"Oh," she said without any trace of emotion, fixing her gaze on me. "Anyone who took him from me would have to be a terrible person, don"t you think?"
She wiped the glistening liquid from the table-cloth with one hand, then went on rubbing it, as if she were trying to erase something. I didn"t know what to say. She had put together a story of her own. And I mine. I could hardly start diving into that lake up in Nittedal just to see whose version was more truthful. So I said nothing.
But the knowledge that she could love a man who treated her like that taught me just one thing about love.
No, actually.
It didn"t.
It taught me nothing about love.
We never spoke about my father again after that.
I turned the wheel to follow the road, matching it as closely as I could, but it was as if it was trying to shake me off the whole time, swerving so that I and the car would hit a wall or one of the cars coming in the other direction, disappearing behind me with wailing horns that diminished in strength like an exhausted barrel organ.
I turned off to the right. Found myself in quieter streets. Fewer lights. Less traffic. Darkness was falling. And then it got completely dark.
I must have fainted and driven off the road. Not fast. I had hit my head on the windscreen but there was no damage, either to windscreen or head. And the lamp post that the radiator had buckled around wasn"t even bent. But the engine had stopped. I turned the key in the ignition a few times, but it just complained with ever decreasing enthusiasm. I opened the car door and crawled out. I lay on my knees and elbows like a Muslim praying, with the fresh snow stinging the palms of my hands. I moved my hands together, trying to gather up the powdery snow. But powdery snow is just that. It"s white and beautiful, but difficult to make anything enduring out of. It promises so much, but in the end everything you try to make collapses, crumbling between your fingers. I peered up and looked around to see where I"d driven.
Leaning on the car I got to my feet, then staggered over to the window. I pressed my face to the gla.s.s, which was lovely and cool against my burning forehead. The shelves and counters inside were bathed in a flickering half-light. I was too late, the shop was closed. Of course it was, it was the middle of the night. There was even a sign on the door saying they"d closed earlier than usual: "Closing at 17:00 on December 23 for stocktaking."
Taking stock. Of course. It was the day before Christmas Eve, after all. The end of a year. Perhaps it was time for that.
In the corner, beyond the short train of trolleys, there was a Christmas tree, mean and small. But it still demanded the t.i.tle-it was a Christmas tree, no matter what.
I didn"t know why I had driven here. I could have driven to the hotel and got a room there. Right across the street from the man we had just fixed. Opposite the woman who had fixed me. No one would think of looking for me there. I had enough money for two nights. I could call the Fisherman in the morning and ask to have the rest of the fee paid into my bank account.
I heard myself laugh.
Felt a warm tear trickle down my cheek, saw it fall and burrow into the fresh snow.
Then another one. It just disappeared.
I caught sight of my knee. Blood was oozing out through the fabric of the trousers and dribbling down to settle on the snow with a skin of slime, like egg whites. I knew it would disappear. Melt down and vanish like my tears. But it just lay there, red and quivering. I felt my sweaty hair stick to the gla.s.s of the window. It"s probably a bit late to mention it now, but in case I haven"t said, I"ve got long, slightly lank, blond hair and a beard, I"m average height and I"ve got blue eyes. That"s pretty much me. There"s an advantage to having a lot of hair and a beard: if there are too many witnesses to a job, you have the potential to change your appearance quickly. And it was this potential to change quickly that I now felt freezing to the window, setting root, like part of that coral reef I keep going on about. Anyway. I wanted to become one with this window, to become gla.s.s, just like the invertebrate anemones in Animal Kingdom 5: The Sea actually become the coral reef they live on. And in the morning I would be able to watch Maria, watch her all day without her seeing me. Whisper whatever I liked to her. Call out, sing. My only wish just then was to disappear-maybe it was the only thing I had ever wanted. To disappear, like Mum drinking herself invisible with neat spirits. Rubbing it in until it erased her. Where was she now? I no longer remember. I hadn"t been able to remember for a long time. It was odd, I could say where my father was, but where was my mother, the woman who had given me life and kept me alive? Was she really dead and buried at Ris Church? Or was she still out there somewhere? Obviously I knew, it was just a question of remembering.
I closed my eyes and rested my head against the window. Relaxed completely. So tired. I"d soon remember. Soon....
Darkness came. The great darkness. Spreading out like a huge, black cloak, coming towards me to take me in its embrace.
It was so quiet that I could hear a soft clicking sound that seemed to be coming from the door beside me. Then I heard steps, familiar, limping steps, approaching. I didn"t open my eyes. The footsteps stopped.
"Olav."
I didn"t answer.
She came closer. I felt a hand on my arm. "What...Are...You...Doing...Here."
I opened my eyes. Stared into the gla.s.s, at the reflection of her standing behind me.
I opened my mouth, but couldn"t speak.
"Are...You...Bleeding."
