The Last Fix (7 page)

    He
whispered back: 'You have to remember that these two met in the way they did
without knowing they were meeting. It was just something that happened. Past
meetings of this kind are a source of the loss or the warmth they carry inside
- for the rest of their lives.'

    'But
you can let them meet once more,' she insisted.

    'OK,'
he said.

    'Tell
me now they did,' she begged. 'Tell me they met again.'

    'OK,'
he repeated. 'The two of them met again. This is how it happened: he was
sitting on a train going south. The train stopped at a station and he got up to
look out of the window. Then he saw her.

    Because
another train was standing in the station too. She stood looking out of the
train window - the train going north, in the opposite direction. A metre of air
separated them. Can you imagine that? Her standing with the wind playing in her
hair. She was wearing a white summer dress which was semi-transparent; through two
train windows he could see the dress clinging to her body - he could see the
outline of her stomach muscles under the dress. They saw each other for five
seconds, looked into each other's eyes until the trains moved off. One train
went north, the other south. And they were separated again.'

    She
caressed Henning's chin with her lips. 'What's her name?' she whispered.

    He
grinned and shook his head. 'This isn't about me. This is a story. This is
something that happens every day. To someone. The one thing you can say is that
there is something beautiful about the moment the two of them experience.'

    'And
you're in a world of your own,' she whispered. 'Do you fantasize about her?'

    'Of
course.'

    His
smile was sad: 'The only comprehensible thing you can take from the system that
affects those two is the poetry. The language, the words we say to each other
form a box in which we can collect the beautiful things in life and reveal them
to each other at moments like now - here, you and I in this car, tonight.
Language and poetry are our way of sensing the incomprehensible because we
cannot step far back enough, outside ourselves, to a place where you can enjoy
the logic and the inevitability of reality.'

    He
was breathless from all the speaking. Henning is actually very charming, she
thought, Henning is naive, child-like and charming. She said:

    'I
don't agree.'

    'Eh?'

    'You're
good at storytelling, but you don't know anything about reality.'

    He
sent her a gentle, sarcastic smile. 'That's how easy it was to get off with
you.'

    'Now
you listen to me,' she said. 'Outside Kragerø there is a little place
called Portør. It's not the name of the place which is important; the
point is that you can see the whole horizon from there. It sticks out into the
sea - all that is between you and Denmark is the Skagerrak. Once upon a time
there was a dead calm. Do you know what that is? Dead calm. That's when the
water is like a mirror, not a ripple. I was swimming, early in the morning, the
sun was shining, the water was warm, not a breath of wind and the sea was
completely still. I began to swim, towards the horizon. You know how I love
swimming. And I swam and I swam until I felt so tired I needed to rest. I lay
floating on my back looking up at the burning sun. I could see my white body
under the surface of the water and I glanced around. And do you know what? I
had swum so far out that it was not possible to see land anywhere. Whichever
way I looked there was just calm, black sea. I couldn't see anything, not a
boat, not a sail, not a strip of land. And I lay there thinking about the black
deep beneath me, thinking that I had no idea which way led back to where I had
come from, and I closed my eyes. Lying there like that was the biggest kick I have
ever known, before or since. I knew in my heart that this was what it is all
about. This is life; this is what actually happens every day. Every second of
the day is like lying there, alone in the sea.'

    'But
you found the way back?'

    She
smiled. 'Of course I did. I'm here, aren't I?'

    'Yes,
I know, but how? Was it just luck that you swam in the right direction?'

    'Maybe.
It might have been luck, but that's not the point. The fact is that it was the
most important experience I have had in my life.'

    'Why
do you think that?'

    'It
was what made me decide to come off drugs. But perhaps even more important than
that was the revelation.'

    She
smiled and whispered softly. 'My single thought while I was out there was that
nothing is predetermined. There is no system. You tell great stories, Henning,
but this business about predetermined systems is just bullshit. My life begins
somewhere between me and the sea. I believe in myself and in reality. That's
it.'

    The
final word hung quivering in the air. Neither of them said anything. They sat
close together and Katrine could feel the heat from Henning's thighs against
her own. 'What kind of amulet did he have?' she asked.

    'Who?'

    'The
guy from Canada.'

    'Oh,
him…' Henning tried to force a hand down into his trouser pocket, but had to
raise his bottom first. 'Here,' he said, passing her a beautiful, small, white
box. She took it. There were neat drawings in gold on the lid. 'The kind we
used to keep our amphetamines in,' she said, weighing the small box in her
hand.

    'Not
like this one,' he said, taking off the lid.

    'Marble,'
she burst out. 'Is it made of marble?'

    Henning
nodded. 'It's the same technique they use in the Taj Mahal. The mother-of-pearl
and the blue stone have been worked into the material. Feel,' he whispered,
stroking the smooth surface of the lid with his finger. At that instant their
eyes met. She slowly lowered the white box and put it in her lap. Then she
loosened the thick band of massive gold with two inlaid jewels she was wearing
on the ring finger of her left hand. She dropped the ring in the box where it
fell with a dry thud. She closed the lid and passed him the box. Henning took
it with a gulp.

    They
huddled close together and the intimacy between them grew. She stared at
Henning's glowing skin, at his black eyes shining in the dark. Sinews and veins
formed dark shadows in his skin. That's how I want him, she thought. And that
was how she took him. She forced Henning under her and fucked him, there in the
car; she rode him until the constellations in the sky made small reflections in
the beads of sweat on his forehead. She could read in his dark pupils how his
orgasm was building up, and when he came inside her, she covered his mouth with
hers and let him scream as much he was able, deep down into her stomach.

