Don't Look Back (12 page)

"Yes, I see," Sejer said. "You've answered my question anyway. It could have been him. And when it comes to that hell you mentioned, he's probably in it already."

Johnas swallowed hard.

"What did you and Annie talk about in the car?"

"She didn't say much. I passed the time talking about Hera and her pups."

"Did she seem anxious or nervous about anything?"

"Not at all. She was the same as always."

Sejer looked around the living room and noticed that it was sparsely furnished, as if Johnas hadn't finished decorating. But there were plenty of carpets, both on the floor and on the walls, big Oriental carpets that looked expensive. Two photographs hung on the wall; one was of a towheaded boy about two years old, the other was of a teenager.

"Are those your sons?" Sejer pointed, to change the subject.

"Yes," he said. "But not recent photographs."

He went back to petting the dog, stroking her black, silky-soft ears and damp snout.

"I live alone now," he added. "Finally found myself an apartment in town, on Oscarsgaten. This place is too big for me. I haven't seen much of Annie lately. I think she was a little upset when my wife left. And there weren't kids to take care of any more."

"And you sell Oriental carpets?"

"I deal mostly with Turkey and Pakistan. Occasionally Iran, but they tend to hike the prices. I take a trip to southern
Europe a couple of times a year and stay for several weeks. Take my time. People there are getting to know me," he said with satisfaction. "I've made some good contacts. That's the important thing, you know, to develop a relationship of trust. They've had rather mixed experiences with the West."

Skarre maneuvered his way past the coffee table and went over to the far wall, which was almost entirely covered by a large carpet, from floor to ceiling.

"That one's a Turkish Smyrna," Johnas said. "One of the most beautiful ones I own. I really can't afford to have it. Two and a half million knots. Incomprehensible, isn't it?"

Skarre looked at the carpet. "Is it true that they're made by children?" he asked.

"Often, yes, but not mine. It's bad for the reputation of the business. You may not like it, but the fact is that children make the finest carpets. Grown-up fingers are too thick."

They stood gazing at the carpet, at all the geometric shapes, one inside the other, getting smaller and smaller, an almost endless number of nuances in color.

"Is it true that the children are chained to the looms?" Sejer asked.

Johnas nodded, resigned.

"It sounds appalling when you put it that way. The children with weaving jobs are the lucky ones. A good weaver has food and clothing and warmth. He has a life. If they are chained to the looms, it's at the behest of their parents. Often a young weaver supports a whole family of five or six people. He saves his mother and sisters from prostitution, and his father and brothers from becoming beggars or thieves."

"I've heard it just postpones things," Sejer said. "By the time they grow up and their fingers are too thick, they're often blind or have weak eyes from laboring over a loom. They can't work at all, and so they end up beggars just the same."

Johnas smiled. "You've been watching too much TV. You
should go there yourself. The weavers are happy little people, and they enjoy great respect among the populace. It's that simple. But we have to help the rich maintain their moral standards; no one is more sensitive than they are when it comes to things like this. That's why I avoid child labor. If you ever want to buy a carpet, come over to Cappelens Gaten," he said eagerly. "I'll see you get a good deal."

"I doubt it's within my price range."

"Why is it discolored?" Skarre asked.

Johnas had to smile a bit at such complete ignorance; at the same time, he livened up, as if talking about his great passion was like a puff of air on a dying ember. His enthusiasm swelled. "It's a nomad carpet."

That didn't tell Skarre anything at all.

"The nomads are always on the move, right? It might take them a year to make such a large carpet. And they dye the wool using plants, which they have to gather during different seasons, in shifting terrain, in varying conditions. This blue here," he said, pointing at the carpet, "is from the indigo plant. And the red is from the madder plant. But inside the hexagon there's a different red that is made from crushed insects. This orange color is henna, the yellow is saffron."

He placed his hand on the carpet and stroked downward. "This is a Turkish rug, made with Gordian knots. Every square centimeter has approximately a hundred knots."

"Who designs the patterns?"

