The Lion's Mouth (41 page)

“I think you know why I want to speak to you,” he said, looking up without warning.

Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden had never noticed Tryggve Storstein’s eyes before. They made contact with hers like an unexpected shower of arrows. They were unpleasant, candid; for some reason he no longer had that half-sad, half-embarrassed fold above his eyes that meant you did not fix too specifically on his actual gaze or the eyes inside those deep hollows. He had changed. His eyes
were
his face now. A wide, green-gray expression of something
she reluctantly – but immediately – recognized: open and undisguised contempt.

A blush of shame spread through her; she felt it prickling the skin on her hands, and without wanting to, she fell into her very worst nervous habit: scratching her neck.

“What do you mean?”

Ruth-Dorthe forced a smile, but the nerves in her face would not cooperate, contorting her mouth into a revealing grimace; he understood that.

“Let’s not make this unnecessarily awkward, Ruth-Dorthe,” he said, getting to his feet.

Taking up position beside the window, he spoke to his own reflection in the glass, the reinforced pane with a greenish tint that was supposed to protect him from external attack. He gave a thin smile, since it had not helped Birgitte one iota.

“Do you know what the point is of being a politician?” he asked. “Have you ever stopped and asked yourself what’s the purpose of it all?”

She did not move a muscle. He watched her reflection, frozen stiff except for her hand running up and down her slender neck; up and down.

“You should at least have done that. I’ve observed you for a long time, Ruth-Dorthe. Longer than you have observed me. I’ve never liked what I’ve seen. That hasn’t been much of a secret, either.”

All at once, he wheeled round and looked at her, trying to make eye contact. But she couldn’t even manage that, just stared intently at a point on the side of his shoulder.

“You don’t have any ideals, Ruth-Dorthe. I wonder if you ever have. That is dangerous. Without ideals, we lose sight of the actual aim – the fundamental reason for getting involved in politics. Damn it all, you’re a member of the Labor Party!”

Now he raised his voice, his cheeks inflamed and his eyes even larger.

“What is it we really stand for? Can you answer me that?”

Leaning forward, he placed his hands on her armrest, with his face now only thirty centimeters from hers. She could smell the faint fragrance of his aftershave, but she did not want to look. Could not manage to, or bear to.

“The public out there – voters, the majority, call them what you will – why should they vote for us rather than anyone else? Because we want to
distribute
wealth, Ruth-Dorthe. We’re no longer revolutionaries. We’re not even particularly radical. We manage a market-driven society, and enjoy a good quality of life in an international arena largely controlled by capital. That is fine by us. A great deal has changed. Perhaps we should even change our name. But what …”

She could feel the warmth of his face; microscopic droplets of spittle sprayed over her flushed countenance and she blinked repeatedly but did not dare turn away.

“Fairness,” he whispered. “A reasonable, fair division of all that milk and honey floating around out there. That can never …”

Abruptly, he drew himself up to his full height, as though he had suddenly felt a pain in his back.

At the window, he turned around again. Darkness was creeping across the city; together with the rain, it had lain in wait behind the Østmark hills, biding its time until evening. Two cars had collided on Akersgata, and he saw angry figures waving their arms, and an impatient bus trying to mount the sidewalk in order to drive past.

“We can never achieve total fairness,” he said bluntly. “Never. But being able to do
something
, trying to level things out … Have you ever been to the East End?”

He looked at her reflection in the glass; her complexion had acquired a greenish hue.

“Have you even
been
out there? Have you visited an immigrant family in Tøyen with five children and a toilet on the landing and rats as big as kittens in the basement? And then gone over there …”

He waved the palm of his hand toward the western hill.

“… and seen what their living conditions are like?”

Ruth-Dorthe had to bite the inside of her cheek to avoid breaking down entirely. She continued to blink, all of a sudden aware that her left hand was on the verge of seizing up with cramp, her knuckles livid as she tried to release her grip on the chair arm.

