Midnight Sun

Chapter 8

Bobby was one of the girls in Slottsparken. She had very long brown hair and dark eyes, and she smoked hash. That’s obviously an extremely superficial description of anyone, but those are the first things I think of. She didn’t say much, but she smoked a lot, which made her eyes soft. We were fairly similar. Her real name was Borgny, and she was from a wealthy family in the western suburbs. Well, she wasn’t quite as wealthy as she liked to make out; she just liked the idea of the rebellious hippy chick breaking away from social conservatism, financial security and right-wing politics for... well, what? To test some naive ideas about how to live life, expand her consciousness and break from old-fashioned convention. Such as the convention that when a man and a woman have a child together, that brings with it a certain responsibility for both parties. Like I said, we were fairly similar.

We were sitting in Slottsparken, listening to a guy play a dodgy version of ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’ on an untuned guitar when Bobby told me she was pregnant. And that she was pretty sure I was the father.

‘Cool, we’re going to be parents,’ I said, trying not to look as though someone had just tipped a bucket of ice-cold water over my head.

‘You just have to pay maintenance,’ she said.

‘Well, obviously I’ll be happy to do my bit. We’ll do this together.’

‘Together is right,’ she said. ‘But not together with you.’

‘Oh? So... together with who, then?’

‘Me and Ingvald,’ she said, nodding towards the guy with the guitar. ‘We’re together now, and he says he’d like to be a father. As long as you pay maintenance, of course.’

And that’s what happened. Okay, so Ingvald didn’t hang around for long. By the time Anna was born Bobby was with another bloke whose name started with ‘I’, I think it might have been Ivar. I was allowed to see Anna very occasionally, at irregular intervals, but there was never any discussion of me looking after her. Nor did I think that was what I wanted either, not then. Not because I didn’t care — I fell in love with her the moment I first set eyes on her. Her eyes radiated a sort of blue shimmer as she lay in her pram gurgling and looking up at me, and even if I didn’t really know her, she became the most valuable thing in my life overnight.

Maybe that was why. She was so small and fragile, but so precious that I didn’t want to look after her on my own. I couldn’t. I didn’t dare. Because I was bound to do something wrong, something irrevocable. I was sure I would do lasting damage to Anna one way or another. Not that I’m an irresponsible or careless person, I’ve just got really bad judgement. That’s why I was always prepared to follow the advice given by random strangers, and leave important decisions to other people. Even when I knew that they — in this case Bobby — were no better than me. Cowardly is probably the word I’m looking for. So I kept out of the way, sold hash, and gave Bobby half the money once a week, when I would look down into the magical blue shimmer of Anna’s smiling eyes, and maybe even get to hold her when we were having coffee if Bobby was between men.

I told Bobby that if she could stay away from Slottsparken and dope, I’d keep away from the cops, from the Fisherman, from trouble. Because she and Anna wouldn’t be able to manage if I ended up behind bars. Like I said, Bobby’s parents weren’t actually that rich, but were so middle class and conservative that they’d made it very clear that they wanted nothing to do with their hash-smoking, promiscuous hippy daughter, and that she and the child’s father would have to fend for themselves, possibly with the help of the state.

Finally the day came when Bobby said she couldn’t handle looking after the bloody kid any more. Anna had been crying, her nose bleeding, and she had been running a fever for four days in a row. When I looked down at the bed, the blue light in her eyes had been replaced by blue circles beneath them; she was pale and had strange blue bruises on her knees and elbows. I took her to the doctor’s, and three days later came the diagnosis. Acute leukaemia. A one-way ticket to death. The doctors gave her four months. Everyone kept saying that things like that just happened, lightning striking at random, mercilessly, pointlessly.

