Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘The title makes that very plain,’ said the professor. ‘But the world, and we as individuals, interpret everything according to our needs. The victors write the history of the war and cast themselves as the ones with right on their side. Theologians read the Bible in such a way as to give the Church as much power as possible, and we use a poem to tell ourselves that we don’t need to feel that we have failed, even if we never lived up to our parents’ expectations nor followed in their footsteps. The actual progress of the war, the actual biblical text, the poet’s actual intentions are secondary. Am I right or am I right?’

Franz put the phone back in the mid-seat console. But he didn’t turn on the ignition. Instead he sat there looking out at the sea, like me.

‘I still don’t understand it,’ he said. ‘I mean, you’re a policeman.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not a policeman for the simple reason that I never was a policeman, I just worked as one. You’ve got to understand that in the story about me, I am you, Franz. Julian betrayed you the way Trevor betrayed me. And the disease of jealousy made killers out of both of us. Life imprisonment in Greece means you can get released on parole after sixteen years. I’ve served more than twice that. I wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to you.’

‘You can’t even know whether or not I feel regret,’ said Franz. ‘Maybe I didn’t need to confess to find peace. And as for you, you could have gone to a priest and confessed.’

‘I had another reason for coming,’ I said.

‘And that is?’

‘You’re the road I never took. I had to see it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You chose her, you chose the one who — innocently or not — was the reason you killed your own brother. Is it possible to live with that? That’s what I wanted to know. Can you live in happiness with the one you killed for in the shadow of that gravestone? I have always believed that was impossible for me.’

‘And now that you’ve seen the other road and know that it’s possible, what are you going to do about it?’

‘That is another story, Franz.’

‘Will I get to hear it some day?’

‘Maybe.’

Franz drove me to the airport two days later. We didn’t talk much during that time; it was as though both of us were empty. Most of my conversation had been with Helena and Ferdinand, and on my last evening Ferdinand insisted I tell him a bedtime story. I saw no sign of jealousy in Franz as he stood in the doorway, smiling contentedly, probably amused at the way little Ferdinand was already bossing me about. So once Ferdinand had kissed his parents goodnight I sat on the side of his bed and told him the story of Icarus and his father. But, just as my father had done, I made my own version of the story, this time with a happy ending in which both of them got away from the prison on Crete.

There was a downpour just as we pulled up in front of the terminal building and we sat in the car to wait it out. Palechoa was swathed in grey cloud. Franz was wearing the same flannel shirt as when I had seen him for the first time, at the police station five years earlier. Maybe it was the shirt that made me notice but now I could see he was getting older too. He sat with both hands on the wheel, looking out through the windscreen as though summoning up the courage to say something. I was hoping it wouldn’t be anything too big and dark. When he did finally begin he spoke without looking at me.

‘Ferdinand asked me this morning where your children and their mother were,’ said Franz. ‘When I said you didn’t have any, he asked me to give you this.’ Franz pulled a worn little teddy bear up out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me.

His gaze met mine. We both laughed.

‘And this,’ he added.

It was a photograph they had evidently printed out on photo paper. It showed me swinging Ferdinand round just the same way I had seen his father do.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘I think you’ll make a good grandpa.’

I looked at the picture. Helena had taken it. ‘Will you ever tell her? What really happened?’

‘Helena?’ Franz shook his head. ‘In the beginning I could have done, ought to have done, of course. But now I no longer have the right to spoil the story she believes in. Because, of course, she has based a life and a family on it.’

I nodded. ‘The story,’ I repeated.

‘But...’ he started, and then stopped.

‘But?’

He sighed. ‘Sometimes I get the feeling she knows.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s something she said once. She said she loved me, and I said I loved her, and then she asked if I loved her so much that I would have killed someone I loved only a little bit less in order to have her. There was something about the way she said it. Then before I could answer she kissed me and started talking about something else.’

‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘And who needs to know?’

The rain stopped.

By the time I boarded the plane the cloud cover had broken.

When I went to bed in my Athens apartment that evening I put the teddy bear on the shelf above the bed and took down an opened envelope lying there. It was postmarked Paris and dated two months ago. I took the letter out and read it one more time. Her handwriting hadn’t changed after all these years.

It was late at night before I finally managed to get to sleep.

Three months later

‘Thank you for a perfect day,’ said Victoria Hässel and raised her wine glass. ‘Who would have thought there was such good climbing to be had in Athens. And you with such powers of endurance.’

She winked as though to make certain I got the double meaning.

Victoria had contacted me a few days after I returned home from Kalymnos, and we corresponded at least once a week after that. Maybe it was the distance and the fact that we had no mutual friends and didn’t know each other very well that made it so easy for me to confide in her. Not about murder but about love. And on my part that meant Monique. Her own love life was a little richer and more varied, and when she wrote that she was going to meet her latest flame, a French climber, in Sardinia, and was planning to travel via Athens, I was genuinely not sure whether it was such a good idea. I wrote, telling her that I liked the distance, the feeling of talking to a confessor who couldn’t see my face.

‘I can always wear a paper bag over my head,’ she wrote back. ‘But I won’t be wearing much more than that.’

‘Is your brother’s flat as posh as this?’ Victoria asked as I cleared the table and carried our dishes over to the worktop.

‘Posher and bigger.’

‘Does that make you envious?’

‘No. I’m...’

‘Happy?’

‘I was about to say, content.’

‘Me too. So content it’s almost a pity I have to travel on to Sardinia tomorrow.’

‘You’ve got someone waiting for you, and I hear the climbing there is fantastic too.’

‘You’re not jealous?’

‘Of the climbing, or of your boyfriend? In that case it’s his job to be jealous of me.’

‘I was single that time in Kalymnos.’

‘You told me. And I’m a lucky man who’s been able to borrow you for a while.’

We took our wine glasses out onto the balcony.

‘Have you come to any decision regarding Monique?’ she asked as we looked out across Kolonaki, with the sounds of the diners at the pavement restaurants rising up to us like monotonous but happy music.

I had told Victoria about the letter I had received just after I arrived back from Kalymnos. That Monique was now a widow and had moved to Paris. And how she had written that she thought about me a lot and wanted me to go over and meet her.