Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘Yes, it would be a real bore for you to have come all this way just to see me and Ferdinand,’ said Helena.

I smiled.

We finished the meal and I went up to my room to get ready. As I packed my climbing gear, through the window I could see Julian playing with Ferdinand. The boy ran laughing around his father, and each time Julian grabbed hold of him and swung him round so that his little blue-and-white cap fell off the boy shrieked with joy. It was like a dance. Not a dance I had ever danced with my own father. Or had I? If so I had forgotten it.

‘Excited?’ asked Julian as we parked after our silent drive out to the spot where we had found Franz’s car.

I nodded as I gazed out across the beach. Looked different today. No sun. Waves that whispered peacefully as they rolled onto the sand without breaking.

After a brisk twenty-minute walk we were out on the point and looking up at Where Eagles Dare. It looked more intimidating with the steel-grey clouds hanging over it. We put on our climbing harnesses and Julian handed me two bunches of quickdraws.

‘I imagine you probably want to climb it onsight,’ he said.

‘Thanks, you overestimate me, but I’ll see how far I get.’ I clipped the quickdraws into the harness, attached myself to the rope, pulled on the old but comfortable climbing shoes I had used in the Lake District and dipped my hands into the bag of resin fastened on a cord around my waist. Instead of stepping the two paces to the wall, I walked out to the edge of the path and looked down.

‘That’s where they found him,’ I said, nodding down towards the breakers. They were calmer today but the sound still reached up to us after a short delay. ‘But you already knew that.’

‘Yes, I knew,’ said the voice behind me. ‘How long have you known?’

‘Known what?’

I turned to face him. He was pale. Maybe it was just the light, but for a moment that almost white pallor made me think of Trevor. But there again, nowadays I think quite often of Trevor.

‘Nothing,’ he said, his face and voice expressionless as he threaded the rope through the manual ATC brake fastened to his halter and ritually checked his equipment list. ‘You’re in, the carabiner is fastened, the rope is long enough, and your knot looks fine.’

I nodded.

Placed one foot in the overhanging wall and gripped into the first obvious handhold. Tensed my body and got my other foot up.

The first ten metres of the climb were fine. I moved easily. Losing those kilos and getting the muscles back had made all the difference. And my climber’s psyche was in good shape too. The previous year I had fallen several times on routes that were minimally bolted, and when the rope stopped my swaying fall after some eight or ten metres I didn’t even feel relief, only a mild disappointment that I hadn’t managed the route without a fall. But here the permanent bolts were close together, and in the event of a fall the drop would be short. I actually began to wonder if I had brought along enough quickdraws as I fastened them to the bolts and clipped in the rope.

I heard a gull screech at the same instant as my thin limestone hold broke away. I fell. It lasted only a moment, that state so often and so inaccurately described as weightlessness. Then the rope and the harness tensed around my waist and thighs. A short, hard fall. I looked down at Julian who was standing on the ground with the rope tensioning out from the brake in the harness.

‘Sorry,’ he shouted. ‘You fell so quickly I didn’t have time to take your fall.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I shouted back, and since I couldn’t get close enough to the overhanging rock face I started to pull myself up the rope using just the muscle power of my arms. Even though it was barely three metres and Julian used his body weight to pull in the slack, the climbing rope was so thin and slippery that by the time I reached the bolt from which the rope hung I was completely exhausted. I looked at my hands. I had already worn off a lot of skin.

After a rest I continued climbing. I had to grab hold of one of the quickdraws at the crux, the toughest point of the route, but apart from that I felt the coming of the flow, when there’s no need to think, the hands and feet seem to solve the stream of equations with one and two unknowns all by themselves. Reaching the top fifteen metres later I clipped the rope into the anchor with a sense of inner content that was deep and calm. I hadn’t managed it without a fall, but the climb had been magical nevertheless. I turned to take in the view. According to George, on a clear day you could see the coast of Turkey from Kalymnos, but today I saw only: the sea, myself, the route. And the rope that ran down to the man I had saved, and who would save me.

‘Ready!’ I shouted. ‘You can lower me down!’

I sank down through the still, heavy afternoon air. Daylight was already fading; once Julian had tried the route we would have to head back if we were to avoid walking along the steep, stony path in the dark. But something told me that Julian wouldn’t be making the climb when, after a few metres in which I lowered myself, I suddenly saw the dark section on the yellow rope passing inside me on its way up to the anchor.

The midpoint marker.

‘The rope’s too short!’ I shouted.

Even though there was no wind, it might well have been the case that the surf, the crying of the gulls or simple absent-mindedness meant that he didn’t hear me and continued to haul me down.

‘Julian!’

But he continued to pay out the rope, faster now.

I looked down at the sea, then in towards the path where the rest of the rope snaked its way up, like a cobra dancing to a flute. And I could see it now, there was no knot in the loose end of the rope.

‘Julian!’ I shouted again. I was so close to him I could the deadness in his facial expression. He was going to kill me, there were only a few seconds remaining before the end of the rope slid unhindered right through the brake, and I would fall.

‘Franz!’

The elasticated rope was pulled tight and tensed above the drop. My harness was pressing into the small of my back. My descent had stopped, I swayed up and down in the empty air. It was just two or three metres down to Julian, but since I was hanging vertically from the anchor at the top, I dangled over the edge where the track ran. If the rope passed through the brake I would fall past Julian and all the fifty or sixty metres down to the rocks where the waves frothed like the contents of a smashed champagne bottle.

‘Looks like the rope isn’t eighty metres after all,’ said Julian. ‘Sorry — to err is human.’ His face didn’t look as if he was sorry.

It was his endgame now. That end was located twenty centimetres below the brake and his hand. Right now it was the only thing holding me. Owing to the angle and the friction in the brake it wasn’t hard for him to hold me there. On the other hand, he couldn’t do it forever. And when he let go it wouldn’t look like a murder but like an all too common type of climbing accident: the rope was too short.

I nodded. ‘You’re right, Franz...’

He didn’t respond.

‘...it is human to err.’

We studied each other. Him half standing on the track, half sitting on the halter and the rope, me dangling directly above him, over the abyss.

‘Paradox,’ he said at length. ‘That’s a Greek word, isn’t it? Like when Ferdinand is afraid of the dark when it’s bedtime and he wants Daddy to tell him fairy stories until he’s asleep. But he insists that they’re scary stories. Isn’t that a paradox?’

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Perhaps not.’

‘In any case, you can see the darkness coming, maybe you should tell a scary story now, Nikos. And then maybe you and I won’t be so afraid.’