Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘On the foundations?’

Carl rolled his head. ‘In a way.’ He said it the way people say things when they either want to spare you the details because they’re too complicated to explain, or want to hide the fact that they don’t really know themselves. Carl went over to have a word with some of the guys working while I wandered around in the heather and looked for new birds’ nests. I didn’t find any. Maybe the noise and the traffic had frightened them, but they were probably brooding not far away.

Carl returned. Wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘Want to go for a dive?’

I laughed.

‘What?’ Carl shouted.

‘The gear is so old it would be almost suicide.’

‘Swim then?’

‘OK.’

But of course we’d just ended up back here in the winter garden again. Somewhere between his fifth or sixth bottle Carl suddenly asked: ‘D’you know how Abel died?’

‘He was murdered by his brother,’ I said.

‘I’m talking about the Abel Dad named me after, the secretary of state, Abel Parker Upshur. He was being given a guided tour of the USS Princeton on the Potomac River and they wanted to demonstrate the firepower of one of the cannons. It exploded, killing Abel and five others. It was in 1844. So he never saw the completion of his life’s greatest achievement, the annexation of Texas in 1845. What d’you make of that?’

I shrugged. ‘Sad?’

Carl laughed loudly. ‘At least you live up to your own middle name. Did you hear about the woman that sat next to Calvin Coolidge…?’

I only half listened, because of course I knew the anecdote, Dad loved to tell the story. The lady sitting next to Coolidge at a formal dinner had made a bet that she’d get more than a couple of words out of the famously taciturn president. Towards the end of the meal the president turned to her and said: ‘You lose.’

‘Which of us is most like Dad and which like Mum?’ asked Carl.

‘Are you kidding?’ I said, diligently taking a couple of pulls of my Budweiser. ‘You are Mum and I’m Dad.’

‘I drink like Dad,’ said Carl. ‘You like Mum.’

‘That’s the only thing that doesn’t add up,’ I said.

‘So you’re the pervert?’

I didn’t answer. Didn’t know what to say. Even when it was happening we hadn’t talked about it, not really, I would just comfort him as though he’d got a normal beating from Dad. And promised revenge without saying anything directly related to the subject. I have often wondered whether things might have been different if I’d talked openly about it, set the words free, turned them into something that could be heard, something real and not just something that happened inside our heads and could therefore be rejected as just imagination. Damned if I know.

‘Do you think about it?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Carl. ‘And no. It bothers me less than the ones I read about.’

‘Read about?’

‘Other victims of abuse. But it’s probably mostly those who’ve been badly damaged who write about it and talk about it. I’m guessing there’s a lot like me. Who put it behind them. It’s a question of context.’

‘Context?’

‘Sexual assault is harmful mostly because of the social condemnation and shame that surrounds it. We’re taught that we will be traumatised by it, so everything that goes wrong in our lives, we blame it on that. Take Jewish boys who get circumcised. It’s a sexual mutilation. Torture. Much worse than being fiddled with. But there’s not much to suggest that many of them suffer mental damage from circumcision. Because it takes place within a context that says this is OK, this is something you just have to put up with, it’s a part of the culture. Maybe the worst damage is done not when the abuse takes place, but when we understand that it’s beyond what’s regarded as acceptable.’

I looked at him. Did he mean it? Was it his way of rationalising it away? And if so, why not? Whatever gets you through the night, it’s all right.

‘How much does Shannon know?’ I asked.

‘Everything.’ He put the bottle to his lips, turned it upwards instead of putting his head back. Clucking sound. Not like laughter, like crying.

‘Well she knows that we covered it up when Olsen went over into Huken, but does she also know I fixed the brakes and the steering on the Cadillac when Mum and Dad died?’

He shook his head. ‘I only tell her everything that concerns me. ’

‘Everything?’ I asked, looked out, let the low evening sun dazzle me. Saw from the corner of my eye that he was looking enquiringly at me.

‘Grete came up to me at the opening do last year, after the first spadeful was dug up there,’ I said. ‘She said you and Mari have secret meetings up at the Aas cabin.’

Carl said nothing for a few moments. ‘Shit,’ he said in a low voice.

‘Yes,’ I said.

In the silence out there I heard two quick cries from a raven. Warning calls. And then came the question: ‘Why did Grete tell you ?’

I had been waiting for it. It was the reason I hadn’t told him before. To avoid the question and the need to lie, to keep secret what Grete thought she’d found out about me: that I wanted Shannon. Because if I just said the words, no matter how mad it sounded and though we both knew how crazy Grete was, the possibility would have been planted in his mind. And then it would be too late, Carl would see the truth, as if it stood printed across my forehead in capital letters.

‘Haven’t a clue,’ I said casually. Too casually, probably. ‘She still wants you. And if you want to start a fire in paradise and get away with it then you creep in and start at the edge and hope the fire spreads. Something like that.’

I put the bottle to my mouth and knew that my explanation had been a little too poetic, the metaphor a bit too artificial to seem spontaneous. I had to put the ball back in his court. ‘But is that true, about you and Mari?’

‘Clearly you don’t,’ he said, placing the empty bottle on the windowsill.

‘I don’t what?’

‘Have a clue. Or else you would have told me before. Warned me, like. Or at least confronted me with it.’

‘Of course I didn’t believe it,’ I said. ‘Grete had had a few and that makes her even crazier than usual. The whole thing just slipped my mind.’

‘Then what made you remember it now?’

I shrugged. Nodded towards the barn. ‘Could use another coat. Maybe you can get an estimate from one of the guys painting the hotel?’

‘Yeah,’ said Carl.

‘We split it, then?’

‘I mean yes to your other question.’

I looked at him.

‘About Mari and me meeting each other,’ he concluded, and belched.

‘None of my business,’ I said and took another swig of my beer which was beginning to taste flat.

‘It was Mari who took the initiative. At the homecoming party she asked if we couldn’t meet, just the two of us, and talk things over, clear the air. But she said all eyes were on us right then, so it was best we meet somewhere discreet, so there wouldn’t be any tittle-tattle. She suggested we meet at the cabin. We each drove our own cars there, parked in different spots, and I arrived a while after her. Pretty smart, right?’

‘Pretty smart,’ I said.

‘Mari thought of it because Grete told her Rita Willumsen once had a similar arrangement at her cabin with a young lover.’

‘Jesus. She keeps herself pretty well informed, that Grete Smitt.’ I could feel my voice was dry. I hadn’t asked Carl if he remembered telling Grete about Dad that time he’d been drinking at Årtun.

‘Something wrong, Roy?’

‘No. Why d’you ask?’

‘You’ve gone all pale.’