Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘ Råte ,’ I supplied in Norwegian. ‘But your teeth are…’

‘I had a mother who made sure I got proper food and brushed my teeth every day. She was determined that I should have a better life. When she died, my grandmother took over the job.’

‘Jesus.’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

She blew on her tea. ‘If nothing else, we redlegs are proof that it’s not just the blacks and Latinos who never manage to escape the poverty trap.’

‘At least you got out.’

‘Yes, and I’m racist enough to believe that it was my African genes that got me out.’

‘You? African?’

‘My mother and grandmother were both Afro-Bajanere.’ She laughed when she saw my incredulous expression. ‘My hair and skin are from an Irish redleg who drank himself to death before I was three years old.’ She shrugged her narrow shoulders. ‘Even though both my grandmother and my mother lived in St John and were married respectively to an Irishman and a Scot, I was never reckoned to be a proper redleg. Partly because we owned a little land, but especially after I matriculated at the University of the West Indies in Bridgetown. I wasn’t just the first from my family to go to university, I was the first in the whole neighbourhood.’

I looked at Shannon. It was the longest speech I’d heard her make about herself since she came here. Maybe the reason was simple: I hadn’t asked for her story. Or at least not since that time she and Carl were in the bunk beneath me, and she said she’d rather hear me talk. Maybe she wanted to check me out first. And now she had.

I coughed. ‘Must have been quite something to make a choice like that.’

Shannon shook her head. ‘It was my grandmother’s decision. She got the whole family, uncles and aunts and all, to spill my school fees.’

‘ Split your school fees.’

‘Split my school fees, and later on for my studies in Toronto. The reason my grandmother drove me back and forth to the university was that we couldn’t afford for me to live in the city. One lecturer told me I was an example of the new social mobility in Barbados. I told him that even after four hundred years redlegs were still sloshing about in social cement, and I have my family to thank, not social reformers. I’m a redleg girl who owes everything to her family, and I always will be. So even though I’ve lived better in Toronto, Opgard is still luxury to me. You understand?’

I nodded. ‘What happened to the Buick?’

She looked at me as if to check I wasn’t trying to be funny. ‘Not “what happened to your grandmother”?’

‘She’s alive and doing well,’ I said.

‘How d’you know that?’

‘Your voice when you talk about her. It’s steady.’

‘So, car mechanic and psychologist?’

‘Car mechanic,’ I said. ‘The Buick’s gone, am I right?’

‘By mistake my grandmother left the gear lever in drive when she parked outside our house. It rolled off an incline and was smashed to pieces in the rubbish dump below. I cried for days. Did you hear that in my voice when I was talking about it?’

‘I did. A Buick Roadmaster 1954. I can understand that.’

She dipped her head from one side to the other as though she was studying me from several angles, as though I were a bloody Rubik’s cube.

‘Cars and beauty,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘You know, last night I dreamed about a book I read a long time ago. I’m sure it was because of that wreck down in Huken. Crash , it was called. J. G. Ballard. About people getting turned on by car crashes. By the crashes, and the injuries. Their own and others’. Did you ever see the film?’

I tried to think.

‘David Cronenberg,’ she said, trying to help me out.

I shook my head.

She hesitated. As though regretting she had started a conversation about something that couldn’t possibly interest a guy who worked at a service station.

‘I prefer books to films,’ I said to help her out. ‘But that’s one I haven’t read.’

‘In the book there’s a description of a blind corner on Mulholland Drive where cars drive over the edge at night and fall down the cliff into a wilderness. It’s too expensive to salvage the cars so a sort of car cemetery has built up down there which gets higher every year. In time there won’t be any drop there at all, anyone driving over the edge will be saved by the mountain of wrecks.’

I nodded slowly. ‘Saved by a car wreck. Maybe I should read it. Or see the film.’

‘Actually I prefer the film,’ she said. ‘The book is a first-person narrative and that makes it perverse in a way that’s subjective and…’ She stopped. ‘How do you say intrusive in Norwegian?’

‘Sorry, we’ll need to ask Carl for that,’ I said.

‘He’s gone to have a word with Jo Aas.’

I looked at the kitchen table. The plans were still lying there, and Carl hadn’t taken his laptop with him either. Perhaps he thought he had a better chance of convincing Aas that the village needed a spa hotel if he didn’t swamp him with material.

‘ Påtrengende ?’ I suggested.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘The film isn’t as påtrengende . As a rule the camera is more objective than the pen. And Cronenberg managed to get hold of the essence of it.’

‘Which is?’

A sort of spark flared in her good eye, and her voice became animated now she realised I was genuinely interested.

‘The beauty of a thing spoiled,’ she said. ‘The partially destroyed Greek statue is extra beautiful because from what isn’t damaged we can see how beautiful it could have been, should have been, must have been.’ She pressed the palms of her hands against the worktop as though about to hoist herself up onto it, sit there with her back arched the way she had at the party. Tiny dancer . Christ.

‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘I should try to get back to sleep.’

The spark in her eye went off like an indicator.

‘What about your coffee?’ she said, and I could hear the disappointment in her voice. Now that she’d finally got someone to talk to. They probably talk to each other all the time over there in Barbados.

‘I need another couple of hours, I can feel it,’ I said, turned off the hot plate and pulled the pan off the heat.

‘Of course,’ she said, and took her hands off the worktop.

I lay in bed for half an hour. Tried to sleep, to think of nothing. Heard the tapping of the laptop keyboard up through the hole, the rustle of paper. Not a chance.

I repeated the ritual. Got up, dressed, hurried out. Called out ‘See you!’ before the door slammed shut behind me. It must have sounded as though I was running from something.

‘OH, HI,’ SAID EGIL AS he opened the door. He looked ashamed. Must have been because he knew I could hear the sounds of a war game and the excited voices of his pals from the living room. ‘Yeah, actually I’m better now,’ he said quickly. ‘I can work tonight.’

‘Take as long as you need to get well,’ I said. ‘That’s not why I came.’

He seemed to be searching his conscience to find out what that might possibly be. Clearly there were a couple of things to choose between.

‘What does Moe come in to buy?’ I asked.

‘Moe?’ Egil said it as though he’d never heard the name.

‘The roofer,’ I said. ‘He asked after you.’

Egil smiled, but there was fear in his eyes.

‘What does he come in for?’ I repeated, as though I thought Egil might have forgotten the question.

‘Nothing special,’ said Egil.

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘Hard to remember.’

‘But he pays cash?’

‘Yes.’