    Afterwards
she dozed off. Her body ached when she woke up; her right leg felt bloodless
and numb. That's the first time I've slept in a car since I was little, she
thought. It was colder now. Henning was emitting low snoring sounds. She
loosened her arms from around his neck and sat up straight. In the mirror she
saw that her hair had become tangled. She looked like a woman waking up in the
arms of a man in a car in the middle of the night. My leg has gone to sleep,
she thought, and began to massage her calf and thigh. And I am cold. Outside
there were still stars in the sky. The tiny crescent moon that had hung over
the water had moved further south, and the sky, above the treetops on the other
side, was lighter, had a bluer tinge. 'Fancy that,' she said in a husky voice.
Henning was mumbling in his sleep. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard.
It was past two o'clock.

    She
shivered, put on her thin blouse and straightened her skirt. She examined her
face in the car mirror and wished she had a comb. The inside of the car windows
had steamed up. She was hungry. And she needed a wash. She searched the glove
compartment for cigarettes, but it was empty apart from the log book and a few
paper napkins. She dried the condensation on one of the side windows. Outside
it was dark behind the spruces. She rolled down the window. The air was
wonderful, fresh, but light and cool to the face. Her upper arms began to get
gooseflesh. She grabbed the gear lever, eased her leg across to find the clutch
pedal. At last she got the car into neutral and manoeuvred her hand around the
steering wheel without waking Henning. Then she turned on the ignition. The car
started, and she put on the fan heater. The white cone of the headlamps picked
out a tree trunk and a mass of green vegetation. Henning was still fast asleep.
She thought about going for a wash in the water. It would be wonderful to rinse
away the taste of smoke from her mouth. But there didn't seem to be an obvious
path. The area between the road and the lake was a murky jumble of trees,
bilberry bushes and sharp ends of bare branches. She shuddered. She thought of
snakes, horrible coiled snakes slithering between the dead leaves on the
ground; she thought of spiders and huge anthills, crawling with millions of
ants, and she shuddered again.

    In
the end she opened the car door and staggered out on stiff legs. She hopped
around until the blood slowly returned to her sleeping leg. Ants in the blood.
It hurt and she bit her lower lip. She brought her heel down on a sharp stone.
It hurt so much she screamed 'Ow', then began to walk. She stumbled around the
car like an electric doll with stiff legs and limbs. Barefoot, she walked over
the cold, sharp stones and soon felt her circulation returning.

    All
of a sudden she heard a sound and stopped to listen. She stood quite motionless
and a chill crept up her spine. She stood like this for a long time, listening,
but didn't hear the sound again. At the same time she scanned her surroundings
to see what could have caused it. The night was grey, not pitch black, and in
the light from the moon and the stars she saw her shadow on the ground. The
only sound to be heard was the low rumble of the idling car engine. What was
truly black were the trees and the surface of the water struggling in vain to
reflect the stars.

    When,
at last, she was sure that she had imagined the sound, she decided to go down
to the lakeside. She walked down the road with care, looking for a path. And
caught sight of a wonderful flat stone she could stand on at the water's edge.
A cool gust of air blew against her ankles and legs as she approached. She
stopped, bent down, put her hand in the water and felt the temperature.
Lukewarm. In the dark she found the stone and went down on her knees. She
scooped up water and threw it into her face; it was not cold at all. She stood
up, peeled off her panties, kicked off her shoes and stepped into the lake bare-legged.
Her feet sank down to her ankles in the mud which felt like cool, lumpy cream.
It was unpleasant, but it didn't matter. It was only for two seconds. She
raised her skirt to her waist, faced land, squatted down and washed herself.

    What
was that?

    She
sprang to her feet and listened.

    A
sound. But what kind of sound?

    She
stood quite still listening. But now the silence was total, not even the sound
of Henning's car was audible. Just the sound of insects fluttering their wings
against the water broke the frozen silence. She suddenly became aware that her
skirt was bunched up around her waist, and she let go.

    Something
had changed. There was something strange about the silence. She tried to work
out what was different. She could not, but she didn't like standing there,
alone and exposed in the water. The deep gloom and the unbearable silence
caused her to feel a clammy sense of fear spreading outwards from the small of
her back, a fear which numbed her fingers, which drained her arms of strength,
which dried out her mouth and which stopped her breathing. As the darkness was
a summer darkness, she could make out the contours of rocks and branches
protruding into the air. A clump of black, impenetrable spruce trees blocked
her view of the road. It was not possible to see through the wall of spruce
foliage.

    
Walk,
she told herself,
wade to the shore and go back to the car.
But for some
reason she did not want to make any noise. Because, she thought, because… it
would drown the other sounds. Which sounds? She stood quite still
concentrating, but she couldn't hear a single thing.

    
Shout,
she thought.
Shout for Henning\
But she couldn't make herself do that,
either. Instead she waded to the shore. She tripped and almost fell, but
managed to regain balance and scrambled on to the shore. She tried to force her
wet feet into the shoes. It was difficult; her feet refused to go into her
shoes of their own accord.

    Once
she was ready, she stood with her body tensed, listening. Not a sound to be
heard, not even insects. Her eyes seemed to be drawn to the thick wall of
spruce on the right. There were spruce needles and tiny pebbles in her shoes.
It was unpleasant, but she repressed the feeling. She was focused on the air
and the dark wall of spruce. There. There was that sound again. And it came
from somewhere behind the spruce trees.