“You don’t often have the time,” Tryggve Storstein said.

His tone had altered, and softened, as though he were talking to an obstinate little child who needed a fatherly admonition.

“All too seldom do we have time to consider why. Why we keep going. But now and again we need to make time.”

Without warning, his voice shifted yet again as he sat down heavily in his own office chair, and his words lashed across the desktop.

“You’re in politics for yourself, Ruth-Dorthe. For your personal benefit. You are deadly. You don’t think about others. Not about the party, and not about most other people. Only yourself.”

She could not endure this. Her life was about to collapse around her; it was like standing in an earthquake zone, not knowing whether the ground was secure under her feet, or if an abyss would open in the next second. She would not put up with this. Furious, she thrust herself forward across the desk, grabbing a paperweight and hefting it threateningly.

“Now you’re really overstepping the mark,” she hissed. “Don’t forget that I’m the Deputy Leader of—”

He burst out laughing, throwing his head back with a loud guffaw. “And it’s a mystery how that came about.”

“But—”

“Shut up!”

She sank back into her seat, still holding the paperweight, clutching it tightly, clinging to the bulky cobalt glass ornament as if it were her last chance for something or other, she did not quite know what.

“You are a fool,” Tryggve Storstein said, his voice dripping with contempt. “Don’t you know anything about modern appliances? Didn’t you know that a fax machine keeps a record of all communications, and stores the numbers of all recipients?”

The room was whirling. What could she do? She had something on him. Didn’t she? Some old stories about his liaisons with women, something about an inheritance issue … She had heard something, she could look it up, throw it back at him, right in his face, he couldn’t do this, he mustn’t.

“You’re so egotistical that you don’t see other people, Ruth-Dorthe. You don’t understand them. They suddenly turn on you when you least expect it, because you never take the time to put yourself in other people’s shoes, to think about how they feel and how they experience the world. That’s why you can never be a politician. You’ve never been a politician. You desire power for its own sake. Power is your aphrodisiac. The problem is that you’re in love only with yourself. You can’t behave any differently, because you don’t like anyone else. Do you understand what you’ve done by leaking this commission report to
Kveldsavisen?”

“But,” she ventured, in a dull, metallic voice, “I … It contained nothing but the
truth
!”

It seemed as though she had suddenly and surprisingly discovered a weapon, and she grasped it with both hands.

“But you’re afraid of the truth, you know, Tryggve. And you hate people like me, who actually believe we need greater press freedom … Yes, people like us who believe that free speech and an open society should mean more than franking ‘Withheld from the Public’ on government documents!”

He laughed uproariously, swiveling his chair to and fro, to and fro, chortling all the while.

“The truth! Are you so power-crazed and arrogant that you think you have the right to control access to the truth as if it were your own servant? Do you believe …”

Throwing back his head, he laughed hysterically.

“Do you believe the truth is something you can parcel out among your own press contacts, in order to get your back scratched now and again? I wondered about that, you see.”

Now he was no longer amused, his voice was trembling as he struggled not to shout.

“I wondered why someone like you – a disloyal, incompetent, unpopular and scheming character like you – was dealt with so
incredibly
lightly by the press. Why they haven’t hung you out to dry long ago has been something of a mystery. Not only to me. Now I know the reason why. You have paid them. Paid them with information. Huh!”

He stretched out his hand peremptorily.

“Give me that paperweight!”

She dropped her gaze, hesitating slightly, before setting it down, at the far edge of the desk. It was in danger of tipping onto the floor, and he had to rise from his seat in order to rescue it.

“I never thought … I
never
thought that I would have to instruct a minister in my own government about the fundamental democratic rules of the game. Don’t you understand, Ruth-Dorthe, that you are tasked with managing the Health Service on behalf of
the Norwegian people
? Instead, you have used your authority to pursue a personal vendetta against me. You leaked information to the press so that you could beat me by being first with statements, and so I would be caught off guard, totally ignorant. It’s such a crass breach of trust that … I simply don’t have words to describe it. A breach of my trust and a breach of the trust invested in you
by the people on whose behalf you have been appointed to govern. And with these
scraps
of truth that you have allowed to leak out, you have succeeded in not only undermining confidence in the government and our credibility, but you have also contributed to the spread of fear and speculation. Fear and speculation! There you have your truth!”

