Midnight Sun (16 page)

I closed my eyes. Felt the warmth of the blood running down my cheek and under my collar.

Waited.

Nothing happened.

‘You
know
I'll do it,' a voice said.

The grip round my head loosened.

I took two steps back. Opened my eyes again.

Ove had raised his hands and dropped the knife. Right in front of him stood Lea. I recognised the pistol she was holding, aimed at his forehead.

‘Get lost,' she said.

Ove Eliassen's Adam's apple bobbed up and down. ‘Lea . . .'

‘Now!'

He leaned over to pick up the knife.

‘I think you've lost that,' she snarled.

He held his palms up towards her and backed away into the darkness, empty-handed. We heard angry cursing, bottles being swigged from and branches rustling as they disappeared between the trees.

‘Here you are,' Lea said, handing me the pistol. ‘It was on the bench.'

‘Must have slipped out,' I said, and tucked it back under my waistband. I swallowed the blood from my cheek, felt my pulse hammer frantically in my temples, and noticed that I couldn't hear much from one ear.

‘I saw you take it out before you stood up, Ulf.' She closed one eye. The family habit. ‘That hole in your cheek needs sewing up. Come on, I've got a needle and thread in the car.'

I don't remember much of the journey back. Well, I remember us driving down to the Alta river, where we sat on the bank while she washed my wounds and I listened to the sound of the water and gazed at the scree, which looked like sugar piled up against the steep, pale cliff faces on either side. And I remember thinking that I had seen more sky in these days and nights than I had done in my whole life before coming here.

She felt my nose gently and concluded that it wasn't broken. Then she sewed my cheek while she talked to me in Sámi and sang something that was supposed to be a
joik
about getting better.
Joik
and the sound of the river. And I remember that I felt a bit sick, but that she waved the midges away and stroked my brow more than was strictly necessary to keep my hair away from the wound. When I asked why she had needle, thread and antiseptic in the car, and if her family was particularly prone to accidents when they were out, she shook her head.

‘Not when we're out, no. A domestic accident.'

‘A domestic accident?'

‘Yes. Called Hugo. Used to fight and was full of drink. The only thing to do was flee the house and patch up any injuries.'

‘You used to sew yourself?'

‘And Knut.'

‘He hit
Knut
?'

‘Where do you think he got those stitches on his forehead?'

‘You sewed him back together? Here in the car?'

‘It was earlier in the summer. Hugo was drunk, and it was the usual thing. He said I was looking at him with that reproachful look in my eyes, and that he wouldn't have touched me that night if only I'd had the sense to show him a bit of respect and not just ignored him. After all, I was only a girl at the time, and he was an Eliassen who had just come home from sea with a huge catch. I didn't reply, but even so he got even angrier and eventually stood up to fight. I knew how to defend myself, but at that moment Knut came in. So Hugo picked up the bottle and struck out. Hit Knut on the forehead and he collapsed in a heap, so I carried him out to the car. When I got back home Hugo had calmed down. But Knut was in bed for a week, all dizzy and nauseous. A doctor came all the way from Alta to look at him. Hugo told the doctor and everyone else that Knut had fallen down the stairs. And I . . . I didn't say anything to anyone, and I kept telling Knut that it was sure to be a one-off.'

I had misunderstood. Misunderstood when Knut said his mum had told him he didn't have to worry about his dad.

‘No one knew anything,' she said. ‘Until one evening when the usual gang of drinkers was round at Ove's and someone asked what
really
happened, and Hugo told them all about his disrespectful wife and brat, and how he'd put them in their place. So the whole village knew. And then Hugo went off to sea.'

‘So that was what the preacher meant when he said Hugo had tried to run away from deeds he hadn't atoned for?'

‘That, and everything else,' she said. ‘Your temple's bleeding.'

She took off her red silk scarf and tied it round my head.

I don't remember anything after that for quite some time. When I came to, I was curled up on the back seat of the car, and she was telling me we'd arrived. I'd probably got a bit of concussion, she said, that was why I was so sleepy. She said it would be best if she accompanied me back to the cabin.

