Pets (19 page)

“Excuse me, who are you?” Havard asks. He obviously doesn't like my friend's accusing tone.

“Who am
I
?”

“Yes, who are you?”

“That depends on who is asking.”

“Oh, is that so! So who
you
are depends on who
I
am?”

“Come on!” Greta interrupts to prevent unnecessary ill feeling. “Can't you just introduce yourselves?”

“My name is Havard Knutsson,” Havard says with cold formality.

“Armann Valur here.”

“Havard?” I hear Saebjorn say. It sounds like he recognizes the name.

“I'm Greta.”

“I spoke to you earlier,” Saebjorn says. He seems to be talking to Havard. “My name is Saebjorn, I called earlier.”

“OK, that wasn't so difficult,” Havard answers.

“But what is going on here?” Saebjorn carries on asking. “Where is Emil? Why hasn't he come home?”

“If only we knew,” Armann answers.

“We are all waiting for him,” Greta says, and Havard tries to explain why they are all here.

“I came here this afternoon, it must have been around
. . .
”

“But how do you know him?” Saebjorn interrupts.

“How do we know each other? We are just old friends. But anyway, I came late this afternoon and knocked and there was nobody home. Then I looked in the window and saw that there was water boiling on the stove so I crawled in through the window and turned off the burner.”

“When was that?” Jaime asks.

“Around five or six o'clock.”

“And hasn't he been back since?” Saebjorn asks.

It is beginning to sound like a murder interrogation. The difference is that the body is still breathing; it has followed the investigation from the start.

“We are just waiting for him,” Havard says. “I saw that he had just come home from abroad, the suitcases have been emptied and of course I thought that he had just nipped out. I mean, he can't have gone far, he has just been delayed. I can't see that it's so unusual.”

“But I mean
. . .
” Saebjorn is clearly not satisfied with the explanation he gets from my unknown friend here, but really he has no cause to disbelieve him. “Haven't you tried to find him? Doesn't he have his cell phone with him?”

“He left it here in the flat,” Greta answers. “It has been ringing all the time, hasn't it?” I imagine that the question is addressed to Havard and that it is he who answers.

“I think everyone has been trying to contact him. Both of you, of course, then his mother and some Vigdis. Is she his fiancée?”

“Is she his fiancée!” Saebjorn is clearly still very suspicious of my friendship with Havard. “Wait a moment, aren't you friends? Didn't you say you were old friends?”

“Has that got anything to do with his fiancée?” Havard objects. “I have just come from Sweden where I have been living for several years; how am I to know what Emil's fiancée is called?”

I can't remember if I had told Saebjorn and Jaime that Havard was in Sweden; from what I can hear, they don't seem to have any notion of who he is. On top of everything else it bothers me to hear them talking about Vigdis as my fiancée in front of Greta. From my point of view—however ridiculous it is in these circumstances—Vigdis and I aren't engaged in any way, though she might think of us in those terms.

“Alright, alright,” Saebjorn says. “You just have to understand that I find it rather strange coming here and there is no Emil around.”

“Of course it is strange,” Havard agrees, no doubt glad that his presence in my home has finally been accepted. “Can't you imagine how strange I thought it was to come here and there was no Emil, just boiling water?”

“But, I mean, the man returns from abroad today,” Saebjorn continues, “and when one comes to visit him there is nothing here but his luggage! And the wine he bought has been opened
. . .
it's his wine, isn't it?”

“Actually I brought this bottle,” Greta says, but apart from the red wine, Saebjorn is quite right. Alcohol isn't exactly the thing I regret most at this instant, though.

“It's just as if he has misbehaved and run off to the woodshed,” Havard says and laughs, as if he is trying to relieve the tension in the room. “Just like his namesake at Kattholt.”

I can't imagine that Saebjorn finds this comment very funny.

“Yes, or just like the ants that the elephant trod on,” Armann adds with a giggle.

“And how do you know each other?” Saebjorn asks, like he wants to get rid of every trace of doubt from his mind.

“We were with Emil on the way home,” Armann answers.

“We were on the same plane today,” Greta explains.

“I really just came to fetch my glasses and
. . .
wait a minute, that's right; he called me after he got here, so it's at least clear that he
came
home.”

“Was that ever a question?” Havard asks, obviously annoyed with the linguist.

“So he called you?” Saebjorn asks.

“Most probably as soon as he got in,” Armann answers.

Greta offers Saebjorn a glass of red wine, and when he has accepted—rather sulkily it seems—Greta tells Armann to look at the table.

“Look, you have spilled ash over everything on the table,” she says.

“I?” Armann sounds surprised, almost as if he has been accused of some terrible crime.

“You miss the ashtray every time, I've noticed.”

It is difficult for me to tell whether Greta is joking or is seriously asking the culprit to wipe all the ash off the table. I'm not really worried about the books and the CDs anymore, not now that Jaime and Saebjorn have arrived.

“Armann doesn't smoke,” Havard says. “He told me he never smokes.”

“You must clean up the table,” Greta says to Armann, but I don't hear his reply because Jaime and Saebjorn drown out his voice—they're discussing the rest of the things lying on the table: the books, videos, and music.

Amongst the books which I bought in London is a recent account of the fate of the whaler
Essex
. Though I don't expect that it will be a likely subject of discussion in the living room, it is even more unlikely that Havard will try to show my friends the model ship and the original edition of
Moby-Dick
. Yet I don't think it is wise to keep the book under my bed any longer. I close it, move it as far as I can down past my body, and push it behind the toy box, alongside the carved whaler.

