Sejer eased off and walked slowly toward the diminutive house. He patted the dog, when it came back disappointed, then bent down, took it by the collar, and walked toward the door. He opened it warily. She was sitting on the floor with her knees drawn up under her chin, next to a laid table. A tiny coffee pot and two china cups graced the white tablecloth. Beside her on the floor lay a discarded doll with her hair cut off.
“Eva Magnus,” he said quietly, “I think you’d better accompany me to the station.”
16
Eva returned to reality.
She glanced up at Sejer, amazed that he was still sitting there.
He could have told her to start talking now, but he didn’t. He could take a break, it was worse for her. She was still wearing her coat, now she put her hand in her pocket and fumbled for something.
“Cigarette?” he asked, and found the packet in his desk, the packet he never touched.
He lit one for her, still keeping quiet; he could see she was trying to gather herself, find the beginning, a good place to start. The blood had begun to congeal around her mouth, and her lower lip was swollen. She couldn’t go back to the house. So, finally, she began at the beginning. With the day Emma had gone on holiday, and she’d taken the bus into town. She’d been standing in Nedre Storgate feeling cold, with her back to the Glassmagasinet department store and thirty-nine kroner in her pocket. A carrier bag in one hand. With the other, she clasped the top of her coat together under her chin. It was the last day of September, and cold.
She should have been at home working, it was eleven in the morning, but she’d fled from the house. Before that she’d phoned her electricity supplier and phone company; she’d asked them for a breathing space, for just a few more days, then she’d pay. And she was allowed to keep her electricity supply as she had a young child, but the telephone would be cut off in the course of the day. If the house burnt down, they’d have to live in the ruins as she hadn’t paid her insurance. Every week a new debt-recovery threat came in the post. Her Arts Council grant was late. The fridge was empty. The thirty-nine kroner was all she had. In her studio she had great piles of paintings, the work of several years which no one wanted to buy. She glanced to her left, across to the square, to where she could make out the illuminated Sparebank sign. A few months before the bank had been robbed. The man in the tracksuit had taken less than two minutes to make off with four hundred thousand kroner. About one hundred seconds, she thought. The case remained unsolved.
She shook her head in despair and looked furtively across at the paint shop, peered down into her bag where the aerosol can of fixative lay. It had cost 102 kroner and was faulty. Something was wrong with the nozzle so that nothing came out, or worse, it would suddenly deliver a great flood of the stuff at her pictures and ruin them. Like the sketch of her father that she’d been so lucky with. She hadn’t the money to buy another one, she’d have to exchange it. The few kroner she had left would buy her milk, bread, and coffee and that was all. The problem was that Emma ate like a horse, a loaf didn’t last long. She’d phoned the Arts Council, who’d said that her grant would be sent out “any day now,” so it could take another week. She had no idea what she would eat tomorrow. It didn’t take her breath away or make her panic, she was used to living hand to mouth, they’d done it for years. Ever since she and Emma had been left alone, and there was no longer a man bringing in money. Something would turn up, it always did. But the worry was like a barb in her breast, over the years she’d become empty inside. Sometimes reality began to quiver, and rumble quietly as if there were an earthquake in the making. The only thing that held her fast was the overarching task of satisfying Emma’s hunger. While she had Emma she had a sheet anchor. Today she’d gone to her father’s, and Eva searched for something to hold on to. All she had was the carrier bag.
Eva was tall and truculent, pale and frightened all at once, but the years with little money had taught her to use her imagination. Maybe she could demand her money back instead of a new aerosol, she thought, then she’d have another 102 kroner to buy food with. It was just a bit awkward asking. She was an artist, after all, she needed fixative and the man in the paint shop knew it. Perhaps she should sweep into the shop and make a real scene, act the difficult customer and mouth off and complain and threaten them with the Consumer Council; then he’d understand how the land lay, that actually she was broke and upset, and he’d refund her money. He was a nice man. Just as Père Tanguy had been when, for payment, he’d cut a pink prawn out of a van Gogh picture. Provided he could buy a tube of paint, he didn’t care if he ate or not. Nor did Eva, for that matter, but she had a child with a ravenous appetite. The Dutchman hadn’t had to contend with that. She psyched herself up, crossed the street and went into the shop. It was warmer inside, quite cozy, and had the same smell as her studio at home. A young girl was behind the counter in the perfume section, flicking through a hair-tone chart. The paint man himself was nowhere to be seen.
“I want to return this,” Eva said with determination, “the spray mechanism doesn’t work. I want my money back.”
The girl assumed a pouting expression and took the bag. “You couldn’t have bought that here,” she said sullenly. “We don’t stock that hairspray.”
Eva rolled her eyes. “It’s not hairspray, it’s fixative,” she said wearily. “I ruined a rather good sketch on account of that aerosol.”
The girl blushed, lifted the can out, and sprayed above Eva’s head. Nothing came out. “You can have a replacement,” she said tersely.
“The money,” Eva persisted doggedly. “I know the owner, he’d give me my money back.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I’m asking for it. It’s called service,” she said curtly.
The girl sighed, she hadn’t been in the shop long and she was twenty years Eva’s junior. She opened the till and took out a hundred-kroner note and two kroner pieces.
“Just sign here.”
Eva signed her name, took the money, and left. She tried to relax. Now perhaps she could manage for a couple of days more. She did some mental arithmetic and worked out she had 141 kroner, almost enough to treat herself to a cup of coffee at Glassmagasinet’s in-store café. You could get a coffee there without having to eat as well. She crossed the street and went through the double glass doors which parted invitingly. She took a quick look in the book and stationery department and was just about to make for the escalator when she caught sight of a woman standing at one of the shelves. A buxom brunette with closely cropped hair and dark eyebrows. She was leafing through a book. Many years had passed, but it wasn’t a face you could forget. Eva stopped dead, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Suddenly the years fell away and she was transported all the way back to that day when, as a fifteen-year-old, she’d been sitting on the stone steps at home. Everything they possessed had been packed in boxes and put on a lorry. She sat staring at it, unable to believe that everything had really fitted into one small lorry, when the house and garage and cellar had been so full of stuff. They were moving. Just then it was as if they didn’t live anywhere, it was horrible. Eva didn’t want to leave. Her father went about with restless eyes as if afraid they’d forget something. He’d got a job at last. But he couldn’t meet Eva’s gaze.