Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

Odd Rimmen wrote with renewed zest. And made love with new zest too.

‘Let us celebrate this glorious day with a glass of something,’ he might say as the sun set in yet another blaze of red, orange and lilac. Then head down into the cellar to fetch one of the dusty bottles of apple wine. And then sometimes he might cross to the small, disused woodstove standing hidden in the darkest and most remote corner. Open the door, poke his hand inside and feel the cold steel of the Heckler & Koch, run his fingertips over the numbers on the barrel.

‘I’m pregnant,’ said Esther.

She stood by the kitchen window with an apple in her hand, looking out across the Bay of Biscay where the livid sky and the whitecaps showed that yet another winter storm was on its way.

Odd put down his pen. He had been writing since morning. He was now several weeks past his deadline. But he was writing again, that was the most important thing. And he was writing well. In fact damned well.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Pretty sure.’ She laid a hand on her stomach as though she could already feel it growing.

‘Well, that’s...’ He looked for the word. And suddenly it was as though his writing block had returned. He knew that there was only one, absolutely correct word. Situations were like bolts. There was one, and only one, nut that fitted. It was just a question of rooting around long enough in the drawer until you found it. In recent weeks the words had just come, presented themselves without his having to look; now, suddenly, it was pitch-dark. Was fantastic the right word? No, getting pregnant was trivial, something nearly all healthy humans could manage. Good ? That would sound like a deliberate understatement, ironic and therefore doubly dishonest. During the nine months in which they had lived together he had explained to her that his work was everything; that nothing could be allowed to stand in its way. Not even her, the woman he loved more than anything (more correctly: than any other woman). Catastrophe ? No. He knew she wanted to have children. If she never said so explicitly the tacit assumption was that they wouldn’t be spending the rest of their lives together, that at some point she would have to find someone who would be father to her child/children. Now she’d managed it without that, and she was an independent woman who would be very well able to manage as a single mother. So inconvenient, perhaps, but not catastrophic.

‘Well, that’s...’ he repeated.

Did he suspect that she’d done this on purpose? That she’d been careless with her birth pills in order to test him? And if so: had it worked? Too bloody right it had. To his own surprise Odd Rimmen realised that he was, if not happy, then at least pleased. A child.

‘That’s what?’ she asked at length. It was clear he’d missed a deadline here too. Odd stood up and crossed to where she was standing by the window. Put his arms around her as he looked out into the garden. At the big apple tree that after twelve barren years had suddenly started to bear fruit again. As they harvested the big red apples and carried them into the kitchen Esther wondered what the cause might be. He replied that the roots were probably getting richer nourishment than usual. He could see she was going to ask him what he meant by that, and to be honest he didn’t know what he would have said if she’d done so. But she let it pass.

‘That’s a miracle,’ replied Odd Rimmen. ‘Pregnant. A child. It really is a miracle!’

The news that Odd Rimmen had declined the invitation to appear on the world’s biggest talk show circulated for a while, but as far as Odd could see it didn’t have the same effect as the article in the New Yorker and the way he’d turned down the film project. It was as though the story of ‘Odd Rimmen: The Recluse’ had already been taken on board, and this was just one more version of the same thing.

The reason Odd was able to reach this conclusion was that he had once again started using social media and was keeping up with the news. He told himself it was because as a father-to-be he had to emerge from his self-imposed isolation and reconnect with the world, as he put it to Esther.

He travelled with her to London, where she had accepted an invitation to take part in a project aimed at mapping and interviewing the most important female voices in literature, film and music. They lived in a cramped little flat and Odd longed to be back in France.

Each day after Esther left for work he sat down at his laptop and searched out what had been written about him on the internet. In the beginning he had been shocked by how much interest there was, or how much time people obviously had. Not only did they analyse his writing to pieces, they also shared news of where and with whom he had recently been seen (Odd was able to confirm that in ninety per cent of cases it was complete fiction), stories about secret children with secret mothers, what kind of drugs he was into, his probable sexual orientation, and which of his characters was really him. He had to admit all that scribbling delighted him. Yes, even those who criticised him or damned him as an arrogant and out-of-touch wannabe artist made him feel... what was the word? Alive? No. Relevant? Maybe. Noticed? Yes, that was probably it. He was forced to admit that it was banal, even depressing that he was so uncomplicated. That he should long so greatly for something that he despised so much in others, the insistent and irritating cry of the spoiled child to ‘look at me, look at me!’ when there was nothing to see beyond a profound egocentricity.

But naturally, these reflections and this (shall we call it?) self-insight did not stop him searching. He told himself it was important to know his status in the world with a new book about to be published. Because not only was it his best book so far — he’d known that for a long time — it was also — and this was something he’s only recently come to realise — his masterpiece. The only novel he’d written that might turn out to be of lasting value. And because it was a masterpiece, the obvious problem was that it was also very demanding. It had cost him a lot of hard work, and readers would have to work hard on it too. It wasn’t that the writer Odd Rimmen was unaware of the fact that great literature could be exhausting, for he had come close to giving up on both James Joyce’s Ulysses and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. But since the latter had become his favourite novel he knew he would have to do the same thing: aim for the goal without the slightest deviation. But in order to be a masterpiece, a masterpiece must be presented in the correct context. God alone knows how many masterpieces the world has missed out on, forgotten, or not forgotten but never even discovered, disappearing instead beneath the avalanche of the hundreds and thousands of books published every day all over the world. So, to get some idea of what his own contextual status was, Odd Rimmen began going through stuff on social media chronologically from several years back. He noticed that the number of tweets, references to his name and press stories showed a decline over the past year, and that for the most part those writing now were the same old same olds. And most of them didn’t get out much either.

The book wasn’t due out for another four months (five months to term) and at a meeting at the publishers on Vauxhall Bridge Road Odd Rimmen discussed the launch with Sophie and her very young colleague (Jane something, Odd couldn’t remember the surname).

‘The bad news is that this is of course a difficult book to promote,’ Jane said, as though this was something everybody knew. She adjusted her oversized and presumably trendy spectacles and smiled broadly, showing a lot of gum.