With the pizza in the oven, Axel sent the twelve little girls in their animal shapes down into the basement, where they could dance to the flashing of disco lights. He went to fetch his mobile phone to see if Bie had been delayed. There was one message. It was from Miriam. He stood out in the hallway, unsure whether or not he should open it. Three days had passed since he had gone up to her flat. He had kissed her. For the rest of that day she had rustled around inside him. Her voice, the smell of her. When she didn’t turn up at the office the following day, he had several times picked up his mobile to call her or send a message. But he’d forced himself not to do anything, and it was as though her hold on him was released. Today he had hardly thought about her at all. He had relinquished control and then regained it.
Miriam had written: I’m better now. See you Monday. The message was accompanied by a smiley. He knew nothing about her. He didn’t want to know. Had made a point of not asking anything that might have led to her talking about herself. Whom she was seeing. Where she was from. Family, friends, former lovers. He had everything to lose.
The alarm from the oven told him that the pizza was ready. He had had fantasies about Miriam. Almost without realising it. Only now did he recognise that in his mind he had started to turn her into something she almost certainly wasn’t. Was that why he had been able to go up to the attic flat with her? Was that why it would be possible to see her again? He knew it would happen. Afterwards he would let her go.
Axel had been responsible for most of his sons’ birthday parties over the years. Compared to them, girls’ birthdays were straightforward enough. Nobody threw slices of pizza around. No one squeezed tomato ketchup across the table. No one put a straw into the ear of the child sitting beside him and blew it full of fizzy lemonade. He could pad about filling glasses for a throng of pink rabbits. There were a few cats too, a couple of ponies, a ladybird and a lugubrious donkey. Natasha, Marlen’s best friend, was a lion, apparently, the crown of Afro hair pushed up into a mane and every question answered with an ominous growling. But she laughed until her eyes rolled back in her head when she saw how frightened Axel was, and reassured him that she was really very nice, as long as she got enough pizza.
– My grandad was nearly killed by the Germans, Marlen boasted. – Isn’t that so, Daddy?
– That’s true enough.
Marlen picked up Cassiopeia and kissed it on the shell.
– Tell about the time Grandad had to escape to Sweden, she said.
Axel declined, didn’t want to invite Colonel Glenne to this particular party. He’d hidden bags of sweets in various places around the house and drawn pirate maps with hidden messages showing where they were. But Marlen wouldn’t give up.
– Then tell us about Castor and Pollux, she insisted. – The one who had to go into the underworld to visit his dead brother.
She got the support of the other animals for her demand, and Axel saw that there was nothing for it but to tell the story. Even as a child he had always liked to tell stories. If he managed to make them exciting enough, he would have his mother’s attention. Astrid Glenne would look at him with her big blue eyes wide open and sit down and listen until he had finished. He considered it particularly successful if he managed to frighten her. When his stories were about Frankenstein and vampires and werewolves, she would be genuinely afraid and hold her hands out in front of her as though she didn’t want to hear any more, though more was exactly what she did want. And when he conjured up a picture of Count Dracula sneaking into the bedroom of a half-naked woman, shadowless and driven on by his insatiable lust for blood, then Axel had his mother in the palm of his hand. The more afraid she was, the closer she was to him.
He didn’t try to frighten the little girls in their animal costumes with the story of the twins, but wove in new, dramatic episodes that came to him as he was going along. They sat there spellbound. The little one in the donkey outfit, the only one of Marlen’s friends whose name he couldn’t recall, had black wrinkles painted on her forehead and cheeks and looked like an old lady. Something about her wide eyes made him think of the daughter of the patient he had visited earlier. That feeling of being a messenger of death invading their home in Vindern hit him again. And with it came the thought of Miriam: return her message. Call her. Go there. He had to talk to her.
– You’ll find Castor and Pollux if you look up into the night sky, he concluded. – Not too far away from the Ethiopian queen, Cassiopeia.
– Did everyone know Cassiopeia was a queen? shouted Marlen. – We’re going out to see if we can find her.
She raced across the room and opened the terrace door with the other animals in tow. Axel followed. The night had cleared, and much of the sky was visible. He pointed out the Twins to them, and Cassiopeia.
– But right next to them is a star you must never look at.
He said no more, and all the girls turned to him.
– What star is that? asked Natasha.
– Its name is Algol; it’s in the constellation Perseus, he said. – That’s the name the Arabs gave it. It means the spirit that eats corpses.
None of the girls said anything; they stood staring up into the dark.
– Sometimes Algol is bright and clear, other times you can hardly see it; it changes all the time. Actually… Axel lowered his voice – actually it’s Medusa’s evil eye we can see up there. It’s winking at us. But you don’t want to hear any more about that…
This was greeted by a chorus of complaints, and Marlen threatened to beat him up if he didn’t continue.
– All right then, he said with a heavy sigh. – You leave me with no choice.
He told them about Perseus, the son of the gods who was sent to the land of the Gorgons to capture the terrifying Medusa. He described the monster in minute detail, the snapping snakes that were her hair, the poisonous sulphur gas she breathed out. Lowering his voice to a whisper, he told them the most terrible detail of alclass="underline" the eyes that were so ugly that anyone who looked into them was turned to stone. A kind of shiver passed through the flock of girls in fancy dress, and that sad little donkey, the one who reminded him of Cecilie Davidsen’s daughter, bit her lip and looked as though she was on the verge of tears. Fortunately Axel was able to tell them how Perseus, with the aid of a mirror, managed to cut the monster’s head off and squash it down into a sack. The girls sighed with relief.
– The story doesn’t end there, he announced. – But I’ll spare you the rest.
A new wave of protests, and reluctantly he had to continue the tale of Perseus’s triumphs.
– Wherever he went, he took with him the sack with the monster’s head inside, and whenever he encountered any wicked enemies, he would pull it out. It was a terrible weapon, because anyone who met the Medusa’s gaze, even after she was dead, was turned to stone. And that’s the way things are stilclass="underline" no one who looks into the eyes of the Medusa lives to tell the tale.
The girls all glanced at each other. No one said anything.
– Perseus was proclaimed a superhero and he got his own constellation in the sky, Axel said in conclusion. – And in his hand he’s holding the head of the Medusa with her evil eye. But of course, I can’t show you that.
Bie was seated at the kitchen table with a glass of red wine when he came down from the loft.
– I’ve been down with Marlen, she said. – She’s still awake.
Axel gave a broad smile.
– She’s probably not come back down to earth again after the party. But I swear I didn’t give them coffee. Not even Coke.