Jo Nesbo: The Son

Per Vollan crossed the street, stopped outside the entrance to the centre, rang the bell and looked into the eye of the camera. He heard the door buzz open and he entered. For old times’ sake the centre had offered him a room for two weeks. That was a month ago.

‘Hi, Per,’ said the young, brown-eyed woman who came down to open the barred gate to the stairs. Someone had damaged the lock so that the keys no longer worked from the outside. ‘The cafe is shut now, but you’re in time for dinner if you go in right away.’

‘Thanks, Martha, but I’m not hungry.’

‘You look tired.’

‘I walked all the way from Staten.’

‘Oh? I thought there was a bus?’

She had started climbing back up the stairs and he shuffled along after her.

‘I had some thinking to do,’ he said.

‘Someone came by earlier asking for you.’

Per froze. ‘Who?’

‘Didn’t ask. Could have been the police.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘They seemed very keen to get hold of you, so I thought it might be about an inmate you know. Something like that.’

Already, Per thought, they’ve come for me already.

‘Do you believe in anything, Martha?’

She turned on the stairs. Smiled. Per thought that a young man might fall deeply in love with that smile.

‘Like God and Jesus?’ Martha asked, pushing open the door into reception which was a hatch in a wall with an office behind it.

‘Like fate. Like chance versus cosmic gravity.’

‘I believe in Mad Greta,’ Martha muttered as she leafed through some papers.

‘Ghosts aren’t-’

‘Inger said she heard a baby cry yesterday.’

‘Inger is highly strung, Martha.’

She stuck her head out of the hatch. ‘We need to have a talk, Per. .’

He sighed. ‘I know. You’re full and-’

‘The centre in Sporveisgata called today to say the fire means they’ll be closed for another two months at least. More than forty of our own residents are currently in shared rooms. We can’t go on like this. They steal from each other and then they start fighting. It’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt.’

‘It’s all right; I won’t be here very much longer.’

Martha tilted her head to one side and looked at him quizzically. ‘Why won’t she let you sleep in the house? How many years have you been married? Forty, is it?’

‘Thirty-eight. She owns the house and it’s. . complicated.’ Per smiled wearily.

He left her and walked down the corridor. Music was pounding behind two of the doors. Amphetamine. It was Monday, the benefits office was open after the weekend and trouble was brewing everywhere. He unlocked his door. The tiny, shabby room with a single bed and a wardrobe cost 6,000 kroner per month. You could rent a whole flat outside Oslo for that kind of money.

He sat down on the bed and stared out of the dusty window. The traffic hummed sleepily outside. The sun shone through the flimsy curtains. A fly was fighting for its life on the windowsill. It would die soon. That was life. Not death, but life. Death was nothing. How many years was it since he had come to that conclusion? That everything apart from death, everything he preached about, was nothing but a defence people had created against their fear of death. And yet none of what he used to believe meant anything at all. What we humans think we know is nothing compared to what we need to believe to numb the fear and pain. Then he came full circle. He regained his faith in a forgiving God and life after death. He believed it now, more than ever. He took out a pad from under a newspaper and started writing.

Per Vollan didn’t have much to write. A few sentences on a single sheet of paper, that was all. He crossed out his own name on an envelope which had contained a letter from Alma’s lawyer briefly stating what share of the matrimonial property they thought Per was entitled to. Which wasn’t much.

The chaplain looked in the mirror, adjusted his dog collar, put on his long coat and left.

Martha wasn’t at reception. Inger took the envelope and promised to deliver it.

The sun was lower in the sky now; the day was retreating. He walked through the park while out of the corner of his eye he registered how everything and everyone played their parts without obvious errors. No one rose from a bench a little too quickly as he passed, no cars pulled out discreetly from the kerb when he changed his mind and decided to walk along Sannergata towards the river. But they were there. Behind a window which reflected a peaceful summer evening, in the casual glance of a passer-by, in the chill in the shadows that crept out from the eastside of the houses and banished the sunlight as they gained territory. And Per Vollan thought that his whole life had been like this; a constant, pointless, vacillating struggle between the darkness and the light, which never seemed to result in victory for either side. Or had it? With every day the darkness encroached a little more. They were heading for the long night.

He increased his speed.

Simon Kefas raised the coffee cup to his mouth. From the kitchen table he could look out at the small garden in front of their house in Fagerliveien in Disen. It had rained overnight and the grass was still glistening in the morning sunlight. He thought he could actually see it grow. It meant another outing with the lawnmower. A noisy, manual, sweat- and swear-inducing activity, but that was all good. Else had asked him why he didn’t get an electric lawnmower like all their neighbours. His answer was simple: money. It was an answer which had ended most discussions when he was growing up in this house, as well as in the neighbourhood. But that was back when ordinary people lived here: teachers, hairdressers, taxi drivers, public sector workers. Or police officers, like him. Not that the current residents were anything special, but they worked in advertising or IT, they were journalists, doctors, had agencies for faddy products or had inherited enough money to buy one of the small, idyllic houses, pushing up the prices and moving the neighbourhood up the social ladder.

‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Else, who was standing behind his chair, stroking his hair. It was thinning noticeably; lit from above you could make out his scalp. But she claimed to like it. Liked that he looked what he was: a police officer close to retirement. Liked that she, too, would grow old one day. Even though he had twenty years’ head start on her. One of their new neighbours, a moderately famous film producer, had mistaken her for Simon’s daughter. That was all right with him.

‘I’m thinking about how lucky I am,’ he said. ‘Because I have you. Because I have this.’

She kissed him on the top of his head. He could feel her lips right against his skin. Last night he had dreamed that he could give up his sight for her. And when he had woken up and not been able to see, he had — for a second before he realised that it was due to the eye mask he wore to block out the early-morning sun in summer — been a happy man.

The doorbell rang.

‘That’ll be Edith,’ Else said. ‘I’ll go and change.’

She opened the door to her sister and disappeared upstairs.

‘Hi, Uncle Simon!’

‘Well, look who it is,’ Simon said as he gazed at the boy’s beaming face.

Edith came into the kitchen. ‘Sorry, Simon, he kept pestering me to get here early so he would have time to try on your cap.’

‘Of course,’ Simon said. ‘But why aren’t you at school today, Mats?’

‘Teacher-training day,’ Edith sighed. ‘Schools don’t know what a nightmare it is for single mums.’

‘Then it’s especially kind of you to offer to drive Else.’