The property on Ocean Avenue had, on the other hand, been sold for 1.2 million dollars.
As it stood.
It had only taken him an hour to figure out what he wanted to take with him. The glass soldiers that he’d taken four winters to make would go to Mrs. Davis. The risk that they would break during the trip across the ocean was considerable. She was moved to tears and promised that none of her grandchildren would be allowed to play with them. She would love the cat like her own, she exclaimed in a loud voice. Matt bowed and scraped the ground with his foot when Aksel offered him the chess table and the large tapestry over the sofa on the condition that he send the galleon figurehead to Aksel as soon as he had an address in Norway.
The figurehead looked like Eva. There wasn’t really much more that was worth bothering about.
Aksel didn’t like his new hairstyle. It made him look older. His face was more visible. The wrinkles, the pores, and the bad teeth that he should have done something about long ago, they somehow seemed more obvious when his bangs had gone and his face was naked and unprotected. He tried to hide behind a pair of old glasses with brown frames. But the lenses were not the right strength anymore and made him feel dizzy.
He had been to the bank. The money for the house came to about ten million kroner. Cheryl, who had grown up in Harwich Port and started to work at the bank a couple of months ago, had given him a big smile and whispered, “You lucky son of a gun” before explaining to him that the buyer would pay the outstanding amount in installments over the next six weeks. Aksel would have to contact a bank in Norway, open an account, and then everything should be fine and the authorities couldn’t make a fuss. It’ll be just fine, she assured him, and laughed again.
Ten million kroner.
To Aksel, the figure was astronomical. He tried to ground himself by remembering that it was ages since he knew what a krone was actually worth, and Norway was an expensive country, after all. At least that was what he had understood from the odd article he came across about his homeland. But over a million dollars was over a million dollars wherever you were in the world. He could even get a place in Beacon Hill in Boston for that amount. And Oslo couldn’t be more expensive than Beacon Hill.
Mrs. Davis had gone to Hyannis with him to buy clothes. There was no way around it. Aksel Seier didn’t quite trust her taste-the plaid pants from Kmart were particularly awful. Mrs. Davis said that plaid pants and pastels made him look rich, and he was, so that was that. When he mumbled something about the Cape Cod Mall, she rolled her eyes and claimed that the shops there fleeced you before you’d even set foot in the door. What you couldn’t buy in Kmart wasn’t worth buying. So now he had a suitcase full of new clothes he didn’t like. Mrs. Davis had confiscated his old flannel shirts and jeans; she was going to wash them before giving them to the Salvation Army.
He must remember to call Patrick.
Aksel took a step back from the mirror. The way the light fell, slanting from the window, he found it difficult to recognize himself in the flecked mirror. It wasn’t just his hair that was different. He tried to straighten his back, but something in his neck and shoulders stopped him. He had looked at the ground for too many years. Aksel’s back was bent from thousands of days toiling over heavy work, turning away from other people, and long evenings crouched over fine handiwork and his own thoughts.
He lifted his head again. There was a pain between his shoulder blades. He looked thinner now. He forced himself to stand like that. Then he stroked his hand over the brown jacket and wondered whether he should put a tie on before he left. Ties were respectable. Mrs. Davis was certainly right there.
If he had enough money when he’d done everything he needed to do, he would pay for Patrick to come over. Even though his friend earned good money in the summer season, he spent most of his earnings on maintaining the carousel and living through the long winter months, when he had no real income. Patrick had never been back to Ireland. He could come to Oslo for a week or two and then stop over in Dublin on the way back, if he wanted to.
Aksel suddenly realized that he was frightened. There was still a lot to do before he left. He had to get a move on.
He’d never been on a plane, but it wasn’t that that frightened him.
Maybe Eva didn’t want him to come. She hadn’t actually asked him to. Aksel Seier pulled off his new jacket and started to pack the glass soldiers in the tissue paper that Mrs. Davis had bought.
He cut his finger on a small blue splinter. It was the remains of the general that Johanne Vik had broken. Aksel sucked on his finger. Maybe the young lady had lost interest in him when he just disappeared.
He hadn’t been so frightened since 1993, when the nightmares about the wet-eyed policeman with the keys had finally stopped plaguing him.
FIFTY-FIVE
He was completely insane,” she said. “Quite simply insane.”
Lena Baardsen seemed anxious when Adam rang the bell, even though it was not particularly late. Her eyes were red and the bags underneath looked almost purple in her pale face. The apartment was stuffy and claustrophobic, though she obviously tried to keep it neat. She offered him nothing, but sat with a kitchen glass full of what Adam thought was red wine for herself. She raised her glass, as if she knew what he was thinking, and said:
“Doctor recommended it. Two glasses before bedtime. Better than sleeping pills, he said. To be honest, neither helps. But at least this tastes nicer.”
She drank the remainder in one gulp.
“Karsten is charming. Was, at least. Good at looking after you. I was very young then. Not used to so much attention. I just…”
Her eyelids sank.
“… fell in love,” she said slowly.
The smile was presumably meant to be ironic. But in fact it was just sad, especially when she opened her eyes again.
“When we became lovers, he changed. Obsessively jealous. Possessive. He never hit me, but toward the end I was terrified all the same. He…”
She pulled her legs up and shivered, as if she was cold. It must have been close to eighty-five degrees in the apartment.
“I realized pretty soon that he wasn’t quite normal. He would wake up at night if I went to the bathroom. He’d come out to the bathroom and watch me pee, as if he sort of expected me to… run away. We didn’t live together. Not really. I had a studio apartment that was too small for both of us. He lived in an apartment with rommates, but I don’t think the people he lived with could stand him. So he kind of moved in with me without asking. He didn’t bring his things with him or anything like that; there wasn’t enough room. But he just took over, somehow. Straightened and washed and fussed around. He’s obsessive about cleaning. Was. I don’t know him anymore. He was incredibly self-centered. It was me, me, me the whole time. I would never put up with it now. But he was good-looking. And very attentive, to begin with at least. And I was very young.”
She gave a feeble, apologetic smile.
“Do you…” said Adam and then started again. “Did you know anything about his family background?”
“Family?” repeated Lena Baardsen in a flat voice. “A mother, at least. I met her twice. Sweet, in her own way. Unbelievably meek. Karsten could be really nasty to her. Even though he seemed… he actually seemed to care about her a lot. Well, sometimes at least. The only person he was really scared of was his grandmother. I never met her, but Jesus, some of the things he told me…”
She suddenly looked surprised.
“D’you know what, I can’t actually remember anything he told me. No examples. Strange. But I do remember clearly that he hated her. It seemed that way to me anyway. Real hate.”