Sister

by Kjell Ola Dahl

  ‘Wearing,’ Matilde said.

  ‘Tommy died. So that was the end of the band.’

  ‘And you moved to Koppang and I couldn’t be bothered anymore.’

  The bass player leaned back without responding. Silence enveloped them. All that could be heard was the low, powerful roar of the V-8 as the car floated like a ship through the countryside.

  ‘Can you find a petrol station and stop?’ the voice from the rear seat asked. ‘I need a leak.’

  6

  Matilde slowed down and indicated right. ‘There’s a toilet here,’ she said as they drove up the narrow entrance. ‘I always stop here when I come this way,’ she continued. ‘And this time it’s a bit special.’

  She came to a halt in a car park between the trees. The bass player strolled over to the outside toilet.

  Frank followed Matilde down a path between the pines where bare roots clung to rocky ground. Petter ran in front. The dog was jubilant to be able to move at last.

  He understood what she meant. Jutulhogget is the closest you can get to the Grand Canyon in Norway. And mindful of the T-bird’s relationship with that place, it was undeniably magical to gaze across the immense cleft cut into the rock.

  They heard the toilet door close with a bang and Gunnar’s footsteps on the gravel as he wandered back to the car and got in.

  ‘He’s seen this before,’ Matilde said.

  ‘How wide is it?’

  ‘It varies between a hundred and fifty and four hundred metres,’ she said. ‘The height is between a hundred and two hundred and fifty metres. If I ever commit suicide I’m going to do it here.’

  ‘Did you want to be Thelma or Louise?’ he asked.

  ‘Louise,’ she said. ‘Louise is the strong one. Besides, she loves a cowboy.’

  ‘She lets him down.’

  ‘This isn’t a film,’ she said, stretching up onto her toes and kissing him on the lips. ‘Do you remember The Rubettes? They made a song called “Sugar Baby Love”.’

  ‘Remind me how it goes,’ he said.

  ‘Baby, take my advice, if you love someone, don’t think twice.’

  He waited for her to go on. She didn’t. She was still serious. They walked to the edge. She told him a jutul, a giant troll, from Rendalen smashed a hole in the rock to guide the Glomma river through to Rendalen. But at the last minute the Glomsdal jutul put a stop to that.

  They stretched out on a gently sloping promontory and threw sticks to Petter, who jumped in the air for them, shook his head as though the stick were prey he wanted to kill, then dropped it and waited for the next.

  ‘We have to decide where to sleep,’ she said.

  He agreed.

  ‘Ålesund,’ she said. ‘I know someone who lives there. We can sleep over at hers.’

  7

  After dropping off the bass player at the railway station in Dombås, they drove westwards. The countryside opened up as they passed Lesjaverk. They drove with the sun angling in from the left and a view of the patchwork of humus-rich fields belonging to the farms on both sides of the Rauma, which plummeted in wild cascades on its westerly course. The river was helped down the mountainside by the waterfalls, narrow cataracts that divided into ribbons of water that resembled spilt milk.

  Soon the valley tapered and after a while rock face towered up on both sides. They stopped at Trollveggen – the so-called ‘troll wall’, in the mountain peaks – out of pure curiosity. They walked over to the information boards and studied the climbing routes and a map of the area.

  Frank confessed that he had only seen this mountain on TV, the helicopter photos taken by the rescue service that had to salvage dead BASE jumpers caught hanging on the wall.

  Matilde said it would be better to throw yourself off without a parachute. ‘I don’t think you feel it when you hit the ground at that speed. It would be much worse to hang from parachute cords with broken legs and other injuries for hours before you die.’

  ‘I don’t think they jump to be killed,’ he said.

  ‘They must’ve thought about it,’ Matilde said, pointing to the top. ‘You don’t jump from up there without having been tempted by the thought of dying.’

  They didn’t speak for a while. Eventually he noticed she was staring at him. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you think she’s here now?’

  ‘Guri?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You mean do I believe her spirit’s here?’

  ‘No. Do you believe death isn’t the end? Do you believe the dead continue to exist in a reality that is much greater than anything we can absorb?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She smiled, a little dejected. ‘No one can know that kind of thing.’

