Punishment aka What Is Mine

FIFTY-FOUR

Aksel Seier stood in front of the old, flecked mirror in the living room. He ran his hand through his hair. It smelled of oranges. His bangs were gone and the hair at the base of his neck was soft and bristly when he rubbed it the wrong way. Mrs. Davis thought that for once he should look like he came from a civilized part of the world. After all, he was embarking on a long journey to a country where people might think Americans were barbarians, for all she knew. They often did, the Europeans. She had read that in the National Enquirer. He had to show them he was a well-to-do man. His shaggy gray locks were fine here in Harwich Port, but now he was going to another world. She had cut him badly on the ear, but otherwise his hair looked even enough. Short all over. The orange pomade had been left behind by one of her six sons-in-law. It was supposed to be good for your scalp. Aksel didn’t like the smell of citrus. He wasn’t leaving for another day and decided to wash it out before he took the bus to Logan International Airport in Boston. Matt Delaware had offered to drive him to the bus stop in Barnstable. And so he should; the boy had gotten both his pickup and his boat for a good price.

The property on Ocean Avenue had, on the other hand, been sold for 1.2 million dollars.

As it stood.

It had only taken him an hour to figure out what he wanted to take with him. The glass soldiers that he’d taken four winters to make would go to Mrs. Davis. The risk that they would break during the trip across the ocean was considerable. She was moved to tears and promised that none of her grandchildren would be allowed to play with them. She would love the cat like her own, she exclaimed in a loud voice. Matt bowed and scraped the ground with his foot when Aksel offered him the chess table and the large tapestry over the sofa on the condition that he send the galleon figurehead to Aksel as soon as he had an address in Norway.

The figurehead looked like Eva. There wasn’t really much more that was worth bothering about.

Aksel didn’t like his new hairstyle. It made him look older. His face was more visible. The wrinkles, the pores, and the bad teeth that he should have done something about long ago, they somehow seemed more obvious when his bangs had gone and his face was naked and unprotected. He tried to hide behind a pair of old glasses with brown frames. But the lenses were not the right strength anymore and made him feel dizzy.

He had been to the bank. The money for the house came to about ten million kroner. Cheryl, who had grown up in Harwich Port and started to work at the bank a couple of months ago, had given him a big smile and whispered, “You lucky son of a gun” before explaining to him that the buyer would pay the outstanding amount in installments over the next six weeks. Aksel would have to contact a bank in Norway, open an account, and then everything should be fine and the authorities couldn’t make a fuss. It’ll be just fine, she assured him, and laughed again.

Ten million kroner.

To Aksel, the figure was astronomical. He tried to ground himself by remembering that it was ages since he knew what a krone was actually worth, and Norway was an expensive country, after all. At least that was what he had understood from the odd article he came across about his homeland. But over a million dollars was over a million dollars wherever you were in the world. He could even get a place in Beacon Hill in Boston for that amount. And Oslo couldn’t be more expensive than Beacon Hill.

Mrs. Davis had gone to Hyannis with him to buy clothes. There was no way around it. Aksel Seier didn’t quite trust her taste-the plaid pants from Kmart were particularly awful. Mrs. Davis said that plaid pants and pastels made him look rich, and he was, so that was that. When he mumbled something about the Cape Cod Mall, she rolled her eyes and claimed that the shops there fleeced you before you’d even set foot in the door. What you couldn’t buy in Kmart wasn’t worth buying. So now he had a suitcase full of new clothes he didn’t like. Mrs. Davis had confiscated his old flannel shirts and jeans; she was going to wash them before giving them to the Salvation Army.

He must remember to call Patrick.

Aksel took a step back from the mirror. The way the light fell, slanting from the window, he found it difficult to recognize himself in the flecked mirror. It wasn’t just his hair that was different. He tried to straighten his back, but something in his neck and shoulders stopped him. He had looked at the ground for too many years. Aksel’s back was bent from thousands of days toiling over heavy work, turning away from other people, and long evenings crouched over fine handiwork and his own thoughts.

He lifted his head again. There was a pain between his shoulder blades. He looked thinner now. He forced himself to stand like that. Then he stroked his hand over the brown jacket and wondered whether he should put a tie on before he left. Ties were respectable. Mrs. Davis was certainly right there.

If he had enough money when he’d done everything he needed to do, he would pay for Patrick to come over. Even though his friend earned good money in the summer season, he spent most of his earnings on maintaining the carousel and living through the long winter months, when he had no real income. Patrick had never been back to Ireland. He could come to Oslo for a week or two and then stop over in Dublin on the way back, if he wanted to.

Aksel suddenly realized that he was frightened. There was still a lot to do before he left. He had to get a move on.

He’d never been on a plane, but it wasn’t that that frightened him.

Maybe Eva didn’t want him to come. She hadn’t actually asked him to. Aksel Seier pulled off his new jacket and started to pack the glass soldiers in the tissue paper that Mrs. Davis had bought.

He cut his finger on a small blue splinter. It was the remains of the general that Johanne Vik had broken. Aksel sucked on his finger. Maybe the young lady had lost interest in him when he just disappeared.

He hadn’t been so frightened since 1993, when the nightmares about the wet-eyed policeman with the keys had finally stopped plaguing him.