I nodded. How could she be here now, in the middle of the night?
Of course.
Stocktaking.
"Your...Car."
I formed my mouth and tongue to say "yes," but no sound came out.
She nodded, as if to say she understood, then lifted my arm and put it over her shoulder.
"Come."
I limped towards the car, leaning on her, on Maria. The strange thing was that I didn"t notice her limp; it was as if it were gone. She got me into the pa.s.senger seat, then went round to the driver"s side, where the door was still open. She leaned over me and ripped open the leg of my trousers, which tore without a sound. She took a bottle of mineral water from her bag, unscrewed it and poured water on my thigh.
"Bullet?"
I nodded and looked down. It didn"t hurt any more, but the bullet hole looked like the mouth of a gaping fish. Maria had pulled off her scarf and told me to lift my leg. Then she tied the scarf tightly round it.
"Hold...Your...Fingers...Here...And...Press...Hard...On...The...Wound."
She turned the key, still in the ignition. The car started with a soft, amiable purr. She put it in reverse and backed away from the lamp post. Pulled out onto the road and drove.
"My...Uncle...Is...A...Surgeon...Marcel...Myriel."
Myriel. The same surname as the junkie. How could she and he have an uncle with the same...?
"Not...At...The...Hospital." She looked across at me. "At...Mine."
I leaned back against the headrest. She wasn"t talking like a deaf mute. It was odd and jerky, but not like someone who couldn"t talk, more like someone...
"French," she said. "Sorry...But...I...Don"t...Like...Talking...Norwegian." She laughed. "I...Prefer...To...Write...Always...Have...Done. As...A...Child...I...Just...Read.... Do...You...Like...Reading...Olav?"
A police car drove past with its blue light slowly rotating on the roof. I saw it disappear in the mirror. If they were looking for the Volvo, they weren"t paying attention. Maybe they were after something else.
Her brother. The junkie had been her brother, not her boyfriend. Younger brother, presumably, that was why she had been prepared to sacrifice everything for him. But why hadn"t the surgeon, their uncle, been able to help them back then, why had she had to...? Well, enough of that. I could find out the rest and work out how it all fit together later. But for the time being she had turned up the heater and the warm air was making me so drowsy I had to concentrate hard not to just drift off.
"I...Think...You...Read...Olav...Because...You...Are...Like...A...Poet...It...Is...So...Beautiful...What...You...Say...When...We...Are...Underground."
Underground?
My eyes closed as it slowly dawned on me. She had been able to hear everything I said.
All those afternoons on the train, when I thought she was deaf, she had just stood there and let me talk. Day after day, pretending she couldn"t hear or see me. As if it were a game. That was why she had reached for my hand in the shop-she thought she knew that I loved her. That the box of chocolates was the sign that I was finally ready to step from fantasy into reality. Could that be how it all fit together? Could I really have been so blind that I had thought she was deaf and dumb? Or had I seen it all along, and simply denied the fact that I actually knew?
Could it have been the case that I had been on my way here, to Maria Myriel, all along?
"I"m...Sure...Uncle...Can...Come...Tonight...And...If...It"s...Okay...With...You...There"ll...Be...French...Christmas...Food...Tomorrow...Goose...A...Bit...Late...After...Christmas...Eve...Ma.s.s."
I put my hand in my inside pocket and found the envelope. I held it out, still with my eyes closed. I felt her take the envelope, pull over to the side of the road, stop. I was so tired, so tired.
She began to read.
Reading the words I had bled onto the pages, the words I had smashed up and rewritten to get the right letters in the right place.
And they didn"t feel dead at all. On the contrary, they were alive. And true. So true that "I love you" sounded like the only thing that could be said. So alive that everyone who heard the words must have been able to see him, the man writing about the girl he went to visit every day, the girl sitting in a supermarket, the girl he loved, but wished he didn"t love, because he didn"t want to love someone who was just like him, imperfect, with faults and failings, another self-sacrificing, pathetic slave to love, who obediently read people"s lips but never spoke herself, who subordinated herself and found her reward in that. But at the same time, he couldn"t manage not to love her. She was everything he wished he didn"t want. She was his own humiliation. And the best, the most human, the most beautiful thing he knew.
I don"t know much, Maria. Only two things, really. One is that I don"t know how I could make someone like you happy, because I"m the sort of person who wrecks things, not one who creates life and meaning. The second thing I know is that I love you, Maria. And that"s why I never came to dinner that time. Olav.
I heard the sob in her voice as she read the last sentences.
We sat there in silence. Even the police sirens had gone quiet. She sniffed. Then she spoke.
"You...Have...Made...Me...Happy...Now...Olav...This...Is...Enough...Don"t...You...Get...It?"
I nodded and took a deep breath. I can die now, Mum, I thought. I don"t need to make up any more stories. I can"t make this story any better.
CHAPTER 21.
