Don't Look Back (26 page)

Sejer didn't reply. He felt a sense of relief, mixed with irritation. He was glad that it wasn't Halvor, but frustrated because they didn't have a suspect.

"I had a nasty dream," he said, a little surprised by his own candor. "I dreamed that there was a rotten apple behind that chair over there. Completely covered with big, black flies."

"Did you check?" Skarre said with a grin.

Sejer took a sip of his whisky. "Just some dust. Do you think the dream means anything?"

"Maybe there's a piece of furniture that we've forgotten to look behind. Something that's been standing there the whole time, and we've forgotten all about it. It's definitely a warning. Now it's just a matter of identifying the chair."

"So we should go into the furniture business?" Sejer chuckled at his joke, a rare phenomenon.

"I was hoping you still had a few cards up your sleeve," Skarre said. "I can't believe that we haven't made any progress. The weeks keep passing. Annie's file is getting older. And you're the one who's supposed to be giving advice."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Your name," Skarre said. "Konrad means: 'The one who gives advice.'"

Sejer raised one eyebrow in an impressive arc without moving the other. "How do you know that?"

"I have a book at home. I look up a name whenever I meet someone new."

"What does Annie mean?" Sejer asked at once.

"Beautiful."

"Good God. Well, at the moment I'm not living up to my name. But don't let that discourage you, Jacob. What does Halvor mean, by the way?" he asked with curiosity.

"Halvor means 'the guard.'"

He called me "Jacob," Skarre thought with astonishment. For the very first time, he used my Christian name.

The sun was low in the sky, slanting across the pleasant balcony and making a warm corner so they could take off their jackets. They were waiting for the grill to heat up. It smelled of charcoal and lighter fluid, along with lemon balm from Ingrid's planter, which she had just watered.

Sejer was sitting with his grandson on his lap, bouncing him up and down until his thigh muscles began to ache. Something inside him would disappear with the boy's youth. In a few years he would be taller than his grandfather and his voice would change. Sejer always felt a sort of wistfulness when he held Matteus on his lap, but at the same time he felt a shiver run down his back from sheer physical well-being.

Ingrid picked up her clogs from the floor of the balcony and banged them together three times. Then she stuck her feet into them.

"Why do you do that?"

"An old habit," she said, smiling. "From Somalia."

"But we don't have snakes or scorpions here."

"I can't help myself. And we do have wasps and garter snakes."

"Do you think a garter snake would crawl into your shoe?"

"I have no idea."

He hugged his grandson and snuggled his nose in the hollow of his neck.

"Bounce more," Matteus said.

"My legs are tired. Why don't you find a book and I'll read to you instead?"

The boy hopped down and raced into the apartment.

"So how are things going otherwise, Papa?" Ingrid said, her voice as light as a child's.

Otherwise ... he thought. What she means is
in reality;
how are things going
in reality?
How was he feeling deep inside, in the depths of his soul? Or could it be a camouflaged way of asking whether anything had happened? Whether, for instance, he had found a girlfriend, or was having a longdistance romance with someone. Which he wasn't. He couldn't imagine anything like that.

"Fine, but what do you mean?" he said, trying to sound sufficiently guileless.

"I was wondering if perhaps the days don't seem so long any more."

She was being terribly circumspect. It occurred to him that she had something on her mind.

"I've been very busy at work," he said. "And besides, I have all of you."

This last comment prompted her to start fidgeting with the salad servers. She tossed the tomatoes and cucumbers energetically. "Yes but, you see, we're thinking of going south again. For another term. The last one," she said quickly, giving him a glance and looking more and more guilty.

"South?" He hung on to the word. "To Somalia?"

"Erik has an offer. We haven't given them our answer yet," she said quickly. "But we're giving it serious consideration. Partly because of Matteus. We'd like him to see some of the
country and learn the language. If we leave in August, we'll be there in time for the start of the school year."

Three years, he thought. Three years without Ingrid and Matteus. In Norway only at Christmas. Letters and postcards, and his grandson taller each visit, and a year older, such abrupt changes.

