The Son

16

Agnete Iversen was forty-nine years old, but if you judged her by her smooth skin, bright eyes and slim figure, she looked thirty-five. Most people, however, took her to be older than she was due to her greying hair, the conservative, classic and timeless way she dressed and her educated speech which bordered on the dated. And, of course, the life the Iversen family lived high up on Holmenkollasen. They seemed to belong to a different, an older generation, with Agnete as the stay-at-home wife with two domestics who helped her manage the house and garden as well as service every need of Agnete herself, her husband Iver and their son Iver Junior.

Even compared to the other imposing houses in the neighbourhood, the Iversen home was impressive. Nevertheless, the domestic tasks were still suitably manageable so that the help (or ‘the staff’ as Iver Junior liked to refer to them with a hint of sarcasm since he had finished his final school exams and developed a new and more social democratic frame of reference) didn’t start work until twelve noon. This meant that Agnete Iversen could be the first person to rise, go for a little early-morning walk in the forest which bordered their property and pick a bouquet of ox-eye daisies before making breakfast for her two men. She sat with her teacup as she watched them consume the healthy and nutritious meal she had prepared for them as the start to a long and demanding day at the office. When they had finished eating and Iver Junior had thanked her for the meal with a handshake as had been the tradition in the Iversen household for several generations, she wiped the table and dried her hands on a white apron she would shortly drop into the laundry basket. Then she followed them out onto the front steps, gave them each a peck on the cheek and watched them get into the elderly, well-maintained Mercedes in the double garage and drive out into the bright sunshine. Iver Junior spent his school holidays at the family’s property company in the hope that it would teach him the meaning of hard work, that nothing is for free, and to appreciate that controlling a family fortune entails as many obligations as privileges.

The gravel on the drive crunched as father and son drove up to the road while she waved to them from the steps. And if anyone had told her that the whole scene looked like a 1950s commercial, she would have laughed, agreed with them and then given the matter very little thought. Because Agnete Iversen lived the life she wanted. She spent her days taking care of the two men she loved so they in turn could manage assets in the best interests of the family and society — what could possibly be more rewarding?

From the radio in the kitchen she could just about make out the newsreader’s voice say something about a spike in the number of fatal drugs overdoses in Oslo, a rise in prostitution and an escaped prisoner who had been at large for the last two days. There was so much unpleasantness in the world down below her. So many things which didn’t work, which lacked the balance and the order one should always strive for. And while she stood there contemplating the perfect harmony of her own life — her family, her household, this day — she became aware that the side gate in the neatly trimmed, two-metre-tall hedge, which was used mostly by the domestic staff, had opened.

She raised her hand to shield her eyes from the sun.

The boy walking down the narrow flagstone path looked like he might be the same age as Iver Junior and her initial thought was that he must be a friend of his. She smoothed her apron. But as he came closer, she realised that he was probably some years older than her son and wearing clothes that neither Iver Junior nor any of his friends would ever wear: an unfashionable, brown pinstriped suit and a pair of blue trainers. He had a red sports bag slung over his shoulder and Agnete Iversen wondered if he was from the Jehovah’s Witnesses before she remembered that they always came in pairs. Nor did he look like a door-to-door salesman. He had reached the foot of the steps.

‘How can I help you?’ she said obligingly.

‘Is this where the Iversen family lives?’

‘It is. But if you want to talk to Iver Junior or my husband then you’ve just missed them.’ She pointed across the garden in the direction of the road.

The boy nodded, stuck his left hand into the sports bag and pulled something out. He aimed it at her while he took a small step to the left. Agnete had never experienced anything like it, not in real life. But there was nothing wrong with her eyesight, never had been, all the family had perfect sight. So she didn’t doubt her eyes for one moment, just gasped for air and automatically retreated one step to the open door behind her.

It was a handgun.

She continued her retreat while she looked at the boy, but she couldn’t catch his eye behind the weapon.

There was a bang and she felt as if someone had punched her, shoved her hard in the chest and she continued to move, stumbling backwards through the door, numb and with no control of her limbs and yet she stayed on her feet through the hallway; she flung out her arms in an attempt to regain her balance and felt her hand strike one of the pictures on the wall. She didn’t fall until she crashed through the doorway to the kitchen and barely noticed that she banged her head against the kitchen counter and took with her a glass vase which was standing there. But when she lay on the floor with her head pressed up against the bottom drawer and her neck bowed so that she was looking down at herself, she saw the flowers. The ox-eye daisies lying amid the broken glass. And something that looked like a red rose growing on her white apron. She looked towards the front door. Saw the silhouette of the boy’s head outside, saw him turn towards the maples to the left of the flagstone path. Then he bent down and was gone. And she prayed to God that he was.