I flew into a rage, asked questions, made phone calls, checked, went to see specialists, and eventually found out that there was a treatment for leukaemia in Germany. It didn’t save everyone, and it cost a fortune, but it gave one thing: hope. Sensibly, the Norwegian state had other things to spend its money on than fragile hope, and Bobby’s parents said it was fate, and a matter for the Norwegian health service, they weren’t paying for some fantasy cure from Naziland. I did the sums. If I sold five times as much hash, I still wouldn’t make enough in time. Even so, I tried, I worked eighteen-hour shifts and pushed like mad for sales, heading down towards the cathedral when the Slottsparken fell silent at night. When I next went to the hospital they asked why no one had been there for the past three days.

‘Hasn’t Bobby been here?’

The nurse and doctor shook their heads, said they’d tried calling her, but that her phone seemed to have been cut off.

When I got to Bobby’s she was lying in bed and said she was ill, and that it was my fault she couldn’t afford to pay the phone bill. I went to the toilet and was about to drop a cigarette butt in the bin when I saw the bloody cotton-wool ball. Further down in the bin I found a syringe. Maybe I’d been half-expecting it to happen; I’d seen more fragile souls than Bobby cross that line.

So what did I do?

I did nothing.

I left Bobby there, tried to convince myself that Anna was better off with the nurses than with either of her parents, and I sold hash and saved up for that bastard miracle cure I forced myself to believe in because the alternative was unbearable, because my fear that the little girl with the blue light in her eyes would die was even stronger than my own fear of death. Because we take comfort where we can find it: in a German medical journal, in a syringe full of heroin, in a shiny new book promising eternal life as long as you subordinate yourself to whatever new saviour they’ve just come up with. So I sold hash and counted the kroner, and counted the days.

That was the situation when the Fisherman offered me a job.

Two days. The clouds were hanging low, but weren’t letting go of any rain. The earth turned, but I didn’t see the sun. The hours were, if possible, even more monotonous. I tried to sleep through them, but that turned out to be impossible without Valium.

I was going mad. More mad. Knut had been right. There’s nothing worse than not knowing when the bullet’s coming.

Towards the evening of the second day I’d had enough.

Mattis had said the wedding would carry on for three days.

I washed in the stream. I no longer noticed the midges, they only annoyed me now when they landed on my eyes, in my mouth or on a piece of bread. And my shoulder no longer hurt. It was funny, but when I woke up the day after the funeral the pain was gone. I’d cast my mind back, tried to remember if I’d done anything in particular, but I couldn’t think of anything.

After washing I rinsed my shirt, wrung it out and put it on. I hoped it would be passably dry by the time I reached the village. I wondered whether or not I should take the pistol. In the end I decided to leave it, and hid it behind the moss alongside the money belt. I looked at the rifle and box of ammunition. I thought about what Mattis had said. That the only reason no one ever stole anything in Kåsund was that there was nothing worth stealing. There wasn’t room for the rifle behind the plank, so I wrapped it in some roofing felt I found under the bunk and hid it beneath four big stones over by the stream.

Then I left.

Even if the wind was gusty, there was something heavy in the air that seemed to press at my temples. As if there was thunder on the way. Maybe the celebrations were already over. The drink finished. The available women taken. But as I got closer I heard the same drums I’d heard two days before. I walked past the church towards the jetty. Followed the sound.

I turned off the road and headed east, up onto a hill. Before me a stony grey desert of a headland stretched out towards a steel-blue sea. At the neck of the headland, immediately below me, lay a flat, well-trodden patch of ground, and that was where they were dancing. A large fire was burning alongside a five- or six-metre-high obelisk-like rock that stuck up from the ground. Around it lay two circles of smaller stones. There wasn’t any real symmetry to the stones, no recognisable pattern, but they still looked like the foundations of a building that had never been finished. Or rather a building site that had decayed, been demolished or torched. I walked down towards them.

‘Hello!’ yelled a tall, fair-haired youth in a Sámi jacket who was having a piss on the heather at the edge of the clearing. ‘Who are you?’

‘Ulf.’

‘The southerner! Better late than never — welcome!’ He shook his cock, scattering drops in all direction, stuffed it back in his trousers and held out his hand. ‘Kornelius, Mattis’s second cousin! Oh, yes.’

