The Whisperer

Chapter 24

Out of the blue, Lars suggested that they should all go to the pub one evening.

‘Saturday, sometime after six? Just the four of us? I’ll book a table.’

Audun smiled politely and Ragna looked the other way.

‘It’s your birthday,’ Gunnhild said immediately.

Yes, it was, Lars admitted. His fortieth birthday, and the celebration he had had with his family, with tapas and red wine and speeches, was not what he had wanted.

‘I’ll pay for everyone,’ he said quickly. ‘Fish and chips.’

The shop closed at six o’clock on Saturdays, so they agreed to meet at Kongens Våpen at seven. The pub was on the south side of the river and very popular. It had a good reputation and was busy most nights. There was never any trouble, no fights or drunks, so they did not have a bouncer, and as far as anyone knew, the police had never been called. Lars had asked for a quiet corner, he assured them, glancing at Ragna, who smiled without looking at him. Considerate, always so considerate. She was just a burden. She could imagine the noise level in a pub on a Saturday night, and it was also the kind of place where they were likely to be showing a football match on the screen. She would not stand a chance. So she said no.

‘Yes,’ Lars said forcefully.

‘No,’ she whispered.

‘Yes,’ Gunnhild ordered.

Audun said nothing. He accepted the invitation with a small nod, but Ragna was distraught. She would not be audible in a pub where they played music, perhaps even sang Irish drinking songs. But if she said no again, all eyes would be on her. A no would make her colleagues even more worried about her, and she did not want that either. She could perhaps say yes and go with them for a short while, and then go home early. They would accept that.

On the bus, on the way there, she had several conversations with herself about what she might say that evening. The odd comment now and then when she could easily catch their attention. Everything was going very well for Rikard Josef. He had a lot to do at the hotel right now, in the run-up to Christmas. No, he wasn’t coming home, it was impossible for him at this time of year, given his senior position and responsibilities. Did he have a girlfriend? Were there any grandchildren on the way? Not that I know of.

And then she would look down at the table, abashed.

He’s only thirty. He doesn’t have time for that sort of thing, he has to do the accounts and wages in the evenings, and contact people high up in the business.

That was the kind of thing she would say, and her words would fall as lightly as that evening’s snow, with its big beautiful snowflakes. She also had a present for Lars. She had gone into Magasinet, the department store in town, and bought him a book, 1000 Proverbs and Sayings. On the title page, she had written: ‘YOU HAVE A VOICE. HERE ARE THE WORDS.’

She had been dreading it all day. Had huffed and puffed and sighed like a martyr facing an enormous challenge. She had tried to keep a smile on her face, but failed; she was worried about what might happen, was her head not a bit warm, was her brain about to melt again, would it escape, because then she would lose what little language she had. Would someone break into her house while she was out? Despite having locked and closed everything, she imagined her stalker would find a small opening somewhere, a crack or a gap where he could slip in like a poisonous gas. She had not heard anything from the police. Nor had she contacted them. Her report and the threat had no doubt been forgotten, they had other more important things to do. She would love to be able give them that — something spectacular that they had never seen before, but as she was not spectacular, she did not know how.

Gunnhild met her at the bus station on the other side of the bridge, and greeted her like a close friend, which she was not. But Ragna did soften. The enormous snowflakes landed on her shoulders and she did not brush them off, but left them to melt into her coat. She pretended that the crystals shone like glitter against the black material, and she definitely needed decoration. She loved the stillness of snow, it was compact, dense, and strangely cosy. She heard better and could be better heard herself.

‘I’ve never had fish and chips,’ she admitted to Gunnhild, speaking into her ear.

‘It’s good,’ Gunnhild said. ‘And the chef at Kongens Våpen is English, so he knows what he’s doing.’