I walked off ahead of her and sat down on a rock when I was out of sight of the village. The light and stillness. Like the moment just before a storm. Or after a storm, a storm that had wiped out all life. Patches of mist were creeping down the green sides of the hills, like spirits in white sheets, swallowing up the small, stunted mountain birches, and as they reappeared from the mist they looked bewitched.

Then she came. Swaying, sort of, also bewitched.

‘Out for a walk?' she asked with a smile. ‘Perhaps we're going the same way?'

Secret hiding.

My ear had started to whistle and peep, and I felt giddy, so Lea held onto me just to be on the safe side. The walk went remarkably quickly, possibly because I seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness. Once I was finally back in the cabin I had a strange feeling of having come home, an inbuilt security and peace that I'd never felt in any of the far too many places I had lived in Oslo.

‘You can sleep now,' she said, feeling my forehead. ‘Take things easy tomorrow. And don't drink anything except water. Promise?'

‘Where are you going?' I asked when she moved from the edge of the bed.

‘Home, of course.'

‘Are you in a hurry? Knut's with his grandpa.'

‘Well, not too much of a hurry. I just think you ought to lie completely quiet and not talk or worry.'

‘I agree. But can't you lie here quietly with me? Just for a little while.'

I shut my eyes. Heard her calm breathing. Imagined I could hear her weighing things up.

‘I'm not dangerous,' I said. ‘I'm not a Pentecostalist.'

She laughed softly. ‘Just a little while, then.'

I moved closer to the wall, and she squeezed in beside me on the narrow bunk.

‘I'll go when you fall asleep,' she said. ‘Knut will be home early.'

I lay there, feeling myself half out of it and yet absolutely present, as my senses took in everything: the heat and pulse of her body, the scent filtering out of the neckline of her blouse, the smell of soap from her hair, the hand and arm she had placed between us so our bodies weren't in direct contact.

When I woke up I had a feeling that it was night. Something to do with the stillness. Even when the midnight sun was at its zenith, it was as if nature was resting, as if its heartbeat had slowed down. Lea's face had slipped into the crook of my neck; I could feel her nose and her even breathing against my skin. I ought to wake her, tell her it was time to go if she wanted to make sure she was home when Knut got back. Of course I wanted her to be there, so he didn't get worried. But I also wanted her to stay, at least for a few more seconds. So I didn't move, just lay there and reflected. Feeling that I was alive. As if her body was giving mine life. There was a distant rumble. And I felt her eyelashes flutter against my skin and realised she was awake.

‘What was that?' she whispered.

‘Thunder,' I said. ‘Nothing to worry about, it's a long way away.'

‘There's never any thunder here,' she said. ‘It's too cold.'

‘Maybe there's warmer weather from the south.'

‘Maybe. I had such bad dreams.'

‘What about?'

‘That he's on his way. That he's coming to kill us.'

‘The man from Oslo? Or Ove?'

‘I don't know. It slipped away from me.'

We lay there listening for more thunder. None came.

‘Ulf?'

‘Yes?'

‘Have you ever been to Stockholm?'

‘Yes.'

‘Is it nice?'

‘It's very nice in summer.'

She raised herself up on one arm and looked down at me. ‘Jon,' she said. ‘Leo.'

I nodded. ‘Did the man from Oslo say that too?'

She shook her head. ‘I saw the tag on your necklace while you were sleeping. “Jon Hansen, born
24
July”. I'm Libra. You're fire and I'm air.'

‘I'm going to burn and you're going to heaven.'

She smiled. ‘Is that the first thing you think of?'

‘No.'

‘What's the first thing, then?'

Her face was so close, her eyes so dark and intense.

I didn't know I was going to kiss her until I did. I'm not even sure if I was the one who did, or if it was her. But afterwards I wrapped my arms round her, pulled her to me and held her tight, feeling her body, like a pair of bellows as the air hissed out between her teeth.

‘No!' she groaned. ‘You mustn't!'

‘Lea . . .'

‘No! We . . . I can't. Let me go!'

I let go of her.

She struggled out of bed. Stood there breathless in the middle of the floor, staring at me fiercely.

‘I thought . . .' I said. ‘Sorry, I didn't mean . . .'

