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 could see Trevor preparing for it. For the crux. He took a deep breath, his new broad shoulders and his back swelled up. That white back I had seen through the window. He opened his mouth.
‘You know what?’ I said hurriedly. ‘I’d like to climb one route more before we go.’
Trevor and Monique exchanged confused glances.
‘I...’ Monique began.
‘It shouldn’t take long,’ I said. ‘Only Exodus.’
‘Why?’ said Monique. ‘You’ve already climbed it today.’
‘Because I want to climb free solo,’ I said.
The two of them stared at me. The silence was so complete we could follow the conversation going on between the climber and his anchor a hundred metres further along the rock face. I pulled on my climbing shoes.
‘Don’t mess about,’ said Trevor with a strained laugh.
I saw from Monique’s look that she knew I wasn’t messing about.
I wiped my slippery, greasy fingertips dry against my climbing trousers, stood up and walked over to the face. Exodus was a route we knew inside out. We’d climbed it dozens of times with ropes. It was easy all the way up to a marked crux — the most difficult point — near the end where you need to commit fully, abandon your balance and throw your left hand out towards a little handhold that slopes slightly downwards, meaning that the only thing that stops you falling is the friction on the rock. And because it’s about friction, we could see from the ground that the handhold was white with the resin of climbers who had dipped their hands in their bags directly before the move so their skin would be as dry as possible.
If you were left hanging your only option was to move your right hand to a large handhold, get your feet up on the ledge and climb the remaining few, easy metres. Once at the top there was a simple descent without ropes down a slope on the rear of the crag.
‘Nikos...’ Monique said, but I had already started climbing.
Ten seconds later I was high up the crag. I heard the conversation further along the face suddenly stop and knew they had realised I was climbing free solo. That means climbing without rope, with no security of any kind. I heard one of them curse quietly. But on I climbed. On up past the point where it might have been possible for me to think better of it and climb down again. Because it was fantastic. The rock. Death. It was better than all the whisky in the world, it really did make me lock everything else out, forget everything else. For the first time since I sat in that tree and saw Trevor and Monique fucking I was free of pain. I was now so high that if I made a single mistake, if I slipped, became exhausted or a handhold broke, I wouldn’t just fall and hurt myself. I would die. I have heard that those who climb free solo programme themselves not to think about death, because if you do all your muscles will stiffen, your supply of oxygen will be blocked, the lactic acid will build up and you will fall. It was the other way round for me that day. The more I thought about death, the easier the climbing seemed to be.
I was at the crux. All I had to do was let my body drop to the left and arrest the fall with my left hand on that single, small handhold. I stopped. Not because I hesitated, but to enjoy the moment. Enjoy their fear.
I stood on my left big toe, let my right foot dangle under me as a counterbalance, leaned over to the left. Heard a little scream from Monique and felt a delicious hollowness in my body as I tipped off balance, out of control and abandoned myself to gravity. I threw out my left hand. Found the ledge and gripped hard. The fall was arrested almost before it had begun. I moved my right hand to the firm, big hold and got my feet up on the ledge. I was safe. And felt almost immediately a strange disappointment. The two other climbers, two elderly Englishmen, had made their way over to Trevor and Monique, and now that they saw I was no longer in danger of falling they began to give vocal expression to their anger. I heard them say the usual things, how free soloing should be banned, that climbing is about risk-management, not about challenging death, that people such as me set a bad example to the younger climbers. I heard Monique defending me, saying there were no young climbers here today, if they didn’t mind her saying so. Trevor said nothing.
Standing steady now, as a way of resting and to get the lactic acid out of my muscles for the final few metres, I used a familiar climber’s technique, alternately turning the right hip and the left in towards the rock face against which I was standing, holding on with my left and then right hand as I did so. As the left hip brushed against the rock, I felt something prick me in the thigh. It was the tube of Elizabeth Arden cream I had in my trouser pocket.
In later years I have tried to reconstruct it, tried to spool back through my own mind, but it’s impossible. All I can conclude is that we are to a quite surprising degree incapable of recalling what we think, that, as is the case with dreams, it slips away, and that we work out what we must have thought from what we in actual, historical fact did do, nothing else.
And what I did that Friday afternoon in the Peak District in England, standing firm and steady and holding on to the rock with my right hand, was stick my left hand into my trouser pocket. As I was standing with my left side and hip twisted towards the rock face, my left hand and pocket were hidden from view to those standing below on the ground, moreover they were preoccupied with discussing the ethical dilemmas associated with suicide climbing. With my hand in my pocket I unscrewed the cap, squeezed the tube, held the thick, fatty cream between two fingers. Continuing to hold on with my right hand I placed my left hand back on that handhold at the crux, seemingly attempting to adjust slightly the position of my feet and smeared off the white cream. Established that it was impossible to distinguish it from the white resin that had been there before. I wiped my hand dry on the inside of my thigh where I knew that the smears of cream would not be seen if I stood with my legs together. I then climbed the last few steps to the summit.
By the time I had descended the rear of the crag and walked round to the front the two other climbers had gone. I could see them walking along the path through the fields. Clouds were moving in from the west.
‘You idiot,’ hissed Monique, who stood there with her rucksack on her back ready to leave.
‘I love you too,’ I said and took off my shoes. ‘Your turn, Trevor.’
He stared at me in disbelief.
In fiction great narrative power is often vested in a single look. In a literary sense the convention helps the writer tell his story well, and sometimes to great effect. But since I am not, as I have said, a specialist in the interpretation of body language, or more sensitive to atmosphere than others, I can only conclude, based on what he did, that he knew. He knew that I knew. And that this would be his way of doing penance; to challenge death, in the same way as I had just done. That this was now the only way he could show his respect for me and have any hope of my forgiveness.
‘You won’t make your idiotic action any less idiotic by persuading him to do something just as idiotic!’ hissed Monique. There were tears in her eyes. Maybe that’s why I didn’t hear the rest of her tirade. I stared at those tears and wondered if they were for me. For us. Or were they for the moral trap she and Trevor had fallen into, which was so contrary to everything she thought she stood for? Or for the knife that was about to be plunged into me, and which seemed to call for more courage than they possessed? But after a while I stopped thinking about that too.
And when Monique realised I was no longer listening and that I was no longer looking at her but at something behind and now above her she turned, and saw Trevor on his way up the crag. She screamed. But Trevor was beyond the point at which he could regret it and turn back. Beyond the point at which I could regret it.