Medusa (2 page)

The visitor passed his hand across her shortish hair, obviously recently cut. He knew what was coming.

– The worst thing is … The woman groaned as she opened her eyes wide, as though afraid.

– Have you had enough to drink today? the visitor interjected with what seemed like genuine concern. – I think you’re thirsty.

She didn’t seem to hear what he said.

– The Gestapo, she whispered as her eyes filled with tears. – I don’t think my husband will come back again ever.

The visitor remained sitting with his mother for almost three quarters of an hour. He poured her orange juice from a carton on the bedside table and she emptied two glasses. Having expressed her fear, she was finished with it this time around and opened a copy of
Allers
. It had been there on the table the last time he’d visited, a week earlier, and all the weeks before that. She didn’t say another word, as though she was completely engrossed by this single page she happened to have opened the magazine at. Now and then she looked over in his direction, her gaze diffuse, a slight smile playing about her mouth; she seemed to have descended once again into that remote calm that spread through her more deeply with every passing week, killing off everything else. He’d remembered to buy
Dagbladet
on the way and now leafed through it. When there was a knock on the door and the nurse came in with her medication – a man with greying hair, possibly a Tamil – he quickly got to his feet and gave his mother a hug.

– I’ll come back again soon, he promised.

– Judas, she hissed, her eyes transformed into glowing embers.

He swallowed his surprise, struggled not to laugh. She raised the half-f glass of juice, looked as though she were about to throw it in his direction.

– No, Astrid, the nurse scolded and took the glass from her.

She stood up and shook her fist.

– Brede is evil, she shouted. – It wasn’t the Gestapo, it was Brede who shot.

The nurse got her down in her chair again. She continued to gesture with her arms.

– Twins, that’s one too many kids, that is. But you wouldn’t have a clue what I’m taking about, a Negro like you.

The visitor glanced at the nurse and shook his head apologetically. The nurse opened the dosage box.

– Negroes are from Africa, he said with a broad smile and handed her the juice glass.

She swallowed one of the tablets.

– Because you are Brede, aren’t you? she said, peering in confusion at the visitor.

– No, Mother, I’m not Brede. I’m Axel.

He knocked on the charge nurse’s door and entered the office. When she saw that it was him, she swung her chair round from the computer desk and gestured with her hand towards the sofa.

– Sit yourself down a moment.

She was in her thirties, tall and athletic, with a face that he found attractive.

– Mother seems much more disturbed these days.

The charge nurse gave a quick nod.

– She’s been talking a lot about the war recently. Of course everyone here knows who Torstein Glenne was, but is there anything in all this about the Gestapo?

Axel pointed to the plastic plate of Maryland cookies on the table.

– Mind awfully if I take one? I missed lunch today.

He said no thanks to offers of coffee and blackcurrant juice, and was amused by the nurse’s further attempts to make up for her initial lack of hospitality.

– It is true that the Gestapo were after my father, he confirmed as he munched away. – He managed to cross the border into Sweden at the last moment. But Mother knew nothing about it at the time. It was fourteen years before she met him. She was four years old.

The charge nurse struggled to fasten her smooth hair at the neck in a hair band.

– It’s tremendously useful to know things like that. She’s always very uneasy whenever there’s anything about war on the TV. Recently we’ve had to switch off when the news comes on. By the way, who is Brede?

Axel Glenne brushed the biscuit crumbs from his lapels.

– Brede?

– Yes. Suddenly Astrid has started saying lots of things about this Brede. That he isn’t to come here, that she doesn’t want to see him any more and God knows what else. She actually gets quite worked up about it. When she’s really in a state we have to give her a Murelax. Of course we don’t know if this Brede really exists, so it isn’t easy for the nurses to know what to say.

– Brede was her son.

The charge nurse’s eyebrows shot up under her fringe.

– You have a brother? I had no idea. There’s never been anyone else but you come to visit. And sometimes your wife, and the children.

– It’s been more than twenty-five years since Mother last saw him, said Axel.

He stood up and rested his hand on the doorknob to indicate that the conversation was over.

F
ROM THE BACK
seat of the taxi he called Bie again. She still didn’t answer and he sent her a text saying he would be late. It was Monday, football practice and violin lesson. Bie was going out this evening, but she’d have time to drive to the violin lesson first. Picking up afterwards was his responsibility.

The ship’s bell had already started ringing as the taxi turned into Aker Brygge. He had a few notes in his card-holder and paid cash, didn’t have time to wait for the receipt, scrambled aboard just as the barrier was about to be lowered. He wouldn’t be home until close on 6.30; Tom would have to go to practice by himself, if he could be bothered. He felt a twinge of guilt and send him a message too.

He knew a lot of the other passengers, perhaps even most of them. But this particular evening he made his way quickly through the salon and settled out on deck. It was warm for late September. A thin, creamy layer coated the sky above the fjord, the evening sun still visible behind it. He heard the echo of a voice in his thoughts: his mother calling him Judas. His mother thinking he was Brede, and being angry with him.

A group of men in dark suits were gathered around the peace torch at the end of the quay. One of them raised a hand as the ferry glided past, and from where Axel Glenne stood by the railings aft, it looked as though he were putting it into the flame.

The house was empty when he got home. Only now did he remember it was half-term holiday. On the kitchen worktop was a note from Bie.
Marlen is spending the night at Natasha’s. Tom will be home before ten. Spaghetti in the microwave. Be back late. B.
Alongside she’d drawn a little heart, from which something red dripped. A tear maybe; it was definitely not blood she had in mind.

He sat down at the kitchen table, listened to the silence in this house in which he had grown up. He still got that feeling when he was alone here, a sudden urge to do something naughty. When he was a child, it might be to go poking around in the kitchen cupboard, or in the drawer of his father’s bedside table, where there was always a magazine with pictures of nude women, or else to go up into the loft and do the most forbidden thing of all: take one of Colonel Glenne’s pistols from the drawer in the box room where his uniforms still hung … Actually, Brede was the only one who dared do that.

