The Jealousy Man and Other Stories
- Автор: Несбё Ю
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Alfred A. Knopf
- ISBN: 978-0-593-32100-3
- Переводчик: Robert Ferguson
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Jealousy Man and Other Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
A detective with a nose for jealousy is on the trail of a man suspected of murdering his twin; a bereaved father must decide whether vengeance has a place in the new world order after a pandemic brings about the collapse of society; a garbage man fresh off a bender tries to piece together what happened the night before; a hired assassin matches wits against his greatest adversary in a dangerous game for survival; and an instantly electric connection between passengers on a flight to London may spell romance, or something more sinister.
With Nesbø’s characteristic gift for outstanding atmosphere and gut-wrenching revelations, The Jealousy Man confirms that he is at the peak of his abilities.
I tried two places. Both were fully booked, both said that every other place they knew of was full too. So I got the taxi driver to drop me off at the place where Peter and I had stayed. Though it had been a large double room it hadn’t cost any more than the singles I’d been looking at. I stood in the back yard, and as the proprietor opened the door of his flat he showed no signs of recognising me. Maybe that’s what happens when you see hundreds of new arrivals every year.
‘Full,’ was all he said.
I explained which room I’d been in, that just an hour earlier it had appeared to be vacant.
‘Yes, but guest looking now,’ he said in his broken English.
‘I’ll take it,’ I heard a familiar voice saying behind me.
I turned round.
Miriam was standing with the proprietor’s wife.
‘For how long?’ asked the proprietor.
‘Indefinitely,’ said Miriam, and looked at me.
‘Perdón?’
‘Sorry,’ she said without taking her eyes off me. ‘A long time, I think.’
‘I hadn’t expected to see you again quite so soon,’ Miriam said as we walked along the bank of the wide river that winds through the town. Its name, she had told me, was the Urumea.
‘Were you expecting to see me again at all?’ I asked.
Miriam had called her mother and they had agreed they didn’t need to move in until the next day, so I would be able to spend the night there.
‘Well, you say you’re Peter’s best friend, so yes,’ she said.
I smiled. ‘Say? You mean a real best friend doesn’t tell his pal’s girlfriend that he’s in love with her?’
‘Peter and I aren’t a couple.’
‘Or his chosen one.’
‘I don’t like to be chosen.’
‘But maybe they’re right this time, those voices whispering in your ear that, after all, you have been lucky, and there’s no need for tears. Peter’s a nice lad. And he’s rich enough to be able to help you and your mother.’
She stopped, turned towards the river and looked across to the other side.
‘It’s not that simple,’ she said.
‘I know it isn’t,’ I said. ‘You’ve got a responsibility to your mother as well as to yourself. It’s a moral dilemma. If you want his help you have to give him hope that there might be something between the two of you. In other words you need to lie.’
She snorted. ‘Why is that lying? I can’t know right now whether or not I can love him.’
‘Oh yes, you know.’
‘Oh?’
‘Because you love me.’
She laughed, shook her head and carried on walking. I quickly caught up with her.
‘You do,’ I said. ‘You just don’t know it yet.’
‘You know what the difference is between you in the West and us out here? We can’t get enough of romantic books and films, but where you come from you think they’re true.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But now and then you get a story like that which actually turns out to be true. And this is one of those stories.’
‘How many girls have you used that on, Martin?’
‘A couple. I probably wasn’t lying, but I was mistaken, they weren’t one of those stories. This time I’m not mistaken. We’re not mistaken.’
‘We? You know nothing about me, Martin. Do you realise how long we’ve known each other?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve thought about that, but I don’t know. Do you?’
She slackened her pace. Then stopped completely. ‘What do you mean?’
I shrugged. ‘From the first time I saw you, the first time I spoke to you, I’ve had this constant feeling of déjà vu. It’s as though everything that’s happening has happened before.’
‘Oh yeah? So what’s going to happen now?’
‘Now you’re going to ask me about this, and I’m going to reply that my advance knowledge is so short that it’s like when you sing a song you don’t know the words to if you think about it — all you know is that the words will come to you just before you get to them, all you need is the music to lead you along. And even before I said this I knew just before I said it that I would say it.’
‘Air, nothing but hot air, not good enough,’ she said with a wave of her hand. ‘You’re just talking it away. Give me something concrete.’
‘We’ll sleep together tonight.’
‘You wish!’ she exclaimed and took a swipe at me.
‘No, not like that,’ I said. ‘With our clothes on. We won’t even kiss each other.’
‘Exactly. So now you’re giving me an excuse to say yes to sleeping with you? Thanks, but I’ve met boys like you before. You’re so creepy.’
The phone in my pocket vibrated and I knew it was Peter trying once again to get in touch with me. I hadn’t answered because I didn’t know what to tell him, at least not now that I wouldn’t be coming back this evening. Before leaving for San Sebastián I had planned to explain my absence by saying that I had simply got caught up in Pamplona’s noisy moveable feast and hadn’t realised the phone had been ringing.
Miriam folded her arms and shivered. The wind hadn’t dropped and now the cloud cover was so dense it completely blotted out the evening sun.
‘I have to get back to Mamma,’ she said.
‘Are you sure? I was going to offer you dinner as a way of thanking you for the room tonight.’
She gave an exasperated little groan and shook her head.
‘I can’t afford to take you anywhere like the Arzak,’ I said. ‘But if the tapas in that bar is anywhere near as good as the breakfast then you’ll be missing out on something.’
She put her head on one side, pulled the hair back from her gorgeous eyes and looked at me. ‘Missing out?’ There was something about the way she looked at me, as though she was searching for something. Or recognised something.
‘I might be exaggerating,’ I admitted. ‘But it’s probably... a pretty good meal.’
She nodded.
‘Yes?’ I said in disbelieving surprise.
‘I’m very hungry,’ she said. She had already turned and was on her way back.
Over dinner I told her everything I could think of about myself. About my impracticality, my indiscipline, my limited capacity for analytical thinking. About my slightly too vivid imagination and my desire to be creative, at the same time as I doubted that my artistic talents matched my ambitions. About how clumsy I was in matters of the heart. About my fling with Peter’s girlfriend when we were younger. As though it was important for me to put it all out there, the good and the bad, while I had the chance.
‘So then, in a nutshell, you’re stupid and egotistical,’ she said, and took a sip of her red wine. She sat with her long thin legs twined around each other, her back bowed and the narrow shoulders projecting forwards, as though she was mildly disabled. A while ago it had seemed to me she was less beautiful than when I had seen her at the Arzak. Now I thought she was even more beautiful. Maybe it was the softer light. Maybe because she was more relaxed. Or perhaps it was me.
‘Yes, I am stupid and egocentric,’ I confirmed.
‘Are you saying that because you think it makes you more interesting? Because I’m not seeing a bad boy here, Martin.’
‘So then what do you see?’
‘A boy who’s actually quite nice.’
‘How come you make that sound as though it’s you that’s five years older than me and not the other way round?’