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.
From childhood onwards I have had a striking ability to become deeply engaged in stories. Family and friends described it as everything from remarkable and moving to pathetic and unmanly. To me it was a gift. I wasn’t a part of Huckleberry Finn’s adventures; I was Huckleberry Finn. And Tom Sawyer. And, when I started at school and learned how to be Greek, the Odyssey, of course. Naturally, they don’t have to be the great tales of world literature. A very simple, even badly told story about infidelity, real or imagined, it doesn’t matter which, will do. I am inside the story. From the first sentence I am a part of it. It’s like turning on a switch. And it also means that I am able to spot quickly any false notes. Not because I have a unique talent for reading body language, the timbre of a voice or the automatic rhetorical strategies of self-defence. It’s the story. Even in a crudely and very obviously falsely conceived character I am able to read the main themes, the person’s probable motivation and place in the story, and on the basis of this I know what inexorably leads to what in this character. Because I have been there myself. Because our jealousy evens out the difference between you and me, beyond the barriers of class, sex, religion, education, IQ, culture, upbringing, our behaviour begins to resemble each other’s, the way drug addicts resemble each other in their behaviour. We are all of us living dead who rave through the streets driven on by this single need: to fill the enormous black hole that is inside us.
One more thing. The power of imaginative projection is not the same as empathy. ‘That I understand doesn’t mean I care,’ as Homer says. Homer Simpson, that is. But in my case it is, unfortunately, one and the same thing. I suffer, suffer, with the jealous one. And that’s why I hate my job.
The wind pulled at the window sash, trying to open it. Wanting to show me something.
I fell asleep and dreamed of falling from a great height. And woke an hour later when the falling man hit the ground, so to speak.
I had mail on my phone. It contained a printout of Franz Schmid’s deleted SMSs and call logs. The night before his brother went missing he had, according to the log, called a certain Victoria Hässel eight times without reply. I checked the number and was able to confirm that it was the same Victoria I had briefly spoken to on Julian’s phone. But the feeling of someone hitting the ground from a great height, the distinct shiver, the sound of flesh against stone that you never, never forget, that didn’t come until I read the text message Franz had sent to a Greek number registered to Helena Ambrosia.
I have killed Julian.
Emporio was a tiny hamlet at the north end of Kalymnos where the main road simply came to a halt. The girl who came to my restaurant table reminded me of Monique. For a while, a few years, I saw Monique everywhere, in the features and eyes of every woman, in the smooth back of every girl, heard her in every word spoken to me by a stranger of the opposite sex. But with time the ghost had paled beneath the constant daylight of time. And after a few years I was able to get up and walk the streets of Athens and know it would leave me in peace. Until darkness fell again.
This girl was pretty too, although not of course as pretty. But in fact yes, she was. Slim, long-legged, with naturally graceful movements. Brown, soft eyes. But her complexion was spoiled by impurities, and she had no chin. What was it Monique lacked? I could no longer remember. Decency, maybe.
‘How can I be of service, sir?’
The slightly exaggerated courtesy of the phrase — which I had grown so used to hearing expressed with just a hint of ironic condescension from waiters in England — sounded touchingly honest in the mouth of this pure young Greek girl. She and I were the only ones in the charming little family restaurant.
‘Are you Helena Ambrosia?’
She blushed when she heard me speaking Greek and nodded in reply. I introduced myself and explained that I was there in connection with the missing Julian Schmid and saw the consternation that spread across her face as I told her what I knew of her association with Franz Schmid. At regular intervals she glanced over her shoulder as if to make sure no one came out from the kitchen and overheard us.
‘Yes yes, but what does this have to do with the one who’s missing?’ she whispered quickly, angry and flushed with shame.
‘You’ve been with them both.’
‘What? No!’ She got carried away and raised her voice, then lowered it once more to an angry whisper. ‘Who says so?’
‘Franz. When you met his twin brother Julian in the stone city Julian pretended he was Franz.’
‘Twin?’
‘Identical,’ I said.
The confusion was plain to see in her face. ‘But...’ I could see her running through the sequence of events in her head, see her confusion change to disbelief and change again to outrage.
‘I’ve... I’ve been with two brothers?’ she stammered.
‘Didn’t you know?’
‘How could I? If there really are two of them then they’re exactly alike.’ She pressed her hands to her temples as though to prevent her head exploding.
‘So Julian was lying when he told his brother he phoned you in the evening on the day after you met him in the stone city and explained everything to you, and said that you forgave him?’
‘I haven’t spoken to either one of them since then!’
‘What about that message you got from Franz. “I have killed Julian.” ’
She blinked and blinked. ‘I didn’t understand that message. Franz had told me he had a brother, but not that they were twins or that his name was Julian. When I read the text I thought maybe Julian was the name of a route he’d climbed, or a name he’d given to a cockroach in his room, something like that, that I was bound to get the explanation later. But we had just closed for the evening and I was very busy clearing up, so all I did was send a smiley in reply.’
‘I’ve read the texts you sent to Franz’s phone. All of them are fairly short answers to long messages. The text you sent the morning after you met Julian is the only one where you take the initiative, the only one where I notice, on your side, a certain... affection?’
She bit her lower lip. Nodded. Her eyes brimmed with tears.
‘So even though Julian lied about having told you he wasn’t Franz, it wasn’t until you met Julian that you fell in love?’