5

“So you are all interested in music?” I hear Havard comment. I can just imagine that Jaime and Saebjorn have separated themselves from the others, though the living room doesn't offer much space for privacy in the crowd that has gathered. They are probably discussing the things that I brought back. Somehow I would have thought that Saebjorn—or both of them, Saebjorn and Jaime—would try to find out more about me, but at the moment they don't seem to be very worried.

“Listen, I'm going to phone Emil's mother,” Saebjorn says, almost as if he is answering me.

“So, was Emil buying you some CDs?” Havard asks. “He's a good guy, Emil. Quite solid.”

Thanks Havard. It sounds like Saebjorn is standing up; he says he is going to check on her, meaning my mother most probably. He asks where the phone is and Greta finds it for him.

“What did he bring you this time?” Havard continues and interrupts Jaime who is about to answer. “Just now Armann and I were playing
. . .
what was it again, Armann? What were we playing just now, Armann, that classical CD?”

Saebjorn has come into the bedroom. He sits down in the middle of the bed, which sags under the weight of his long body without making the springs poke down into me, and he begins to turn over the pages of a book, which I immediately recognize as the telephone directory—the pages sound so thin. Then he mutters my father's name as he turns the pages over, one after another, and just as I'm about to tap on his heel, Armann appears in the doorway. He makes a rather strange surprised sound, excuses himself and says he meant to go to the bathroom. He has clearly had too much to drink.

“Armann! What's the name of the music we were playing just now, the classical disc?” Havard shouts from the living room.

“The classical disc?” Armann shouts back. “What are you talking about, my friend?”

Saebjorn stands up as soon as he has dialed the number and walks over to the bookshelf on the right of the bedroom window.

“We were playing some music just now that you said was chamber music,” Havard shouts.

“Yes, Mahler. We were playing Mahler. Mahler's piano quartet,” Armann says. Just as before, he sees no reason to shut the door while he urinates.

“That's what we were listening to,” I hear Havard say to Jaime, “Mahler's piano quartet. Actual chamber music, the real thing. One hundred percent proof.” Then he shouts: “Do you hear that, Armann? One hundred percent chamber music!”

Armann starts laughing and repeats Havard's last words. There is clearly some comradeship that connects them at this moment.

“You are a great chamber fan, aren't you Armann?” Havard carries on in the same loud voice.

Who else, apart from these two, would shout from one room to another about chamber music, I ask myself.

“Chamber fan?” Armann begins to pee into the toilet bowl, and considering the state he is in at the moment, I can't imagine that he will be more successful now than on the previous occasion. “You are fine fellows,” he says in a low voice that can hardly be heard in the living room over the noise he is making.

“Hello?” Saebjorn has contacted one of my parents, who turns out to be my mother. “Yes, good evening. My name is Saebjorn, I'm a friend of Emil's. I am just checking to see if Emil is by any chance with you. He hasn't come? He hasn't called either? Yes, I'm at his place, there are two of us here, his friends. He was going to meet us here this evening after he arrived. What? Yes, there's also an old friend of his here, Havard. He spoke to you? Yes, he came here earlier today, as far as I know, and saw through the window that Emil was boiling water here so he
. . .
yes, no, he wasn't at home
. . .
so he climbed in through the window and took the water off the burner. That he forgot it? You mean that Emil should forget it? Yes, it is rather strange. He had unpacked his suitcases. It looked as if he had just nipped out.”

Saebjorn listens to my mother for one or two minutes and nods in agreement with what she says. Something suddenly falls on to the floor, probably a book from the shelf, and Saebjorn carries on listening while he bends down to pick up the fallen object. “Yes, I think we will have to,” he says finally, and I hear that the conversation is drawing to a close.

Armann flushes the toilet and goes back into the party without washing his hands. I'm about to try and make contact with Saebjorn before he leaves the room—I am even considering whispering to him—but he suddenly turns away from the bookshelf and rushes out. He is still talking to my mother. He tells her that there are two other people here, a young woman and a slightly older man who was with me on the plane. They are fine, just some people whom I seem to have invited home. Then he goes into the bathroom and asks my mother if I could have gone to visit Vigdis. It's not very probable but there must be some reason for me taking so long. It doesn't seem that he and my mother come to any conclusion. As soon as Saebjorn has said goodbye to her, he turns on the tap—probably to have a drink of water—and then goes back into the living room.

The piano quartet has started again, and as far as I can hear Armann is lecturing the other visitors on the music.

“Yes, wasn't it seventy-six?” I hear Saebjorn say. It sounds as though he had some doubt about the year and has now received confirmation that it was right.

“That must make all the difference,” Havard says scornfully.

“Eighteen hundred seventy-six,” Armann confirms.

I think of my son Halldor. Now he is lying in his bed in Amager, fast asleep in his Danish bed with his twin teddies by his head, completely ignorant of the fact that his father is lying awake under his own bed on Grettisgata and doesn't dare to come out because he has this dread of something that is impossible to explain.

Why don't you just go and say hello to your friends, daddy?

What are you doing there under the bed?

I'm just resting, Halldor. Just go back to sleep. No, I know it's not the most comfortable place. One mustn't always think of what is most comfortable.

“He was only sixteen,” is yet another piece of information that Armann gives the others.