The Consorts of Death

41

I did more than ring. After exchanging a few words with her, I arranged to drop by, ordered a taxi and went outside into the cold night air. I leaned backwards and stared up at the sky. High above me in the black heavenly vault some pale stars had taken up position for a few fleeting moments, as rare guests to Sunnfjord as the sun I had glimpsed the previous day.

In Hornnes I was forced to concede that my body was not in perfect equilibrium as I pushed on up the steep slope to her house. She had seen me from the window and was standing in the doorway waiting, but I had hardly said anything before, with a glare, she asked me: ‘Tell me, have you been drinking?’

I rolled my head and tried to find something funny to say. But inside it was empty. Empty and dark. Hans Haavik had turned off the light when he left.

I don’t think I won any gold medals that night. I remember quoting Emil Zatopek’s wise words: ‘If you want to win medals, run a hundred metres. If you want to learn about life, run the marathon.’

She replied: ‘If you want to run the marathon you’ll have to be in better shape than this, Varg.’ She had already given up.

The following day arrived with a throbbing head, farewells and departure. She was friendly enough, yet I sensed a sudden distance; or else she was stricken with the same collective feeling of guilt, the same depression that had driven both Hans and me into the dingiest mental back streets the day before.

She drove me to the hotel. After parking outside, she turned to me and said: ‘Are you going home?’

‘Yes. There’s nothing more for me to do here. Not for me. And no one’s paying for my stay now.’

For a second or two I entertained the thought: You could invite me to stay with you perhaps… but either she didn’t have the same thought herself, or she didn’t like it, for all she did was lean forward and kiss me on the cheek and say: ‘Maybe we’ll see each other another time then, Varg…’

I stole into her line of vision, still with my tail between my legs. ‘I hope so, Grethe…’

But it didn’t turn out like that.

In reception I asked after Jens Langeland, but he had gone back to Oslo, I was informed. I tried to ring him at his office, but an answering machine replied. It asked me to ring back during office hours from Monday to Friday. I called directory enquiries and was given his home number. No one answered there, either.

I packed the little luggage I had, settled my account at reception, got into my car and left. On one of the highest bends on Halbrendslia I stopped the car for a moment and sat looking across. From there I could see right up to the furthest end of Angedalen valley. I saw Forde lying in the morning mist between the high mountains. I saw the residential quarter in Hornnes, the huge dockyard beyond the tiny airstrip, the new industrial buildings and businesses. I saw the old white church, sighed and thought to myself: Everything is changing. Nothing stays the same as before. What’s the purpose of it all, of all the things we do? Then I pinched myself and said: ‘No, none of that, now you sound like bloody Hansie Haavik. Pull yourself together, man! There are still things to do…’

I rammed the car into gear and drove to Bergen without stopping anywhere apart from those places nature intended, by the ferries in Lavik and Knarvik.

Two images fought for a place in my head during the drive: Grethe Mellingen who so brazenly gave herself to me a day and a half ago, and Jan Egil who glared at me like a wounded animal as he was led out of the courtroom.