Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘Can I have a look at it again?’

He poured coffee for both of them and they took their cups with them down to the basement. She sat on the top of the chest freezer and watched him while he showed her the ski. A heavy, white ski made by Splitkein with six grooves on the underside. And she thought what a very strange day it had been. Sunshine and showers. The blinding sea and the dark, cold basement. A stranger she felt she had known all her life. So far away. So near. So right. So wrong. .

‘And were you right about the jump?’ she asked. ‘Was there really nothing bigger than that?’

He tilted his head pensively to one side. ‘My first fix. That was bigger.’

She bumped her heels carefully against the chest freezer. Perhaps the chill was coming from there. And it struck her that the power to the freezer must be on — a tiny red lamp glowed between the handle and the keyhole in the freezer lock. Which seemed odd given that everything else in the house suggested it had been abandoned for a long time.

‘Well, at least you set a new record,’ she said.

He shook his head while he smiled.

‘You didn’t?’

‘A jump is invalid if you fall, Martha,’ he said and took a sip of his coffee.

And she thought that though it wasn’t the first time she’d heard him say her name, it felt as if it was the first time she’d heard anyone say it.

‘So you had to carry on jumping. Because boys measure themselves against their fathers and daughters against their mothers.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘All sons believe that one day they’ll turn into their father, don’t you think? That’s why they’re so disillusioned when their father’s weaknesses are revealed; they see their own failings, their own future defeats waiting for them. And sometimes the shock is so devastating that it makes them give up before they’ve even started.’

‘Was it like that for you?’

Martha shrugged. ‘My mother should never have stayed married to my father. But she chose to conform. I hurled it at her once when we argued about something she wouldn’t let me to do, I don’t even remember what it was. I screamed that it was unfair to deny me happiness just because she denied it to herself. I’ve never regretted saying anything that much in my whole life and I’ll never forget her wounded look when she replied: ‘Because I risk losing the one thing which brings me most happiness. You.’

Stig nodded and looked out of the basement window. ‘Sometimes we’re wrong when we think that we know the truth about our parents. Perhaps they weren’t weak. Perhaps something happened to give you the wrong impression. What if they were strong? What if they were willing to leave behind a disgraced name, allow themselves to be stripped of all honour, take the blame, to save the ones they loved? And if they were that strong, perhaps you’re strong, too.’

The trembling in his voice was almost imperceptible. Almost. Martha waited until he turned his gaze on her again before she asked:

‘So what did he do?’

‘Who?’

‘Your father.’

She saw his Adam’s apple slide up and down. Saw him blink more quickly. Press his lips together. She saw that he wanted to. Saw him watch the take-off point come closer. He could break the fall by throwing himself to the side.

‘He signed a suicide note before they shot him,’ Stig said. ‘To save my mother and me.’

Martha felt dizzy while he continued to speak. She might have pushed him over the edge, but she was going down with him. And now there was no way back to the point where she could erase what she had learned. Deep down, had she known what she was doing all along? Had she wanted this wild floating, this free fall?

Stig and his mother had been to a wrestling tournament in Lillehammer that weekend. His father would normally have gone with them, but had said that he needed to say at home, that he had something important to do. Stig had won in his weight class and when they came home, had run to his father’s study to tell him. His father had been sitting with his back to him and his head resting on the desk. At first Stig thought his father had fallen asleep while working. Then he saw the gun.

‘I had only seen that gun once before. My father used to write his diary in his study, a diary bound in black leather with yellow pages. When I was little he used to say it was his confession. I used to think that to go to confession was just another word for writing, right up until I was eleven and my RS teacher told me that to confess is to tell someone your sins. When I came home from school that day, I crept into his study and found the desk key — I knew where he kept it. I wanted to know what my father’s sins were. I unlocked. .’

Martha took a breath as if she were the one telling the story.

‘But the diary wasn’t there. Instead I found an old-fashioned, black pistol. I locked the drawer, returned the key and sneaked out. And I felt ashamed. I had tried to spy on my own father, to expose him. I never told anyone and I never tried to find out where he kept his diary again. But when I stood behind my father in his study that weekend, it came back to me. It was my punishment for what I had done. I put my hand on his neck to wake him up. It wasn’t just that he wasn’t warm, it was the chill, a kind of hard, marble-cold death exuded from his body. And I knew that it was my fault. Then I saw the letter. .’

Martha looked at the vein on his neck while he told her that he had read it. Seen his mother stand in the doorway. He told her how at first he was going to tear up the letter, pretend that it never existed. But he hadn’t been able to do it. And when the police came, he had given it to them. And he could tell from looking at them that they wanted to shred it, too. The vein bulged as if he was an inexperienced singer. Or someone who isn’t used to talking very much.

His mother had started taking the antidepressants her doctor prescribed. Then other pills on her own initiative. But like she used to say, nothing worked better or faster than alcohol. So she had started drinking. Vodka for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He had tried to take care of her, get her off the pills and booze. In order to do that he had had to quit wrestling and other after-school activities. His teachers had come to their door, rung the doorbell and asked why he, who used to get such fine grades, was skiving and he had thrown them out. His mother had deteriorated, becoming increasingly unbalanced and eventually suicidal. He was sixteen years old when he discovered a syringe among the pills while clearing up his mother’s bedroom. He had known what it was. Or at least what it was for. He had plunged it into his own thigh and it had made everything better. The next day he had gone down to Plata and bought his first wrap. Six months later he had sold everything in the house that could easily be converted into cash and robbed his defenceless mother blind. He didn’t care about anything, least of all himself, but he needed money to keep the pain at bay. Since he was under eighteen and couldn’t be sent to adult prison, he had started paying for his habit by confessing to minor robberies and burglaries with which older criminals were charged. When he turned eighteen and such offers dried up and the pressure, the constant pressure to get money only grew worse, he had agreed to take the fall for two murders in return for being supplied with drugs while he was in prison.

‘And now you’ve served your sentence?’ she said.

He nodded. ‘ I certainly have.’

She slipped off the chest freezer and went up to him. She wasn’t thinking, it was too late for that. She reached out her hand and touched the vein in his neck. He looked at her with big, black pupils that almost filled the iris. Then she put her arms around his waist and he put his arms around her shoulders, like two dancers who couldn’t decide which of them should lead. They stood like this for a while, then he pulled her close. He was burning up, he must have a fever. Or did she? She closed her eyes, felt his nose and lips against her hair.