Karin Fossum - I Can See in the Dark

‘What should I worry about the rest of the world for? I didn’t ask to be born.’

All at once the mere idea of life seemed to do him an injustice, as if I’d reminded him of something unpleasant, something he wanted to forget. That life was a sentence, that he was serving it day by day as he crept towards death, and that his days were without light or warmth. I filled his glass for the third time. He was beginning to relax properly now, he leant back on the sofa, and for the first time, took in his surroundings.

‘This place has never known a woman’s touch,’ he pronounced.

‘You’re sharp, too,’ I replied. ‘No, women don’t ever come to visit me here. I’m a lone wolf. Just like you.’

His gaze, shining now, swept over the room and took everything in. All the telling details that bore witness to who I was.

‘Why have you got an Advent Star in your window?’ he asked, pointing. ‘It’s almost the middle of May.’

‘But I’ve pulled the plug out,’ I said in my own defence. ‘I pull it out on the first of January, and plug it in again on the first of December, and hey presto, it’s Christmas. I like doing things the easy way. Just like you. Help yourself to another drink,’ I coaxed, and nodded towards the bottle. ‘The drink’s all right, isn’t it? And you might as well fill your hip flask while you’re about it, so you’ll have something to keep you going when you wake up tomorrow.’

Arnfinn nodded, and drank deeply. I thought I was an excellent host, despite my lack of experience. I poured the vodka and let him talk about himself and his life.

‘Why don’t you switch the light on?’ he asked, after a long silence. ‘It’s so dark.’

I didn’t mention my excellent night vision. I switched on a light above the sofa, and the hours went quickly by, having a visitor was a totally novel experience. A stranger, admittedly, but we would gradually get to know each other, if he should decide to return, and I was fairly certain he would. Then he told me about all the black days, about his bad back, it was bad enough for him to claim Disability Allowance, about all the countries he’d been to, all the ports, as he put it, all the women who’d come and gone, and all of them had gone because, as Arnfinn pensively assured me, taking a pull at his glass, nothing good lasts. He drank himself into great glittering halls, of light and laughter and warmth. When, after four hours, he finally left and the vodka bottle was empty, I stood at the front door watching him go. He vacillated on the drive for a moment, shining like a torch, unsure, almost, if he really did want to go, perhaps I had another bottle, and maybe his journey home was a long one. I stood at the top of the steps and was aware of something new.

Arnfinn, I could say when I went to work. Oh yes, he’s an old friend of mine, he often pops in for a visit. I felt happy, standing there on the steps, I liked this new condition of having a friend. He was an alcoholic, it was true, but that was better than nothing.

‘Will you be all right getting home?’ I enquired.

He coughed contemptuously and began walking.

‘You’re talking to an old skipper,’ he said.

Then he moved off down the road and vanished.

A lone, burning soul.

It’s too light and too hot in summer. The days never end, I can’t stand all this germinating and sprouting and growing. It’s like an unbridled force, a cornucopia without meaning: worms that peer out during wet weather, flies and wasps, ladybirds and lice, moths and daddy-long-legs in the curtains, spiders in the corners, mice in the wall, I can hear them scratching. They swarm, creep or crawl, my thoughts get badly disrupted, and I slowly go mad.

I gradually realised that something was taking shape deep within me. An incomprehensible longing whose contours I was in the process of discerning. I wanted to be something. Become something, mean something, be on everyone’s lips like a bitter pill. It wasn’t enough to wander up and down Løkka’s corridors pinching Nelly Friis, or whispering nasty threats in Waldemar Rommen’s ear. It wasn’t enough. I was a nobody. I was totally insignificant, nothing to look at, nothing to the world at large, eminently forgettable, and this knowledge was insufferable. I wanted people to turn and watch me pass, remember me and speak of me with reverence and respect. This yearning grew big. It filled my heart and head. Cost what it might, I had to make a difference. In some way or other, I had to check nature’s headlong rush.

Like cutting branches off a tree.

Like pouring poison down a well.

It was as if I’d fallen in a river, I was going with the current, as fragments of images flitted past my mind’s eye. Like pennants in a summer breeze. Images of Arnfinn, his glass raised. Images of Oscar falling through the ice, images of Ebba with her crocheting, images of Miranda with her thin ankles. Images of Sister Anna, my angel, my little sugarplum.

If only I had a woman!

I went about observing life and its people, I pulled Nelly’s hair and pinched her behind the ears, and all the while I listened for signals, alertness was vital. I liked strolling past the slumbering houses close to where I lived, I liked going to the park by Lake Mester, preferably in the dark when no one could see me. But I could see. Eyes gleaming in the shrubbery behind the benches, foxes, cats and hares, quivering, darting, orange-coloured creatures. I also registered that the big black man from the Reception Centre frequently occupied a bench at night. He probably got out of a window, and then sat there on the bench glowing like a house on fire. I stood motionless in the bushes and stared at all that strength which no one wanted. There was something genuinely pathetic about him. I’m not a compassionate person, but that massive man touched something deep within me. He was so very big and so very unwanted.

It came to pass just as I’d imagined.

One day there was an impatient ring at the door.

The sound of the bell through the house was so rare that I jumped; but I’d been waiting, I’m no fool, some things are so obvious. I’d dangled a worm, and now the fish had bitten. The bell was a harbinger of something new and different, something resembling an occasion in my uneventful life: I was wanted for something. Arnfinn stood at the top of the steps, faltering and shaky as always. With one hand on the wall to steady himself, he looked at me with beseeching eyes. He’d had to swallow his pride, his need was too great, his dignity had been laid aside, he needed first aid.

‘You wouldn’t happen to have a drink, would you?’ he asked expectantly.

His hopeful enquiry hung in the air between us. I didn’t answer immediately; I liked the situation and I wanted to milk it a bit. So I stood for a while in silence and regarded the pathetic figure, the broken-down man in his windcheater and stout, brown shoes. With his florid face and all his forlorn despair. There was definitely a mutual understanding between us; I felt it clearly as I stood in the open doorway. Deep in his ravaged, drink-sodden brain, Arnfinn had registered that I wanted him for some reason, that he had something I needed. Or, to be more precise, that I had a plan. Even if he didn’t understand my motive, the reward was a few glasses of vodka, and vodka was the only thing that got him from one day to the next. I opened the door wide and led the way into the house, and he scuttled in after me with his rolling gait, found his place on the sofa, right up in the corner and sat there, hunched and clasping his hands in his lap, like some inscrutable riddle. He didn’t remove his windcheater or his shoes, but seated himself as he was. Shabby, unkempt and thirsty. His eyes turned to the cupboard and, just like the last time, it contained a bottle: I’d bought another in case he dropped in, and he’d realised this. But I didn’t hasten across the floor to fetch it. I wanted to wait a bit, I wanted to torment him, at least for a short while. I was like a small boy with a stick, and he was wriggling like a worm.