Gunnhild hooked an arm through hers and pulled her along. Ragna had never been so close to Gunnhild. Had never felt her body in this way. They walked close together, hip to hip, through the streets, past all the low, wooden buildings which were warped and crooked, and not particularly well maintained, but all the more charming for it. Ragna knew that Irfan lived somewhere around here, it was cheaper than the other side of the river. And she presumed that his new shop was somewhere nearby, the one he had opened with his cousin, after the tax office had gone through his papers. Now there were two of them to keep the accounts. She was unfamiliar with the area, but now that she was walking through it, she understood his choice. This was where all the immigrants lived, and they would want to go to Irfan’s shop. She missed the flatbread that was so fresh there was condensation in the bag, and the jars of spicy sauces. Ragna could tell from the way Gunnhild was holding her arm that she felt responsible for her. On the one hand Ragna wanted to let herself be led like a child, but on the other, it annoyed her. I can walk, after all, she thought, and I can see, and I can hear. Then she regretted these thoughts and smiled happily at Gunnhild and brushed some snow off her sleeve. She thought of it as a caress, and could not remember the last time she had caressed anyone. Why had she not seized the opportunity to give William from London a sign of affection, a hand on his arm, when they stood so close on the pavement and she had the chance?

The entrance to the pub was on the corner of one of the town’s beautiful old streets, and they could hear the noise from some way off, the usual hum of voices that rose and fell and sometimes erupted in a roar. Ragna had a sudden urge to turn. Gunnhild felt her arm twitch with reluctance, and tightened her hold.

‘There might not be a football match tonight,’ she said optimistically.

‘There’s always a football match,’ Ragna whispered. ‘You can hear there’s a football match on. Don’t play the fool.’

‘They only last ninety minutes. I’ll sit beside you,’ Gunnhild promised. ‘And there’s no obligation to say anything anyway, it’s not as if you have to talk non-stop, there’s enough people with big mouths in the pub on a Saturday night. You can look and listen, think of it as an experience, a memory to take with you. I tell you, there’s a few of us who could do with keeping our mouths shut more.’

‘But you’ll never know my thoughts,’ Ragna whispered. They both laughed.

And they really were given a quiet corner.

At the back of the pub, with two high-backed benches that faced each other to create a booth, and a coarse wooden table with scars and notches, and carved letters that were still legible, an A and an R and a K, and even ‘I love you’. No attempt had been made to sand down the surface and give it a new varnish. Ragna sat on the inside, next to the wall. From there she could look out into the room, at the big screen, which was showing a match, just as she had predicted, red and yellow strips against the neon green of the grass with its white, chalked lines. Every time one of the teams scored, a jubilant roar from the other customers broke over them like a wave. They did not play any music when the match was on, and she managed better than she had feared, the high-backed benches acting as a kind of sound barrier. It was just the four of them, close together. Lars and Gunnhild, Audun and herself, their faces soft in the candlelight. The low light and warmth meant that she soon relaxed. She leaned forward, then back, rested, looked at the others one by one, followed the conversation, watched them — just as they watched her, making sure she was all right, because she needed them more than they needed her. They know me, she realised. They listen and read my lips, wait patiently while I shape the words, nod when they’ve understood, ask me to repeat it when they haven’t, like I’m someone important. And the fish was good, hot and white inside the crispy golden shell, with thick, home-made tartar sauce and fat chips with salt. She ate greedily until she was full, and her mouth was greasy. She washed it all down with cold beer. Not bad, she thought, we’ve never sat like this before.

Gunnhild had given Lars a printed T-shirt. She had ordered it online; it had a picture on the front of a man on a huge forklift truck, and underneath it said in bold letters: ‘LARS IS THE BEST’. Audun sat there clutching a white envelope, as though he did not want to give it away, but eventually he pushed it over the table to Lars. It was a gift voucher for Paul’s Tattoo, where he could now decorate himself however he wished. And they had plenty of suggestions.

Audun added quietly that he could also choose a piercing, if he preferred that.

‘A ring in your nose,’ Ragna whispered, teasing him. ‘You’re such a bull.’

