Хьелль Аскильдсен - The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat and Other Stories from the North

The Tiger showed no interest in Karima’s isolation, because he too had turned in on himself, focusing on his bus, and his conversations and the fruit machine. His only remaining consolation after work was to meet up with a hard-drinking Moroccan friend in some bar. His friend would always talk about the difference between Finnish and French women, or between Spanish and Arab women. He knew the stories of all the regulars in the bar and gave each one a nickname. When the Moroccan had his own business to attend to, the Tiger would sit in front of the fruit machine and throw away his money.

As far as the Tiger was concerned, it was obvious from the start that the strange man was targeting him with his appearances and disappearances on the bus, even before he managed to confront him about it. On that occasion the fat man was sitting in the back seats. The Tiger went up to him and told him in Finnish that this was the last stop. The fat man smiled and stared at the Tiger’s face.

Switching to Arabic, the Tiger asked him, “Are you Iraqi?”

The fat man took some chewing gum out of his pocket and began to chew as he answered: “Don’t kill me, I beg you. This is my tree.”

The words struck a powerful chord in the Tiger’s mind. He stepped back a few paces, then took one confused step forward towards the man. They were the same words he’d heard years ago in the pomegranate orchard.

“What is it you want?” the Tiger asked.

“Nothing,” the fat man replied.

The Tiger had a good look at the man’s face.

“Did you used to work with the water gangs?” he asked.

“No, but you killed me.”

“I killed you! But you’re not dead!”

“How are you so sure I’m not dead?”

His wife Karima didn’t know what kind of work he’d been doing in those years. He’d excused his absences by saying he had to travel to other cities to buy and sell used cars. When the police got on his trail, the Tiger and his family fled to Iran, and from there to Turkey, where he applied to the United Nations for refugee status after forging some documents and claiming that he was an opponent of the dictatorial regime then in power. Finally, through the United Nations, he reached Finland.

That night, the night of the pomegranate orchard, the Tiger was driving the car, accompanied by another killer. The mission was to go to a posh house in the pomegranate orchards on the outskirts of Baghdad. The owner of the house was a boss in a gang that controlled a small river that flowed in from a neighbouring country. The gang owned special tankers for carrying water, which they would sell in areas hit by drought. The government had lost control, overwhelmed by problems: rebels, groups of religious extremists and then the drought, which disrupted a bureaucracy that was already corrupt. The government started bartering oil for water from neighbouring countries. Most of the gangs that had been dealing in arms and counterfeit banknotes expanded their operations and started trading water. Some of them controlled wells and began to impose taxes on the farmers. The mission of the Tiger and his companion was clear: to eliminate everyone in the posh house in the pomegranate orchards. There was intense rivalry between the gangs to win control of the water market. The Tiger and his companion crept through the fence into the grounds of the posh house. They burst into the building, where there were five men sitting at a table, eating and talking. The Tiger and his companion killed everyone in the room. Then he rushed into the kitchen while his companion started looking for some documents in another room. The Tiger found a servant girl cowering in the corner of the kitchen. At the far side of the room, there was an open window. He realized that someone else had been in the kitchen and had escaped. He caught sight of the man’s shadow heading deep into the orchards. The Tiger killed the servant girl, jumped out of the window and started running after the man who had escaped. The Tiger was soon out of breath; he couldn’t see the man, but could hear him stepping on dry twigs somewhere. There wasn’t much time. After running some distance further in the pitch black, the Tiger pulled back some branches and found a man kneeling close to the base of a pomegranate tree. The Tiger couldn’t make out the man’s features. He heard him saying that it was his tree and begging him not to kill him. The Tiger aimed his pistol and fired several shots.

The Tiger gave a bus ticket to a drunk, turning his face away because the man’s clothes smelled so rank. He looked for the fat man, but couldn’t see him. He spat out one of his rants at the road in front of him: “Roads… roads… all the roads we have walked, when the world is done for. Where are you, fatty? Where are you? Do you think the Tiger’s frightened? A tiger who’s seen all the roads, afraid of a sheep!”

He hadn’t prepared a specific plan for getting rid of the fat man. All he’d decided was that he’d bury him and rid himself of the ghost of his shitty past forever. Once, when the fat man spoke to him, he’d made a strange request: that the Tiger take him for a drive around a forest by night—it didn’t matter which particular forest. At first, the Tiger tried to ignore this man’s weird and foolish words, but his appearances and disappearances so unnerved the Tiger that he asked his Moroccan friend to get him the pistol.

The Tiger drove the bus back and forth along his route. His shift was due to finish at two o’clock in the morning. The fat man appeared, just before midnight, at the bus stop close to the public swimming pool. The Tiger kept a close watch on him, in case this ghost disappeared again.

The last passengers got off at the final stop. When the fat man tried to alight, the Tiger closed all the doors and moved off quickly, changing course. The fat man laughed and asked, “What are you doing, man?”

The bus’s absence would soon be discovered. It was a stupid, reckless act by an ageing tiger; there was only an hour before the bus had to be back in the depot. But the Tiger was in another world. His anger blinded him and paralysed his thinking.

From the back of the bus, the fat man shouted out in derision: “Are you going to kidnap a dead man? Well, if we’re going to the forest, then fine.”

The Tiger didn’t really answer, just threw him one of his rants. “Dead, alive, it’s all the same. I’m dead and alive. You’re alive and dead. So what? Do you think you’re a scarecrow and I’m a crow? It’s amazing, these questions of the dead and the living. They don’t repent and they never learn… Today I’m going to teach you!”

The bus crossed the main road towards the dirt track that led to the forest. The man moved up and sat close to the Tiger. He rambled on about various subjects—the past, coincidence, water, war and peace. The fat man said that over the past years he’d not only been interested in looking for the Tiger but also in piecing together the events that led to his murder. He said he’d often spoken to others about his death. The fat man put a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it. Then he took it out of his lips and started to tell the Tiger his story:

“That night I was driving my old Volkswagen, with a little pomegranate tree in the back of the car. The branches were sticking out of the window and the cool night breeze was refreshing. My only daughter had leukaemia and we’d been taking her from one hospital to another. But her condition was deteriorating as time passed. I tried getting blessings from holy men, and when I despaired of them, I went to fortune-tellers and magicians. An old woman well known for her psychic powers told me to plant a pomegranate tree in an orchard where pomegranates already grow, and that I should do this at night, without telling anyone. ‘Give life its fruit so that it will give you its fruits,’ the old woman said.