Jo Nesbo - Midnight Sun

I closed my eyes. Felt the warmth of the blood running down my cheek and under my collar.

Waited.

Nothing happened.

‘You know I’ll do it,’ a voice said.

The grip round my head loosened.

I took two steps back. Opened my eyes again.

Ove had raised his hands and dropped the knife. Right in front of him stood Lea. I recognised the pistol she was holding, aimed at his forehead.

‘Get lost,’ she said.

Ove Eliassen’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. ‘Lea...’

‘Now!’

He leaned over to pick up the knife.

‘I think you’ve lost that,’ she snarled.

He held his palms up towards her and backed away into the darkness, empty-handed. We heard angry cursing, bottles being swigged from and branches rustling as they disappeared between the trees.

‘Here you are,’ Lea said, handing me the pistol. ‘It was on the bench.’

‘Must have slipped out,’ I said, and tucked it back under my waistband. I swallowed the blood from my cheek, felt my pulse hammer frantically in my temples, and noticed that I couldn’t hear much from one ear.

‘I saw you take it out before you stood up, Ulf.’ She closed one eye. The family habit. ‘That hole in your cheek needs sewing up. Come on, I’ve got a needle and thread in the car.’

I don’t remember much of the journey back. Well, I remember us driving down to the Alta river, where we sat on the bank while she washed my wounds and I listened to the sound of the water and gazed at the scree, which looked like sugar piled up against the steep, pale cliff faces on either side. And I remember thinking that I had seen more sky in these days and nights than I had done in my whole life before coming here.

She felt my nose gently and concluded that it wasn’t broken. Then she sewed my cheek while she talked to me in Sámi and sang something that was supposed to be a joik about getting better. Joik and the sound of the river. And I remember that I felt a bit sick, but that she waved the midges away and stroked my brow more than was strictly necessary to keep my hair away from the wound. When I asked why she had needle, thread and antiseptic in the car, and if her family was particularly prone to accidents when they were out, she shook her head.

‘Not when we’re out, no. A domestic accident.’

‘A domestic accident?’

‘Yes. Called Hugo. Used to fight and was full of drink. The only thing to do was flee the house and patch up any injuries.’

‘You used to sew yourself?’

‘And Knut.’

‘He hit Knut ?’

‘Where do you think he got those stitches on his forehead?’

‘You sewed him back together? Here in the car?’

‘It was earlier in the summer. Hugo was drunk, and it was the usual thing. He said I was looking at him with that reproachful look in my eyes, and that he wouldn’t have touched me that night if only I’d had the sense to show him a bit of respect and not just ignored him. After all, I was only a girl at the time, and he was an Eliassen who had just come home from sea with a huge catch. I didn’t reply, but even so he got even angrier and eventually stood up to fight. I knew how to defend myself, but at that moment Knut came in. So Hugo picked up the bottle and struck out. Hit Knut on the forehead and he collapsed in a heap, so I carried him out to the car. When I got back home Hugo had calmed down. But Knut was in bed for a week, all dizzy and nauseous. A doctor came all the way from Alta to look at him. Hugo told the doctor and everyone else that Knut had fallen down the stairs. And I... I didn’t say anything to anyone, and I kept telling Knut that it was sure to be a one-off.’

I had misunderstood. Misunderstood when Knut said his mum had told him he didn’t have to worry about his dad.

‘No one knew anything,’ she said. ‘Until one evening when the usual gang of drinkers was round at Ove’s and someone asked what really happened, and Hugo told them all about his disrespectful wife and brat, and how he’d put them in their place. So the whole village knew. And then Hugo went off to sea.’

‘So that was what the preacher meant when he said Hugo had tried to run away from deeds he hadn’t atoned for?’

‘That, and everything else,’ she said. ‘Your temple’s bleeding.’

She took off her red silk scarf and tied it round my head.

I don’t remember anything after that for quite some time. When I came to, I was curled up on the back seat of the car, and she was telling me we’d arrived. I’d probably got a bit of concussion, she said, that was why I was so sleepy. She said it would be best if she accompanied me back to the cabin.

I walked off ahead of her and sat down on a rock when I was out of sight of the village. The light and stillness. Like the moment just before a storm. Or after a storm, a storm that had wiped out all life. Patches of mist were creeping down the green sides of the hills, like spirits in white sheets, swallowing up the small, stunted mountain birches, and as they reappeared from the mist they looked bewitched.

Then she came. Swaying, sort of, also bewitched.

‘Out for a walk?’ she asked with a smile. ‘Perhaps we’re going the same way?’

Secret hiding.

My ear had started to whistle and peep, and I felt giddy, so Lea held onto me just to be on the safe side. The walk went remarkably quickly, possibly because I seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness. Once I was finally back in the cabin I had a strange feeling of having come home, an inbuilt security and peace that I’d never felt in any of the far too many places I had lived in Oslo.

‘You can sleep now,’ she said, feeling my forehead. ‘Take things easy tomorrow. And don’t drink anything except water. Promise?’

‘Where are you going?’ I asked when she moved from the edge of the bed.

‘Home, of course.’

‘Are you in a hurry? Knut’s with his grandpa.’

‘Well, not too much of a hurry. I just think you ought to lie completely quiet and not talk or worry.’

‘I agree. But can’t you lie here quietly with me? Just for a little while.’

I shut my eyes. Heard her calm breathing. Imagined I could hear her weighing things up.

‘I’m not dangerous,’ I said. ‘I’m not a Pentecostalist.’

She laughed softly. ‘Just a little while, then.’

I moved closer to the wall, and she squeezed in beside me on the narrow bunk.

‘I’ll go when you fall asleep,’ she said. ‘Knut will be home early.’

I lay there, feeling myself half out of it and yet absolutely present, as my senses took in everything: the heat and pulse of her body, the scent filtering out of the neckline of her blouse, the smell of soap from her hair, the hand and arm she had placed between us so our bodies weren’t in direct contact.

When I woke up I had a feeling that it was night. Something to do with the stillness. Even when the midnight sun was at its zenith, it was as if nature was resting, as if its heartbeat had slowed down. Lea’s face had slipped into the crook of my neck; I could feel her nose and her even breathing against my skin. I ought to wake her, tell her it was time to go if she wanted to make sure she was home when Knut got back. Of course I wanted her to be there, so he didn’t get worried. But I also wanted her to stay, at least for a few more seconds. So I didn’t move, just lay there and reflected. Feeling that I was alive. As if her body was giving mine life. There was a distant rumble. And I felt her eyelashes flutter against my skin and realised she was awake.

‘What was that?’ she whispered.

‘Thunder,’ I said. ‘Nothing to worry about, it’s a long way away.’

‘There’s never any thunder here,’ she said. ‘It’s too cold.’