The Whisperer

Chapter 16

On the day that Ragna told Sejer about the man standing under the street light and her conversation with his colleague, who had dismissed her, he pondered long and hard when he got home in the evening. He also felt solidarity for his colleagues who received an endless torrent of phone calls day and night, an enormous amount of which were gibberish from lunatics or drunks, or pranks from children.

He pulled his chair over to the window and sat there in the half-light thinking. From the twelfth floor, he could look out over the town that sparkled and twinkled below him with the lights reflected in the river. Some important buildings were floodlit, like the theatre, the old fire station and the brewery, and the strings of lit streets reminded him of Christmas lights. He liked to see the city from above, as he had an overview and it gave him a sense of distance and control. The nights must have been so dark before electricity, he mused, pitch-black and overwhelming. Only the moon bathing the river in its cold light. Frank was asleep at his feet. He took a sip of whisky. He sometimes smoked a cigarette, just the one, in the evening; the tobacco was dry and strong and made him dizzy. He tried to imagine the fear that Ragna must have felt when she saw the man by the street light. Dressed in black, immobile, staring at her house. There were clear rules when it came to communication between people, and staring was not the done thing. Eye contact could easily switch from being open and inviting, flirtatious, an expression of interest, to being threatening, a serious precursor of aggression and violence. The man had stood there like a statue. That in itself was puzzling and unsettling, a form of aggression. If he had been pacing back and forth, just glancing up at the house every so often, then he might have been waiting for somebody there, by the lamp post. Someone who never showed up. He snapped out of his reverie and took Frank out for a walk, his steps light on the newly fallen snow. They met nobody, the streets were empty, and all the windows bright and warm. It’s inside the four walls of the home it happens, he thought, the abuse and betrayal, threats and slavery. It often went on for years, and no one knew anything about it. The same defence mechanisms in people that made them avoid anything uncomfortable, also kept them alive. It was a paradox that had always bothered him. He studied the windows one by one, as he passed, saw figures moving around inside. Perhaps some were sitting looking out, as he so often did himself. But here in the denseness of the dark, the bright windows looked inviting. It would not be long now before there would be stars and wreaths in nearly every window in anticipation of Christmas. He carried on at a steady pace. Other dogs had left their signatures by the roadside. Frank knew them all, they walked the same route between the blocks every night. They never went particularly far, as Frank was fat and found it hard to breathe. Sejer himself was lean and resilient, an ascetic on the verge of undernourished, some might say. He liked being that way, alert, sharp and clear. Hunger, not for food, but for everything else.

And he liked the dark. The biting snow on his cheeks, the cold that made his eyes water, the snow crunching under his boots — it was so clean and cold that everyone and everything left a mark. A sparrow weighed no more than a few grams, but still left a trail. On other continents far away, the sun was blasting the landscape, breaking down heaths and forests, drying out riverbeds, destroying harvests, forcing people into the shadows, where they sat and begged for mercy as they dreamt of a cool paradise and longed for soothing rain and glittering rivers. He tried to imagine living in that heat, working in it, struggling in it. He would never manage that.

He looked up at the stars that were sparkling clear in the cold. He knew the obvious constellations, like the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt, and usually looked for the Dog Star. He loved its brightness that outshone all the other stars, and reminded him of a boat. It was actually two stars very close together, he knew that, which was why it sparkled more than other single stars. But as soon as he had found it and confirmed it was still there, he looked down again. On the whole, he was a man who concerned himself with what happened on dry land. There was more than enough to keep him occupied there. And he could neither understand nor move the stars, and he liked to keep things moving.

Frank picked up a plastic chocolate milkshake cup from the side of the road — so that was tonight’s trophy that he would take home. Sejer allowed him this, it was a dog’s instinct to take home prey, after all. Once he was home he would heave his heavy rump up onto the sofa, which he usually managed on the third attempt, and then bury the quarry under a cushion. To hide it from other predators so it could be eaten some other time. There was something about this simple ritual that touched Sejer. Frank continued to be Frank, an ageing hunting dog, even though he got food in a dish twice a day, and the occasional sausage or biscuit. With misgivings. Twice on the short walk the dog did his business, turned his back on the result and kicked snow over it. He moved slowly on the way home, was out of breath. It’s all my fault, Sejer thought, as he tugged at the lead. You’ll have to stop dribbling in front of the fridge, Frank, you mustn’t look at me with those black eyes, I’m an old man.

When he had turned off the light that evening, and Frank had buried the plastic cup under the cushions and fallen asleep on the mat by his bed, Sejer lay awake thinking about Ragna. And the fact that she was alone in a cell, on a narrow bunk. With bars in front of the window and a toilet bucket in the corner. There was something very appealing about her that was slowly growing on him. This delicate woman with tiny cinnamon-coloured freckles on her hands and a rare mix of shyness and pride. She would often not look at him, and yet came across as determined. She was sad, but she was not ashamed. She was patient and grateful for all she got, she never complained or fretted. He was still not sure how much she accepted responsibility for what had happened, they were not at that point yet. There were moments when he felt that she was glad of the situation, not with what she had done, but with where she found herself now, that someone else had taken charge of the catastrophe. That she was being looked after. For her, something was over, the problem was solved. And would not disrupt her life again. He had not seen much despair, or defiance. He did not know if she understood the magnitude of her crime, or if she was at all concerned about forgiveness, if she thought about things like that — they had never discussed it.

If he was honest, he had never really understood what forgiveness was himself. What it entailed, what it might mean to those implicated. Could one forgive and then later regret it, like giving a present one couldn’t really afford? He suspected that the one who forgave had a motive for doing so, in much the same way that the guilty party had a motive for the crime. Was forgiveness something that the victim or those affected gave out of pure magnanimity, a generosity of almost divine proportions, or was there an egotistical need to be better than the offender? See this insurmountable divide between us? Well, I’ll just make it bigger. You’ll never reach my level, that is your punishment, you will never deserve it. You will have to carry my forgiveness for the rest of your life, and it will be as heavy a burden as the crime you have committed. It is binding, and will hold you forever. If you break this pact we have made, through my forgiveness, you will be eternally damned. He realised they were not particularly charitable thoughts. Mean, in fact. And as a result, he could not sleep. What did he know about forgiveness and supernatural goodness? Of course it existed. And Ragna Riegel would need it.