In spite of the extreme cold it snowed all night, and when the first people to get up in the morning darkness looked out across Oslo, the city had put on a soft, white blanket. Cars drove slowly through the snow, and people smiled as they edged their way round the clumps of ice on the pavement, because no one was in a rush-it was Christmas Eve, a time for peace and reflection.
On the radio they kept going on about the record-breaking cold and colder times ahead, and in the fishmonger"s on Youngstorget they wrapped up their last kilos of cod and sang "Merry Christmas" with that strange Norwegian voice that makes everything sound so happy and good-natured no matter what the message.
Outside the church in Vinderen the tape of the police cordon was still fluttering while inside the priest discussed with the police how to perform the Christmas service when everyone began to arrive that afternoon.
At Rikshospitalet in the centre of Oslo the surgeon walked straight from the young girl in the operating theatre out into the corridor, pulled off his gloves and went up to the two women sitting there. He saw that the fear and desperation hadn"t left their rigid faces, and realised that he had forgotten to take off his mask so they could see the smile on his face.
Maria Myriel walked up the hill from the underground station towards the supermarket. It would be a short day at work, they were due to close at two o"clock. And then it was Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve!
She was singing a song in her head. A song about seeing him again. She knew she"d see him again. She had known it from the day he had come to take her away with him from...From everything she didn"t want to think about any more. His kind blue eyes behind his long blond hair. His straight, thin lips behind his bushy beard. And his hands. They were what she thought about most. More than other people did, but that was only natural. They were a man"s hands, but nice. Large and slightly square, the way sculptors imagine heroic workers" hands. But they were hands she could imagine stroking her, holding her, patting her, comforting her. The way her hands would him. Every so often she felt scared at the strength of her own love. It was like a dammed-up stream, and she knew that there was only a tiny difference between bathing and drowning someone in love. But she wasn"t worried about that any longer. Because he looked like he"d be able to receive, and not just give.
She could see a group of people gathered in front of the shop. And there was a police car there. Had there been a break-in?
No, just a collision from the look of it. There was a car with its front wrapped round a lamp post.
But as she got closer she saw that the crowd seemed more interested in the window than the car, so perhaps there had been a break-in after all. A policeman emerged from the crowd and walked over to the police car, pulled out a radio microphone and began to talk. She read his lips. "Dead," "bullet wound" and "the right Volvo."
Now another policeman was waving and ordering the crowd back, and as they moved she caught sight of a shape. At first she thought it was a snowman. But then she realised that was because he was covered in snow, that there was a man standing there, leaning against the window. He was being held up by the long blond hair and beard that had frozen to the gla.s.s. She didn"t want to, but she moved closer. The policeman said something to her, and she pointed to her ears and mouth. Then she pointed to the shop and showed her name on her ID card. She had occasionally thought about changing it back to Maria Olsen, but had come to the conclusion that apart from the drug debt, the only thing he had left her was a French name that sounded a bit more exciting than Olsen.
The policeman nodded and indicated that she could unlock the shop, but she didn"t move.
The Christmas carol in her head had fallen silent.
She stared at him. It was as if he had grown a thin skin of ice, and under it were thin blue veins. Like a snowman that had soaked up blood. Beneath frosted eyelashes his broken gaze was staring into the shop. Staring at the place where she would soon be sitting. Sitting and tapping the prices of groceries into her till. Smiling at the customers, imagining who they were, what sort of lives they lived. And later, that evening, she would eat the chocolates he had given her.
The policeman reached inside the man"s jacket, pulled out a wallet, opened it, took out a green driver"s licence. But that wasn"t what Maria was looking at. She was staring at the yellow envelope that had fallen out into the snow when the policeman pulled out the wallet. The lettering on the front was written in ornate, beautiful, almost feminine handwriting.
To Maria.
The policeman strode off towards the police car with the driving licence. Maria bent down, picked up the envelope. Put it in her pocket. No one seemed to have noticed. She looked at the place it had been lying. At the snow and the blood. So white. So red. So strangely beautiful. Like a king"s robe.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR.
Jo Nesbo is a musician, songwriter, economist, as well as a writer. His Harry Hole novels include The Leopard, Phantom, The Redeemer and The Snowman, and he is also the author of several stand-alone novels and the Doctor Proctor series of children"s books. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Gla.s.s Key for best Nordic crime novel.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR.
Neil Smith majored in Scandinavian Studies at University College London and lived in Stockholm for several years. He now lives in Norfolk, England. His translations include books by Liza Marklund, Mons Kallentoft, Leif GW Persson, Marie Hermanson and Anders de la Motte.
ALSO BY JO NESBO.
HEADHUNTERS.
The Son.
THE HARRY HOLE SERIES.
The Bat.
c.o.c.kroaches The Redbreast.
Nemesis The Devil"s Star.
The Redeemer The Snowman.
The Leopard.