"They weave them from patterns that are centuries old, and many have never even been sketched out. The old weavers walk around the workshop, singing the patterns to the younger weavers."

The old blind weavers, Sejer thought.

"Here in the West," Johnas said, "it's taken us a long time to discover this handwork. Traditionally we prefer figurative patterns, something that tells a story. That's why carpets with
hunting and gardening patterns were the first to catch our attention, because they include flower and animal motifs. Personally I prefer this type. First the wide outer border that holds everything in place. Then your eye moves farther and farther in, until at last you come to the treasure, in a sense." He pointed to the medallion in the center of the rug.

"Forgive me," he said all of sudden. "Here I am, rattling on about me and my interests." He looked embarrassed.

"The helmet," Skarre said, tearing himself away. "Was it a half or a whole helmet?"

"Is there such a thing as a half helmet?" Johnas asked, surprised.

"A whole helmet has a piece that fits over the jaw and cheek. An ordinary helmet covers only the skull."

"I didn't notice."

"What about the leather suit. Was it black?"

"Dark, at any rate. It didn't occur to me to study him. There's something completely normal about watching a pretty girl cross the road and head toward a guy on a motorcycle. It's as though that's the way things should be, don't you think?"

They thanked him and paused a moment at the door. "We'll probably be back; I hope you understand."

"Of course. If the puppies come tonight, I'll be home for a few days."

"Can you leave the shop closed?"

"My customers call me at home if there's something they want."

Hera gave a heavy sigh and whined plaintively, lying there on her Oriental rug. Skarre gave her a long look and then reluctantly followed his boss.

"Maybe we'll get to see them if we come back," he said. "The pups, I mean."

"No doubt," Johnas said.

Sejer was thinking about his own dog, Kollberg.

***

"Do you remember Halvor's helmet? The one he had hanging up in his room?"

They were sitting in the car.

"A whole helmet, black with a red stripe," Sejer said. "I guess we can call it a night now. And I have to take the dog for a walk."

"What do you think, Konrad? Do you have as much passion for your job as Johnas does?"

Sejer looked at him. "Of course. But maybe you think it doesn't show?"

He fastened his seatbelt and started the engine. "I find it annoying when people gag themselves, in a show of solidarity for someone they don't even know, because they're convinced that he's an honorable person."

He thought about Halvor and felt a little sad. "Up until the day someone kills for the first time, he's not a murderer. He's just an ordinary person. But afterward, when the neighbors find out that he actually did commit murder, then he's a murderer for the rest of his life, and from then on he's going to kill people right and left, like some kind of killing machine. Then they hug their children close, and nothing feels safe any more."

Skarre gave him a searching look. "So now Halvor is in the spotlight?"

"Of course. He was her boyfriend. But I wonder why Johnas wanted so badly to protect a boy he has seen only from a distance."

Ragnhild Album bent over the paper and started drawing. The notebook was new, and she had opened it reverently to the first untouched page. A car in a cloud of dust might not, in a sense, be worthy of the task that was going to rob the notebook of its chalk-white purity. The box held six different crayons. Sejer had been out shopping: one box for Ragnhild and one for Raymond. Today she had two pigtails on top of her head, pointing straight up like antennae.

"I like the way you've fixed your hair today," he said.

"With this one," said her mother, tugging on one pigtail, "she can get Operation White Wolf in Narvik, and with the other she gets her grandmother, who lives way up north on Svalbard."

He had to laugh.

"She says it was just a cloud of dust," she went on, anxiously.

"She says it was a car," said Sejer. "It's worth a try."

He put his hand on the child's shoulder. "Close your eyes," he said, "and try to picture it. Then draw it as best you can. And not just any old car. You should draw the car that you and Raymond saw."

"I know," she said impatiently.

He ushered Mrs. Album out of the kitchen and into the
living room so Ragnhild could draw in peace. Mrs. Album went over to the window and looked at the blue mountains in the distance. It was a hazy day, and the landscape might have come straight out of an old romantic painting.

