‘OK. Everything alright with you, Roger? You sound stressed.’
‘Everything’s fine,’ I said, running the back of my hand across my forehead. ‘Everything’s absolutely fine.’
I put down the phone and went on my way. The sky was clouding over, but I hardly noticed. Because everything was OK, wasn’t it? I was going to be a multi-millionaire. To buy my freedom, freedom from everything. The world and everything in it – including Diana – would be mine. The rumbles in the distance sounded like hearty laughter. Then the first raindrops fell, and the soles of my shoes clattered cheerfully over the cobblestones as I ran.
7 PREGNANT
IT WAS SIX o’clock, it had stopped raining and in the west gold streamed into the Oslo fjord. I put the Volvo in the garage, switched off the ignition and waited. After the door had closed behind me, I put on the internal light, opened the black portfolio and took out the day’s catch. The Brooch. Eva Mudocci.
I ran my eyes over her face. Munch must have been in love with her, he couldn’t have drawn her like that otherwise. Drawn her as Lotte, caught the silent pain, the quiet ferocity. I swore under my breath, inhaled hard and hissed through my teeth. Then I pulled back the ceiling upholstery above my head. It was my own invention, designed for concealing pictures that had to be transported across national borders. I had just loosened the ceiling liner – the head liner as they say in car-speak – where it was attached to the top of the windscreen. Then I had stuck two strips of Velcro on the inside, and after a bit of careful cutting around the front ceiling light I had the perfect hidey-hole. The problem with moving large pictures, especially old, dry oil paintings is that they have to lie flat and must not be rolled up, because then there is a risk that the paint will crack and the picture will be ruined. In other words, transportation requires room and the cargo is somewhat conspicuous. But with a roof surface of approximately four square metres there was room for even the big pictures, and they were hidden from prying customs officers and their dogs, who luckily did not sniff around for paint or varnish.
I slid Eva Mudocci inside, fastened the lining with the Velcro, got out of the car and went up to the house.
Diana had stuck a note on the fridge saying that she was out with her friend Cathrine and would be home at about midnight. That was almost six hours away. I opened a San Miguel, sat down on the chair by the window and started to wait for her. Fetched another bottle and thought about something I remembered from the Johan Falkberget book Diana had read to me the time I had mumps: ‘We all drink according to how thirsty we are.’
I had been lying in bed with a temperature and aching cheeks and ears and looked like a sweaty pufferfish while the doctor checked the thermometer and said ‘it wasn’t too bad’. And it hadn’t felt too bad, either. It was only after pressure from Diana that he had mentioned ugly words like meningitis and orchitis, which he had even more reluctantly translated as an inflammation of the tissues round the brain and inflammation of the testicles, but straight away he had added that they were ‘highly unlikely in this case’.
Diana read to me and laid cold compresses on my forehead. The book was The Fourth Night Watch, and since I had nothing else to occupy my inflammation-threatened brain with, I listened carefully. There were two particular things that caught my attention. First there was Sigismund the priest who excuses a drunk with those words ‘We all drink according to how thirsty we are’. Maybe because I found comfort in such a view of humanity: If that’s your nature, then it’s fine.
The second was a quotation from what are known informally as ‘Pontoppidan’s Explanations’ in which he declares that a person is capable of killing another person’s soul, infecting it, dragging it down into sin in such a way that redemption is precluded. I found less comfort in that. And the thought that I might be defiling angel wings meant that I never let Diana in on all the things I was doing to acquire extra income.
She took care of me for four days and nights, and it was a source of both pleasure and annoyance. For I knew I would not have done the same for her, at least not if she had only had lousy mumps. So when I finally asked her why she had done it, I was genuinely curious. Her response was simple and straightforward.
‘Because I love you.’
‘It’s just mumps.’
‘Perhaps I won’t get a chance to show it later. You’re so healthy.’
It sounded like an accusation.
And, sure enough, the day afterwards I got out of bed, went for a job interview with a recruitment agency called Alfa and told them they would have to be idiots not to employ me. And I know how I was able to say that to them with such unshakeable self-assurance. Because there is nothing that makes a man grow beyond his own stature than a woman telling him she loves him. And however much she might have lied to him, there will always be a part of him that is grateful to her for this, and that will harbour some love for her.
I took one of Diana’s art books, read about Rubens and the little there was about The Calydonian Boar Hunt and studied the picture with great care. Then I put down the book and tried to think through the following day’s operation in Oscars gate step by step.
An apartment in a block meant of course a risk of bumping into neighbours on the stairs. Potential witnesses who could catch a glimpse of me. Just for a few seconds, though. They wouldn’t be suspicious then, wouldn’t make a note of my face as I would be wearing overalls and would let myself into an apartment that was being redecorated. So what was I frightened of?
I knew what I was frightened of.
He had read me like an open book during the interview. But how many of the pages? Could he have suspected something? No. He had recognised a method of interrogation he had used himself in the military, that was all.
I grabbed my mobile phone and called Greve’s number to tell him that Diana was out and the name of a possible expert to check the picture’s authenticity would have to wait until he was back from Rotterdam. Greve’s answerphone voice said in English: ‘Please leave a message,’ and so I did. The bottle was empty. I considered a whisky, but dismissed the idea, didn’t want to wake up with a hangover tomorrow. A last beer, great.
The call was about to go through when I realised what I had done. I lowered my phone and hurriedly pressed the red button. I had dialled Lotte’s number, the one under the discreet L in the address book, an L which had made me tremble the few times it had appeared on the display as an incoming call. Our rule had been that I was to ring. I went into the address book, found L and pressed ‘Delete’.
‘Do you really want to delete?’ the phone replied.
I scrutinised the alternatives. The cowardly, faithless ‘no’ and the mendacious ‘yes’.
I pressed ‘yes’. Knowing that her number was printed in my brain in a way that defied deletion. What that meant I neither knew nor wanted to know. But it would fade. Fade and disappear. It had to.
Diana returned home at five minutes to midnight.
‘What have you been doing today, darling?’ she asked, making for the chair, squatting on the arm and giving me a hug.
‘Not much,’ I said. ‘I interviewed Clas Greve.’
‘How did it go?’
‘He’s perfect, except that he’s a foreigner. Pathfinder said they wanted a Norwegian as head; they’ve even said publicly they set great store by being Norwegian down to the last detail. So it will have to be a persuasion job.’
‘But you’re the world’s greatest at that.’ She kissed me on the forehead. ‘I’ve heard people talking about your record.’
‘Which record?’
‘The man who always has his candidate appointed, I suppose.’