Blood on Snow
- Автор: Несбё Ю
- Серия: Blood on Snow #1
- Год: 2015
- Язык: английский
- Год: Knopf, Doubleday Publishing Group
- ISBN: 978-0-385-35419-6
- Переводчик: Neil Smith
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Blood on Snow». Краткое содержание книги:
I didn’t know why I had driven here. I could have driven to the hotel and got a room there. Right across the street from the man we had just fixed. Opposite the woman who had fixed me. No one would think of looking for me there. I had enough money for two nights. I could call the Fisherman in the morning and ask to have the rest of the fee paid into my bank account.
I heard myself laugh.
Felt a warm tear trickle down my cheek, saw it fall and burrow into the fresh snow.
Then another one. It just disappeared.
I caught sight of my knee. Blood was oozing out through the fabric of the trousers and dribbling down to settle on the snow with a skin of slime, like egg whites. I knew it would disappear. Melt down and vanish like my tears. But it just lay there, red and quivering. I felt my sweaty hair stick to the glass of the window. It’s probably a bit late to mention it now, but in case I haven’t said, I’ve got long, slightly lank, blond hair and a beard, I’m average height and I’ve got blue eyes. That’s pretty much me. There’s an advantage to having a lot of hair and a beard: if there are too many witnesses to a job, you have the potential to change your appearance quickly. And it was this potential to change quickly that I now felt freezing to the window, setting root, like part of that coral reef I keep going on about. Anyway. I wanted to become one with this window, to become glass, just like the invertebrate anemones in Animal Kingdom 5: The Sea actually become the coral reef they live on. And in the morning I would be able to watch Maria, watch her all day without her seeing me. Whisper whatever I liked to her. Call out, sing. My only wish just then was to disappear — maybe it was the only thing I had ever wanted. To disappear, like Mum drinking herself invisible with neat spirits. Rubbing it in until it erased her. Where was she now? I no longer remember. I hadn’t been able to remember for a long time. It was odd, I could say where my father was, but where was my mother, the woman who had given me life and kept me alive? Was she really dead and buried at Ris Church? Or was she still out there somewhere? Obviously I knew, it was just a question of remembering.
I closed my eyes and rested my head against the window. Relaxed completely. So tired. I’d soon remember. Soon...
Darkness came. The great darkness. Spreading out like a huge, black cloak, coming towards me to take me in its embrace.
It was so quiet that I could hear a soft clicking sound that seemed to be coming from the door beside me. Then I heard steps, familiar, limping steps, approaching. I didn’t open my eyes. The footsteps stopped.
“Olav.”
I didn’t answer.
She came closer. I felt a hand on my arm. “What... Are... You... Doing... Here.”
I opened my eyes. Stared into the glass, at the reflection of her standing behind me.
I opened my mouth, but couldn’t speak.
“Are... You... Bleeding.”
I nodded. How could she be here now, in the middle of the night?
Of course.
Stocktaking.
“Your... Car.”
I formed my mouth and tongue to say “yes,” but no sound came out.
She nodded, as if to say she understood, then lifted my arm and put it over her shoulder.
“Come.”
I limped towards the car, leaning on her, on Maria. The strange thing was that I didn’t notice her limp; it was as if it were gone. She got me into the passenger seat, then went round to the driver’s side, where the door was still open. She leaned over me and ripped open the leg of my trousers, which tore without a sound. She took a bottle of mineral water from her bag, unscrewed it and poured water on my thigh.
“Bullet?”
I nodded and looked down. It didn’t hurt any more, but the bullet hole looked like the mouth of a gaping fish. Maria had pulled off her scarf and told me to lift my leg. Then she tied the scarf tightly round it.
“Hold... Your... Fingers... Here... And... Press... Hard... On... The... Wound.”
She turned the key, still in the ignition. The car started with a soft, amiable purr. She put it in reverse and backed away from the lamp post. Pulled out onto the road and drove.
“My... Uncle... Is... A... Surgeon... Marcel... Myriel.”
Myriel. The same surname as the junkie. How could she and he have an uncle with the same...?
“Not... At... The... Hospital.” She looked across at me. “At... Mine.”
I leaned back against the headrest. She wasn’t talking like a deaf mute. It was odd and jerky, but not like someone who couldn’t talk, more like someone...
“French,” she said. “Sorry... But... I... Don’t... Like... Talking... Norwegian.” She laughed. “I... Prefer... To... Write... Always... Have... Done. As... A... Child... I... Just... Read... Do... You... Like... Reading... Olav?”
A police car drove past with its blue light slowly rotating on the roof. I saw it disappear in the mirror. If they were looking for the Volvo, they weren’t paying attention. Maybe they were after something else.
Her brother. The junkie had been her brother, not her boyfriend. Younger brother, presumably, that was why she had been prepared to sacrifice everything for him. But why hadn’t the surgeon, their uncle, been able to help them back then, why had she had to...? Well, enough of that. I could find out the rest and work out how it all fit together later. But for the time being she had turned up the heater and the warm air was making me so drowsy I had to concentrate hard not to just drift off.
“I... Think... You... Read... Olav... Because... You... Are... Like... A... Poet... It... Is... So... Beautiful... What... You... Say... When... We... Are... Underground.”
Underground?
My eyes closed as it slowly dawned on me. She had been able to hear everything I said.
All those afternoons on the train, when I thought she was deaf, she had just stood there and let me talk. Day after day, pretending she couldn’t hear or see me. As if it were a game. That was why she had reached for my hand in the shop — she thought she knew that I loved her. That the box of chocolates was the sign that I was finally ready to step from fantasy into reality. Could that be how it all fit together? Could I really have been so blind that I had thought she was deaf and dumb? Or had I seen it all along, and simply denied the fact that I actually knew?
Could it have been the case that I had been on my way here, to Maria Myriel, all along?
“I’m... Sure... Uncle... Can... Come... Tonight... And... If... It’s... Okay... With... You... There’ll... Be... French... Christmas... Food... Tomorrow... Goose... A... Bit... Late... After... Christmas... Eve... Mass.”
I put my hand in my inside pocket and found the envelope. I held it out, still with my eyes closed. I felt her take the envelope, pull over to the side of the road, stop. I was so tired, so tired.
She began to read.
Reading the words I had bled onto the pages, the words I had smashed up and rewritten to get the right letters in the right place.
And they didn’t feel dead at all. On the contrary, they were alive. And true. So true that “I love you” sounded like the only thing that could be said. So alive that everyone who heard the words must have been able to see him, the man writing about the girl he went to visit every day, the girl sitting in a supermarket, the girl he loved, but wished he didn’t love, because he didn’t want to love someone who was just like him, imperfect, with faults and failings, another self-sacrificing, pathetic slave to love, who obediently read people’s lips but never spoke herself, who subordinated herself and found her reward in that. But at the same time, he couldn’t manage not to love her. She was everything he wished he didn’t want. She was his own humiliation. And the best, the most human, the most beautiful thing he knew.
I don’t know much, Maria. Only two things, really. One is that I don’t know how I could make someone like you happy, because I’m the sort of person who wrecks things, not one who creates life and meaning. The second thing I know is that I love you, Maria. And that’s why I never came to dinner that time. Olav.