Jo Nesbo - Midnight Sun

‘Mmm,’ Knut purred.

‘All we’re missing is the white wine,’ I said.

‘Burn,’ he said, flashing his teeth.

‘Jesus drank wine,’ Lea said. ‘Anyway, you drink red wine with cod.’ She laughed as Knut and I both stopped eating and looked at her. ‘Or so I’ve heard!’

‘Dad used to drink,’ Knut said.

Lea stopped laughing.

‘More wrestling!’ Knut said.

I patted my stomach to show that I was too full.

‘Boring...’ His bottom lip drooped.

‘See if you can find any gulls’ eggs,’ Lea said.

‘Eggs, now?’ Knut asked.

‘Summer eggs,’ she said. ‘They’re rare, but they do exist.’

He closed one eye. Then he stood up, raced off and disappeared over the brow of the island.

‘Summer eggs?’ I asked, lying back on the sand. ‘Is that true?’

‘I think most things exist,’ she said. ‘And I did say they were rare.’

‘Like your lot?’

‘Us?’

‘Læstadians.’

‘Is that how you see us?’ She shaded her eyes, and I realised where Knut had picked up his habit of squinting with one eye.

‘No,’ I said eventually, and closed both eyes.

‘Tell me something, Ulf.’ She put the jacket I had borrowed under her head.

‘What?’

‘Anything.’

‘Let me think.’

We lay in silence. I listened to the fire crackle and the waves play gently on the shore.

‘A summer’s night in Stockholm,’ I said. ‘Everything’s green. Everyone is asleep. I’m walking slowly home with Monica. We stop and kiss. And then we carry on. We hear laughter from an open window. There’s a breeze coming from the archipelago, carrying with it a smell of grass and seaweed.’ I hummed inside my head. ‘And the breeze strokes our cheeks and I pull her closer to me, and the night doesn’t exist, only stillness, shadow, wind.’

‘That’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Go on.’

‘The night is short and light and slips away as the thrushes wake up. A man stops rowing to look at a swan. As we walk across the Western Bridge, a single, empty tram passes us. And there, in the middle of the night, in secret, the trees blossom in Stockholm as the windows paint the city with light. And the city plays a song for everyone who’s sleeping, for everyone who has to travel far away but will come back to Stockholm again. The streets are scented with flowers, and we kiss again, and walk slowly, slowly home through the city.’

I listened. Waves. Fire. A distant gull’s cry.

‘Monica, is she your beloved?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She’s my beloved.’

‘Ah. How long?’

‘Let’s see. Ten years or so, I think.’

‘That’s a long time.’

‘Yes, but we’re only ever in love for three minutes at a time.’

‘Three minutes?’

‘Three minutes and nineteen seconds, to be more precise. That’s how long it takes her to sing the song.’

I heard her sit up. ‘What you just told me is a song?’

‘“Slowly We Walk Through the City”,’ I said. ‘Monica Zetterlund.’

‘And you’ve never met her?’

‘No. I had a ticket to see her and Steve Kuhn in concert in Stockholm, but then Anna got ill and I had to work.’

She nodded silently.

‘It must be nice to be so happy with someone,’ she said. ‘Like the couple in the song, I mean.’

‘But it doesn’t last.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘True. No one knows. But, in your experience, does it last?’

There was a sudden cold gust, and I opened my eyes. Saw something on the edge of the cliff on the other side of the water. Probably the silhouette of a big rock. I turned towards Lea. She was sitting hunched up.

‘I’m just saying that everything could exist,’ she said. ‘Even eternal love.’

Strands of hair were blowing into her face, and it struck me that she had it. That same blue shimmer. Unless it was just the light out here.

‘Sorry, it’s none of my business, I just...’ I stopped. My eyes searched for the rock, but couldn’t find it again.

‘You just...’

I took a deep breath. Knew I’d regret this. ‘I was standing under the window of the workroom after the funeral. I overheard you talking to your husband’s brother.’

She folded her arms. Looked at me. Not shocked, but studious. She glanced in the direction Knut had disappeared in, then looked at me again.

‘I have no experience of how long love for a man can last, because I never loved the man I was given.’

‘Given? Are you saying it was an arranged marriage?’

She shook her head. ‘Arranged marriages are what families used to organise between them in the olden days. Favourable alliances. Grazing pasture and herds of reindeer. The same faith. Hugo and I didn’t have that sort of marriage.’

‘So?’

‘It was a forced marriage.’

‘Who forced you?’

‘Circumstances.’ She looked round for Knut again.

‘You were...?’

‘Yes, I was pregnant.’

‘I appreciate that your religion isn’t particularly tolerant of children outside marriage, but Hugo wasn’t from a Læstadian family, was he?’

She shook her head. ‘Circumstances, and Father. Those two things forced us into it. He said he’d expel me from the congregation if I didn’t do as he commanded. Expulsion means not having anyone, being completely alone. Do you understand?’ She put her hand to her mouth. At first I thought it was to cover her scar. ‘I’ve seen what happens to people who get expelled...’

‘I get it...’

‘No, you don’t get it, Ulf. And I don’t know why I’m telling all this to a stranger.’ Only now did I hear the sob in her voice.

‘Perhaps precisely because I am a stranger.’

‘Yes, perhaps,’ she sniffed. ‘You’re going to leave.’

‘How could your father force Hugo when Hugo wasn’t part of a congregation he could be expelled from?’

‘Father told him that if he didn’t marry me, he’d report him for raping me.’

I looked at her in silence.

She sat up, straightened her back, lifted her head, and looked out to sea.

‘Yes, I married the man who raped me when I was eighteen years old. And had his child.’

There was a shrill shriek from the mainland. I turned. A black cormorant was flying close over the water below the cliff.

‘Because that’s your interpretation of the Bible?’

‘In our home there’s only one person who interprets the Word.’

‘Your father.’

She shrugged. ‘I went home the night it happened, and told Mother that Hugo had raped me. She comforted me, but said it was best to let it go. Getting one of Eliassen’s sons convicted for rape, what good would that do? But when she realised I was pregnant she went to Father. His first reaction was to ask if we had prayed to God that I wouldn’t get pregnant. His second was that Hugo and I must get married.’

She swallowed. Paused. And I realised this was something she had told very few people. Perhaps no one at all. That I offered the first and best opportunity for her to say these things out loud after the funeral.

‘Then he went to see old Eliassen,’ she went on. ‘Hugo’s father and my father are powerful men here in the village, in their different ways. Old Eliassen gives people work at sea, and my father gives them the Word and eases their troubled souls. Father said that if Eliassen didn’t agree, he’d have no problem persuading someone in his congregation that they’d seen and heard a thing or two that night. Old Eliassen replied that Father didn’t have to threaten him, that I was a good match regardless, and maybe I could calm Hugo down a bit. And once the two of them had decided that was what was going to happen, that was what happened.’