Soundlessly he lets himself in. The light is on in the room. Truls must have woken up and turned it on. He’s sleeping up on the sofa beside Nini. The duvet has slipped off and is lying half on the floor. Jo stands there looking at the sleeping bodies. Truls will miss him. Truls needs you, Jo. Mother will be ashamed; she’ll start crying. She’ll feel so sorry for herself. Nini is too small to understand anything. Only Truls will miss him. He picks up the duvet and wraps it round his brother and sister.
He notices that the whole of his underarm is covered in green slime mixed with bloody goo. Slips into the bathroom and rinses it off. Silent in the bedroom. Mother needs to sleep. Arne isn’t back yet. Here’s something he can do. Go up to the bar. Find Arne slobbering over that skinny bitch who’s with the other bloke. Walk over, grab something from a table, a knife, a corkscrew. Shove it into the side of his neck so it goes all the way through whatever’s in there and the blood gushes up out of Dickhead Arne’s mouth like a garden hose. Rouse Mother. Shove her and Truls and Nini into the back of a taxi and drive to the airport. We’re finished here, Mother, never come here again, understand? With Arne lying on the floor of the bar, bleeding to death. On the plane, she doesn’t touch a drop, not when they get home either. She’ll make their packed lunches and drop off Truls and Nini and then she’ll go to work, because her head at the hospital called and said they want her back. She’ll never again spend half the day lying in bed, and she’ll be there when they come home, and there’ll be the smell of roasting meat and freshly baked bread, and she’ll stand on the steps and smile at Jo when he comes home from school. This is how it’ll be from now on, Mother. Now Dick head Arne is gone for ever.
On top of the fridge he finds an envelope, tears off the back of it. Fetches one of Nini’s crayons, a light green one. Write something or other. Hate you is how he might begin, but that’s not what he writes. When he’s finished, there are just two words on the paper: Forget me.
From the top of the steps, the breakers look like huge kittens licking milk. He takes off his trainers on the bottom step and walks barefoot across the sand. It’s cool now. Passes a group of deckchairs at a distance. From the corner of his eye it looks as though someone’s sitting there, but he’s no intention of checking. He reaches the point at which the foaming water has to give up and go back again. Follows the tideline along. The sand here is firm and hardly sinks underfoot. Keeps going to a point midway along the beach, the place he picked out a few days earlier, without having planned it. Swim out. Past the buoys. Out through the warm black water. Headed for Africa. He’ll never get there. He’ll grow tired. Afraid, maybe, but mostly tired. Swim till he can’t do it any more. The dark warmth will close around him… He feels suddenly light. Hardly even angry any more. Just happy. His disappearance will wake Mother up. She’ll leave Dickhead Arne. Truls and Nini will have a better life. What is required is that he take this swim. Ylva will never know it has anything to do with her. Or perhaps she’ll understand when she comes home and sees what’s hanging on her door.
He pulls off his trousers and underpants, keeps the yellow T-shirt on. Behind the tongue of one of his trainers he puts the note he wrote in the kitchen.
He stands just where the breakers turn. They foam around his toes, frothing so the small bubbles burst. They don’t come to bring something, he thinks. They come to fetch something. He starts to wade out.
– Hey, Joe.
He stands there without turning round. Tries to tell himself it’s his imagination. Realises that it isn’t. Realises that Jacket is standing on the sand behind him.
– Bit late for a swim, isn’t it?
No one can stop what he has started on now. Postpone it maybe, but not stop it. He has given a promise. Doesn’t know who to, if it’s not to the one who stands in the dark pounding with the sledgehammer. There is nothing in the world that can make him go back on his word.
He half turns. Jacket is wearing the same dark clothes. His hair looks dirty and uncombed. A cigarette in one hand. Jo’s trainer in the other, with the note.
– It’s going to be a long night, Joe, says Jacket, and doesn’t seem the least bit bothered. – You’ve got plenty of time.
He takes a drag on the cigarette and offers it to him.
– Come and sit down here with me for a while. I’m not leaving until you tell me how things are working out between you and Ylva Richter.
DEAR LISS,
If you receive this letter, I am no longer. I sit watching how the dust slowly sinks down through the grey light falling from the window, and outside the wind whips up the autumn leaves and lays them down on the snow again. Even now that thought seems so strange. Not to be any more. It’s not a last-minute decision; it’s been latent for years, and now I’ve woken it up again. What you do will decide whether I send you this letter I’m writing, or burn it in the fireplace and carry on down my road a while longer. I won’t contact you, won’t lift a finger to influence you. The closest I can get to a feeling of relief right now is the thought that what is to come lies in your hands, not mine. And related to this relief is another thought: if you receive this letter, then you’ll also know what happened that time.
I first saw him on the plane. He passed by on the way to the toilet. I looked up from my book, the only luggage I had with me on that trip. His glance caught mine, but I don’t think he noticed me. I still remember the lines of verse I sat reading, over and over again, by the window:
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together.
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
– But who is that on the other side of you?
I could have written a lot about Jo and Jacket. I could have described in detail the first meeting in Makrigialos that autumn. How I saved him from drowning himself. How he saved me. Not because I need to confess, Liss, but because it matters to me, sitting here, that you understand what you condemn me for…
PART I
1
Friday 28 November 2008
MAKE-UP OFF. RUBBING, revealing strips of pale red facial skin in the sharp light. The photographer had insisted she cover up with this thick white mask. Something he wanted to bring out. Something stiffened, in contrast to the almost naked body.
She unfastened the clip, let the hair tumble down her back. It looked darker than usual, but still reddish. She sat a moment, considering what she saw in the mirror. The arc of the forehead, the eyebrows she had allowed to grow out wide, the eyes that seemed to be too far apart. It had always looked odd, but a lot of the photographers obviously liked it. Wim, whom she was working with today, maintained with a grin that it made her look elfin. She began drawing a brush through her hair, slowly, following the waves; it got caught in a tug, a quick jerk which she felt at the base of her skull, a reminder that she mustn’t linger too long in this distant state. It was past eleven o’clock. Part of her was aware of the need to slip down into a dark hole, sleep there for a day or two, or more. But her pulse was too quick and too hard.