Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

I can’t explain all the thoughts, the half-thoughts and beginnings of thoughts that then collided with one another and made me respond as I did, but I wrenched my gaze from hers, let it wander further as though it had not found what it was searching for, then turned on my heel and quickly left.

I pretended to be asleep when Peter let himself into our room at half past midnight.

He stood listening in the doorway, then silently undressed and got into bed without turning on the light.

‘Peter?’ I murmured as though I had just woken.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t let me go.’

‘Oh?’ I said. ‘How is the girl? Miriam, isn’t it?’

‘Still very weak, but she’ll be all right.’ In the darkness he made a yawning noise. ‘Goodnight, Martin, I’m all in. Again, my apologies. We’ll find a good restaurant in Pamplona.’

I was on the point of telling him. That I’d seen them in the restaurant. Expose him in triumph, make him laugh about it too, tell him that of course I appreciated his priorities, that naturally when he had obtained a table at the best restaurant in the world he took along the girl he was hoping to marry. Should bloody well think so too. That in potential life-changing situations like that, loyalty to your pals had to go by the board. And anyway this particular pal hadn’t shown any particular interest in gourmet restaurants four months ago.

I would actually have said that, because Peter had shown more consideration than the situation required. Had he not, after all, been willing to lie to me and deceive me? Gone to all that unpleasant bother just so that I wouldn’t feel hurt? But of course I didn’t feel hurt! Well, yes, slightly. Hurt to think that he had so little faith in my consideration for him that I wouldn’t completely understand when he preferred the company of the person who could be — if he played his cards right, in the small amount of time he had at his disposal — the love of his life.

But I didn’t say it. I don’t know why not. Maybe it was because I felt as though he was the one who should be doing the talking, and not leave it up to me to expose the lie. Anyway, the seconds ticked by. And at a certain point it was just too late. If I said something now it would no longer be something we could laugh about and he would lose face. Because in the course of those few seconds I had lied too. And in doing so, in pretending I knew nothing, I’d allowed him to develop the lie, to involve himself more intricately in it. If I exposed him now if I would drive a wedge of suspicion between us.

I closed my eyes. It was confusing. Very confusing.

I saw her eyes on the insides of my own eyelids. What did she know? About me, about Peter? Had she seen through the fiction that it was he who had saved her? Did she remember me? Was that what I had seen in her gaze? And if so — why hadn’t she told him that she had seen me in the restaurant? No. No, she couldn’t possibly remember, she had hardly been conscious. After a while I heard Peter’s breathing, deep and even. And I fell asleep too.

Next morning Peter and I checked out, took a taxi to the railway station and boarded the train to Pamplona. It was packed, but fortunately we had tickets booked in advance. The journey inland and up to the heights took an hour and a half. We disembarked a little after nine, the air still cool, cooler than in San Sebastián though the sun shone from a cloudless sky.

We found the place where we were going to stay, a private house which, like so many others in the town, rented out rooms to tourists during the San Fermín festival.

The festival offered a wide range of activities, and I had read that for many Catholics and local people it was the religious processions, the folk dancing and theatre performances that were most important part of it. For aficionados of blood sports it was Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon, the bullfighting at the Plaza de Toros de Pamplona. For everyone else it was the bull running that took place every morning through the narrow, cobbled streets in the old part of town and ended up at the bullring.

Peter and I had agreed that we would do the bull running twice over the nine days the festival lasted, since we reckoned that the second time — when we knew what we were in for — would be very different from the first. Or as Peter put it: ‘It’ll be like two first times.’ I hadn’t thought about that, that there is also a first time for experiencing something for the second time.

After meeting our hosts and settling into our two small but clean rooms we went out to breakfast before Chupinazo, the ceremonial firing of a rocket from the balcony of the town hall at midday that marks the start of the festival. We stood in the square along with thousands of cheering, singing people, many of them wearing the white shirts and trousers and red neckerchiefs we had seen in photographs. The atmosphere was so electric that for a while I forgot all about what had happened in San Sebastián.

Our lodgings were less than a hundred metres from the town hall square, and yet it took us twenty minutes to make our way through the crowds that almost blocked the narrow streets. And we heard more languages here than we had done in San Sebastián. Outside a bar where the clientele had spilled out into the street we were offered wine for no other reason than that we had each bought our red neckerchiefs and Basque caps from a street vendor.

‘I’m happy,’ said Peter after we’d downed the sweet sangria, exchanged promises of eternal friendship with our new Spanish friends and moved on. I had, of course, noticed how he had been checking his phone every five minutes since early in the morning, but made no mention of it. After a short sleep we headed out again to eat churros and drink brandy. We followed the music, the stream of people and tried our hand at speaking all the languages we heard spoken around us. At some point around midnight we found ourselves in a small marketplace with a fountain where several young men formed a human pyramid from the top of which one of them dived, five metres above the cobblestones. He was caught by a human safety net consisting of six or seven other boys and girls. They repeated the feat, people cheering loudly every time, and suddenly I saw Peter standing up there. He spread his arms sideways, kicked off and dived. But when he crossed his own centre of gravity and his head was pointing directly downwards I felt as though the heart inside me stopped beating. There was a gasp from the watching crowd. Peter disappeared behind the ranks of people in front of me. Silence. And then once again the cheering rose up to the star-strewn sky.

‘You’re crazy!’ I yelled as Peter appeared in front of me and we hugged each other. ‘You might’ve been killed!’

‘Peter Coates has already died a million times,’ he said. ‘If he dies young in this universe, he’s still got countless others in which things can turn out well for him.’

I tried to hold on to that thought the next morning as, together with a group of other young men, most of them wearing white, we stood in front of a little statue in a niche in the wall of a house. We listened as a prayer was offered to the figure, who apparently represented the patron saint of San Fermín. It was now seven thirty, and on the way out of our house we’d seen people, young men mostly, sleeping off the night’s drinking on the cobbles around the walls of the houses, huddled close to one another for warmth in the cool mountain air of the night. Now they were on their feet and ready for the day’s bull run. The prayer consisted of a single sentence in Spanish and was for blessing and protection from the bulls. Peter and I joined in as best we could.

There was still half an hour before the run started, so we went to a bar — Jake’s bar — for an espresso and brandy. On the counter I saw one of the newspapers that I had noticed several of the young men were carrying rolled up in their hands. I glanced through the paper, trying to pick up some of the Basque words, then gave in and studied the pictures instead. Most seemed dedicated to yesterday’s opening ceremony and the day’s bull run. Among them were photographs of what I assumed had to be the six bulls due in the streets that day, along with statistical information about them. To put it mildly they looked scary. I turned the page. As my gaze flitted across it, I stopped at one picture in particular. It was of a rug. Like the one on the floor of our room in San Sebastián. And I noticed the name of the town in the caption. I turned to Peter but saw his back disappearing in the direction of the toilet. I therefore leaned towards the man standing next to me and asked politely and in English if he could translate for me. He shook his head with a smile: ‘I’m Spanish.’