The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I let go of my bin right in front of the gate and Pijus had to stop his to avoid crashing into me.

He shrugged. ‘That’s why you were fighting. You felt your position was threatened. Your amygdala was activated. Fight, flight or freeze. She’s small, so you chose to fight. It’s only natural.’

I could already feel the blood sort of tightening in my head. It’s a much too familiar feeling. The pressure rises and to stop my head exploding I need to open a valve, find some other way out, because otherwise it’ll burst open and little yellow bits of brain go whirling through the air and land on walls and bicycles, prams and letter boxes and some little guy trying to kid people into believing he’s a fucking psychologist.

As a rule the solution is to open my mouth and even out the pressure that way, same as when you’re on a plane. I just have to roar. Roar something.

‘My amagy...’ I began. I was calm. Pretty calm. OK, I raised my voice a bit.

‘Amygdala,’ said Pijus with a little and very fucking irritating grin. ‘Think of it like a woman’s name, Amy G—’

That did it for me.

‘Don’t talk to me like that, you fucking nazibastardcunt!’ I pushed the container as hard as I could so the bloody Latvian was sandwiched between the two bins, and I was on my way round to give him a good kicking when a voice cut through the morning air in the yard.

‘We are trying to sleep!’

I looked up. There was a woman standing on a second-floor balcony. She was probably only in her forties but she’d let herself go and looked more like fifty. I can say that because she was completely naked.

‘Shut up and put some clothes on, you dirty old slag!’ I yelled. ‘OK?’

The woman laughed, a piercing wail of a sound, raised both arms in the air, lifted one knee and twisted her hip into a grotesque glamour-model pose. ‘I’ll ring your boss!’ she shrieked. ‘This time tomorrow, gentleman, you’ll both be on the dole!’

And through the red curtain of my rage I could see it all. The boss giving me the message he’d been waiting so long for the opportunity to give me: Svendsen, you are so fucking fired!

I could feel the bin against my stomach. Pijus was pushing at the other end, nodding towards the gate, signalling that we should get out.

‘Think she’ll do it?’ I asked as the wheels rattled across the asphalt outside.

‘Yes,’ said Pijus.

‘Very fucking inconvenient,’ I said.

‘Oh yes?’

‘The Corolla’s due for its EU test and I’ve promised the missus a holiday in the Canaries this Christmas. What about you?’

Pijus shrugged. ‘I send money to my parents. They get by, but without the money they won’t eat well and they won’t be able to pay for the electricity.’

I helped him hook the container onto the hydraulics. ‘I shouldn’t complain, is that what you’re saying?’

‘No, I’m just saying we all have our problems, Ivar.’

Maybe we do. My problem was that when I got angry I couldn’t keep things separate any more. I should have had optical detectors that did it for me, like they have at the dump out at Klementsrud. We just offloaded into this sort of unmanned factory of a place and all the trash waltzes off on a conveyor belt with robots sorting out the big bits from the little bits and sending the organic stuff to the incinerators, the glass, plastic and metal for recirculating, and so on. If only I could learn to just let some things go.

I calmed down, and as we emptied the containers tried again to remember. What the fuck actually happened last night? All I knew was that it must have been a lot, because when I woke up I wasn’t just hung-over, I felt like I’d just run two marathons. Did I fight with Lisa? Had I — who in all the thirty years of our marriage never laid a hand on her — had I done something to her? She was lying on her side in the bed with her back to me when we woke up. That was in itself a bit weird because usually she slept flat on her back. But a fight, a fist fight? I couldn’t see that. But what I did see now, now that I thought about it, was that we had quarrelled. It was as if the echo of harsh and ugly words was only just now reaching me from the night before. And I’d used one of them again just a couple of minutes ago. Slag. I’d called Lisa a couple of things over the years, but never slag.

We wheeled the bins back into the yard. The lady on the balcony was gone.

‘She’s inside calling the boss,’ I said.

‘He’s not up,’ said Pijus. ‘Not yet.’ He looked up the facade, nodding, his lips moving as though he was counting something. ‘Come on, Ivar.’

I followed Pijus out and over to the entrance to the block, where he stood and studied the list of residents’ names.

‘Second floor, second door on the right,’ he muttered, and rang the bell. Waited, looking at me with that little smile, but it wasn’t quite so annoying this time.

A voice crackled over the speakerphone. ‘Hello?’ said a piercing voice.

‘Good morning, fru Malvik,’ said Pijus, sounding like he was trying to imitate someone. Someone who spoke better Norwegian than he did. ‘My name is Iversen, I’m from the Oslo police. We’ve just had a call from the Oslo city sanitation services. They’re reporting an incident involving indecent exposure by someone on the second floor. Since we were on patrol in the area we’ve been asked to look into it. I am aware that there are several people living on the second floor, but let me ask you first: is this something you have any knowledge of, fru Malvik?