After the spaghetti, he wandered out on to the terrace. The sun had set behind the hills above Asker. There was a touch of cold in the air; it was clear and sharp to breathe in. Bie hadn’t replied to his message and he didn’t know where she was, and this thought was calming: that she lived her own life and he didn’t need to know what she was doing at every moment.

He sat down with his back to the empty house. It was full of their presence; he felt it even more strongly than usual. It was as though Bie were padding about in there, whispering to her orchids, or else was curled up on the sofa with a book. Tom sat playing in his room, the guitar plugged in to the little amplifier, and down in the basement Marlen was holding a meeting with Natasha and the other members of her club. Daniel was there too, even though it was now almost two months since he’d left for New York to study.

Axel was forty-three. He had always had the feeling of being on a journey. Was this his destination, this terrace with its view across the fjord to the distant hills on the other side, this presence of other people who were not there but who would presently enter the house and call to him, and when he answered they would find him out here, and he would hear in their voices that they were glad he was home? He would ask Marlen to show him her maths test, and when she asked him how he thought she had done, he would say,
Well, I expect you got over half of them right
, and
she would nod and keep her lips pressed together and try to hold out as long as she could before telling him her result. And when she couldn’t contain herself any more and was forced to tell him, he would shout out,
What are you saying? I just can’t believe it
, so that she would have to run off and fetch her satchel and get the book out and open it for him, and he would shake his head in disbelief and ask how on earth she had managed it. And Tom would lounge in the door opening,
Hey, Dad
,
and wonder why he hadn’t been home to drive him to football practice so that he wouldn’t have to cycle, but wasn’t so bothered that he wouldn’t ask him to come to his room and listen to a new riff with him, singing along in his hoarse adolescent voice
.

He went inside and fetched a bottle of cognac and a glass. It was an unusually fine cognac, bought on a trip abroad. He’d been waiting for a special occasion to open it, and decided now that this sharp autumn evening, this Monday evening on the terrace, with the sky still high above the fjord, was precisely the right moment. He left the bottle standing, gathering the evening light to it. Sat and watched the boats down on the fjord, a container ship on its way towards the city, a few sailing boats. The psychiatric hospital was in a bay on the other side. He’d worked there about ten or twelve years ago; he needed the subsidiary training to complete his course as a specialist. A few years before that, he’d visited the place. Quite by chance, he’d heard that Brede was a patient there. It was not long after 17 May, National Day, he remembered. There were still a few leafy braided wreaths hanging on the doors with ribbons in red, white and blue. It was two days before his father’s funeral, and that was why he had gone there, to try to persuade his brother to attend. The nurse who opened the door to him stood there gaping:
Jesus, has Brede got a brother?
And came back again a few minutes later:
Sorry, he doesn’t want any visitors
.

Axel opened the bottle and poured cognac into the large tulip-shaped glass. The smell of corrosive caramel now mingled with the faint scents coming from Bie’s rose garden. He’d never told Bie that he had tried to contact Brede before his father’s funeral. Brede was part of a world he couldn’t talk about to her. They’d been married now for twenty-something years. She still occasionally told him she loved him. It had always embarrassed him. He wasn’t afraid to express his feelings, but he had never managed to believe she meant it. Bie admired him. She admired everyone who was strong, and ended up despising them when they turned out not to be after all. She felt as if they’d tricked her. It was the certainty that he would never disappoint her in this way that made her whisper these
I love you
s.

He raised the glass and let the evening light run out of it. As he was about to put it to his lips, his mobile phone rang. On the display he read the number of a colleague from work, and immediately he knew what it was about, because his colleague was on duty that evening. He smiled to himself at the sudden thought of downing the cognac in one so that he would be unable to cover for whoever was sick.

Instead he put the glass down and took the call.

A
NITA
E
LVESTRAND CHANGED
channels. She’d seen the film several times before but looked forward to catching the ending one more time. There was still a while to go, so she muted the sound, reached out for the chocolate on the table and broke off a row. Enough is enough, she decided, and wrapped the paper around what remained of the bar. She put two pieces in her mouth and tried to chew slowly, washed them down with a swig of red wine. She lifted the box of wine; it was still quite heavy, but she mustn’t drink any more this evening. It was five past eleven. In less than nine hours she had to pick up Victoria. They were going to the dentist’s together. If they smelt the wine on her, they would use it against her.

There was a knock on the door. Must be Miriam. No one else knocked on her door. Anita got up from her easy chair and walked out into the corridor. Miriam stood outside smiling, and no other smile could make Anita feel relieved in quite the same way. Apart from Victoria’s, of course.

– I saw the light was on, Miriam said apologetically, as though
that
were necessary. She was wearing a denim jacket and a short skirt. A white blouse with a lace collar.

Anita opened the door wide.

– Would you like a glass of wine? she said, positioning herself on the threshold of the room, moving back just a tiny bit to let Miriam pass. Pass so close that Miriam’s shoulder brushed one of her breasts and she could inhale the lovely smells from her hair and the skin beneath the clothes. A hint of smoke, too; Miriam had been somewhere where people were smoking, because she didn’t smoke herself.

– A small one perhaps. I can’t stay long. I have to be up early tomorrow.

– So do I. I have to take Victoria to the dentist.

Miriam watched her as she sat down. When something surprised Miriam, her thin eyebrows shot up and stayed there quivering for a moment before sinking down again. Anita couldn’t take her eyes off her face. Miriam’s eyes were almond shaped and dark, her thick dark brown hair gathered in braids at the temples and fastened at the back with a hair grip.