Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

Which is where I came in.

I think my talent lay more in disarming people, in stopping them from doing damage, the same way you disarm bombs. I’m practical. I understand how things function. Maybe that’s why. Understood the centre of gravity, mass, speed, stuff like that. So I did what was necessary to stop those who were trying to beat up my little brother. What was necessary , no more and no less. But of course, more was sometimes necessary. A nose broken, the occasional rib, and at least one jaw. That was an out-of-town guy who had punched Carl hard on the nose.

I was there quick. I remember the bleeding knuckles, the blood on my shirtsleeves, and someone saying: ‘That’s enough now, Roy.’

But no, it wasn’t enough. One more punch of that bloody face below me. One more punch and the problem would be permanently solved.

‘The sheriff’s coming, Roy.’

I lean down and whisper into the ear with blood running down both sides of it.

‘You don’t touch my brother again, understand?’

A glassy-eyed stare, emptied by drink and pain, is fastened on me, but staring inwards. I raise my arm. The head below me nods. I stand up, dust off my clothes, walk over to the Volvo 240 with its engine running and the driver’s door open. Carl is already stretched out in the back seat.

‘Don’t get any blood on my fucking seat covers,’ I say as I release the clutch and accelerate so hard bits of the lawn fly up in the air around us.

‘Roy,’ says a groggy voice once we’re through the first few corners on the drive up the mountain.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I won’t say anything to Mari.’

‘That’s not it.’

‘You gonna be sick?’

‘No. I want to tell you something.’

‘Why not try instead to—’

‘I love you, bro.’

‘Carl, don’t—’

‘Yes! I’m a fool and an idiot, but you, you don’t let that bother you, you come along and you bail me out every time.’ Tearful now. ‘Roy, listen… you’re all I’ve got.’

I look at the bloodied fist holding the wheel. I’m wide awake and the blood is pounding pleasurably through my body. I could have hit him one last time. The guy on the ground beneath me was just a jealous nobody, a loser, it really wouldn’t have been necessary. But Jesus, how I had wanted to.

It turned out that the guy whose jaw I broke had a reputation for turning up at parties where people didn’t know how good he was at fighting, provoking someone and then giving them a good kicking. After I heard about the jaw I was expecting a summons, but it never came. Or rather, I heard the guy had gone to the sheriff, and the sheriff advised him to drop it since Carl had suffered a broken rib, which was actually not true. Afterwards I realised that jaw had been a good investment. It gave me a reputation, so that it was often enough for me just to square up to someone if Carl got in trouble and they would back off.

‘Shit,’ Carl snuffles, choked up and drunk, as we lie in our beds afterwards. ‘I’m just a peaceful guy. Make the girls laugh. But the guys get all pissed off, and then you come along and sort it all out for your brother, and I’ve made you a lot of new enemies. Shit.’ He snuffled again. ‘Sorry.’ He hits the planks under my mattress. ‘You hear? I’m sorry.’

‘They’re idiots,’ I say. ‘Go to sleep now.’

‘Sorry!’

‘I said sleep .’

‘Yeah yeah, OK. But, Roy…’

‘Mm.’

‘Thanks. Thanks for… for…’

‘Just shut up, all right?’

‘…for being my brother. Goodnight.’

Silence. Then, the steady breathing of the one in the bunk bed below me. Safe. Nothing is as good as the sound of a little brother who is safe.

But at the party that led to Carl leaving town, and leaving me, not a single blow was struck. Carl had been drunk, Rod had been hoarse, and Mari had gone home. Had he and Mari quarrelled? Maybe. Mari being the chairman’s daughter it was probably not surprising she was more concerned with appearances than Carl was, but she was maybe tired of Carl always drinking too much at parties. Or perhaps Mari had to get up early, go to church with her parents, or study for her exams. No, she wasn’t that prim and proper. Decent yes, but not prim and proper. She just didn’t like looking out for Carl when he was pissed, and gave that job instead to her best friend Grete, who was a little too happy to do it. You would need to be pretty short-sighted not to see that Grete was in love with Carl, but of course it was quite possible Mari hadn’t noticed, and she certainly never saw what was coming. That Grete – having supported Carl out on the dance floor as Rod ended the evening as usual with ‘Love Me Tender’ – had dragged Carl up into the birch trees. They’d had it away standing up against a tree trunk. He hadn’t really known what was going on, he said, and only woke up at the sound of her down jacket scraping up and down against the bark. A sound that abruptly ceased when the cloth gave way and feathers like miniature angels were floating in the air around them. That’s how he referred to them. As miniature angels. In the silence he realised that Grete herself hadn’t made a single sound, either because she didn’t want to break the spell or because she wasn’t getting too much out of it. So that’s when he stopped.

‘I said I’d buy her a new jacket,’ said Carl from the lower bunk next morning. ‘But she said it was OK, she could repair it. Then I asked…’ Carl groaned. His boozy breath hung in the air. ‘I asked if she wanted me to help her with the sewing.’

I had laughed until I was crying in the top bunk and heard him pull the duvet over his head. Leaned out:

‘So what you gonna do now, Don Juan?’

‘Don’t know,’ from beneath the duvet.

‘Anyone see you?’

No one had seen them. At any rate, a week passed and we hadn’t heard any village gossip about Grete and Carl. Neither had Mari, apparently. It was beginning to look as though Carl was home free.

Until later in the day when Grete came visiting. Carl and me were sitting in the winter garden and saw her coming round Geitesvingen on her bicycle.

‘Shit,’ said Carl.

‘She’s probably looking for her climbing jacket,’ I said. ‘Meaning you.’

Carl pleaded with me and in the end I went out and said Carl had a terrible cold. Very contagious. Grete had stared at me, almost like she was taking aim, along her enormous sweaty, shiny nose. Then she’d turned and left. Back at the bike she’d put on the down jacket she had fastened to the carrier. The stitches were like a scar running down the back of it.

She came back the following day. Carl opened the door and before he could say anything she told him she loved him. And he replied that it was a mistake. That he’d done something really stupid. That he regretted it.

The next day Mari phoned and said Grete had told her everything and that she couldn’t be with someone who was unfaithful to her. Carl told me afterwards that Mari had cried, but otherwise been calm, and that he couldn’t figure it out. Not that Mari had broken up with him, but that Grete had told her what had happened up in the birch trees. He could understand that Grete was pissed off with him, about the jacket and everything. Revenge. Fair enough. But to lose the only friend she had into the bargain, wasn’t that like shooting yourself in the foot, as people say?

I didn’t have much to say about that, but thought of that story Uncle Bernard had told about the wreckers, those people in the old days of sailing ships who gave false signals to sailors and lured them onto underwater reefs so that they could plunder the wrecks. That was when I began to think of Grete as an underwater reef. Lying there, invisible, just waiting for the chance to rip open a hull. In a way I felt sorry for her, caught up in the passion of her own feelings, but she had betrayed Mari every bit as much as Carl had. I sensed something in that woman that Carl hadn’t seen. A hidden wickedness. That the pain you get from ruining things for yourself is less than the joy it brings to drag others down with you. The psychology of mass shootings in schools. The difference here being that this particular school shooter was still alive. Or at least still existing. To burn people up. Cut off their hair.