Lars promised he would go to Paul’s Tattoo. He would think carefully about what kind of statement he wanted to make, as it would be for life. Gunnhild told them about a documentary she once saw, about people living with HIV in Los Angeles. One woman had a big tattoo across her chest: ‘I AM HIV POSITIVE’. That way, everyone knew without her having to stammer over the truth.

They raised their glasses.

Lars opened the book from Ragna last, and read out some of the sayings and quotes in a theatrical voice. ‘“It is hardest at night, said the blind man, because then it is so dark.”’

Ragna held the beer tankard with both hands. Took a sip every now and then, laughed when the others laughed, absorbed everything. She studied the other people in the pub, wondered what kind of houses they had and what was waiting for them at home. Yes, it was hardest at night. You could never be sure of anything in the dark, your hearing and smell took over, but most of all your fear and treacherous imagination. Regardless of whether you were blind or not.

‘“He who speaks ill of others will swallow his own tongue,”’ Lars quoted. ‘Do you speak ill, Ragna?’

He winked at her across the table.

‘But wait,’ he said. ‘You can say whatever you like, because no one will hear you anyway.’

She tried to think of this as cheeky and amusing, as she usually did when Lars teased her. He was the only one who dared state the obvious. But a bell was ringing somewhere, maybe in her head, or in one of the dark corners of the pub, which reminded her of something else.

For a while she said nothing, sat and looked at the walls, which were covered in old weapons. They looked real — they might even have been used in a war, or two. Maybe there were traces of blood on the woodwork and rusty metal. Had someone really used that sword, that knife, that axe? she wondered. Had heads rolled and limbs been severed? There was an old axe hanging on the wall not far from the booth where they were sitting, it was a terrifying weapon. The handle was longer than usual and the blade was double-edged. She thought it might be an execution axe. She could happily have kept one of those under her bed. But then, she would probably not be able to lift it. How much strength would it take to separate a head from its body, she wondered, with all the bones and the muscles in the neck? A lot, no doubt. In addition to will and determination.

She realised the others had forgotten her. She had been quiet for a few minutes, lost in her own thoughts. They had forgotten her because she had not said anything, had not looked at them with pleading eyes, look at me, listen to me! But as the noise level had increased, it would not be possible to hear her anyway. The match was over, someone had put the music back on, and people were starting to get drunk, so they were screaming and yelling. She had guessed it would end like this. She knew that she would not be able to sit there much longer, and she dreaded the moment when she had to raise a hand and say I think I’m going to go home now. Most of all, she dreaded the guilt in their eyes because they had forgotten her. It was not as if they owed her anything. It would perhaps have been easier to be in a wheelchair, she thought, then they would all squabble about who was going to push her. There was something honourable about pushing a wheelchair, and all you needed was a bit of muscle.

Gunnhild followed her out onto the street, where they huddled together in the snow and waited for a taxi.

‘Well, well,’ Gunnhild said after a while, ‘that’s life. It always gets noisy later on in the evening, you know what it’s like when people drink. Did you know that alcohol affects your hearing as well?’

She looked at Ragna. The flames from the lanterns by the door cast a flickering light over her face.

‘But you had a good time, didn’t you? A good memory to take home with you. And it’s always nice to get home when you’ve been out. Whether someone’s waiting there or not.’

The corner of her mouth twitched, and her eyes drifted as though she yearned for something far away, something unobtainable, something that was lost. It occurred to Ragna that she had always assumed that Gunnhild’s life was perfect, that she wanted for nothing and never felt different, or left out. That what waited for her at home was wonderful. But what did she actually know about Gunnhild? She only knew the side she saw in the shop, the effective and energetic Gunnhild. Now she was watching out for a car in the dark. And even though they had just called for a taxi and it was probably still some way off, she seemed impatient. The noise from inside was too distant to lure them, but the odd wave of laughter did ripple out to the pavement, particularly when the doors opened and someone came out for a smoke. Ragna squeezed Gunnhild’s arm, leaned in towards her.