  ‘But you believe it?’

  ‘Music proves it all the time. There are worlds that are much more beautiful than the one we relate to in this life.’

  He stood thinking about what she had said. ‘So you think she still exists?’

  Matilde nodded. ‘I don’t think death is as stark as it seems to us.’

  ‘Have you seen any signs?’

  Matilde nodded. ‘I see them all the time.’

  8

  When they drove into Ålesund it took them a little while to find the house where Nini-Beate and her partner lived. It was at the top of a hill, block-shaped and looked like an arrangement of rectangular steel containers with large windows. It rested on a promontory with a view of the sea.

  Matilde said she had known Nini-Beate from the time they both worked in a nail salon in Lillestrøm. Nini-Beate had been much better at it than her; she knew everything about nails and cosmetics and now she ran a blog that provided her with a good income.

  ‘She earns at least as much as her partner, who’s a doctor.’

  The house canine was a sad-looking, little Tibetan temple dog who answered to the name Doris. Nini-Beate carried Doris in the crook of her arm while Matilde’s more experienced best friend sniffed it. Whether the two of them hit it off was hard to say – they occupied opposing corners of the veranda.

  Nini-Beate had dyed her hair so blonde it was almost white, she had lip implants and her face was tanned. She walked around in light-blue, faded, torn jeans and a purple knitted jumper that revealed her navel. Her stomach was as nut-brown as her face.

  Her partner had to be at least twenty-five years older than her. He appeared to be muscular in a somewhat cramped way, as though he couldn’t quite straighten his body. His arms were long. When he moved he seemed to propel his legs by twisting his hips, like a stooped orangutan. His hair was grey and short.

  The man’s name was Ove Treschow and he showed Frølich around the house while Matilde and Nini-Beate sat on the veranda drinking white wine. Matilde had seen the house before.

  The living room was enormous, with a gas fireplace in one corner and large posters on the walls – motif: scantily clad woman at sunset.

  ‘That’s Nini-Beate,’ Treschow said. ‘I do a bit of photography. Just a hobby.’

  In the cellar there was a fitness studio with technologically advanced apparatus and a fridge and sunbed. Treschow lay down on a bench with weights and began to do presses.

  ‘Feel at home, do a workout,’ he said, discharging intermittent violent pants as the bar rose and fell.

  Frank Frølich leaned against the door frame watching him.

  After twenty presses his host put the bar on the stand and sat up.

  ‘As I pile on the years I have to keep myself in form,’ he said. ‘You know, they do have their needs.’ He winked. ‘Do you want a beer?’

  Frank saw no reason to say no.

  The host went to the fridge. He took out two bottles of IPA, which he opened with a screwdriver that was on the floor. ‘Skål!’

  They drank.

  They stood looking at each other.

  ‘So you’re a detective?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Why does one become a detective?’

  F
rølich shrugged. ‘Because one once worked for the police, stayed there a bit too long and had no skills when one left, other than knowing how to investigate crimes. And you?’

  ‘I’m a doctor. A gynaecologist.’

  ‘Why does one become a gynaecologist?’

  ‘Aesthetics,’ the gynaecologist said. ‘It’s to do with your gaze. Seeing is an art. You say you see a leaf. I ask you what kind of leaf. Is it circular, heart-shaped, elliptical, lobular, jagged, has it got veins, is it green or are there stains of leaf-mould fungus? It’s no good just looking. To have a qualitative understanding of the subject, you need to know if you’re looking at an oak leaf or a maple leaf, an alder leaf, an aspen leaf or a chestnut leaf. A botanist systematises large parts of his profession according to the shape of the leaf and drawings of the veins. So what has that to do with my job, you might think. Well, the answer is: my gaze focuses on the centre, where we come from, the birthplace, the flesh. The place at which a woman’s thighs meet. But it’s a gaze that is steeped with expertise. I can see from your expression that you think such an intense interest verges on depravity or perversion. Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn’t. At any rate I can’t imagine anything more edifying than studying female genitals. The mystery of the parted lips.’