I was reluctant to take his hand.

‘So that’s the cod-liver-oil stone,’ I said. ‘Is it a ruined temple?’

‘Transteinen?’ Kornelius shook his head. ‘No, Beaive-Vuolab threw it there.’

‘Really? And who’s that then?’

‘A pretty strong Sámi. A demigod, maybe. No, quarter! A quarter-god.’

‘Hmm. And why do quarter-gods chuck rocks here?’

‘Why does anyone chuck heavy rocks? To prove that they can, of course!’ He laughed. ‘Why didn’t you come earlier, Ulf? The party’s almost over now.’

‘I got it wrong, I thought the wedding was in the church.’

‘What, with that superstitious lot?’ He pulled out a hip flask. ‘Mattis is better at marrying people than those thin-blooded Lutherans.’

‘Really? So which gods is it done in the name of, then?’ I peered towards the fires and a long table. A girl in a green dress had stopped dancing and was looking at me curiously. Even from a distance I could tell she had a fine figure.

‘Gods? No gods, he marries them in the name of the Norwegian state.’

‘Is he authorised to do that?’

‘Oh, yes. He’s one of three people in the district who are.’ Kornelius raised a clenched fist and unfolded his fingers one by one: ‘The priest, the deputy judge, and the ship’s captain.’

‘Wow. So Mattis is a ship’s captain as well?’

‘Mattis?’ Kornelius laughed and took a swig from the hip flask. ‘Does he look like a seagoing Sámi? Have you seen him walk? No, Eliassen senior’s the captain, and he can only marry people on board his boats, and no women have ever set foot on one. Oh, yes.’

‘So what do you mean, have I seen Mattis walk?’

‘Only nomadic Sámi are that bow-legged, not seagoing Sámi.’

‘Really?’

‘Fish.’ He passed me the hip flask. ‘They don’t eat fish inland on the plateau. So they don’t get enough iodine. They get soft bones.’ He stuck his knees out by way of illustration.

‘And you’re...’

‘Fake Sámi. My father was from Bergen, but don’t tell anyone. Especially not my mother.’

He laughed, and I couldn’t help joining in. The drink tasted even worse than the stuff I’d got from Mattis.

‘So what is he, then? A priest?’

‘Almost,’ Kornelius said. ‘He went off to Oslo to study theology. But then he lost his faith. So he switched to law. He worked as a deputy judge in Tromsø for three years. Oh, yes.’

‘No offence, Kornelius, but unless I’m badly mistaken, something like eighty per cent of what you’ve told me is either lies or fantasy.’

He adopted a hurt expression. ‘Hell, no. First Mattis lost his faith in God. Then he lost his faith in the legal system. And now the only thing he believes in is alcohol content, or so he says.’ Kornelius laughed loudly and slapped my back so hard that the drink almost came back up again. Which might actually have been a good thing.

‘What sort of hellish brew is that?’ I asked, handing him the hip flask.

‘Reikas,’ he said. ‘Fermented reindeer milk.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘But the youth of today only want fizzy drinks and cola. Snow-scooters and hotdogs. Proper spirits, sledges and reindeer meat, all that will soon be gone. We’re going to the dogs. Oh, yes.’ He took a consoling swig from the flask before screwing the lid on. ‘Ah, here comes Anita.’

I watched the girl in the green dress walk towards us, apparently rather aimlessly, and straightened up automatically.

‘Now, now, Ulf,’ Kornelius said in a low voice. ‘Let her do a reading for you, but nothing more.’

‘A reading?’

‘Second sight. She’s a real shaman. But you don’t want what she wants.’

‘And that is?’

‘You can see that from here.’

‘Hmm. Why not? Is she married? Engaged?’

‘No, but you don’t want what she’s got.’

‘Got?’

‘Has and spreads.’

I nodded slowly.

He put his hand on my shoulder.

‘But have fun. Kornelius isn’t one to gossip.’

