‘He reads poems. The bells chime. It’s a Swedish tradition.’
‘Put it on then,’ I said.
While she was doing that I went over to open the windows. The noise of fireworks was growing steadily, now the bangs, crackles and whizzes were non-stop, a wall of sound above the rooftops. The streets were thick with people. Champagne bottles and sparklers in hand, warm coats and capes over festive outfits. No children, just happy, drunken adults.
Linda fetched the last bottle of champagne, opened it and filled the glasses full with effervescent foam. Holding them, we stood by the windows. I watched the others. They were happy, excited, talking, pointing, skål-ing.
Outside, sirens sounded.
‘Either war has broken out or 2004 has started,’ Geir said. I put out my arms and held Linda to me. We looked into each other’s eyes.
‘Happy New Year,’ I said and kissed her.
‘Happy New Year, my darling prince,’ she said. ‘This is our year.’
‘Yes, it is,’ I said.
After all the hugs and congratulations were over and people had started to withdraw from the streets, Anders and Helena remembered their sky lantern. We put on our coats and went down to the backyard. Anders lit the wick, the lantern slowly filled with hot air and when, at length, he let go it began to rise alongside the house, glowing and silent. We followed it until it vanished over Östermalm’s rooftops. Back upstairs, we sat round the table again. Conversation was more sporadic and less concentrated now, but occasionally it focused on one point, such as when Linda talked about the posh party she had been to when she was a pupil at gymnas, in a grand house with a large swimming pool behind which there was an enormous glass partition. During the course of the evening they had swum and as she kicked off from the partition to dive into the water it shattered and smashed into a million tinkling pieces.
‘I’ll never forget that sound,’ she said.
Anders talked about a trip to the Alps — he had been skiing off-piste and suddenly the ground had opened beneath him. Still wearing his skis, he had fallen down a crevasse in a glacier, perhaps six metres, and lost consciousness. He was rescued by a helicopter, he had broken his back, paralysis was feared and he was operated on at once; for weeks he lay in hospital while his father, he told us, sometimes sat in the chair next to him, as if in a dream, reeking of alcohol.
Then he got to his feet, leaned forward and pulled his shirt up so that we could see the long scar on his back from the operation.
When I was seventeen, I told them, we had been doing a hundred kilometres an hour in the frozen wastes of Telemark and a tyre had burst, we had bounced off a telephone pole, flown over a road and landed in a ditch, escaping serious injury by some miracle, but the car was a total write-off. However, the worst had not been the accident but the cold, it was minus twenty, the middle of the night, we were wearing T-shirts, jackets and trainers after an Imperiet gig and stood on the roadside for hours without getting a lift.
I refilled the glasses with cognac for Anders, Geir and myself, Linda yawned, Helena began a story about Los Angeles, then a shrill alarm went off somewhere in the building.
‘What the hell’s that?’ Anders said. ‘The fire alarm?’
‘Well, it is New Year’s Eve,’ Geir said.
‘Should we go out?’ Linda wondered, sitting up on the sofa.
‘I’ll go and check first,’ I said.
‘I’ll join you,’ Geir said.
We stepped into the corridor. There was no smoke anyway. The sound was coming from the ground floor so we hurried down the stairs. The light above the lift was flashing. I leaned forward and looked through the window in the door. Someone was lying on the floor inside. I opened the door. It was the Russian. She was on her back with one foot against the wall. She was in party clothes, a black dress with some sequins on the chest, skin-coloured tights and high heels. She laughed when she saw us. Instinctively, I looked at her thighs and the black panties between them before shifting my gaze to her face.
‘I can’t stand up!’ she said.
‘We’ll give you a hand,’ I said. I grabbed one arm and pulled her into a sitting position. Geir went to the other side and between us we managed to get her upright. She was laughing all the time. The stench of perfume and alcohol in the confined space was overpowering.
‘Tack så mycket,’ she said in Swedish. Then Tusen, tusen takk, in Norwegian.
She took my hands in hers, bent forward and kissed them, first one, then the other. Then she peered up at me.
‘Oh, what a good-looking man,’ she said.
‘Come on and we’ll help you to your flat,’ I said. Pressed the button for her floor and closed the door. Geir was grinning from ear to ear as he glanced from her to me. As the lift started its ascent she slumped against me.
‘So,’ I said. ‘Here we are. Have you got the key?’
She looked into the little bag she wore over her shoulder, swaying to and fro like a tree in the wind as her fingers rummaged through the contents.
‘Here it is!’ she exclaimed triumphantly, producing a bunch of keys.
Geir held an arm against her shoulder as she toppled forward with the key pointing to the lock.
‘Take a step forward,’ he said. ‘And you’ll be fine.’
She obeyed. After some fumbling she succeeded in getting the key into the lock.
‘Tusen takk!’ she thanked us again. ‘You’re two angels who have come to my aid this evening.’
‘Not at all,’ Geir said. ‘And good luck.’
On our way upstairs to the flat Geir sent me a quizzical look.
‘Was that your crazy neighbour? he asked.
I nodded.
‘She’s a prostitute, isn’t she?’
I shook my head.
‘Not as far as I know,’ I said.
‘She must be, you know. She couldn’t afford to live here otherwise. And her appearance… She didn’t look stupid though.’
‘That’s enough,’ I said, opening the door to the flat. ‘She’s like any woman. Just very unhappy, an alcoholic and Russian. With an impulse-control disorder.’
‘Yes, you can say that again.’ Geir laughed.
‘What was it?’ Helena asked from the living room.
‘That was our Russian neighbour,’ I said, going in. ‘She’d fallen over in the lift and was so drunk she couldn’t get up. So we helped her to her flat.’
‘She kissed Karl Ove’s hands,’ Geir said. ‘“Oh, what a good-looking man,” she said!’
Everyone laughed.
‘And that’s after she’s stood here swearing and cursing at me,’ I said. ‘And driven us mad.’
‘It’s a nightmare,’ Linda said. ‘She’s totally out of it. When I walk past her on the stairs I’m almost afraid she’ll pull out a knife and stab me. She glares at me with hatred in her eyes, doesn’t she? Deep hatred.’
‘Time’s slowly running out for her,’ Geir said. ‘Then you move in with a bulging belly and impending bliss.’
‘Is that it, do you think?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ Linda said. ‘If only we’d kept our distance at the beginning. But we were open with her. Now she’s obsessed by us.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said. ‘Anyone up for some dessert? Linda’s made her famous tiramisu.’
‘Oh!’ said Helena.
‘If it’s famous it’s because it’s the only dessert I can make,’ Linda said.
I fetched it and the coffee, and we sat at the table again. No sooner had we done so than the music blared out from the flat below.
‘This is how we live,’ I said.
‘Can’t you get her thrown out?’ Anders asked. ‘If you want I can fix it for you.’
‘And how does that work?’ Helena asked.