‘Shhh,' she said quietly. ‘That didn't happen. And it won't happen again. Never. Do you understand?'

‘No.'

She let out her breath in a long, trembling groan.

‘I'm married, Ulf.'

‘Married? You're a widow.'

‘You don't get it. I'm not just married to him. I'm married to . . . to everything. Everything up here. You and I belong to two different worlds. You make a living from drugs, I'm a sexton, a believer. I don't know what you live for, but that's what I live for, that and my son. Nothing else matters, and I'm not going to let a . . . a stupid, irresponsible dream ruin it. I can't afford to, Ulf. Do you understand?'

‘But I've already said I've got money. Look behind the plank next to the cupboard there, there's—'

‘No, no, no!' She clapped her hands to her ears. ‘I don't want to hear, and I don't want any money! I want what I've got, nothing else. We can't see each other again, I don't want to see you again, it's ended up . . . ended up all silly and mad and . . . and now I'm going. Don't come and see me. And I won't come and see you. Goodbye, Ulf. Have a good life.'

A moment later she was out of the cabin and I had already started to doubt if any of it had actually happened. Yes, she had kissed me, the pain in my cheek wasn't lying. But then the rest of it must be true as well, the part of it when she said she never wanted to see me again. I stood up and went outside, and saw her running towards the village in the moonlight.

Of course she was running away. Who wouldn't?
I
would have done. A long time ago. But then I was the type who ran away. She couldn't afford to run away, whereas as a rule I ran because I couldn't afford to stay. What had I been thinking? That two people like us could be together? No, that isn't what I'd been thinking. Dreaming of, maybe, the way our minds conjure up images and fantasies. Time to wake up now.

There was another rumble of thunder, a bit closer this time. I looked off to the west. Off in the distance banks of lead-grey clouds towered up.

That he's on his way. That he's coming to kill us.

I went back inside the cabin and leaned my forehead against the wall. I believed in dreams about as much as I believed in gods. I was more inclined to believe in a junkie's love of drugs than in people's love for one another. But I did believe in death. That was a promise I knew would be kept. I believed in a nine-millimetre bullet at a thousand kilometres an hour. And that life was the time between the moment when it left the barrel of the pistol and when it tore through your brain.

I pulled the rope out from beneath the bed and tied it round the door handle. Knotted the other end to the heavy bed-frame that was nailed to the wall so the door couldn't open outwards. I pulled it tighter. There. Then I lay down and stared at the planks of the bunk above me.

IT WAS IN
Stockholm. A long, long time ago, before everything. I was eighteen years old, and had caught the train from Oslo. I walked around the streets of Södermalm alone. Waded through the grass on Djurgården, dangled my legs off a jetty while I looked across at the Royal Palace and knew that I would never swap what they had for the freedom I had. Then I got dressed up as best I could with the little I had, and went to the Royal Dramatic Theatre, because I was in love with a Norwegian girl who was playing Solveig in
Peer Gynt
.

She was three years older than me, but I had talked to her at a party. That must have been why I was there. Mostly because of that. She was good in the play, she could speak Swedish like a native, or at least that's how it sounded to me. And she was attractive and unobtainable. All the same, during the course of the performance my infatuation withered away. Maybe because she couldn't compete with the day I'd had, with Stockholm. Maybe it was just that I was eighteen and had already fallen for the red-haired girl in the row in front of me.

The next day I bought some hash at Sergels torg. I walked down to Kungsträdgården, where I saw the red-haired girl again. I asked if she had enjoyed the play, but she just shrugged her shoulders and showed me how to roll a joint in Swedish. She was twenty, came from Östersund, and had a little flat at Odenplan. Next door was a reasonable restaurant called Tranan, where we ate fried herring and mashed potato and drank medium-strength lager.

It turned out that she wasn't the girl I'd seen in the row in front of me after all, she'd never been to the Royal Dramatic Theatre. I stayed with her for three days. She went to work while I just wandered about breathing in the summer and the city. On the way home I sat looking out of the window, thinking about what I'd said about going back. And thought, for the first time, the most depressing thought of all: that there was no going back. That now becomes then, now becomes then in an endless fucking sequence, and there's no reverse gear on this vehicle we call life.