Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘Because that’s what I do.’

‘Why didn’t the two of you tell me all this?’ I asked.

Shannon smiled to herself.

‘Eh?’ I said.

‘He said it wouldn’t be good for you. I’m just trying to remember exactly how he put it. That’s right: he said that even though you aren’t sensitive and you don’t know much about empathy, you’re a moralist. Unlike himself, who is a sensitive and sympathetic cynic.’

I felt like cursing out loud, but instead I had to laugh. Damn him, he had a knack for describing things. He didn’t just correct the orthography in my school essays, sometimes he tacked on a sentence or two. Sort of lifted it a bit, gave wings to the crap. Giving wings to crap. Yeah, that was what his talent was.

‘But you’re wrong if you don’t think Carl’s intentions are good,’ said Shannon. ‘He wishes everybody well. But of course, he wishes himself a bit more well. And look, he actually manages it.’

‘There are probably a few submerged rocks to look out for. Dan Krane, for example, is planning an article.’

Shannon shook her head. ‘Carl says that problem has been solved. And things are going much better now. The project is back on schedule. In two weeks he’s signing a contract with a Swedish hotelier who’s going to run the place.’

‘So Carl Opgard saves the village. Gets to erect a permanent monument to himself. And gets rich. Which of those do you think matters most to him?’

‘I think our motives are so complex that we don’t even understand them completely ourselves.’

I stroked the bruise beneath her cheekbone.

‘And his motives for beating you, are they complex too?’

She shrugged. ‘Before I left him and went to Toronto last summer he’d never laid so much as a finger on me. But when I came back something had changed. He had changed. He drank all the time. And he started to hit me. He was so distraught after the first time that I convinced myself it was a one-off. But then it turned into a pattern, like a form of compulsive behaviour, something he had to do. Sometimes he would be crying even before he began.’

I thought of the crying down below in the bunk bed, that time I realised it wasn’t Carl but Dad.

‘Why didn’t you leave then?’ I asked. ‘Why come back from Toronto at all? Did you love him so much?’

She shook her head. ‘I’d stopped loving him.’

‘Did you come because of me?’

‘No,’ she said, and stroked my cheek.

‘You came because of the hotel,’ I said.

She nodded.

‘You love that hotel.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I hate the hotel. But it’s my prison, it won’t let me go.’

‘And yet still you love it,’ I said.

‘The way a mother loves the child that holds her hostage,’ she said, and I thought of what Grete had said.

Shannon turned.

‘When you’ve created something that has cost you so much time, pain and love, as I’ve put into the creation of that building, it becomes a part of you. No, not a part, it’s bigger than you, more important. The child, the building, the work of art, it’s your only shot at immortality, right? More important than anything else you might love. Do you understand?’

‘So then, it’s also your own personal monument?’

‘No! I don’t design monuments. I’ve designed a simple and useful and beautiful building. Because we, the people, need beauty. And the beauty of my designs for the hotel lies in their simplicity, their self-evident logic. There’s nothing monumental about my drawings.’

‘Why do you say the drawings and not the hotel? I mean, it’s almost finished.’

‘Because they’re destroying it. These compromises with the council regarding the facade. The cheap materials Carl has agreed to use to stay within the budget. The entire lobby and the restaurant that were altered while I was in Toronto.’

‘So you came back to save your child.’

‘But I came too late,’ she said. ‘And the man I thought I loved tried to beat me into submission.’

‘Then if you’ve already lost the battle, why are you still here?’

She smiled bitterly. ‘You tell me. I guess maybe a mother feels compelled to be present at the funeral of her own child.’

I swallowed. ‘Is there nothing else keeping you here?’

She gave me a long look. Then she closed her eyes and nodded slowly.

I took a deep breath. ‘I need to hear you say it, Shannon.’

‘Please. Don’t ask me to do that.’

‘Why not?’

I saw her eyes fill with tears. ‘Because it’s an open sesame , Roy. And that’s why you’re asking me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If I hear myself say it, my heart opens up, and then I’m weak. And until everything’s finished here, I need to stay strong.’

‘I need to stay strong too,’ I said. ‘And to stay strong enough I need to hear you say it. Say it low so that I’m the only one that hears it.’ And I cupped my hands over her small, white, shell-like ears.

She looked at me. Took a breath. Stopped. Started again. And then she whispered the magic words, more powerful than any password, any declaration of faith, any oath of allegiance: ‘I love you.’

‘And I love you too,’ I whispered in return.

I kissed her.

She kissed me.

‘God damn you,’ she said.

‘When this is over,’ I said, ‘when the hotel is up, will you be free then?’

She nodded.

‘I can wait,’ I said. ‘But then we’ll pack up and leave.’

‘Where?’ she asked.

‘Barcelona. Or Cape Town. Or Sydney.’

‘Barcelona,’ she said. ‘Gaudí.’

‘Deal.’

As though to seal the deal we looked into each other’s eyes. From out of the darkness came a sound. A golden plover? What had caused him to come all the way down here from his mountain? The rockets?

Something showed in her face. Anxiety.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘It isn’t a good sound.’

I listened. It wasn’t a plover. This note rose and fell.

‘It’s the bloody fire engine,’ I said.

As though at a signal we jumped up out of bed and ran into the workshop. I opened the door, just in time to see the old fire engine disappear in the direction of the village. I’d done repair work on it; it was a GMC. The council had bought it from the armed forces, who’d been using it at an airport. The sales argument was that the price was reasonable and came with a water tank with a capacity of 1,500 litres. One year later the sales argument was that the heavy vehicle was so slow in the steep terrain that if a fire broke out in the hills there would be nothing for those fifteen hundred litres of water to put out by the time it got there. But there were no takers for the monster and it was still here.

‘In weather like this they shouldn’t allow fireworks in the middle of the village,’ I said.

‘The fire isn’t in the middle of the village,’ said Shannon.

I followed her gaze. Up the mountain, up in the direction of Opgard. The sky above was a dirty yellow.

‘Ah shit,’ I whispered.

I turned the Volvo into the yard. Shannon was right behind me in the Subaru.

There was Opgard, sloping, shining, leaning a little eastward in the moonlight. Intact. We got out of the cars; I headed towards the barn and Shannon towards the main house.

Inside I saw that Carl had already been there and picked up his skis. I took my own and the ski poles and ran to the house where Shannon stood in the doorway holding out my ski boots. I fastened my skis and set off at double pace through the trees, towards that dirty yellow sky. The wind had dropped so much that Carl’s tracks hadn’t been covered over and I was able to use them to speed along. I would guess that the wind was down to a strong breeze by now, and now I could hear the shouts and the crackle of fire before I came up on the ridge. For that reason I was surprised and relieved when at last I arrived and looked down at the hotel, the framework and the modules. Smoke, but no flames – they must have managed to put it out. But then I noticed the glow in the snow on the far side of the building, on the red bodywork of the fire truck, and on the expressionless faces of those standing there, turned towards me. And when the wind dropped for a moment I saw those yellow, licking tongues everywhere, and realised that it was just that the wind had temporarily blown the flames out on the lee side. And I realised too the problem facing those trying to put them out. The road only went as far as the front of the hotel, and the fire truck had to park some distance away because the snow hadn’t been cleared from the area in front. It meant that even with the hose fully unrolled it wasn’t long enough for them to get round to the rear of the hotel and direct the jet of water with the wind behind them. Now, even though they must have had the hose turned on full, the jet dissipated in the facing wind and blew back across them as rain.