Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘You must come to our Autumn Ball, Martin, absolutely everyone’s going to be there!’

The Stop signs began with what was correct ‘attire’. The word simply means what you wear; but in their context it means not just a dinner jacket but the right dinner jacket. How to wear it, and all the other small and secret details that can — and do — expose you as the outsider you really are. The way that their glances — despite the welcoming exterior — can and do reveal that little touch of contempt they feel for outsiders whom, without thinking too much about it, they regard as pushy candidates to join their ranks, on the automatic assumption that everyone wants to be one of them. Because they know where their place is, and that is at the top of the food chain. That’s to say, there’s always room for someone even higher up, and that is where their attention is concentrated, on that next step up.

In that respect Peter was probably a little more laid-back than his friends. Not that he wasn’t competitive once he’d set himself a goal. But he didn’t seem driven by social ambition, more by curiosity and genuine enthusiasm. Of course, a person who is already accepted feels less need to be accepted, and I think that was what made Peter so classy and easy to like. Or so hard to dislike. And as his chosen one, some of this dripped onto me.

The girls in Peter’s circle seemed to like me particularly. His accreditation was my entry ticket, at the same time as I was regarded as ‘exciting’, even a bit ‘dangerous’, which would have made the boys who knew me in my old neighbourhood laugh out loud. Though it was mild and pretty much smoothed out I still spoke with an East End accent, and Peter described me as an artist without the prefix ‘wannabe’ the word actually deserved. I’d spent a night or three with some of these girls without breaking any hearts. They seemed as satisfied with the no-strings brevity of things as I was. I’m guessing they referred to it as a ‘fling’ when they talked about it to their friends. Because that’s exactly what it was: a slight sidestep away from their ordinary everyday reality. Because naturally they wouldn’t want to get seriously involved with someone as unserious as a would-be artist from the East End of town, regardless of how cute and likeable he might be.

One of them had been an old flame of Peter’s, a girl with an interest in horses. At a party at Peter’s place she had — when I told her how I used to ride the old nag on my grandparents’ farm — invited me to go riding with her. I told her I would have to ask Peter first if he thought it was OK.

Peter had just laughed. ‘Go for it,’ he said, giving me a punch on the upper arm. So I had. Perhaps at some point it had occurred to me that a romp in the hay with an upper-class girl wearing riding gear was an erotic cliché, but that didn’t make it any the less enjoyable. Probably the opposite. But once I started enthusiastically relating what had happened to Peter I realised I had misjudged the situation. A slight tightening of the facial muscles, an almost imperceptible stiffness in his smile. So I lied, said I’d tried but that it hadn’t worked out. I don’t know why that seemed to make him like me better, because the way I told the story I hadn’t had any qualms about trying to seduce my best friend’s first girlfriend. I could only hope that she wouldn’t say anything about that little ‘fling’ of ours. Because in that fraction of a second I had seen something, something in that stiff smile, something unknown and yet somehow also known, a Peter I didn’t recognise, but who in some way or other I knew was there.

When I returned to the hotel I saw that the bin had been emptied. I went up to our room, lay down on my bed, closed my eyes and listened to the sounds coming through the window. It was something I’d noticed before, the way both natural sounds and the noises of cities and towns could change over the course of a day, as though following regular cycles ordained by routines, communal activities and daylight. Right now there was the shivering sound of a grasshopper or cicada, caused by the vibration of a membrane, a frenetic mating signal the male of the species was created to make and therefore could not help but make, a slave to his own sexual instincts.

When I awoke the room was in darkness, I had the taste of ashes in my mouth and what I had been dreaming slipped away from the grasp of memory. But there had been something about a flying carpet.

I looked at my watch. Eight thirty. The table was booked for nine. I checked my phone. Nothing from Peter. I called him, no reply. I sent an SMS consisting of a simple question mark. I waited ten minutes, then dressed and went out.

At five minutes past nine the taxi dropped me off outside the Arzak. It was on the ground floor of what appeared to be a residential block. The restaurant’s name was on a narrow, arched awning above the entrance. There was no flashing sign, nothing displaying the three stars in the Michelin guide. I sent a text to Peter, said I hoped everything was OK, that I was outside the Arzak and was going to go in and wait at the table in case he was on his way.

This time the answer came at once.

Don’t. Go back to the hotel now, I’m coming straight from the hospital and I’ll meet you there. I’ll treat you to the Arzak some other time.

I shoved the phone into my pocket and looked down the road for a taxi, but there wasn’t a car in sight. I decided to enter the famous restaurant, explain the situation and perhaps get them to book a taxi for me. I was greeted by a maître d’ wearing a red waistcoat. I offered my apologies for the fact that Peter Coates and companion were unable to come this evening, but that Coates had had to make a hospital visit. The maître d’ glanced down at the evening’s seating plan that was in front of him as I looked around. The restaurant was simply but tastefully furnished, stylish and homely at the same time. My parents would have liked it here if they could have afforded it, and maybe that’s why I had the odd feeling of having been there before.

‘But Mr Coates and companion are here, sir,’ the maître d’ said in a thick Spanish accent.

My mouth was gaping. He looked up at me.

‘If there has been a misunderstanding, perhaps you want to talk to him, sir?’

‘Yes,’ I said without thinking. ‘Yes, thank you.’

As I followed him I regretted it. The whole thing was obviously a misunderstanding; either the maître d’ had gone cross-eyed or someone had taken our reservations. Anyway, there was nothing I could do about it now. I glanced down at my phone and Peter’s message to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood. When I looked up again and caught sight of her it seemed so obvious I was astonished it hadn’t occurred to me before, at the same time as it was a complete surprise.

Peter sat with his back to me, and from his body language I could see he was talking animatedly about something, no doubt about our limited conceptions of space and time. She was silent. Her gaze wandered up past his shoulder and found mine. It was as though an electric shock passed through her. And through me. She was wearing a plain black dress. The eyes, or perhaps it was just the pupils, seemed almost unnaturally large and dark in the rather wide face. The mouth was wide too, with generous lips. But the rest was small. The nose, the ears, the shoulders, and there were no breasts visible beneath the fabric of her dress. Perhaps it was that slender, girlish young body that had made me suppose she was younger than I now saw she was. She was probably about the same age as Peter and me.

Her gaze held mine. Maybe I had awakened some dormant memory of the moment she looked at me under the water. She didn’t look ill at all. Peter was still deep in his description of a reality he believed to be more real than the one which the three of us currently inhabited, but I knew it was only a matter of time before he noticed the expression on her face and turned.