Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Jason, but what this boils down to is a chemical formula. A long one, certainly, but all the same, a formula.’

‘The formula contains one hundred and fifteen symbols,’ I told him.

‘And this is not written down in some scholarly paper or on a computer, it’s only—’ in the darkness I caught a movement, as though he were tapping his index finger against his temple — ‘in your head.’

‘Everything from El Aaiún has been shredded, including the memories of those who did not have A-code clearance. Which means, everyone except me, Bernard Johansson and Melissa Worth.’

‘Melissa...?’

‘Worth. The laboratory head.’

‘OK. But I hope you realise the board is not going to stake the whole of the company’s future on the fact that you have managed to prolong the lives of a handful of mice by a few months.’

‘They’re still alive,’ I said. ‘In human terms that means they’re over a hundred and fifty years old. All ten of them.’

‘Or risk ending up with nothing because you’ve forgotten the formula or been killed in a traffic accident. It is highly unusual not to have proper documentation of the work.’

‘But we do , Kopfer. I have signed an agreement that in the event of something unforeseen arising, you can use the bio-memory downloader on me.’

He snorted. ‘Bio-memory downloaders don’t exist any more.’

‘At least one does.’

‘Exor?’ He snorted. ‘Do you know what it costs to use it, and how long it takes to do a complete search of even a single adult human?’

‘Yes, and I know the rumours about it rusting somewhere in the ruins of Paris. But it works, and the army has people with the technological know-how to operate it. So as long as you have my brain, you’ll find my formula in there. Actually, you don’t even need the entire brain — a fragment will do.’

Ludwig Kopfer grunted something, and I saw him raise his arm to look at his watch. He’d gone back to using the kind of analogue watch with a radioactive content that had been banned in the 1960s once they discovered improved and less carcinogenic ways of making the hands luminous, a discovery that had since been lost. ‘Let’s see what the board has to say, Ralph. I’ll call you after the meeting.’

At eleven o’clock that evening Klara and I sat on the sofa drinking white wine and watching Titanic on TV. It’s strange to think that a ship that sank over a hundred and fifty years ago is still lying on the bottom of the ocean. And that there was once a time when it was still possible to make films like that. When progress in technology, knowledge and civilisation was something that was taken for granted. Most had obviously forgotten the dark middle ages, in which, among other things, we had forgotten how to make concrete.

Klara wiped away a tear, the way she always did every time Leonardo DiCaprio gave Kate Winslet that last kiss. Klara had told me that the reason she cried was because they had just met each other, the loves of their lives, and only had these few hours and days together as they headed towards inevitable catastrophe.

Klara had entered my life and our house when I was eighteen years old. She came with my brother Jürgen, three years older than me, who proudly presented his new love to the family. Klara had curly blonde hair, a lively personality and a smile that could melt a stone. Polite, helpful, sympathetic, easy company, the whole family fell for her at once. But not, of course, in the same way I did. Klara had an innocent charm, she had no agenda, she didn’t play little games, and yet just occasionally I sensed a touch of some darker, passionate depth behind those flashing blue eyes when she laughed in my direction. But I never dared to think that it might be related in some way to me. In the first place, I was a loyal brother. Secondly, I was not the kind who was used to arousing this type of feeling in women. The exception had been a couple of colleagues who, I presume, fell for what they took to be a certain intellectuality and a pleasing calmness, perhaps allied to a degree of self-irony and an almost self-negating tendency to be of service. Whatever, throughout Klara’s marriage to my brother she and I adhered strictly to our allotted roles as brother- and sister-in-law. For twenty years I hid my undying love for her, and she did the same. I offered my sympathies when it turned out she and Jörgen couldn’t have children, and I exaggerated my concern when Jörgen fell ill. Just ten years earlier there had still been medicines on the market that could have saved him, and I know that through my connections in medical research, or via some illegal channel, I could probably have managed to get hold of something from the reserves stockpiled for central figures in the worlds of politics, research and the military. But I did not make the attempt, telling myself by way of an excuse that not only would I risk going to prison but that it would also be immoral and egotistical of me to take care of my own family like that when there were others in need who were much more important for the future of society.

In the days and weeks and then months that followed Jörgen’s burial I hardly left Klara’s side. We did everything together. Ate, read, went to the cinema, went walking. Travelled to Vienna and Budapest where we visited restaurants, cafes and museums, including the museums of technology that documented the naive faith of earlier generations that the future was heading only one way. During the evenings we walked the cobbled streets of these decaying cities, hand in hand, talking of everything and nothing. We were both approaching fifty, but while I still had a full head of dark hair, Klara’s had turned silvery grey, and her bright smile and shining eyes were framed by deep furrows. I attributed the early onset of these signs of ageing to grief at the loss of her husband.

It was on the way home from one of these trips, standing alone in the bow of a riverboat, that I told Klara how I felt about her. How I had always felt about her. She told me she had always known, and she felt the same way too. When I kissed her it was with a deep, trembling feeling of happiness, accompanied by a curious melancholy. Melancholy because it had taken us twenty years, or almost half the expected lifespan in the Russo-European Federation, to find happiness.

Four years had passed since Jörgen’s death, but still, out of consideration for the family, we waited a further year before marrying.

I was as happy as a man can be, at the same time as my research into telomeres, the white regions at the end of the chromosome that appear to determine the maximum potential lifespan of the human being, had come to a standstill. Maybe it was my frustration while working at the laboratory, in such sharp contrast to my joy at being with Klara, that meant I began working shorter days. Or did I have some premonition, did I recognise in Klara some of the symptoms we had encountered in the children with Hutchinson — Gilford syndrome whom we had studied, so-called progeria or hyper-ageing, in connection with our research? But I dismissed that thought; the syndrome is genetically determined, and something known about from the moment of birth.

When Klara began having problems with her hips and came home and said that the doctor who had examined her asked if she was really only forty-nine, I gave him a call. And he confirmed that the X-rays had shown him the body of someone he thought must be in her eighties. I arranged for Klara to see a specialist, who confirmed the presence of Werner syndrome, another cause of hyper-fast ageing, but one that can occur later in life. The specialist gave Klara another five years before she died of old age, just fifty-four years old.

Klara accepted her fate with resignation.