‘You’re going back in, aren’t you?’ she whispered.

There was only the two of them, together in the dark and the snow. No one could hear them out there.

‘Guess I have to play the game,’ Gunnhild said. ‘I’ve got no excuse. No one asks why you’re going home early. If it was me, they’d have me up against the wall demanding an explanation.’

Gunnhild had had a few beers and was confiding in her more than usual.

A number of uncomfortable questions raced through Ragna’s mind. What if Gunnhild was actually deeply unhappy, what if her husband no longer loved her, what if she was suffering from a fatal or painful illness that was not visible, MS or arthritis or something else? I spend so much time trying to keep people at a distance that I don’t actually see them, she had to admit.

‘It’s your choice,’ she said. ‘If you do actually want to go home.’

‘There’s rules you have to follow,’ Gunnhild said. ‘It’s a game. You’ve got your moves, I’ve got mine. We’ve got another round to go in there.’

Then she said nothing more. She turned round and looked at the old building, as though fascinated all of a sudden, as though she had never seen it before. When the taxi pulled up, Gunnhild opened the door and helped Ragna in, making sure her coat did not get caught in the door. She looked at the driver and said, ‘Kirkelina 7, please,’ so Ragna did not have to tell him. Ragna watched Gunnhild out of the side window for a long time, saw the white hand waving. Followed her with her eyes when she turned and went in again. She had hoped that Irfan would come and collect her, but the driver was an older man with a red turban. Her head was singing with all the beer. My moves, Gunnhild had said. And your moves. The game between people, the assumptions. On the inside. On the outside. It was still snowing heavily. The snow was on her side. If anyone had walked the forty-eight steps up to her door while she was at the pub, she would see the tracks. She wanted to lean forward between the seats and ask the driver with the red turban, who was no doubt from India, why he had willingly left the sun and warmth and that exotic beauty, to come and live in this cold town. She could tell him that she wished she had a beautiful, wine-red turban like his because her hair was so awful. No doubt he had long black hair that reached halfway down his back and did not need to hide it at all. But she said nothing. Something small tickled her cheek. It was winter, surely she did not have to swat away a fly. She pulled off her glove and felt her cheek. Maybe it was a little beastie that had got under her skin, a sand flea or something. And the sand flea would penetrate deeper and deeper and infect her, leaving an open wound that would weep and ache. The driver spoke to her, but she could not hear. And if she answered him, he would not be able to hear her. It was best just to keep quiet. She imagined that he had said something beautiful about the snow.

Not so much as a cat had been there. She was the only one to leave tracks, and when she turned and looked at her own footsteps she felt visible again after the hours in the pub, when they had forgotten her because she was quiet. Her footsteps were clear in the light from the street lamp, the characteristic zigzag pattern of the soles. There was something recognisable about them, she thought. Whoever was following her would notice. Then he would see her tracks everywhere, find her anywhere. The snow was no longer on her side. It fell silently and steadily, but it would betray her.