He shut his eyes briefly, and his old face returned: the anxious, half-embarrassed expression was in place again. It gave her courage, and she tried afresh.

“But the truth can
never
be damaging! It is only by—”

“I’ll tell you something about the truth,” he said wearily, in a quiet voice. “Of course it should come out. Fully and completely. So I’ll give my report to Parliament. Not to the Akersgata press pack. They’ll receive everything, naturally, in the fullness of time, but Parliament is the appropriate forum for this extremely important matter. Only then can this be tackled with the … with the decorum a matter such as this demands. And in the meantime …”

Leaning forward, he dialed a four-digit number on the phone.

“Would you be kind enough to bring in two cups of tea, Wenche?”

He disconnected the call and waited.

Neither of them said a word until Wenche Andersen entered. Little blotches of lilac colored her cheeks, but her hand movements were steady and familiar as she set out cups and saucers and poured generous servings for them both.

“Sugar?” she asked Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden. “Milk?”

The Health Minister made no response, and Wenche Andersen did not consider it appropriate to press for an answer. She tiptoed lightly back to her own domain, but managed to catch an encouraging smile from her boss as she closed the door.

“You are being put under supervision,” he said softly, stirring a spoonful of sugar into the golden-brown tea. “With immediate
effect. Not a single decision of any significance is to be taken without consulting me. Understood?”

“But …”

Something was happening to Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden. Her face had adopted a different expression, as though all her features had become magnified; her mouth grew, her nose seemed swollen, her eyes appeared too coarsely carved, too large for her face, which was actually quite narrow. The shadows cast by the desk lamp emphasized the irregular proportions: a thin face with overlarge details.

“You can’t do that! In fact, you haven’t got the right to do that! Vote me down at the next Cabinet meeting, go ahead and do that, but … You’re not entitled to take control away from me!”

Tryggve Storstein continued to stir his tea, with an unnecessary circular rhythm that gave him something to look at. Suddenly he stopped, licked the spoon and blew on the hot tea.

“The alternative is that you resign now,” he said softly. “You can choose between the two evils. Either you do as I say, and then I replace you some time after the election. Nice and quietly, and nobody will be any the wiser. Or else you resign now, and I announce the reason for your departure. All of it.”

“But you can’t … The party … Tryggve!”

“The party!”

He laughed again, even more heartily, as though he really did find the situation entertaining.

“You have never thought of the party,” he said, drained. “Now you get to choose. The devil or the deep blue sea.”

They sat in silence for fully five minutes. Tryggve drank his tea, stretched his legs out in front of his chair and looked as if he were thinking of something else entirely. Ruth-Dorthe seemed to have been turned to stone. A lonely teardrop ran down her scarlet, inflamed cheek. Seeing it, he momentarily felt
a touch of something resembling compassion, but swiftly brushed it aside.

“The devil or the deep blue sea, Ruth-Dorthe. The choice is yours.”

At that instant, the phone rang, startling them both, and Tryggve Storstein hesitated before grabbing the receiver.

“It’s for you,” he said curtly, surprised, and passed the phone across the desk.

The Minister of Health clutched it mechanically, like a mannequin in a shop window, with stiff limbs and staccato movements.

“Okay,” she said a moment later, and handed back the phone. “I’m required at Oslo Police Station. Immediately.”

And so Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden left her Prime Minister, without saying which option she would take.

It did not matter.

He knew that she would never in her wildest moments opt for a public humiliation.

He had crushed her. It astonished him that he did not feel even a scintilla of regret or sorrow. When he took stock, he realized that he felt pity for her, but that was all.

Someone should have destroyed her long ago.