Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

After parking at Palle’s I got into the taxi and coasted down the slope. I could feel the brake pedal was even slacker and I called the garage and asked Todd if he could fix it tomorrow.

‘I could, but if you can bring it in today that gives us more time,’ said Todd.

I didn’t reply.

‘I get it,’ Todd said, and I could hear him grinning. ‘Palle’s driving the day shift tomorrow and you’re pissed off it’s always you who has to spend his shift at the garage.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

At ten the phone rang.

I saw from the display it was Eirin.

‘Hi,’ was all I said.

‘Hi,’ she said, as though she knew she didn’t have to give her name, that I recognised her number. And didn’t her voice sound a little tense, almost nervous? Maybe not, maybe it was just that I wanted her to sound like that.

We agreed to meet at the taxi rank at ten thirty. I did one quick pickup and afterwards parked the taxi and waved Gelbert’s and Axelson’s cabs in ahead of me. While I was waiting I tried not to think. Because now all the fantasies, all the expectations that had been fighting for a place in my brain were as nothing; soon I would know.

The passenger door opened, and I smelled the perfume before I heard the voice. A meadow in flower outside a cabin in June. Apples in August. The western wind on the sea in October. Sure, I know I’m exaggerating, but those really were the associations I got.

‘Hello again.’ She sounded slightly out of breath, as if she’d been walking quickly. She was perhaps a little older than I’d imagined. The voice was younger than the face, in a manner of speaking. Maybe she thought something similar about me, that I’d seemed more attractive on the phone, I don’t know. But Eirin had been beautiful once, there was no doubt about that. Available, I thought. Yes, I actually did, I thought that word, Palle’s word. Doable. Did I want to? Yes, I wanted to.

‘Thank you so much for looking after my earring for me, Amund.’

So she got straight to the point. As though she wanted to get it over with. I don’t know whether from shyness, nervousness or because I’d been a disappointment to her.

‘Here it is,’ I said and handed her the stud. ‘At least, if it’s the right one I found.’

She examined the earring. ‘Oh yes,’ she said slowly. ‘You found the right one.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I guess it’s so unusual it wouldn’t have been easy to find a match for the one that was left.’

‘True, true.’ She nodded as she stared hard at the earring, as though she didn’t dare look at me. As though something she didn’t want to happen would happen then.

I said nothing, felt just the hammering of my pulse in my throat, beating so hard that I knew if I tried to talk the tremor in my voice would betray me.

‘Well, thanks again,’ said Eirin as she fumbled for the door handle. Probably, like me, she’d felt a moment’s panic. Naturally. She was sitting there with a wedding ring on her finger. She was wearing make-up, but the morning light was pitiless. She was at least five, perhaps ten years older than me. But certainly still doable. And she would definitely have been doable back when I was a young lad.

‘Do you know Palle?’ I asked, without a tremor in my voice.

She hesitated. ‘Well, know him and know him.’

That was all I needed. An earring doesn’t fall off, not while you’re sitting up straight. I glanced in the wing mirror. It looked as if it had taken a knock and needed tightening.

‘Looks like I’ve got a fare,’ I said.

‘Ah yes,’ she said. ‘But thanks again.’

‘You’re welcome.’

She got out and I watched her as she crossed the square.

She didn’t know it, no one knew it, but I had just stepped out of jail. I was outside now, breathing in that unfamiliar air, savouring the new and frightening freedom. Now it was just a question of carrying on, exploiting it, not slipping back into old ways and ending up back inside the walls again. I should probably be able to manage that. And with what I did next I would demonstrate it to myself.

By the time it turned five o’clock I’d had a good day. I’d even got a few tips, something that rarely happened. Was it because of the unusually good mood I was in? The new me, so to speak?

I parked the cab in Palle’s garage. He kept his tools hanging on the wall, and it took me twenty minutes to do the job that had to be done.

I got into my own car, called Wenche and told her I’d bought a bottle of white wine to have with dinner, her favourite type.

‘What is it with you?’ she asked again, only this time without the tone of annoyance she used at breakfast. Almost curious. And why not? Now I was a new me, maybe I could be a new me for her too.

I was humming I drove along, one hand on the wheel. Steering. I liked steering. The other hand was in my trouser pocket and I was thinking about the brake fluid I’d drained back there in the garage. Wondered what it was Palle had on Eirin, or did they have something on each other? Wondered how far back the two of them went. Long enough at least for him to be able to ask her to step up once he realised I was bound to make the connection between him, the earring and Wenche. He’d probably called Wenche immediately after I rang him to ask about the earring. And she’d immediately hidden the box with the one remaining earring. It was a smart move to claim she’d lent them to a friend. She was going out tonight, yes, but she wouldn’t be meeting Torill or any of her other friends, she’d be meeting Palle who, according to plan, would have the earring I’d given to Eirin. But Wenche would never get that earring from Palle. And not because Palle had noticed the earrings Wenche was wearing as they lay there in the back seat. There’s no way he would have noticed that the earring Eirin handed to him had a narrow band around it, like a blue equator. No way.

No, Palle wouldn’t be giving Wenche the Saturn stud. And he wouldn’t be giving her any lost earring either. And she would never know they’d been tricked, the pair of them. Because from this afternoon onwards, Palle will no longer be among us, as they say. And she’ll have to make do with what she has. Meaning me. But I think she’ll get to like me. The new me. Next in line for a taxi licence following Palle’s unexpected demise. I smiled to myself in the mirror, steering with one hand, the other in my pocket, where I held the pin of the pearl earring I had once given Wenche. Held it gently, but firmly. The way you hold a balloon on a string.

A halyard flaps lazily against the flagpole in the wind. I look out over the city. It seems strangely peaceful. But then, from the roof of a ninety-floor skyscraper you don’t see the human ants fleeing or hunting through the streets. Hear the cries of those beaten to the ground, the pleas for mercy, the click of the cocked rifle. But you hear the shooting. The growl of a solitary motorcycle. And now that night has fallen you see the fires.

Although from up here most of them look small. The torched cars that look like cheerful lanterns, casting a little light in a city in which it has been over a year since the street lamps stopped working.

I heard a burst of machine-gun fire, not too long. They’re young, but they’ve learned when to stop to prevent the weapon from overheating. They have learned what they need to know in order to survive in these times. Or to be more accurate: to survive a little longer than a person whose needs are the same as yours; food, weapons, shelter, petrol, clothing, drugs and at least one woman who can carry a man’s genes into the next generation. To employ a cliché, it’s a jungle down there. And the jungle gets closer with each day that passes not with each hour. I’m guessing the building we’re standing on now will be part of the jungle by first light.