It’s not a sand flea, she thought, when she was sitting in the armchair by the reading light, and her cheek was still tickling, like someone was stroking the right side of her face with a feather. It also felt warmer than the left side. She had drunk a beer and was a little tipsy, but whatever it was needed closer investigation. It certainly didn’t feel like a caress, more like a strange and unsettling irritation. She went to the bathroom and positioned herself squarely in front of the mirror, then leaned in closer, despite Walther Eriksson’s insistence that she should be wary of her own critical eye. She stared at herself now, her face close to the glass, and immediately saw something that had not been there before. It looked like a small white worm. And it was crawling out through her skin. She stepped back in horror, but then leaned forward again, she was not mistaken. Only she realised it was not crawling, or creeping, in fact, it was not alive at all, it was just a piece of thread. She managed to get hold of it with her index finger and thumb, but then lost it time and again, as it was slippery like spaghetti. But she persisted and eventually caught it between her nails and with wide eyes started to pull. The hole was no bigger than a pinhead to begin with, but as she pulled at the thread it got bigger, she could not stop what she was doing, she was completely absorbed by what she saw in the mirror, no longer aware of the room around her, it was just her and the white thread. The hole slowly grew, to the size of a corn kernel, then a grape, then a plum, the thread got longer and longer, there was no end to it. Of course she had to keep on pulling until the thread came out, if that was midnight or the next morning. After a while, the thread started to curl, she noticed, it reminded her of unravelled wool. Her mother had often knitted new things from old garments, and she let Ragna unravel them. Her face was unravelling like an old sweater. She could see the red muscle tissue underneath. She could also see some of the white sinews and a thin layer of yellow fat. She was disintegrating. The long white thread gathered in the sink like a big nest of pasta. If I carry on pulling the thread, Ragna thought, I’ll get down to the bones, and soon there will only be my skeleton left. What’s the point of saving it anyway? Even Rikard Josef has disappeared, is there anyone other than me who asks about him? Does he even exist?

She let her arms drop. There was no thread left. The hole was now so big that she could put her fist in it. She went and lay on the bed as though someone had laid out her body. She had not taken any sleeping pills, turned off the lights or opened the window. She stayed there until morning, staring at the ceiling. She noted every single crack in the old wood, and a considerable amount of fly shit that she had never bothered to wash off. She got up at half past six and then remembered it was Sunday. Lots of people would be happy about that, like Irfan or the Sois or Olaf. She personally thought that Sundays were dead days, to her they were like a dirty room with sharp lighting. Everything was slow, both outside and inside her body. There was not much traffic on Kirkelina, people were outdoors doing different things. She found her clothes in the bathroom, but avoided the mirror, did not dare to see if the hole was still there, if her bones were still shining through the red mass. I can’t look, it’s not true, she thought, and snuck out again. In the living room, she realised that the windows were actually rather dirty and the light in the room was grey. She had not noticed it before. She looked down to the road, which was empty. She went to the kitchen window, looked up to the church spire. It was still dark in the Sois’ house. She imagined them all sleeping together, curled up like puppies in a box. She still did not dare to touch her cheek, but hoped that the hole had healed in the course of the night. She pulled some faces to test it, reasoning that she would feel it if there was still an open wound. She felt nothing. She remembered it was advent, a time of expectation. She had not yet lit the purple candles from the shop, they were still in a drawer. She wondered who had moved into the flat in Landsberger Allee. People do not just disappear. She could not understand it.

She decided to go for a walk along Kirkelina. This was not something she normally did, but she had had the window closed all night and needed some air. She hoped that Olaf might be out with Dolly. When she got to the bottom of the steps, she was seized by uncertainty. How many steps would it be down to the road today? Could she walk without counting? Her whole system relied on her measuring the distance down to the mailbox, thus defining her own space and exactly how big it was. She was not able to break the pattern. She took a few hesitant steps. The damned counting in her mind started immediately, and after ten steps, she took four back. Then she walked forward for eight and back for five, then thirteen forward and three back. When she had completely lost count, she started to walk faster, it was only a few metres down to the road. She had outmanoeuvred her own system. Triumphant, she turned round. The footprints looked like a horde of people had been playing in her driveway.

She set off towards the church, with her hands deep in the pockets of her coat. She met no one. Every now and then a car drove past, but they were also going slower than normal, it was Sunday, after all, there was no need to rush. The cold air on her cheeks felt good, but was the right cheek not extra cold? Had the hole not healed as she had hoped, it felt like the chill was in her bones. She stamped her feet hard on the ground, to make her presence known. Of course it cut to the bone, she had no fat on her body, and the wind was coming from the right, blowing the bitter cold from the river that ran through town, all the way up to Kirkelina. A taxi came driving towards her, the light on the roof was on, perhaps it was Irfan. The shop would be closed today, and he might want to earn some Sunday fares. But it was not Irfan, she discovered. The driver looked at her directly as he passed, possibly in the hope she would wave him down. She carried on. Huddled over as she was freezing now, but she liked it, liked walking briskly up the road without meeting anyone. After some time, she lifted her head and looked around. To think that she had walked this far, time had stood still, no ticking either inside her or out.

