Blood on Snow: A Novel Part 11

I slipped into a dream world.

She was carrying me over her shoulder, running as the water splashed around her feet. It was dark and there was a smell of sewage, infected wounds, ammonia and perfume. From the streets above us came the sound of shots and shouting, and streaks of light filtered through the holes in the drain covers. But she was unstoppable, brave and strong. Strong enough for both of us. And she knew the way out of here, because she'd been here before. That was how the story went. She stopped at a junction in the sewers, put me down, said she had to take a look around but would soon be back. And I lay there on my back, listening to the rats scampering about me as I stared up at the moon through a drain. Drops of water hung from the grid pattern up above, revolving, s.h.i.+mmering in the moonlight. Fat, red, s.h.i.+ny drops. They let go, hurtled down towards me. Hit me in the chest. Pa.s.sed straight through the chain mail, to where my heart was. Warm, cold. Warm, cold. The smell...

I opened my eyes.

I said her name. No answer.

"Corina?"

I sat up in bed. My thigh was throbbing and aching. Laboriously I lowered my foot over the edge of the bed and switched on the light. Jumped up. My thigh had swollen so much it was almost creepy. It looked like it had just carried on bleeding, but all the blood had built up inside the skin and bandage.

In the moonlight I could see her case in the middle of the living-room floor. But her coat was gone from the chair. I got to my feet and limped over to the kitchen. I opened the drawer and lifted out the cutlery tray.

The sheets of paper were still there in their envelope, untouched.

I took the envelope over to the window. The thermometer on the outside of the gla.s.s showed that the temperature was still dropping.

I looked down.

There she was. She'd just gone out for a bit.

She was standing hunched in the phone box, with her shoulders facing the street, the receiver pressed to her ear.

I waved, even though I knew she couldn't see me.

Christ, my thigh hurt!

Then she hung up. I took a step back from the window so I wasn't standing in the light. She came out of the phone box and I saw her look up towards me. I stood completely still, and she did the same. A few snowflakes hung in the air. Then she started walking. Putting her feet down with her ankles straight, placing one foot close to the other. Like a tightrope-walker. She crossed the street back towards me. I could see footprints in the snow. Cat footprints. Rear feet in the same prints as the front ones. The thin light from the street lamps meant that the edge of each print cast a small shadow. No more than that. Just that...

When she crept back inside the flat I was in bed with my eyes closed.

She took her coat off. I had been hoping she might take the rest off as well and get into bed with me. Hold me for a while. Nothing else. Loose change counts as money. Because now I knew that she wouldn't come and carry me through the sewers. She wasn't going to rescue me. And we weren't going to Paris.

Instead of getting onto the bed, she sat on the chair in the dark.

She was watching. Waiting.

"Will it take him long to get here?" I asked.

I saw her jerk in the chair. "You're awake."

I repeated the question.

"Who, Olav?"

"The Fisherman."

"You're feverish, Olav. Try to get some sleep."

"That's who you were calling from the phone box just now."

"Olav..."

"I just want to know how long I've got."

She was sitting with her head bowed, so her face was in shadow. When she spoke again it was with a different, new voice. A harder voice. But even to my ears the notes sounded purer. "Twenty minutes, maybe."

"Okay."

"How did you know...?"

"Ammonia. Skate."

"What?"

"The smell of ammonia, it sits in your skin after you've been in contact with skate, particularly before the fish has been prepared. I read somewhere that it's because skates store uric acid in their flesh, like sharks do. But what do I know?"

Corina looked at me with a distant smile. "I see."

Another pause.

"Olav?"

"Yes."

"It's nothing..."

"Personal?"

"Exactly."

I felt the st.i.tches tear. A stench of inflammation and pus belched out. I put my hand on my thigh. The gauze bandage was soaked. And it was still stretched tight-there was loads more to come out.

"So what is it, then?" I asked.

She sighed. "Does it matter?"

"I like stories," I said. "I've got twenty minutes."

"This isn't about you. It's about me."

"And what are you about, then?"

"Yes. What am I about?"

"Daniel Hoffmann was dying. You knew that, didn't you? And that Benjamin Hoffmann would be taking over?"

She shrugged. "You've pretty much got me there."

"Someone who deceives the people she needs to deceive without a guilty conscience in order to follow the money and power?"

Corina stood up abruptly and went over to the window. Looked down at the street. Lit a cigarette.

"Apart from the bit about the guilty conscience, that's more or less right," she said.

I listened. It was quiet. I realised that it was past midnight, that it was now Christmas Eve.