"I have no doubt that you're needed down there," he said, making an effort to keep his voice steady. "You're not thinking that my welfare should stop you from going, are you? I'm not ninety, Ingrid."

She blushed a little.

"I'm thinking about Grandmother too."

"I'll take care of my mother. You're going to crush that salad to bits," he said.

"I don't like it that you're all alone," she said. "I have Kollberg, you know."

"But he's just a dog!"

"You should be glad he doesn't understand what you're saying." Sejer cast a glance at Kollberg, who was sleeping peacefully under the table. "We do pretty well. I think you should go if that's what you really want to do. Is Erik tired of treating appendicitis and swollen tonsils?"

"Things are different there," she said. "We can be so much more useful."

"What about Matteus? What will you do with him?"

"He'll go to the American kindergarten, along with a whole bunch of other children. And besides," she said, "he actually has relatives there that he's never met. I don't like that. I want him to know everything."

"American?" he said. "What do you mean by 'know everything'?"

He thought about Matteus's real parents and their fate.

"We won't tell him about his mother until he's older."

"You should go!" he said.

She looked at him and smiled. "What do you think Mama would have said?"

"She would have said the same thing. And then she would have had a good cry in bed later on."

"But you won't?"

Matteus came running back with a picture book in one hand and an apple in the other. "'It was a dark and stormy night.' Doesn't that sound a little scary?" Sejer said.

"Ha!" his grandson snorted, climbing onto his lap.

"The coals are hot," Ingrid said. "I'm going to put on the steaks."

"Put them on," he said.

She placed the meat on the grill, four pieces in all, and went inside to get the drinks.

"I have a green rubber python in my room," Matteus whispered. "Should we put it in her shoe?"

Sejer hesitated. "I don't know. Do you think that's a good idea?"

"Don't you?"

"As a matter of fact, I don't."

"Old people are such chickens," he said. "I'm the one she'll blame."

"OK," he said. "I'll look the other way."

Matteus hopped down, ran to get his snake, and then carefully stuffed it inside his mother's clog. "You can keep reading now."

Sejer cringed at the thought of the awful rubber snake and how it would feel against her toes. "Tt was a dark and stormy night. There were robbers in the mountains, and wolves as well.' Are you sure this isn't too scary?"

"Mama has read it to me lots of times." He bit into his apple and chewed contentedly.

"Don't take such big bites," Sejer said. "You might get it caught in your throat."

"Read, Grandpa!"

I must be getting old, he thought. Old and anxious.

"'It was a dark and stormy night,'" he began again, and just at that moment Ingrid came back, carrying three bottles of beer and a Coke. He stopped and gave her a long look. Matteus did too.

"Why are you staring at me like that? What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing," they said in unison, bending over their book. She set the bottles on the table, opened them, and looked around for her shoes. Picked them up, turned them upside down, and knocked them together three times. Nothing happened. It's stuck in the toe, they thought gleefully. Then everything happened at once. Sejer's son-in-law, Erik, appeared in the doorway, Matteus jumped down from his lap and rushed across the room. Kollberg leaped up from under the table and wagged his tail so hard that the bottles fell to the floor, and Ingrid stuck her feet inside her shoes.

Sølvi stood in her room, taking things out of a box. For a moment she straightened up and peered outside. Directly across the street, Fritzner was standing at his window, watching her. He had a glass in his hand. Now he raised it, as if offering a toast.

Sølvi turned her back on him at once. True, she didn't mind men looking at her, but Fritzner was bald. Imagining life with a bald man was as unthinkable as imagining life with a man who was fat. They had no place in her dreams. That her stepfather was both bald and fat didn't trouble her. Other men could be bald, but not the one she went out with. She looked up again. He was gone. He was probably sitting in his boat again, the weirdo.

She heard the doorbell ringing and went to open the door.

"Oh!" she said. "It's you! I'm cleaning up Annie's room. Come on in. Mama and Papa will be home in a minute." She was wearing a light-blue trouser suit with a silver belt around her waist and ballet slippers.