He turned towards the girl. ‘Hi, Anita!’

‘Goodbye, Kornelius.’

He laughed and walked off. The girl stopped in front of me, smiling with her mouth closed. Sweaty and still out of breath from dancing. She had two angry red pimples on her forehead, pupils the size of pinpricks, and wild eyes that spoke for themselves. Dope, probably speed.

‘Hi,’ I said.

She didn’t reply, just inspected me from top to toe.

I shifted my weight.

‘Do you want me?’ she asked.

I shook my head.

‘Why not?’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘You look like a healthy specimen of a man. What’s wrong?’

‘I understand that you can tell things like that about people.’

She laughed. ‘Did Kornelius say that? Oh, yes, Anita can see things. And she saw that you were keen enough a few moments ago. What happened, did you get scared?’

‘It’s not you, it’s me, I’ve got a touch of syphilis.’

When she laughed, I could see why she smiled without showing her teeth. ‘I’ve got rubbers.’

‘More than a touch, actually. My cock’s fallen off.’

She came a step closer. Put her hand on my crotch. ‘It doesn’t feel like it. Come on, I live behind the church.’

I shook my head and took a firm grip of her wrist.

‘Fucking southerners,’ she hissed, and snatched her hand away from me. ‘What’s so wrong about a quick fuck? We’re all going to die soon, didn’t you know?’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard the rumours,’ I said, and looked round for a suitable escape route.

‘You don’t believe me,’ she said. ‘Look at me. Look at me, I said!’

I looked at her.

She smiled. ‘Oh, yes, Anita saw right. You’ve got death in your eyes. Don’t turn away! Anita can see you’re going to shoot the reflection. Yes, shoot the reflection.’

A small alarm had gone off inside my head. ‘What fucking southerners are you talking about?’

‘You, of course.’

‘Which other southerners?’

‘He didn’t say what his name was.’ She took my hand. ‘But now I’ve read you, now you can—’

I pulled free. ‘What did he look like?’

‘Wow, you really are scared.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Why’s it so important?’

‘Please, Anita.’

‘Okay, okay, take it easy. Thin man. Nazi fringe. Handsome. Had a long nail on his index finger.’

Shit. The Fisherman always finds what he’s looking for. You and I may not know how, but he knows. Always.

I swallowed. ‘When did you see him?’

‘Just before you arrived. He went up into the village, said he was going to talk to someone.’

‘What did he want?’

‘He was looking for some southerner called Jon. Is that you?’

I shook my head. ‘My name’s Ulf. What else did he say?’

‘Nothing. He gave me his phone number in case I heard anything, but it was an Oslo number. Why are you going on about it?’

‘I’m just waiting for someone to show up with my shotgun, but it probably isn’t him.’

So Johnny Moe was here. And I had left the pistol in the cabin. I’d gone somewhere I wasn’t safe, and I hadn’t taken the only thing that might make me a bit safer. Because I thought it might be tricky if I met a woman and had to get undressed. And now I had met a woman, and evidently didn’t want to get undressed after all. Is there a level below idiot? The funny thing was that I was more annoyed than frightened. I should have been more scared. He had come to shoot me. I was hiding here because I wanted to survive, wasn’t I? So I’d better get my fucking act together and do a bit of surviving!

‘You live behind the church, you said?’

She brightened up. ‘Yes, it’s not far.’

I looked up at the gravel track. He could come back any time. ‘Can we take a detour through the churchyard, so that no one sees us?’

‘Why don’t you want anyone to see us?’

‘Just thinking about... er, your reputation.’

‘My reputation?’ She snorted. ‘Everyone knows that Anita likes men.’

‘Okay, mine, then.’

She shrugged. ‘Okay, if you’re so bloody precious.’

The house had curtains.

And a pair of man’s shoes in the passage.

‘Whose...?’

‘My father’s,’ Anita said. ‘And you don’t have to whisper, he’s asleep.’

‘Isn’t that when people normally whisper?’