  The gynaecologist put down his bottle, sat on a mat by the wall bars and tucked the tips of his shoes underneath one. Then he did a series of sit-ups.

  Finally he lay flat out, gasping for breath.

  ‘There are no finer moments in my profession than undertaking a gynaecological examination,’ he said, breathing calmly again. ‘When a patient has rested her legs on the stirrups and is lying with them well apart, and she knows I’m looking, and I’m waiting, a little sniff of the nose and I can sense the effect of the wait. Of course, it’s different from woman to woman, the smell and the effect of the wait. Some patients come well prepared and perfumed. Many women start to secrete vaginal fluids as I wait. Did you know that I’ve saved many women from cervical cancer with that tiny fraction of a moment’s sniff?’

  Frank Frølich shook his head.

  ‘You develop skills in this area. It can be compared with tasting wine. It’s the cork, isn’t it. You’ve heard about the smell of corked wine, haven’t you? Porn? I’ve never been interested in seeing others copulate. But show me a woman’s crotch when she walks, sits, bends down, not to mention when she does gymnastic exercises, a gymnast doing the splits naked. A psychiatrist I know thinks that what I’m actually doing is searching backwards, he thinks I have a psychotherapeutic problem, that my training, work with and special interest in women’s genitals is actually a hunt for the origins of life, a desire to go back to the security of the womb before the world starts making demands on me. We have long discussions about this. He thinks that what I call art history’s conspicuous censorship of cunts reflects a normality.’

  The gynaecologist stood up.

  Frølich took a step back, but hid his reaction by taking a swig of beer.

  The gynaecologist donned a pair of boxing gloves hanging on the wall. He began to pound away at a punch bag suspended from the ceiling.

  Frølich took another swig, fascinated by the fact that the punch bag didn’t move despite all the energy the gynaecologist was investing in his boxing.

  At last the gynaecologist was worn out. He stopped and wiped the sweat from his brow with his forearm. ‘The fact that Rubens,’ he began, but had to rest, wait until he had his breath back. ‘The fact that Rubens, Rafael or, for that matter, Titian paint all the details of a face, down to the tiniest wrinkle, while the bit between women’s legs is shown without a cleft, without hair and without any detail at all, not so much as a little follicle or a tiny pimple, reflects an unheeded schism of the times. Look at sculptures, look at the works of Rodin, Bernini and Michelangelo; they always have an underdeveloped penis on their sculptures. Imagine it now: they carefully chip the little winkle out of a block of marble, and nota bene: the man isn’t circumcised. But what do they do with the vagina? Those who aim to copy God by painting or shaping a perfect anatomy, why don’t they proceed to the most important bit, the place where God has of necessity to reside, the place from which we all originate? My psychiatrist has formulated a theoretical class approach to this. He asserts the explanation lies in the fact that Michelangelo, Veronese, Tintoretto and all the others were court artists. They never dared risk painting a dick that was bigger than the king’s, so the male motif, the penis – regardless of whether it is David, Achilles or Saint Sebastian – is infantile. Whoever they portray is equipped with a small, innocent child’s willy. The same applies to women of course, he maintains. The British royal family was, as we know, at times an inbred bunch of deformed cripples. So the beauty of Aphrodite or Helen had to be limited to the face.’

  The gynaecologist peeled off his gym gear and went into the adjacent room to shower. Soon Frank heard the murmur of water from inside.

  The door opened.

  Nini-Beate stood in the doorway. She nodded to her guest, then shouted to her husband: ‘Darling!’

  ‘Yes, dear?’ came from the shower.

  ‘We haven’t got much food in the house. Let’s go out to eat.’

  9

  The gynaecologist led the way this warm summer evening. Frank and Matilde were shown into seats in the back of his Mercedes. They first drove to Fjellstua restaurant in Aksla, where all four of them stood by the railing looking down on Ålesund.

  A magenta hemisphere illuminated the sky. The colours shone from the break in the cloud cover. The sky and the buildings were reflected in the surface of the water, which assumed a deeper, reddish-brown hue.