Sejer followed her through the living room to her own room, which was next to Annie's. It was quite a bit bigger, decorated in pastels. A photograph of her sister stood on her bedside table.

"I have inherited a few things from her," she said with an apologetic smile. "Some knickknacks and clothes and things like that. And if I can persuade Papa, I want to knock down the wall to Annie's room so I'll have one big room."

"That will be very nice," Sejer said. But at the same time he felt a little ashamed at the emotions that crept over him. He had no right to judge anyone. They were struggling to go on with their lives and had every right to do it in their own way. No one could tell anyone else how to grieve. He gave himself this little reprimand and then looked around. He had never seen a room with so many knickknacks.

"And I'm going to get my own TV," she said. "With an extra antenna so I can get TV-Norway." She bent down to a cardboard box on the floor and began pulling more things out of it. "It's mostly books. Annie didn't have any makeup or jewelry or anything like that. Plus a bunch of CDs and cassettes."

"Do you like to read?"

"Not really. But the bookshelves look nice when they're full."

He nodded in agreement.

"Has something happened?"

"Yes, actually. But we don't know yet what it means."

She took one more thing out of the box. It was wrapped in newspaper.

"So you know Magne Johnas, Sølvi?"

"Yes," she said. He thought she blushed, but she had such
rosy cheeks, he couldn't be sure. "He's living in Oslo now. Works for Gym & Greier."

"Did you know that he and Annie once had something going?"

"Had something going?" She gave him a look of pure incomprehension.

"That they might have had a romance, or that Magne might have been in love with her, or might have tried something? Before your time?"

"Annie just laughed at him," she said, her tone almost plaintive. "Not that Halvor was anything to boast about. At least Magne looks like a guy should. I mean, he has muscles and everything."

She pulled away the newspaper wrapping, avoiding his eye.

"Do you think he might have been offended?" he asked carefully as something shiny appeared from the newspaper.

"He could have been. It wasn't enough for Annie to say no. She could be really snide sometimes, and she wasn't impressed by muscles. Everybody keeps on talking about how wonderful and nice she was, and I don't mean to say anything bad about my half sister. She was often snide, but nobody dares talk about it. Because she's dead. I can't understand how Halvor could bear it. Annie was the one who decided on everything."

"Is that right?"

"But she was nice to me. She was always nice." For a moment she looked stricken at the memory of her sister and everything that had happened.

"How long have you and Magne been together?" he asked.

"Only a few weeks. We go to the movies and stuff like that."

Her reply was a little too quick.

"He's younger than you, isn't he?"

"Four years," she said reluctantly. "But he's very mature for his age."

"I see."

She held something up to the light and squinted at it. A bronze bird sitting on a perch. A chubby little feathered creature with its head tilted.

"It's broken," she said uncertainly.

Sejer stared in astonishment. The sight of the bronze bird struck him like an arrow at his temple. It was the sort of thing that was placed on the gravestones of small children.

"I could roll up a lump of clay and make a stand for it," Sølvi said. "Or Papa might help me. It's really pretty."

A picture of a new Annie was slowly taking shape, a more complex Annie than the one Halvor and her parents had presented to him.

"What do you think it's for?" he said.

Sølvi shrugged. "No idea. Just some kind of decoration that's broken, I suppose."

"You've never seen it before?"

"No. I wasn't allowed in Annie's room when she wasn't home."

She put the bird on the desk, and bent down to the box again.

"Has it been a long time since you saw your father?" he asked as he continued to stare at the bird. His brain was working in high gear.

"My father?" She straightened up and looked at him in confusion. "You mean ... my father who lives in Adamstuen?"

He nodded.

"He was at Annie's funeral."

"You must miss him, don't you?"

She didn't answer. It was as if he had touched on something that she rarely examined properly. Something unpleasant that
she tried to forget, a trace of guilty conscience perhaps, about not visiting her father. Sejer felt a little too aggressive at that moment. He had to remember to be respectful, to approach people on their own terms.