‘Still scared?’

I looked at the shoes. They were smaller than mine. ‘No.’

‘Good. Come on.’

We went into her bedroom. It was cramped, and the bed was only meant for one person. One thin person. She pulled her dress over her head, unbuttoned my trousers, then pulled them and my underpants down with one tug. Then she unhooked her bra and slipped her pants off. Her skin was pale, almost white, with red marks and scratches here and there. But no needle tracks. She was nice. It wasn’t that.

She sat down on the bed and looked up at me. ‘You might as well take your jacket off.’

While I was taking off my jacket, and hanging it and my shirt on the only chair in there, I heard snoring from the next room. Harsh, grating breaths in, spluttering breaths out, like a broken silencer. She opened the bedside cabinet.

‘No condoms left,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to be careful, because I don’t want a kid.’

‘I’m no good at being careful,’ I said quickly. ‘Never have been. Maybe we could just... er, play around a bit?’

‘Play around?’ She uttered the words as though they disgusted her. ‘Dad’s got condoms.’

She left the room naked and I heard the door to the next room open; the snoring stuttered a bit before carrying on as before. A few seconds later she was back with a worn brown wallet which she was searching through.

‘Here,’ she said, tossing a little square of plastic at me.

The plastic was frayed at the edges. I looked for an expiry date, but couldn’t find one.

‘I can’t do it with a condom,’ I said. ‘It just doesn’t work.’

‘Yes, it will,’ she said, grabbing hold of my terrified cock.

‘Sorry. So what do you do here in Kåsund, Anita?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Hmm. Maybe it needs a bit of... er, iodine?’

‘I said shut up.’

I looked down at the little hand which evidently believed it could work miracles. I wondered where Johnny could be. In such a small village it wouldn’t be difficult to find someone able to tell him that the recently arrived southerner was staying in the hunting cabin. He would look there and at the wedding party. Kornelius had promised to keep quiet. As long as I stayed where I was, I was safe.

‘There, see!’ Anita chirruped happily.

I looked down at the miracle, astonished. It had to be some sort of stress reaction — I’ve read that hanged men sometimes get erections. Without letting go or stopping, she picked up the condom packet with her left hand, tore it open with her teeth, sucked out the condom and formed a circle around it with her lips. Then she dived down, and when she lifted her head again I was equipped and ready for battle. She leaned back on the bed and spread her legs.

‘I just want to say that—’

‘Haven’t you finished talking yet, Ulf?’

‘I don’t like being thrown out immediately afterwards. It’s all to do with self-respect, if you—’

‘Just shut up and get going while you still can.’

‘You promise?’

She sighed. ‘Just fuck me.’

I crawled up onto the bed. She helped me into place. I closed my eyes and started to thrust, not too fast, not too slow. She groaned, cursed and swore, but in a way I found encouraging. In the absence of any other metronome, I fell into the same rhythm as the snoring in the next room. I could feel it building. I tried not to think about the state of the condom, or what a combination of Anita and me would look like.

Suddenly she stiffened and stopped making any noise at all.

I stopped thrusting. I thought she’d heard something, some irregularity in her father’s snoring, or someone approaching the house. I held my breath and listened. To my ears the jagged snoring sounded just the same as before.

Then the body beneath me suddenly went completely limp. I looked down at her anxiously. Her eyes were closed and she looked lifeless. Carefully I put my thumb and forefinger to her throat, feeling for a pulse. I couldn’t find it. Fuck, where was the pulse, was she...?

Then a low sound emerged from her mouth. First a dull growl, which got louder. And turned into something very familiar. Grating breaths in, breaths out like a broken silencer.

Yep, she was her father’s daughter.

I squeezed in between the slim female form and the wall, and felt the cold wallpaper behind my back and the bed frame against my hip. But I was safe. For the time being.

I closed my eyes. Two thoughts struck me. That the thought of Valium hadn’t struck me. And you’re going to shoot the reflection.

Then I drifted off into dreamland.