The Leopard

95
The Allies

Harry left the dance restaurant that was no longer a dance restaurant, drove down the hill to the Seamen’s School that was no longer a seamen’s school. Continued to the bunkers that had defended the country’s invaders. Beneath him were the fjord and the town, hidden by mist. Cars crept forward carefully with yellow cat’s eyes. A tram emerged from the mist like a ghost gnashing its teeth.

A car stopped in front of him, and Harry jumped into the front seat. Katie Melua oozed through the speakers with her honey-dripping agony, and Harry desperately searched for the ‘off ’ switch on the radio.

‘Jesus Christ, what do you look like!’ Oystein said, horrified. ‘The surgeon must have definitely failed the sewing course. But at least you’ll save a few kroner on the Halloween mask. Don’t laugh or your mug’ll tear again.’

‘I promise.’

‘By the way,’ Oystein said, ‘it’s my birthday today.’

‘Oh, fuck. Here’s a smoke, from me to you. Free.’

‘That’s exactly what I wanted.’

‘Mm. Any bigger presents you’d like?’

‘Like what?’

‘World peace.’

‘The day you wake up to world peace, you don’t wake up, Harry. Because they’ve dropped the big one.’

‘OK. No private wishes?’

‘Not a lot. New conscience maybe.’

‘New conscience?’

‘The old one’s not so good. Smart suit you’ve got. Thought you had only the one.’

‘It’s Dad’s.’

‘Jesus, you must have shrunk.’

‘Yes,’ Harry said, straightening his tie. ‘I have shrunk.’

‘How’s Ekeberg restaurant?’

Harry closed his eyes. ‘Fine.’

‘Do you remember the leaky shack we sneaked into that time. How old were we? Sixteen?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘Didn’t you dance with the Killer Queen there once?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Frightening to think that the MILF of your youth has ended up in an old people’s home.’

‘MILF?’

Oystein sighed. ‘Look it up.’

‘Mm. Oystein?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did you and I become pals?’

‘Because we grew up together, I suppose.’

‘Is that all? A demographic coincidence? No spiritual fellowship?’

‘Not that I’ve noticed. As far as I know, we’ve only ever had one thing in common.’

What’s that?’

‘No one else wanted to be pals with us.’

They wound their way through the next bends in silence.

‘Apart from Tresko,’ Harry said.

Oystein snorted. ‘Who stank so much of toe-fart no one else could bear sitting next to him.’

‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘We were good at that.’

‘We nailed that one,’ Oystein said. ‘But, Christ, how he stank.’

They laughed together. Gentle, light-hearted. Sad.

Oystein had parked the car on the brown grass with the doors open. Harry clambered up onto the top of the bunker and sat on the edge with his legs dangling. From the speakers inside the car doors Springsteen sang about blood brothers one stormy night and the vow that had to be kept.

Oystein passed Harry the bottle of Jim Beam. A lone siren from the town rose and fell until it lost power and died. The poison stung Harry’s throat and stomach, and he threw up. The second swig went better. The third was fine.

Max Weinberg sounded as if he was trying to destroy the drumhead.

‘It often strikes me how I ought to wish I had more regrets,’ Oystein said. ‘But I don’t give a shite. I think I just accepted from my first waking second that I was a bloody slob. What about you?’

Harry ruminated. ‘I have loads of regrets. But perhaps that’s because I carry around such high notions of myself. In fact, I imagine I could have chosen differently.’

‘But you bloody couldn’t.’

‘Not at that time. But next time, Oystein. Next time.’

‘Has it ever happened, Harry? Ever in the fucking history of mankind?’

‘Just because nothing has happened doesn’t mean that it can’t happen. I don’t know that this bottle is going to fall if I drop it. Fuck, which philosopher was it again? Hobbes? Hume? Heidegger? One of the headcases beginning with H.’

‘Answer me.’

Harry shrugged. ‘I think it’s possible to learn. The problem is that we learn so damned slowly, so that by the time you’ve realised, it’s too late. For example, someone you love might ask you for a favour, an act of love. Like helping him to die. Which you say no to because you haven’t learned, you haven’t had the insight. When you do finally see the light, it’s too late.’ Harry took another swig. ‘So instead you perform the act of love for someone else. Perhaps for someone you hate, even.’

Oystein accepted the bottle. ‘Got no idea what you’re chuntering on about, but it sounds fucked up.’

‘Not necessarily. It’s never too late for good actions, is it.’

‘It’s always too late, don’t you mean?’

‘No! I always thought we hate too much for it to be possible for us to obey other impulses. But my father had a different opinion. He said hatred and love are the same currency. Everything starts with love, hatred is the reverse side of the coin.’

‘Amen.’

‘But that must mean you can go the other way, from hatred to love. Hatred must be a good starting point for learning, for changing, for doing things differently next time.’

‘Now you’re so optimistic I’m considering puking, Harry.’

The organ came in the refrain, a whine, cutting through like a circular saw.

Oystein leaned his head to the side while flicking ash. And Harry was almost moved to tears. Simply because he saw the years that had become their lives, that had become them, in the way his friend flicked ash as he had always done, leaning to the side as if the cigarette were too heavy, his head angled as if he liked the world better from a slanted perspective, the ash on the floor of the smokers’ shed at school, down an empty beer bottle at a party they had gatecrashed, on the cold, rough concrete of a bunker.

‘Anyway, you’re beginning to get old, Harry.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘When men start quoting their fathers, they’re old. The race has been run.’

And then Harry found it. The answer to her question about what he most wanted right now. He wanted an armoured heart.