She tried to get up, but she couldn’t move; it was as if her body had been disconnected from her brain. She closed her eyes and felt the pain, a kind of pain she hadn’t felt before. It flooded all of her body as if she was about to be torn in half, but at the same time it was numb, almost distant. The news had ended; they played classical music again. Schubert. ‘Abends unter der Linde’.

She heard the sound of soft footsteps.

Trainers on the stone floor.

She opened her eyes.

The boy was coming towards her, but his gaze was focused on something pinched between his fingers. A cartridge shell; she had seen them when the family went hunting in the autumn at their cabin in Hardangervidda. He dropped it into the red bag, took out a pair of yellow washing-up gloves and a facecloth. He sat down on his haunches, put on the gloves and wiped something off the floor. Blood. Her blood. Then he rubbed the soles of his shoes with the cloth. Agnete realised that he was removing his footprints and cleaning his trainers. Like a professional killer would have done. Someone who didn’t want to leave behind any evidence. Or any witnesses. She should feel afraid. But she didn’t, she felt nothing — or she was capable only of observing, registering, reasoning.

He stepped over her and went back to the hallway, to the bathroom and bedrooms. He left the door open. Agnete managed to turn her head. The boy had opened her handbag which she had left on the bed — she was planning on going into town to buy a skirt from Ferner Jacobsen. He opened her purse, took out her money and discarded everything else. He went over to the chest of drawers, pulled out first the top drawer and then the second where she knew he would find her jewellery box. The beautiful and priceless pearl earrings she had inherited from her grandmother. Well, strictly speaking they weren’t priceless; her husband had had them valued at 280,000 kroner.

She heard the jewellery rattle into the sports bag.

He disappeared into the family bathroom. He emerged again holding their toothbrushes, hers, Iver’s and Iver Junior’s. He must be either terribly poor or terribly disturbed, or both. He came over to her and bent down. He put his hand on her shoulder.

‘Does it hurt?’

She managed to shake her head. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

He moved his hand and she felt the rubber glove on her neck. His thumb and index finger pressed against her artery. Was he about to strangle her? No, he didn’t press very hard.

‘Your heart will stop beating shortly,’ he said.

Then he got up and walked back to the front door. He wiped down the door handle with the facecloth. Closed the door behind him. Next she heard the garden gate close. Then Agnete Iversen felt it coming. The chill. It started in her feet and her hands. It spread to her head, the top of her scalp. Ate its way towards her heart from all sides. And darkness followed.

Sara looked at the man who had got on the metro at Holmenkollen Station. He sat down in the other carriage, the one she had just moved from when three youths with back-to-front baseball caps had got on at Voksenlia. During the summer holidays there were few people on the trains immediately following the morning rush hour so she had been the only passenger. And now they were starting to harass him, too. She heard the smallest of them — who was clearly the leader — call the man a loser, laugh at his trainers, tell him to get out of their carriage, saw him spit on the floor in front of him. Stupid gangsta-wannabes. Now one of them, a handsome blond lad, probably a neglected posh boy, pulled out a flick knife. Dear God, were they really going to. .? He jerked his hand in front of the man. Sara almost screamed. Howling laughter erupted in the other carriage. He had plunged the knife into the seat between the man’s knees. The leader said something, gave the man five seconds to get out. The man rose. For a moment it looked as if he was thinking about fighting back. Yes, it actually did. But then he pulled the red sports bag closer to his body and moved to her carriage.

‘Fucking coward!’ they shouted out after him in their MTV Norwegian. Then they roared with laughter.

There was just her and him and the three youths on the train. In the door which connected the two carriages the man stopped and balanced for a few seconds and their eyes met. And though she couldn’t exactly see the fear in his eyes, she knew it was there. The fear of the weak and the degenerate who always defer, slink away and yield territory to anyone who bares their teeth and threatens physical violence. Sara despised him. She despised his weakness. And the well-intentioned goodness he undoubtedly surrounded himself with. In some way she wished they had beaten him up. Taught him to hate a little. And she hoped that he saw the contempt in her eyes. And that he would squirm, wriggle on the hook.

But instead he smiled to her, muttered a modest ‘hello’, sat down two rows away and looked dreamily out of the window as if nothing had happened. Good God, what kind of people have we become? A bunch of pathetic old women who don’t even have the decency to be ashamed of ourselves. She was sorely tempted to spit on the floor herself.