Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘Of course, I will have to reveal the formula before I die. When that time comes.’

‘That time—’ said Egger, pushing the handkerchief back into the inside pocket of his tweed jacket — ‘might come sooner than you imagine, Jason.’

I noticed that two large men, both wearing suits too small for them, were standing outside the door of my office.

I coughed. ‘Are you threatening me, Egger?’

He looked blankly at me. ‘I gathered from Kopfer that you are prepared to die in order to keep your secret.’

‘Naturally I’m worried that the discovery might do more harm than good if it falls into the wrong hands. Three world wars have been fought for less, Herr Egger. One single life isn’t so much.’

He sighed. ‘God and martyr. Diametrically opposed, and yet mankind’s two favourite roles. You’re trying to play them both, Jason. It’s not right. You’re welcome to play God, but you’re going to have to let someone else play the martyr.’

‘What do you mean?’ I felt a dark foreboding.

He smiled. ‘I think Klara Jason would make a perfect martyr.’

It only took a second for my mouth to dry up. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘If the previous God could sacrifice His son to save mankind, you ought to manage to sacrifice your wife. Right?’

‘I still don’t understand...’

‘I think you probably do,’ said Egger, and pointed to the top of his cane. ‘You know what this is? No, of course you don’t. It’s bone from the black rhinoceros. The black rhinoceros is—’

‘I’ve seen pictures.’

‘— extinct. This is from one of the last of them. I inherited the cane from my grandfather. He had no trouble walking either. Like me, he used it as a reminder that nothing has eternal life, everything disappears, for good and ill. Or all things shall pass, as the Jews said, at least those of them who lived in the USA. But now that death is no longer a certainty, an early death is all the more bitter. Whether it’s your own or that of someone you wanted to spend the rest of eternity with.’ He looked at me, and there was ice in his grey stare. ‘You’re going to give me that formula, Jason. Here and now. If you don’t, then you’ll find when you get home to Rainerstrasse that your wife isn’t there. When you eventually do find her — if you find her — she will be crucified. And I am not speaking metaphorically. She will be suspended in a forest, nailed to a cross of wood by her hands and feet, a crown of thorns on her head, the whole works, apart from that business about resurrecting on the third day. So what do you say, God?’

I swallowed. Looked at him, the way one poker player looks at another who has gone all in. Was he bluffing? I couldn’t quite believe that Daniel Egger, one of the city’s most prominent and respected citizens, a real pillar of society, was threatening me with criminal methods that might have come from a Mafia boss. On the other hand, he had been an officer during the war, and isn’t that exactly what gives society’s alpha males and females their positions? That they’re willing to go further than others.

I nodded in resignation, took a sheet of paper from my desk drawer and began to write.

It took me almost four minutes to write down the formula using the chemical codes in which the world is boiled down to elements, molecular connections, pressure and temperature.

I handed him the sheet of paper.

His eyes scanned the symbols.

‘The Holy Writ,’ he said. ‘But what’s this?’ He pointed to the title, a symbol like a T with a loop above it.

‘The hieroglyph Ankh,’ I said. ‘The symbol for eternal life in ancient Egypt.’

‘Elegant,’ he said, as he folded the sheet of paper with infinite care and placed it in the inside pocket of his tweed jacket.

I watched him as he disappeared down the corridor. He was swinging his stick, and it made a cheerful clicking sound each time it hit the parquet floor. Like the second hand on a clock.

The countdown had started.

I didn’t know how long it would take Egger to find out I had tricked him. Not even the researchers on my own team would be able to dismiss what I had written on Egger’s sheet of paper as nonsense, since their knowledge was only partial. But given time, they would of course put two and two together and discover that the formula on the page did not add up to four.

It took me a week to find somewhere to hide Klara.

As a young medical student I had once, along with some other students, been shown round a mental hospital. It was a place in which the associations with hell could only have been matched by the nightmares and hallucinations of the inmates who lived there. The dark corridors reeked of sterilising fluids and excrement, and from behind locked doors came heart-rending shrieks and groans. Looking in through the food-delivery slots I saw pale faces, empty and terrified, gazing as though hypnotised into the darkness and confusion of their own souls. The person who showed us round, realising from our horrified expressions what we were feeling and thinking, told us that things hadn’t always been this way, and that prior to the Last War the state had had the money and the technology to give the mentally ill a more dignified life.

The place I found for Klara seemed to offer just that. Dignity.

It called itself a convalescent home and was located on a hillside overlooking the sea. Clean, pure mountain air, spacious grounds, large, airy rooms, two nurses to each patient, and daily conversations with a psychiatrist. And — what was even more important — it was in the area formerly called Switzerland and had preserved a form of autonomy that gave it certain privileges. For example, the privileges of discretion, which meant they did not have to report the identities of their patients to the authorities or anyone else. Naturally, it was a service designed for the elite. And the elite were the only ones able to afford the price.

Even using all my savings I would not have been able to afford to keep Klara there for long. Then I thought of our house in Rainerstrasse. It had been in the family for generations, and Klara and I simply adored it. But it was large, and could and indeed should have been home to a family with children. Two rooms and a kitchen were all Klara and I needed. And each other.

‘Now let me show you the gym,’ the female superintendent continued.

‘Thank you, Fru Tsjekhov, but I have seen enough,’ I said. ‘Let’s get the papers signed and I’ll bring her in tomorrow.’

The desert wind whispers a secret, a formula out there. The way Klara now and then could lean into me and whisper forbidden words, words meant for my ears alone, a formula of her own that opened up the gates and made the nitric oxide and norepinephrine start to flare inside me. That for a moment gave eternal life. I don’t want to think about those other words of hers, the hate-filled ones she hurled at me when I came to fetch her. But I must. I must think of her rage, how she spat at me, scraped at the wallpaper with her fingernails and screamed that she had to get out, her eyes rolling wildly. Think how I finally managed to get enough sedatives down her to get her into the car. But also think of her peaceful face as she slept in the back seat while I drove through the night. The car began to overheat on the winding, uphill road leading to the home, but we made it. When I left Klara stood on the steps in front of the home, a nurse at each side ready to restrain her. But Klara didn’t move. Her arms dangled by her sides. Big, heavy teardrops rolled from her eyes as she whispered my name, over and over again — I kept hearing it all the way back. Twice I was on the point of turning round and driving back to fetch her.