Ю Несбё - Blood on Snow

“Stay with me, my love,” the breath in my ear panted. “Stay with me, my love, my Olav.”

I smoked a cigarette. She slept. It had stopped snowing. The wind which had been playing a mournful tune on the guttering had packed up its instruments. The only sound in the room was her even breathing. I listened and listened. Nothing.

It had been just like I had dreamed it would be. And hadn’t believed it could be. I was so tired that I had to get some sleep. But so happy that I didn’t want to. Because when I fell asleep, this world, this world that I had never much cared for until now, would cease to exist for a while. And, according to that Hume guy, the fact that I had until now woken up every morning in the same body, into the same world, where what had happened had actually happened, was no guarantee that the same thing would happen again tomorrow morning. For the first time in my life, closing my eyes felt like a gamble.

So I went on listening. Keeping watch over what I had. There were no sounds that shouldn’t have been there. But I carried on listening anyway.

My mother was so weak. That was why she had to put up with more than even the strongest person could have handled.

For instance, she could never say no to my bastard of a father. Which meant she had to put up with more beatings than someone banged up for sex offences. He was especially fond of throttling her. I’ll never escape the sound of my mum bellowing like a cow in the bedroom each time my father let go long enough for her to catch her breath, so that he could start strangling her all over again. She was too weak to say no to drink, which meant she downed enough poison to fell an ox or an elephant, even though she was only small. And she was so weak when it came to me that she gave me everything I ever wanted, even when she really needed what she was giving me.

People always said I was like my mum.

Only when I was staring into my father’s eyes for the last time did I realise that I had him inside me as well. Like a virus, an illness in my blood.

As a rule he only came to us when he needed money. And as a rule he got what little we had. But he also realised that to maintain the fear factor — no matter whether he got a handout or not — he had to demonstrate what would happen the day she didn’t pay up. My mother would blame black eyes and thick lips on stairs, doors and slippery bathroom floors. And, as the drinking took hold, it did actually happen that she fell or banged into walls entirely of her own accord.

My father said I was studying to become an idiot. I suspect he may have had the same trouble reading and writing as I did, the difference being that he had given up. While he had dropped out of school at the earliest opportunity and hardly even read a newspaper after that, I actually had liked school, weirdly enough. Apart from math. I didn’t say much, and most people probably thought I was stupid. But the Norwegian teacher who marked my work said I had something, something behind all the spelling mistakes, something the others didn’t have. And that was more than enough for me. But my father used to ask what I thought I was going to do with all that reading. If I thought I was better than he and the rest of the family. They’d managed fine, doing honest work. They never tried to put on airs by learning fancy words and getting lost in stories. When I was sixteen I asked why he didn’t try doing a bit of honest work himself. He beat me black and blue. Said he was raising a kid, and that was enough work for one day.

When I was nineteen he came round one evening. He had been let out of Botsen prison the same day, after a year inside for killing a man. There hadn’t been any witnesses, so the court had agreed with the defence that the injuries to the man’s brain could have been caused when he tried to fight back and slipped on the ice.

He made some remark about my having grown. Slapped me jovially on the back. My mum had said I was working in a warehouse, was that right? Had I finally come to my senses?

I didn’t answer, didn’t say I was working part-time as well as going to college to save money so I could get a small flat when I started at university after my military service the following year.

He said it was good I had a job, because now I’d have to cough up.

I asked why.

Why? He was my father, victim of a miscarriage of justice who needed all the help his family could give him to get back on his feet.

I refused.

He stared at me in disbelief. And I could see he was wondering whether to hit me. That he was sizing me up. His little boy had grown up.

Then he let out a short laugh. And said if I didn’t hand over my pathetic savings, he’d kill my mother. And make it look like an accident. What did I think about that?

I didn’t answer.

He said I had sixty seconds.

I said the money was in the bank, and he’d have to wait till they opened the next morning.

He tilted his head, as if that would help him work out whether I was lying.

I said I wasn’t going to run, that he could have my bed, and I’d sleep in Mum’s room.

“So you’ve taken over my place there as well, have you?” he sneered. “Don’t you know that’s illegal? Or doesn’t it say that in your books?”

That evening Mum and Dad shared the last of her drink. They went into her room. I lay on the sofa and stuffed my ears with toilet paper. But it didn’t block out her bellowing. Then a door slammed, and I heard him go into my room.

I waited until two o’clock before I got up, went into the bathroom and got the toilet brush. Then I went down to the cellar and unlocked our store cupboard. I’d been given a pair of skis when I was thirteen. By my mum. God knows what she had to go without to pay for those skis. But they were too small now, I’d grown out of them. I pulled the snow-guard off one of the poles and went back up. I crept into my room. My father was lying on his back, snoring. I stood with a foot on each side of the narrow bed-frame, put the point of the ski pole against his stomach. I didn’t want to risk his chest, because the spike might hit his sternum or one of his ribs. I put one hand through the strap on the pole, put the other one on top, and made sure the pole was at the right angle so that it wouldn’t bow or snap the bamboo shaft. I waited. I don’t know why, it wasn’t that I was scared. I wasn’t. His breathing became more unsettled, soon he’d move and roll over. So I jumped up, bending my knees under me like a ski jumper. And landed with my full weight. His skin offered some resistance, but once the hole was made the pole thrust right through him. The bamboo stick dragged part of his T-shirt with it into his stomach, and the spike bored deep into the mattress.

His eyes were black with shock as he lay there staring up at me. I’d been quick to sit on his chest so that his arms were locked down by my knees. He opened his mouth to scream. I took aim and rammed the toilet brush into his mouth. He gurgled and wriggled, but he couldn’t move. Sure I’d fucking grown.

I sat there, feeling the bamboo pole behind the small of my back, with his body struggling beneath me. And I thought to myself that I was riding my father. Now my father was my bitch.

I don’t know how long I sat there before he stopped struggling and his body became limp enough for me to risk removing the toilet brush.

“Fucking moron,” he groaned, his eyes closed. “You cut someone’s throat with a knife, not...”

“That would have been too quick,” I said.

He laughed, and coughed. Bubbles of blood at the corners of his mouth.

“Now, that’s my boy.”

That was the last thing he said. So he got the last word after all. Because I realised there and then that he was right, the bastard. I was his boy. It isn’t true that I didn’t know why I waited those extra seconds before sticking the pole into him. It was to prolong the magical moment when I, and I alone, had power over life and death.