Anne Holt - 1222

‘I must say,’ said Magnus Streng, mopping up sauce with a piece of coarse bread, ‘that the kitchen here really does maintain an excellent standard. I mean, this fish must have been frozen, but even so. Delicious! Do you realize that while all these terrible things were going on, all this business with the carriage and so on, our friend the chef and his faithful companions were in the kitchen baking bread. Baking bread! That’s what I call a dedicated professional!’

He laughed delightedly and popped the last piece of bread in his mouth before emptying his glass of red wine in one draught.

The temperature had returned to a reasonable level. It was probably no more than fifteen degrees, but compared with the level during the hours after the carriage fell, this felt positively tropical. For the first time I had capitulated when it came to the stairs leading down to the dining room. Geir had insisted. Johan had helped him to negotiate my chair down the three steps before I managed to gather my strength for a real protest. Perhaps I was too tired. Perhaps I really wanted to do it. To sit at a table. To eat in a normal way, along with other people. To eat good food in the company of other people.

And I had actually called home.

I didn’t say much, but I did call.

Nefis was pleased.

Her friends can’t understand how she puts up with me.

I meet them from time to time, of course. Nefis gives parties. She invites people to dinner. She goes so far over the top when it comes to celebrating Christmas that you can easily forget she’s a Muslim. Last Christmas Eve there were so many of us around the extravagantly laid table that it looked like a scene from Fanny and Alexander. And I can live with that. I hardly ever say anything, and Nefis’s friends stopped talking to me long ago, apart from a few absolutely necessary and as a rule completely meaningless phrases. But I am there. I sit there at the far end of the table, eating and listening and looking at Nefis, at how happy she is. I always go to bed early. As I fall asleep to the murmur of voices from the dining room, I know they can’t understand what she sees in me.

I think I know; I never have any doubts.

From the moment I met her at a pavement café in Verona, when I was trying to escape from a sorrow that I thought would cost me my life, I have been sure about Nefis and me. When I was shot in the back a few years later and lost my mobility, and no longer had the strength to do anything other than to push away those friends I still had, I held on to Nefis. She was the one I wanted there, by my sick bed. She was the only one who was allowed to come when I tried in vain to regain some movement in Sunnaas Rehabilitation Hospital, and she was the one I wanted to come home to.

In late winter four years ago she woke me in the middle of the night. I had been allowed home from hospital for the first time, two months after the accident. We had had such a lovely evening. Now she was weeping quietly, overcome with guilt. She was pregnant. I had said no to children, over and over again, ever since the question had come up on the very first night we were together, and I explained that I didn’t want to burden any child with a mother like me. Nobody should have a mother like me, and since then there had never been an ounce of doubt: we were not going to have children.

But now we were.

I smiled in the darkness that night. I think I said thank you. It was impossible to sleep. I have never been so happy.

I never have any doubts about Nefis and Ida and me. In times like these, perhaps that’s enough.

I was missing them both.

This feeling of longing is something I have never known. Except when I was a child, and I yearned for so much that I never really knew what it was. This longing was something quite different, a warm, lovely pull in my stomach that almost made me smile.

‘You look as if you’re about to fall asleep with food in your mouth,’ said Berit.

‘That’s all right,’ I said.

‘Coffee,’ said Geir, placing a cup in front of me. I hadn’t even noticed that he’d left the table. ‘Drink. It’s red hot.’

I curled my hands around the cup. The heat alone made me feel good. I blew gently and drank.

Roar Hanson had been glancing surreptitiously in my direction all through the meal. He was sitting with his colleagues from the church commission a couple of tables away from us, in the main dining room. Every time I looked over, he glanced down. In my mind I cursed Magnus Streng who had been so determined to bring up my police background when he treated me that first time. If he hadn’t done that I would have been spared it all. The intrusiveness. The worry. And the annoying curiosity about what it was that Roar Hanson actually wanted to tell me. I had no doubt that he was pondering whether to confide in me about something.

Veronica and Adrian had become inseparable. They had tried in vain to get a table to themselves, but every chair was needed, which meant they had to share with others, so they had taken their food up to reception and disappeared. I hadn’t exchanged two words with the boy since the carriage fell. He was obviously embarrassed, and I had been too tired to try to distract him.

Many people had tried to get a seat at Kari Thue’s table. Despite the fact that it had filled up as soon as she sat down, several others had pulled their chairs over and were sitting with their plates on their knees. I could only guess what they were talking about. They were speaking quietly, consciously avoiding looking in our direction. Berit shrugged her shoulders and put down her knife and fork.

‘She’s hardly likely to try again.’

‘Don’t count on it,’ I said. ‘Even if it’s no longer possible for her to seek refuge in one of the apartments, she could still demand that some of us are locked in.’

‘An intelligent person, that Kari Thue. Very intelligent.’ Magnus Streng refilled his glass, almost to the brim. ‘But not very sensible,’ he added, raising his glass in a toast. ‘A very dangerous combination, in my considered opinion. I’ve seen her film, Deliver Us From Evil. Fascinating. What about you, Hanne? Have you seen it?’

‘No.’

‘It’s good, unfortunately. Extremely politically correct, apparently. Not exactly Michael Moore, if I can put it that way.’ He beamed as dessert was placed in front of him. ‘The problem is that the film is basically unethical, in terms of both methodology and content.’

I wasn’t up to this.

‘Of course you’re not up to this,’ said Magnus Streng, waving over one of the waitresses. ‘I don’t suppose it would be possible to have a little more of this fantastic strawberry sauce?’

He patted his stomach and picked up his spoon again.

‘You know… People like me don’t frighten other people. Not really. As long as I can remember I have been met with… mainly curiosity. Silence also, of course; as a child I sometimes found it quite difficult to deal with the silence that always came down over me like a cheese-dish cover whenever I moved outside my own little circle. Sometimes I felt like a piece of Port Salut. Not that I smelled like a…’ He smiled wryly and went on: ‘Silent curiosity! That’s what people usually feel when they catch sight of someone like me.’

The serviette he had tucked inside his shirt collar was slipping. He tucked it back in and shook his head as he looked at me.

‘And disgust. Sometimes disgust.’

I probably ought to have protested.

‘But not fear,’ he added quickly. ‘Not hostility, and never fear. Other than the obvious fear of having children like us. And do you know why?’

Nobody felt the urge to guess.

‘There aren’t enough of us to make anyone nervous,’ he said slowly, stressing every single word. ‘Persons of restricted growth simply do not constitute a threat. Insofar as we still exist. I mean, there are methods of eliminating us before the political majority in this country regards us as being capable of sustaining life…’