Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

She looked me straight in the eye. There was a groan from the trees behind us. Then she put her arms around me.

‘I wish I’d never met Carl,’ she whispered in my ear. ‘But then I wouldn’t have met you either, so I don’t know. But we need a miracle. We need God to do something, Roy.’

She rested her chin on my shoulder so that we were looking in different directions, her through the fence and into the dark forest, me towards the clearing and the motorway that led out, away, to other places.

There was another groan, a shadow fell over us, and the chorus of birdsong stopped abruptly, as though a conductor had raised his baton.

‘Roy…’ whispered Shannon. She raised her chin from my shoulder.

I looked at her, saw that she was staring upwards, with one eye wide open and one almost closed. I turned and saw four legs directly behind the fence. I followed the legs upwards. And upwards. And there at last was a body, and above it a neck. That continued upwards, parallel with the tree trunks.

A wondrous thing to behold: a giraffe.

Chomping away and looking down on us without interest. Eyelashes like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange .

‘I forgot to tell you, this is a zoo,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Shannon as the giraffe’s lips and tongue pulled at one of the thin, bare branches, making the sunlight flicker across her upturned face. ‘They forgot to tell us this is a zoo.’

After our walk in the woods, Shannon and I headed back to the station.

I said she could take the Volvo and that I would call her when I was finished so she could pick me up. I had accounts to go through, but I couldn’t concentrate. Carl had sold me out. Swindled me, stolen my birthright, sold it to the highest bidder. He’d allowed me to go ahead and become a killer, let me kill Willumsen to save his own skin. As usual. And still kept quiet about how he had betrayed me. Yes, he had betrayed me .

I was so angry my whole body was trembling and would not fucking stop. Finally I had to go to the toilet and throw up. And afterwards I sat there whimpering and hoped no one heard me.

What the fuck should I do?

My eye fell on the poster in front of me. I’d pinned the same one up there as I had in the staff toilet at Os. DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE. EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON YOU. DO IT NOW.

I think I made my decision there and then. I’m pretty sure about that. But of course, it could have been later that evening. When I heard the other thing Shannon had come to Kristiansand to tell me.

I SAT IN SILENCE AT the kitchen table Shannon and I had carried into the living room.

She’d been to the shopping centre and made cou cou, which she explained was the national dish of Barbados. It consisted of cornmeal, bananas, tomatoes, onions and peppers. Though she had to make do with cod instead of flying fish, she was pleased to have found okra and breadfruit.

‘Is anything wrong?’ asked Shannon.

I shook my head. ‘It looks delicious.’

‘Finally food shops with a bit of choice,’ she said. ‘You’ve got the highest standard of living in the world, but you eat as though you were paupers.’

‘True,’ I said.

‘And I think the reason you all eat so quickly is that you aren’t used to food that actually tastes of something.’

‘True.’ I poured wine into our glasses from the bottle of white Pia Syse and head office had sent me two weeks earlier, when it became clear that the station would take third place in the ranking list. Put the bottle down on the table but didn’t touch my glass.

‘You’re still thinking about Carl,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You’re asking yourself how he could betray you like this?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m asking myself how I could betray him like this.’

She sighed. ‘You can’t decide who you fall for, Roy. You told me you mountain people fall in love with someone it makes practical sense to fall in love with, but now you see that isn’t true.’

‘Maybe not,’ I said. ‘But maybe it isn’t so completely random after all.’

‘No?’

‘Stanley told me about some French something-or-other who believes we desire the things other people desire. That we imitate.’

‘Mimetic desire,’ said Shannon. ‘René Girard.’

‘That was it.’

‘He believes it’s a romantic illusion that a person can follow their heart and their own inner desires, because beyond satisfying our most basic needs we don’t have any inner desires of our own. We desire what we see others around us desiring. Like dogs that are not interested in a toy bone suddenly have to have it when they see another dog wanting it.’

I nodded. ‘And like when you feel a stronger desire to own your own service station once you know other people want to own it too.’

‘And architects have to land the job when they know they’re competing with the best.’

‘And the ugly, stupid brother who has to have the woman that belongs to the smart, handsome brother.’

Shannon prodded at the food in front of her. ‘Are you saying your feelings for me are really about Carl?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not saying anything. Because I don’t know anything. Maybe we’re as much a riddle to ourselves as we are to others.’

Shannon touched her wine glass with her fingertips. ‘Isn’t it sad if we can only love what others love?’

‘Uncle Bernard said a lot of things seem sad if you look at them too long and too closely,’ I said. ‘That we ought to be blind in one eye.’

‘Maybe so.’

‘Shall we try being blind?’ I said. ‘For one night, at least.’

‘Yes,’ she said, struggling to smile.

I raised my glass. She raised hers.

‘I love you,’ I whispered.

Her smile widened, her eyes glistened like Lake Budal on a calm summer’s day, and for a moment I managed to forget all the rest, and hoped only that we could have this night, and then let the nuclear bomb drop. Yes, I wanted a nuclear bomb to drop. Because I had – I think I remember I already had – made up my mind. And I would have preferred a nuclear bomb.

As I put my glass down I saw that Shannon hadn’t drunk from hers. She stood up, leaned over the table and blew out the candles.

‘Time is tight,’ she said. ‘Too tight not to be lying naked beside you.’

The time was eight minutes to four when Shannon again collapsed on top of me. Her sweat mingled with mine, we smelled and tasted the same. I raised my head to look at the clock on the bedside table.

‘We’ve got three hours,’ said Shannon.

I dropped back onto the pillow and fumbled for the snuffbox next to the clock.

‘I love you,’ she said. She had said it every time she woke up, before we made love again. And before she went back to sleep again.

‘I love you, dotterel,’ I said, in the same tone as hers, as though the deep meaning of these words was now so familiar to us we didn’t need to add emotion, or meaning or conviction to them, just to say them was enough, chant them like a mantra, a creed we knew off by heart.

‘I cried today,’ I said, wedging a pellet of snuff beneath my lip.

‘You probably don’t do that often,’ said Shannon.

‘No.’

‘What were you crying for?’

‘You know what for. For everything.’

‘Yes, but exactly what? And why today?’

I thought about it. ‘I was crying for what I lost today.’

‘The family property,’ she said.

I gave a brief laugh. ‘No, not the farm.’

‘Me,’ she said.

‘I’ve never had you,’ I said. ‘I was crying for Carl. I lost my little brother today.’

‘Of course,’ Shannon whispered. ‘Sorry. Sorry for being so stupid.’