Later, she sat at the kitchen table and drank some hot tea from a large cup with two handles. The window here was dirty as well, covered in a grey film. It would not be easy to wash them while it was cold. She could not remember them being like that the day before, but that’s often the way with things that happen slowly, she reflected, like the division of cells in the body, never the same as before. Was anything happening in there at all, she wondered, or were her organs in fact in the process of shutting down? One machine at a time, until the whole biochemical factory lay cold and deserted? She leaned closer to the window and spotted a mark that she could not work out at first, until she noticed a small feather quivering in the wind. A bird must have crashed into the window, perhaps it was lying dead in the snow below. She stood up, opened the window and looked down. But she could not see a dead bird. Either it had been eaten by a cat or it had just got a terrible fright and flown away. She closed the dirty window, went over to the computer and sat staring at the screen as it sprang to life.

On YouTube, she found ‘The Jumper’, but a thought struck her before she pressed play. The young man who jumped from the building, hit the asphalt, then got up and left the frame was remarkably familiar. She had seen him before, no, not just seen him, she felt that she knew him, or had known him once a long time ago, because there were some strings in her that resonated every time she looked him in the eye. It was of course a ridiculous thought, the video was not even Norwegian, and she did not know any young men, apart from Audun. And he certainly did not look anything like Audun. The video only lasted a minute. But those sixty seconds always seemed to stretch on for much longer. There he was, on the roof of the building, only a few steps from the edge. He was slim and dressed in dark clothes. A black jacket that sat neatly on his hips, but was not buttoned. He stood there for a long time without moving, preparing himself for the great fall, then he stepped out to the edge. Not a sound to be heard. No music, no traffic from the street below, no shouts or screams. That was perhaps why the images made such an impact, because of the silence; everything had stopped, everyone was holding their breath, just as she was holding her breath. Then he spread out his arms so he looked like a cross, or a figurehead. And in fact, he did not jump at all, he fell forwards into a swoop, as elegant as a swallow. His jacket swung open and fluttered around him so he looked like a flying squirrel. The noise of the body hitting the ground was the first sound on the video. He immediately started to bleed from his ears and mouth, and the person with the handheld camera stormed across the street to get a close-up of him, she could hear his footsteps and shallow breathing. Time started again. Ragna took a deep breath and waited. Any second now he would slowly move one hand and lift his head, muster his strength and manage to pull his body up until he was standing, then he would start to walk, staring straight at the camera, at her, Ragna Riegel, with that inscrutable expression. Only this time it did not happen. He stayed on the ground, and the pool of blood expanded and grew, as though the lifeless body was emptying itself of fluid. He did not move so much as a finger. The seconds ticked by and she waited, touched the screen with her finger, poked him. A minute passed, and another, had the computer frozen? She knocked it a couple of times to jolt it into action, but nothing happened. Four point seven million people had watched this video and now it was over. The screen went black. But still she waited, she knew that it automatically went back to the beginning, it would play again and again, on a loop, until she decided to watch something else. But the screen remained black. Even though the blue light was still flashing to show that the computer was on, she could not find ‘The Jumper’ again. It was just another trick, they had fooled her once more. She could not believe anything any more, everything was fixed, everything was a trick. Everything that happened outside the windows, everything that happened inside. She lifted her hand and studied it carefully, imagined the blood flowing through the tiny veins that coloured the tips of her fingers pink, imagined the cells that were constantly renewing themselves to make her fingers sensitive. Divide, for God’s sake, divide! she thought. She came abruptly to herself when someone knocked hard on the door.