"Annie took care of Ragnhild for me lots of times," she said. "And whenever she baby-sat, she did a good job. That was a few years ago now. They would take the bus to town and stay out all day. Ride the train at the market, ride up and down on the escalator and in the elevator at the department store, things that Ragnhild liked doing. Annie had a natural talent with children. She was different. Thoughtful."

Sejer could hear the little girl taking crayons out of the box in the kitchen. "Do you know her sister too? Sølvi?"

"I know who she is. But she's only her half-sister."

"Oh?"

"Didn't you know that?"

"No, I didn't."

"Everyone knows," she said. "It's not a secret or anything. They're very different. For a while they had difficulties with her father. Sølvi's father, I mean. He lost his visitation rights, and apparently he's never gotten over it."

"Why?"

"The usual trouble. Drunk and violent. That's the mother's version, of course, but Ada Holland is hard to take, so I'm not sure how much is true."

"But Sølvi is over twenty-one by now, isn't she? And can do what she wants?"

"It's probably too late. I daresay that things have probably gone sour between them. I've been thinking a lot about Ada," she said. "She didn't get her little girl back, the way I did."

"I'm done!" came a shout from the kitchen.

They got up and went in to have a look. Ragnhild was sitting with her head tilted, not looking especially pleased. A grayish cloud filled most of the page, and out of the cloud
stuck the front end of a car, with headlights and bumper. The hood was long, like that of a big American car, the bumper was colored black. It looked as if it had a big grin with no teeth. The headlights were slanted. Chinese eyes, Sejer thought.

"Did it make a lot of noise when it drove past?"

He leaned over the kitchen table and noticed the sweet smell of her chewing gum.

"It was really noisy."

He stared at the drawing. "Could you make me another drawing? If I ask you to draw the headlights on the car? Just the headlights?"

"But they looked just like this!" She pointed to the drawing. "They were slanted."

He nodded, as if to himself. "What about the color, Ragnhild?"

"Well, it wasn't really gray. But there wasn't much to choose from here," she said precociously, shaking the box of crayons. "It was a color that doesn't exist."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean a color that doesn't have a name."

A string of colors swirled through his mind: sienna, petrol, sepia, anthracite.

"Ragnhild," he said, "can you remember if the car had anything on the roof?"

"Antennae?"

"No, something bigger. Raymond thought there was something big on top of the car."

She stared at him, thinking hard. "Yes!" she exclaimed. "A little boat."

"A boat?"

"A little black one."

"I don't know what I would have done without you," Sejer said, smiling, as he flicked his fingers at her antennae.

"Elise," he said, "you have a nice name."

"No one wants to call me that. Everyone calls me Ragnhild."

"But I can call you Elise."

She blushed shyly, put the lid on the box, closed up the notebook, and slid them over to him.

"No, they're yours to keep."

She opened the box at once and went back to drawing.

"One of the rabbits is lying on its side!"

Raymond was standing in the doorway to his father's room, rocking back and forth uneasily.

"Which one?"

"Caesar. The giant Belgian."

"Then you'll have to kill it."

Raymond got so scared that he farted. But the little release didn't make any difference in the stale air of the room.

"But it's breathing so hard!"

"We're not about to feed rabbits that are dying, Raymond. Put it on the chopping block. The ax is behind the door in the garage. Watch your hands!"

Raymond went outdoors and plodded dejectedly across the courtyard toward the rabbit cages. He stared at Caesar for a moment through the netting. It's lying there just like a baby, he thought, rolled up like a soft little ball. Its eyes were closed. It didn't move when he opened the cage and stuck his hand cautiously inside. It was just as warm as always. He took a firm grip of the skin on the scruff of its neck and lifted it out. It kicked halfheartedly, seeming to have little strength.

Afterward he slumped in his chair at the kitchen table. In front of him lay an album with pictures of the national soccer team and birds and animals. He was looking very depressed when Sejer arrived. He was wearing nothing but sweatpants and slippers. His hair stood up from his head, his belly was
soft and white. His round eyes looked sulky, and his lips were pursed, as if he were sucking hard on something.