Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘What do you mean?’ said Odd, hoping that he didn’t sound as irritated as he was.

‘In the first place it’s almost impossible to describe what it’s about in two or three sentences. Secondly it’s difficult to find a target group beyond the very literary-interested and your own regular readers. Which is one and the same thing really. And that is, anyway, a...’ She exchanged looks with Sophie. ‘...quite small and rather exclusive group.’

She took a deep breath and Odd realised there was a third thing too.

‘Thirdly, it’s a very dark and empty novel.’

‘Empty?’ exclaimed Odd Rimmen, who had no problem with its being dark.

‘Dystopian,’ Sophie added.

‘And there are hardly any characters in it,’ said Jane. ‘At least, not characters the reader can identify with.’

Odd Rimmen realised that the two of them had conferred beforehand. He was at least pleased they hadn’t complained that the new book ( Nothing ) was lacking in the sex scenes that had become his trademark. He shrugged. ‘It is what it is. Take it or leave it.’

‘OK, but we’re here to focus on how to get them to take it,’ said Sophie. Odd recognised the sharp undertone now.

‘The good news,’ said Jane, ‘is that we have you. You are what the media are interested in. The only question is if you’re prepared to help your book by making public appearances.’

‘Hasn’t Sophie explained it to you yet?’ asked Odd Rimmen. ‘That I help the book by not making public appearances? That — for what it’s worth — is now my image.’ He spat the word with all the contempt he could muster. ‘Surely the sales department doesn’t want to spoil that and ruin the author’s selling point, do they?’

‘Silence can work,’ said Jane. ‘But only for so long, then it gets boring and counterproductive. Look at it like this: what silence has sown we must now reap. Every newspaper and magazine will be standing in line for the first, exclusive interview with the man who stopped talking.’

Odd Rimmen thought about what she’d said. There was something a little strange about the words, some kind of hidden contradiction.

‘If I’m going to prostitute myself anyway, why do so exclusively?’ he asked. ‘Why not the full gangbang, total blanket coverage?’

‘Fewer column inches,’ said Sophie quietly. Her and Jane-something had definitely already talked this over.

‘And why not a talk show?’ he asked.

Jane sighed. ‘Everyone wants to do those, and unless you’re a movie star or a famous athlete or reality star it’s very, very difficult.’

‘But Stephen Colbert...’ Now it was no longer the irritation but the pathos Odd Rimmen hoped they didn’t notice.

‘That was then,’ said Sophie. ‘Doors open, doors close, that’s the way of the world.’

Odd Rimmen sat up straight in his chair, raised his chin, directed his gaze at Sophie. ‘I take it for granted you understand I’m asking out of curiosity, not because there’s any chance of my playing the media clown again. Let the book do its own talking.’

‘You can’t have your cake and eat it,’ said Jane. ‘You can’t both be an icon of cool and be read by the masses. Before we decide on a marketing budget for this book we need to know which is most important to you.’

Odd Rimmen turned slowly, almost reluctantly to face her.

‘And one more thing,’ said Jane-something-or-other. ‘Nothing is a lousy title. No one buys a book about nothing. There’s still time to change it. The marketing department suggested Loneliness. It’s still dark, but at least it’s something a reader can identify with.’

Odd Rimmen turned back to Sophie. The look on her face seemed to say that she felt for him, but that Jane was right.

‘The title stays,’ said Odd Rimmen and got to his feet. Suppressed anger make his voice shake, which made him even more angry, and he decided to shout in order to overcome it. ‘And the title also tells you just how much I intend to contribute to this damned commercial media circus. Fuck them. And fuck...’

He didn’t finish but marched from the room and down the steps, since waiting for a lift that didn’t come might possibly spoil his exit, out through Reception and onto Vauxhall Bridge Road where it was, of course, raining. Fucking shit publisher. Shit town. Shit life.

He crossed the road on green.

Shit life?

He was about to publish the best book he’d written, about to become a father, had a woman who loved him (maybe not expressed quite as openly as in their first days together, but everyone knows the strange effect hormone chaos in a pregnant woman can have on her moods and desires), and had the best job a person can have: to express something that is important to him, to be listened to, to be seen — read, for chrissakes!

And that was exactly what they wanted to take away from him. Take away the only thing he had in life. Because it was the only thing. He could pretend all the rest of it was meaningful. Esther, the child, their life together. And of course it was meaningful. Simply not meaningful enough. No, truly not meaningful enough. He needed it all. The cake and eating it. Jam today and jam tomorrow. Overdose on overdose, he needed to kill off this shit life. Now.

Odd Rimmen stopped abruptly. Stood there until he saw the lights change to red and the cars on both sides begin to rev their engines, like beasts ready to attack.

And it occurred to him that it could stop here, like this. That it wouldn’t be a bad way of ending the tale. Sure. Great writers before him had chosen such an ending. David Foster Wallace, Édouard Levé, Ernest Hemingway. Virginia Woolf, Richard Brautigan, Sylvia Plath. The list went on. It was long. And strong. Death sells. Gore Vidal called it a ‘good career move’ when his fellow writer Truman Capote died; but suicide sells better. Who would still be downloading Nick Drake and Kurt Cobain if they hadn’t both killed themselves? And had the thought really never occurred to him before? Hadn’t it flitted through his mind when Ryan Bloomberg told him to shoot one of them? If only the book had been finished...

Odd Rimmen stepped out into the road.

He had time to hear a cry from the person who had been standing next to him on the pavement before it drowned in the roar of the traffic. He saw the wall of cars on its way towards him. Yes, he thought. But not here, not like this, in a banal road accident that could be dismissed as just bad luck.

The amygdala decided on flight and he just reached the pavement on the far side before the cars flashed past him. He didn’t stop, carried on running, slipping between people on London’s overcrowded pavements, knocking them. Got a few choice swear words in English yelled after him and yelled a few back in French, better ones too. Crossed streets and bridges and open squares, climbed steps. After an hour’s running he finally let himself into the cramped and damp apartment. His clothes, even the jacket, were drenched in sweat.

He sat at the kitchen table with pen and paper and wrote a farewell note.

It only took him a couple of minutes. It was a speech he had given to himself so many times before he didn’t need to weigh the words, didn’t need to edit anything. And on the instant it was back again — the spark. The spark he had lost when Esther entered his life. Rediscovered when he killed Ryan, and almost lost again when Esther got pregnant. And as he placed the suicide note on the kitchen worktop it occurred to him that it was the only absolutely perfect thing he had ever written.

Odd Rimmen packed a small bag and took a taxi to St Pancras, from where an express train to Paris departed every hour.