"You just gave him a call?" I asked.

"I went to his shop."

"And he agreed to see you?"

I could see the silhouette of her pout against the window as she exhaled the smoke. "He's a man. Just like all other men."

I thought about the shadows behind the frosted gla.s.s. The bruise on her neck. It was fresh. How blind can you be? The beatings. The submission. The humiliation. That was how she wanted it.

"The Fisherman's a married man. So what did he offer you?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. For the time being. But he will."

She was right. Beauty trumps everything.

"When you looked so shocked when I came home, it wasn't because I was wounded, but because I was alive."

"It was both. You mustn't think I don't have any feelings for you, Olav. You were a good lover." She let out a short laugh. "At first I didn't think you had it in you."

"Had what in me?"

She just smiled. Sucked hard on her cigarette. The tip glowed red in the semi-darkness over by the window. And I thought that if anyone down in the street looked up at that moment, they might think they were looking at a plastic tube trying to imitate cosy home life, happy families, a sense of Christmas. And they might imagine that the people up there had everything I wished I had. Up there they lived the sort of lives people ought to live. I don't know. I just know that that's what I would have been thinking.

"Had what?" I repeated.

"The dominant thing. My king."

"My king?"

"Yes." She laughed. "I thought I was going to have to stop you there for a while."

"What are you talking about?"

"This," she said, pulling her blouse down over her shoulder and pointing at the bruise.

"I didn't do that."

She stopped with the cigarette halfway to her mouth and looked at me suspiciously.

"You didn't? Do you think I did it myself?"

"It wasn't me, I'm telling you."

She laughed gently. "Come on, Olav, it's nothing to be ashamed of."

"I don't hit women."

"No, it was harder to get you to do that, I'll give you that. But you liked the strangling. After I got you going you really liked that."

"No!" I pressed my hands to my ears. I could see her lips moving, but couldn't hear anything. It wasn't worth hearing. Because that's not how the story went. It had never been like that.

But her mouth kept making shapes. Like a sea anemone, which I once learned has its mouth as its a.n.u.s and vice versa. Why was she talking, what was it she wanted? What was it they all wanted? I was deaf and dumb now. I no longer had the equipment to interpret the sound waves which they, normal people, produced incessantly, waves cras.h.i.+ng over the coral reef and then vanis.h.i.+ng. I stared out at a world that made no sense, had no coherence, just people desperately living the life that each of us has been given, instinctively sating every sick desire, stifling our anxieties about loneliness and the death-throes that start as soon as we realise we're mortal. I knew what she meant. Was. That. It?

I grabbed my trousers from the chair by the bed and pulled them on. The fabric of one of the legs was stiff with blood and pus. I heaved myself out of bed and dragged my leg behind me across the floor.

Corina didn't move.

I leaned down over my shoes and felt a wave of nausea, but managed to pull them on. My coat. I had my pa.s.sport and the tickets to Paris in the inside pocket.

"You won't get far," she said.

The keys to the Volvo were in my trouser pocket.

"Your wound has opened up, just look at yourself."

I opened the door and went out into the stairwell. I got hold of the handrail and heaved myself down using my lower arms, as I thought about the randy little male spider realising that visiting time was over just a bit too late.

By the time I got downstairs my shoe was already slos.h.i.+ng with blood.

I set off towards the car. Police sirens. They had been there the whole time. Like wolves howling in the distance around the snow-covered hills that surrounded Oslo. Rising, falling, sniffing out the scent of blood.

This time the Volvo started at once.

I knew where I was going, but it was as if the streets had lost their shape and direction, becoming gently swaying tentacles of a lion's mane jellyfish that I had to keep swerving to follow. It was hard to see where you were in this rubber city where nothing wanted to stay as it was. I saw a red light and braked. Tried to get my bearings. I must have nodded off, because I jumped when the lights changed and a car behind blew its horn. I put my foot down. Where was this, was I still in Oslo?

My mum never said anything about my father's murder. It was as if it had never happened. And that was fine with me. Then one day, four or five years later, when we were sitting at the kitchen table, she suddenly asked: "When do you think he'll come back?"

"Who?"

"Your father." She looked through me, past me with unfocused eyes. "He's been gone a long time. Wonder where he's been this time?"

"He's not coming back, Mum."

"Of course he is. He always comes back." She raised her gla.s.s again. "He's very fond of me, you know. And you."

"Mum, you helped me carry him..."

She put the gla.s.s down with a bang, spilling some of the gin.