  The gynaecologist compared the centre with Manhattan. He claimed that Ålesund’s art nouveau style set off the little harbour town below in the same way that the skyscrapers gave an identity to the strip of land between the Hudson and the East River. Once they were back in the car and heading for the town centre, Nini-Beate inserted a CD in the player. A throbbing rock song came from the speakers and Matilde shouted ‘No!’ The hosts beamed and looked at Matilde from each of their mirrors.

  ‘It’s me,’ Matilde told him apologetically. She asked them to switch it off. But the gynaecologist turned it up louder.

  Frank liked what he heard. The accompaniment reminded him of The Clash and her voice of Mélanie Pain. ‘Cool,’ he said. ‘Trendy.’

  ‘Don’t listen to the lyrics,’ Matilde said.

  ‘It’s at least four years,’ Nini-Beate said, ‘since I’ve done any back-up vocals.’

  ‘Three and a half,’ Matilde said.

  The gynaecologist turned into a yellow building, a multi-storey car park.

  Afterwards they strolled along the pavements, two by two, as flashy cars glided by. A wide, low-slung Porsche reminded Frank of a mother goose waddling ahead of a line of stylish Volvos and Opels that had almost sunk down to the tarmac and had spoilers mounted on the back. There were plenty of heads on the rear seats, and hands holding glasses were stuck out of the windows, occasionally a woman’s foot with a gold bracelet around the ankle. The slightly older age bracket, women and their escorts, forty, plus or minus, formed queues into venues guarded by muscular men with polished domes. In this throng the gynaecologist was at home. He knew people, stopped and exchanged the odd word with them or patted someone on the shoulder and made a cheery comment. He probably trained with some of the bouncers. As if by magic, all four of them were waved past a queue. A hunk stretched out an arm and accompanied them. Once inside the door the gynaecologist took another initiative. He grabbed a woman dressed in a short, purple skirt and jacket. She tucked a handful of menus under her arm and walked ahead of them on high heels up a staircase to a packed, dimly lit room. At the back, by a window with a view of the harbour there was, strangely enough, a table free. They sat down. Nini-Beate and Matilde by the window, and the gentlemen on the end.

  The gynaecologist spoke at length about this restaurant and the town, its history and the
importance of fishing in olden times, tourism nowadays, all the famous chefs who had plied their trade in the kitchen here and, not least, the man who was the chef here now. The gynaecologist insisted that the man had been awarded Michelin stars in Oslo. Now it would soon be Ålesund’s turn.

  Frølich felt like an extra in someone else’s fantasy. He was worn out after the drive and didn’t quite catch the topics of their small talk, but nodded and alternated between ‘oh, yes’ and ‘mhm’ and ‘aha’.

  The gynaecologist ordered for everyone. Baked halibut, Hasselback potatoes and other stuff, trimmings with French names. The gynaecologist went to town choosing the wine. He ended up with an apparently very special Riesling, a prize vintage that came from a select cellar in Alsace. He held the glass to the light and lectured on the minerals he could taste on different parts of his palate. Frølich would have preferred a beer, but played the role of guest, as expected, accepted the Riesling in the glass and praised it, as expected.

  Otherwise, the conversation traversed Swedish waiters and other immigrants, the war in the Middle East, terrorist attacks and what the gynaecologist saw as the more or less successfully staged comedies of life, and hence the world.

  The two ladies wanted a dessert and gave a squeal of pleasure when they saw chocolate fondant on the menu. The gynaecologist had a brandy with his coffee. Frank Frølich politely declined. After Nini-Beate had pecked away at the fondant, a thick stripe of chocolate oozing out on to her plate, she leaned forward to Frølich and said in a low voice:

  ‘Rita Torgersen’s here.’

  ‘Who’s Rita Torgersen?’

  ‘She’s an MP in Stortinget, on the justice committee. I know she was involved in a small way with the case.’ She glanced over at Matilde. ‘The ferry you were talking about.’

  ‘The Sea Breeze,’ Matilde said.

  ‘I’ll ask her over,’ the gynaecologist said. ‘I know Rita. She’s a patient.’