. ‘That’s exactly what I’d wanted to ask Johnny about.’ He stood up suddenly. ‘We can talk more about that tomorrow. We need a few hours between the sheets. In peace, I mean. Right? As the kids are out … Come with me.’
He motioned for me to follow him into his son’s bedroom and cleared a place on the bunk bed, under posters of English footballers and American pop stars, behind piles of cowboy comics and Hardy Boys books, space travel and hi-tech magazines, and surrounded by a dozen or so big cuddly toys: tigers and bears, dogs and monkeys.
Like Noah in my very private ark I drifted into the dark waters of the final hours of the night, my sights set on nothing but sleep, and it was late morning before I sent out a dove to search for land.
9
There are days when coffee tastes like fresh rolls straight from the bakery. And there are days when it tastes like bitter almonds. It is almost the death of you. This was such a day. And the bread didn’t taste very fresh, either.
The kitchen was long and narrow and looked out onto the back yard. However, the interior was modern enough and we ate at an oil-treated pine table that slid out from under the worktop.
Jakob looked pale and unkempt and he had some butter smeared on one cheek. He also had some trouble getting food down.
There was a black portable radio on the worktop. A local writer was choosing songs. They played ‘Yesterday’. He was that kind of writer.
‘What did they die of?’ I asked, poking a hole in the butter.
He eyed me in bewilderment. ‘Who? Only Lennon’s died.’
‘I was thinking about Arild Hjellestad and Harry Kløve.’
He didn’t answer, but indicated that his mouth was full. Then he made a grab for a glass of milk to help the food down. But he misjudged the distance, knocked over the glass and the milk made a pool like Lake Mjøsa across the table.
‘You could’ve continued as a duo, you and Johnny.’
He swallowed, fetched a cloth and wiped up the milk. ‘And what would we have performed? Songs our mummies sang to us?’
‘Great idea. Now what did they die of?’
His mouth twitched. ‘The … pretty typical causes of those days, I’m afraid. Harry died in a traffic accident. Arild drank himself to death.’
‘When did that happen
?’
‘Their deaths? Well … Harry, last year, and Arild … January this year. He was found lying in the snow. He’d fallen asleep when he was drunk.’
‘And Harry?’
‘A bus knocked him down on a zebra crossing last autumn. He stepped out when the pedestrian lights were red, so the bus driver had no chance. It was in the papers.’
‘Did you have any contact with them? I mean, after you split up?’
‘Not much. We talked when we ran into one another, but that wasn’t often. Harry lived with his mother until she was moved to a care home a couple of years ago. He worked at the same ironmonger’s as he always had. In the storeroom. Arild, on the other hand, went off the rails. He worked for a while in a music shop, wrote for newspapers – he’d been to university, as you probably remember. Went from girl to girl, like in the old days, and partied hard. At the end there were fewer girls and more bottles, it seemed to me. When I bumped into him in the street he always tried to bum money off me.’ He stared down into his half-full glass of milk. ‘Eventually I learned to avoid him.’
‘But isn’t it strange that after so many years of being together you went your separate ways? Didn’t the other three keep in touch, either?’
‘I don’t think so.’ He stared into the far distance. ‘The last few years we played together, it was like we kept the group going with CPR. Jesus, Varg. We started when we were boys, fifteen or sixteen years old. We’d known one another since we were small. Later we developed into very different people. It was a wonder that we stuck it as long as we did.’
‘You make it sound like a marriage that goes to pieces when the children have grown up.’
‘Perhaps that’s how it was. Life is like that. We’re born and we grow up. We meet people and they bring about changes. Then all the farewells start. You finish school – some kids disappear. You’re abandoned or others abandon you.’
‘I know the feeling.’
‘You learn new skills, meet new people. Get a job, get several jobs … and meet even more people. And lose some on the way. Even those who’ve been with you for most of your life are sometimes gone one day.’
‘You’re not just referring to the lads in the band?’
‘No, Varg. I’m thinking of … well.’
I was on the point of saying something, but he interrupted me: ‘I remember when we started out for real – that was the heyday of the dances outside Bergen, at the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties. Big cars had started appearing on the roads, people could afford to go out on Saturday evenings, buy beer and petrol and half-bottles of spirits.’
I nodded.
‘And the places we played. Bergheim, Fjellheim or whatever they were called. Youth clubs, sports halls, school gyms – they all merge into one for me. We went back to the same places again and again. The stench of detergent and sweat. The pathetic dressing rooms. The noise outside before the crowd was allowed in. Bottles clinking, car horns hooting, hysterical laughter. Then, when the dance started, all the wallflowers, then the first couples venturing onto the dance floor. The teenie-boppers who always hung around the stage as if they were stuck to it with the pink bubble gum they always had in their gobs. If you went to the toilet there was always someone puking, always someone spewing up their guts and spreading a carpet of beer, spirits and bile all over the place. Towards the end of the night you could bet your bottom dollar that there would be fights, especially if there was a shortage of girls. And there often was. We always had quite a few of them with us.’
‘The band?’
