Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘It was supposed to look as though I’d drowned,’ she said. ‘I’m a good swimmer. I was on the university swimming team in Moscow. The plan was to make a lot of noise so that we had witnesses to the fact that I was in difficulties, and then disappear. I was going to swim for a long way underwater — I’m good at that — and then continue on out to the point on the eastern side, where there’s no road and it’s completely deserted. I had a bag with clothes and shoes hidden behind one of the rocks there, and then I was going to take a bus to Bilbao where I’d booked a room under a false name and stay there a week. Mamma was going to report me missing, so that it would be in the newspapers.’

‘And Kolyev would give up the chase.’

She nodded. ‘But you came so quickly. I dived, and thought, well, now we have at least one witness to the drowning. But then you found me down there, in the darkness.’

‘It was your bathing cap.’

‘I wasn’t quite sure what to do. The plan was ruined. So I thought I should just let myself be rescued, and then try to disappear again some other day.’

‘But you’ve given up that idea now?’

She nodded.

‘Because now that you’ve got Peter to help you, you don’t need it.’

She nodded again.

‘And he knows nothing about the Kolyevs, is that correct?’

‘I told him about the abduction and the forced marriage.’

‘But he doesn’t know you killed your husband.’

‘Don’t call him my husband!’

‘OK. So this means that you knew all along it was me and not Peter who rescued you.’

She gave a quick, bitter laugh. ‘You didn’t rescue me, Martin, you screwed things up for me.’

‘But you played the rescued maiden for Peter.’

‘He played the hero!’

‘Yeah, everyone’s lying. But...’ I felt a hand touching my face. Fingertips against my lips.

‘Shh,’ she whispered. ‘Can’t we just be quiet for a few moments?’

I nodded and closed my eyes. She was right, we needed to take a break. Gather our thoughts. How could so much have happened in such a short space of time? Just two days ago Peter and I were pals on our way to the bull run in Pamplona, where his father and his uncle before him had been, so even though he would never admit it, it was understood to be a male rite of passage in the family. For me it was pure romance, living out Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, a book which, according to my father, has to be read and enjoyed when you’re young, because Hemingway is a young man’s writer, a writer who has less appeal the older you get. But instead of a short, three-minute sprint through the streets of Pamplona I had the feeling now of running all the time, with all the side streets barricaded, and the horns of the bulls getting closer and closer. It was like Peter said, everything that can happen happens all the time, all at the same time. Time both is and isn’t an illusion, because in an infinity of realities it is just as irrelevant as everything else. I was dizzy. I fell. I fell into a chasm and had never felt happier.

I could hear how her breathing had fallen into rhythm with mine, how her body rose and fell with mine. It was as though, just for a moment, we had become one; it was no longer her body giving warmth to mine or the other way round, we had become one body. I don’t know how much time passed — five minutes, half an hour — before I spoke again:

‘Have you sometimes wished you could travel back in time and change something?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But you can’t. We might feel as though we have free will, but if you’re the same person you were, carrying the same information in the same situation, you’ll just repeat yourself all over again. It’s obvious.’

‘But what if you can travel back as the person you are now ?’

‘Aha. The idea that you can take revenge on your old psychopath of a schoolteacher in front of the whole class, or invest money where you know for certain what the outcome will be?’

‘Or score the penalty you missed in your earlier life,’ I added.

‘It’s fun to fantasise about,’ she said. ‘Until you come up against the paradox of time, that by changing the past you also change the future. And then it doesn’t work out.’

‘What if you travel back in time in the universe you inhabit now, but at a certain point which you’ve decided on yourself you slip into a parallel universe? One that up until that point is identical to the one you’ve been living in? A universe in which you already exist as another person.’

‘Meaning that there are two of you?’

‘Yes. In that case there is no paradox of time involved.’

‘But a completely crazy reality.’

‘Isn’t every reality crazy?’

She laughed. ‘Oh, yes!’

‘The problem is that if you want to take that penalty kick again the earlier edition of yourself is already there, all geared up to miss. So you have to get that person out of the way first.’

‘How do you that?’

‘If you want to take that person’s place without anybody noticing, the best way is to do what you did. Get the main character to disappear for ever.’

‘Drown yourself?’

‘Put a pillow over his face while he’s sleeping.’

‘Er, right. Martin?’

‘Yes?’

‘What are we talking about now?’

‘We’re talking about Peter having travelled here from another reality which was identical with this one until two days ago. And in this reality, which is here and now, he killed himself while I was out at breakfast.’

‘Here? In this bed? With a pillow?’

‘I think it happened in the bathroom, perhaps while my Peter was showering or using the toilet. The Peter who has just arrived hit him with something heavy, and there was bleeding, because there’s blood beneath the toilet bowl. The new, but older, Peter cleaned up as far as he could, wrapped the body in the floor rug and dumped it in the wheelie bin behind the building, which he knew would be emptied later the same day.’

‘I love it,’ she laughed. ‘But why? Why has he come back?’

‘To change something that happened in the universe he’s arrived from.’

‘And that is?’

‘That he didn’t get you. I think you’re the penalty kick he missed.’

‘This is so good! You should make a film about it,’ she said, apparently not noticing that she’d lain a hand on my chest.

‘Maybe,’ I said, and closed my eyes again. It was OK. OK to leave it there. Outside, it had started raining again. Miriam sighed heavily. Without opening my eyes I noticed the light from her phone.

‘I need to tell Mamma I’m spending the night here,’ she said. ‘It’s OK, all she knows is that I’ve rented a room here. She doesn’t know you’re here.’

I mumbled something in response. On the interior of my eyelids I saw once again that naked corpse. The mark on the temple. The white, unblemished skin. No tattoo. Peter. Who had just fallen in love for the first time in his life. Who had not yet had time to make his first mistake, the one that would ensure he never got her. He just looked like a happy boy sleeping.

I was mistaken.

I did manage to sleep.

When the alarm on my phone woke me it was still dark outside.

I looked at her, lying with her back turned to me in the bed. The black hair spread out across the pillow.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I said.

She didn’t move. ‘Will you tell Peter that we met?’

‘No, I promised, remember.’

‘Sure you promised, but you’re best friends. I know how it is. Anyway, we’ve established now that all three of us are liars.’ She turned in the bed and smiled at me — at least I saw teeth in the darkness.