Jo Nesbo - Midnight Sun

‘The peace of God.’

I stared at her. She looked as if she meant it.

Pirjo’s shop was in the basement of one of the houses. It was dark inside, and she only showed up after Knut had called her name three times. She was big and round, and was wearing a headscarf. She had a squeaky voice:

‘ Jumalan terve .’

‘Sorry?’ I said.

She turned away from me and looked at Knut.

‘The peace of God,’ he said. ‘Pirjo only speaks Finnish, but she knows the Norwegian for the things in her shop.’

The goods were behind the counter, and she got them out as I listed them. Tinned reindeer meatballs. Tinned fish balls. Sausages. Cheese. Crispbread.

She evidently added them up in her head, because when I was finished she just wrote a number on a piece of paper and showed it to me. I realised that I should have taken some notes out of the money belt before I went in. Seeing as I didn’t want to advertise the fact that I was carrying a serious amount of money, around a hundred and thirteen thousand kroner, I turned my back on the other two and undid the bottom two buttons of my shirt.

‘You’re not allowed to pee in here, Ulf,’ Knut said.

I half-turned to look at him.

‘I was joking,’ he said with a laugh.

Pirjo gestured that she couldn’t change the hundred-kroner note I gave her.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Take it as a tip.’

She said something in her harsh, incomprehensible language.

‘She says you can have more supplies when you come back,’ Knut said.

‘Maybe she should write the outstanding amount down.’

‘She’ll remember,’ Knut said. ‘Come on.’

Knut danced ahead of me on the path. The heather brushed my trouser legs and the midges buzzed around our heads. The plateau.

‘Ulf?’

‘Yes?’

‘Why have you got such long hair?’

‘Because no one’s cut it.’

‘Oh.’

Twenty seconds later.

‘Ulf?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Do you know any Finnish?’

‘No.’

‘Sámi?’

‘Not a word.’

‘Just Norwegian?’

‘And English.’

‘Are there lots of English people down in Oslo?’

I squinted at the sun. If it was the middle of the day, that meant we were walking more or less directly west. ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘But it’s a global language.’

‘A global language, yes. That’s what Grandpa says too. He says Norwegian is the language of common sense. But Sámi is the language of the heart. And Finnish is the holy language.’

‘If he says so.’

‘Ulf?’

‘Yes?’

‘I know a joke.’

‘Okay.’

He stopped and waited for me to catch up, then set off beside me through the heather. ‘What keeps going but never reaches the door?’

‘That’s a riddle, isn’t it?’

‘Shall I tell you the answer?’

‘Yes, I think you’re going to have to.’

He shaded his eyes with his hand and grinned up at me. ‘You’re lying, Ulf.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You know the answer!’

‘Do I?’

‘Everyone knows the answer to that riddle. Why do you all keep lying? You’ll end up—’

‘Burning in hell?’

‘Yes!’

‘Who are “you all”?’

‘Dad. And Uncle Ove. And Mum.’

‘Really? What does your mum lie about?’

‘She says there’s no need for me to worry about Dad. Now it’s your turn to tell a joke.’

‘I’m not much good at telling jokes.’

He stopped and leaned forward, with his arms dangling towards the heather. ‘You can’t hit a target, you don’t know anything about grouse, and you can’t tell jokes. Is there anything you can do?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said, as I watched a solitary bird drift on its wings high above us. Watching. Hunting. Something about its stiff, angled wings made me think of a war plane. ‘I can hide.’

‘Yes!’ His head shot up. ‘Let’s play hide-and-seek! Who’s going to start? Eeny, meeny, miny mo...’

‘You run ahead and hide.’

He ran three paces and then stopped abruptly.

‘What is it?’

‘You’re only saying that because you want to get rid of me.’

‘Get rid of you? Never!’

‘Now you’re lying again!’

I shrugged. ‘We can play the being-quiet game. Anyone who isn’t completely quiet gets shot in the head.’

He gave me a funny look.

‘Not for real,’ I said. ‘Okay?’

He nodded, his mouth tight shut.

‘From now,’ I said.

We walked and walked. The scenery which had looked so monotonous from a distance was constantly changing, from soft, earthy browns covered by green and reddish-brown heather, to stony, scarred lunar landscapes, and suddenly — in the light of the sun which had turned half a revolution since I arrived, like a golden red discus — it looked like it was glowing, as though lava were running down the gently sloping hillsides. Above it all was a vast, broad sky. I don’t know why it seemed so much bigger here, or why I imagined I could see the curvature of the earth. Maybe it was lack of sleep. I’ve read that people can become psychotic after just two days without sleep.

Knut marched on in silence, with a determined look on his freckled face. There were more clouds of midges now, until eventually they formed one great big swarm that we couldn’t escape. I’d stopped swatting them when they landed on me. They punctured my skin with their anaesthetised bites, and the whole business was so gentle that I left them to it. The important thing was that I was putting metre after metre — kilometres — between me and civilisation. Even so, I needed to come up with a plan soon.

The Fisherman always finds what he’s looking for.

The plan up to now had been not to have a plan, seeing as he would be able to predict every logical plan I could come up with. My only chance was unpredictability. Acting so erratically that even I didn’t know what my next move was going to be. But I’d have to think of something after that. If there was any ‘after that’.

‘A clock,’ Knut said. ‘The answer’s a clock.’

I nodded. It was only a matter of time.

‘And now you can shoot me in the head, Ulf.’

‘Okay.’

‘Go on, then!’

‘What for?’

‘To get it over with. There’s nothing worse than not knowing when the bullet’s coming.’

‘Bang.’

‘Did you get teased at school, Ulf?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘You’ve got a weird way of talking.’

‘Everyone talks like this where I grew up.’

‘Wow. Did they all get teased, then?’

I couldn’t help laughing. ‘Okay, I got teased a bit . When I was ten years old my parents died, and I moved from the east side of Oslo to the west, to live with my grandfather, Basse. The other kids called me Oliver Twist and east-end trash.’

‘But you’re not.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re south-side trash.’ He laughed. ‘That was a joke! That’s three you owe me now.’

‘I wish I knew where you got them all from, Knut.’

He screwed one eye shut and squinted at me. ‘Can I carry the rifle?’

‘No.’

‘It’s my dad’s.’

‘I said no.’

He groaned, and drooped his head and arms for a few seconds, then straightened again. We sped up. He sang quietly to himself. I couldn’t swear to it, but it sounded like a hymn. I thought about asking him what his mother’s name was — it might be useful to know when I needed to go back to the village. If I couldn’t remember where the house was, for instance. But for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

‘There’s the cabin,’ Knut said, and pointed.

I got the binoculars out and adjusted the focus, which you have to do with both lenses on a B8. Behind the dancing midges lay something that looked more like a small woodshed than a cabin. No windows, from what I could see, just a collection of unpainted, grey, dried-out planks gathered around a thin, black chimney pipe.