He nodded. ‘In the end it all merges into one and you can’t distinguish a thing. All the gigs, the youth clubs, the girls. And usually we were wasted. And we didn’t do it in the most romantic places, either. On a sleeping bag in a dark corner of the gym. In the basement of a youth club. Against a toilet wall. On the floor of the van, if we had one. I tell you, Varg, I can remember some of the places we did it in better than the girls we did it with.’
‘One body was much the same as another. Is that what you’re saying?’
He was lost in thought now. ‘The girl I remember best was actually one I didn’t sleep with. Her name was Herdis. She came straight up to me in a break. “You’ve got such charisma onstage…” she said, “…unlike the others. I could almost fall in love with you. There are so many cynical people around nowadays.” That was how she spoke, fast and forthright. I was too taken aback to say anything sensible, and as we went back on stage she reached out her hand and said: “I should introduce myself. I’m Herdis.” Later she was lost among the kids dancing and after we’d finished she’d gone. I never saw her again. When we went back to that place, I always looked for her, but she was never there. I’d spoken to her for only a few minutes but it was one of those sudden passions that stay with you for years afterwards. For many years I hoped I would meet her again one day. But I never did.’
‘And you kept thinking about her even after you were married?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘We played at dances for ten years after I got married – right up the fjords and deep into the valleys. But it was life on the road. It never meant anything. Apart from…’
‘Gro?’
He nodded. ‘But it wasn’t only me who—’
I interrupted him: ‘You mentioned your wife last night … And how you hadn’t managed to ask … But why would Johnny know where she was?’
His eyes met mine, covered with a film of ice. ‘Because she … because she went off with him once. Before.’
I could feel a chill run down my spine. ‘That seems incomprehensible.’
‘It was incomprehensible. But life has at least taught me one thing, Varg. I’ve stopped wondering about the types of guys some girls fall for.’
‘Maybe … maybe she ran off with him to teach you a lesson? Maybe she chose to go off with him to show you something?’
‘In which case, Varg, she did show me. I got the message.’
‘When did this happen?’
He looked at his watch, as though it was half an hour ago. ‘It was … in 1982. We’d been having some problems when, well more or less from when Grete was born, in seventy-nine. I’d forgotten what it was like, those difficult periods after the births. But the other two had been so long before. This time I didn’t deal so well with the problems it created. We’d been through some rough patches, but this was worse. Maybe I should have done things differently – although I don’t know what I could have done. At any rate she moved out and went to stay with a girlfriend. It was only afterwards, when she was on her way back to me, that I heard she and Johnny…’
‘Was it her who told you?’
‘No, no, no. You can guess who…’
‘It wasn’t…?’
‘Yes, it was. Johnny delivered the message at a choice moment.’
I nodded.
‘Not that I have any reason to get on my high horse, but … Johnny, of all people.’
I leaned forward. ‘But…’
‘Then last year I had this strange feeling that something was brewing again.’
‘Between her and Johnny?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘No, with someone else.’
‘Who?’
‘I’ve never had it confirmed. She didn’t move out this time. It was just a feeling I had that something was going on. That something was about to happen. And then finally, last autumn…’ He opened his palms. ‘Gone again.’
‘With this other…?’
‘I have no definite suspicions, Varg. And at least she’s not at his place. That much I do know.’
‘But where is she then?’
‘That’s what I wanted to ask Johnny. If he … But I can’t believe that. I’d already got the message. She didn’t need to send it twice.’
I poured more coffee for us and said: ‘Well, would you like me to…?’
‘Yes,’ he said, with a sudden eagerness. ‘You, with your background, you could make some discreet enquiries, have a
chat with Johnny, no direct questions, but … You can be sure that if she’s with him, he’ll be only too happy to tell you – before you ask probably.’
‘He didn’t say anything yesterday.’
‘No, but that might be because of … Bella Bruflåt.’
I nodded. ‘If she’s not with him, have you any other ideas where she might be?’
He hesitated. ‘She had these friends. Girls from her study days.’
‘Do these friends have names?’
He looked at me wearily. ‘It’s not important. I can give you some of them later if you can just … If you can just reassure me that she’s definitely not with Johnny.’
‘Would that be the worst?’
‘That would be the worst.’
‘A fate worse than death?’
He nodded. Then he unfolded the flier we’d had pressed into our hands as we left the nightclub. ‘Perhaps we should go here tonight?’
I looked at the flier. ‘What sort of a place is it?’
‘The Hot Spot. A unique experience, Varg. A … what shall we call it? … a mobile night club? It moves at regular intervals from one condemned building to another, at virtually no cost, sells booze at half the price of the official nightclubs, has a light show plus a sound show and one attraction better than the next. In short, somewhere even old nags can have a good time before they keel over and snuff it.’
‘Sounds fantastic.’
‘And they never open before midnight. In other words, you have enough time.’
‘Where does Johnny live?’
‘No idea, to be honest.’
‘Don’t make me laugh. You can’t tell me you suspect your wife of jumping into bed with him again and you haven’t gone through the phone book to ring him and, if nothing else, at least listen to his lecherous voice.’
Fallen Angels Page 6
