The Cold Song (25 page)

And anyway, the whole house was a reminder of Milla. Siri imagined finding strands of dark hair along the baseboards and around the doorframes, in the annex, in the meadow behind the house, in the vegetable plot, under the maple tree, and in her white flower bed.

That white peony in your hair—that’s from one of my beds. You wreck things
.

Siri left the running of Gloucester in the hands of one of her young and talented chefs and hurried back to Oslo.

Amanda’s voice was everywhere.

But surely, you must know something? You can’t just stand there and not know. It’s not good enough! Please! She lived in your house! You were supposed to watch over her! Where is she? Where is she goddamn it? Tell me where she is!

It would soon be July and then she would have been gone a year.

A few weeks earlier that summer, Jon had had an excellent meeting with his editor, Gerda, and Julian, the publisher. They had split a bottle of wine. Everyone had agreed that the third part of the trilogy should be published in mid-November, which meant that he would have to deliver the manuscript by mid-August at the latest.

“Writer’s block or no writer’s block, this book will be published,” Jon had said with a loud laugh. Much louder than Gerda’s and Julian’s. He had wanted to show them that he could actually joke about this whole awkward situation that had arisen over the past few years, namely that he 1) owed the publishing house a lot of money, and 2) had never produced a manuscript.

It so happened, though, that the writing had been coming easier over the past couple of months. He’d had two good weeks in Sandefjord in April and May, except during that first weekend, when Karoline joined him and was all set on “defining their relationship.” She thought it might be better if she just told her husband, to which Jon had replied that he really didn’t think she should. Jon had Siri and Karoline had Kurt and they were all good friends and she mustn’t go messing things up or muddling things up or whatever the right expression was. “Let’s think about the kids, Karoline,” Jon said. “And besides, what good would it do telling Kurt about us?” And when she didn’t answer, he repeated: “Let’s think about the kids.”

Really, he just wanted to end the whole thing, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

And the text messages from Milla’s mother kept on coming, sometimes with weeks in between them, sometimes days. More often than not they came just when he had managed to put the whole thing to the back of his mind.

Her birthday today. She’s twenty. Walking around the flat searching for her. A
.

We find it almost impossible to talk about her. A
.

Is there something you’re not telling, Jon? Is there something you and Siri aren’t telling? A
.

July 15. She’s been gone a year. These are the anniversaries we will be observing from now on. A
.

On one occasion (when she had written “we find it almost impossible to talk about her”) he replied, asking if they should meet for coffee, and was relieved when he didn’t hear back from her.

Jon had imagined finishing the book at Mailund, Alma could watch Liv for a few hours outside while he wrote, but when, typically, Siri changed all their plans and moved everyone back to Oslo, he realized there would be nothing written this summer either. Siri immersed herself in work at the Oslo restaurant and it was up to him to figure out what to do all day with the children in the city.

When August came along, he tried to explain to Gerda why he didn’t have that many new pages to show her, why he would probably have to ask for a new deadline. Gerda said she would speak to Julian, but Jon sensed that she didn’t really
have time to listen to his explanations. Gerda had actually been quite brusque on the phone.

In October, Jon drove down to Mailund alone—to clean the gutters. He had never cleaned gutters before, but the strangest thing had happened: Irma had called him on his cell to ask if by any chance he had time to come down to Mailund and clean the gutters. Naturally Jon had been surprised that Irma should be calling him about anything. They had never spoken on the phone, or exchanged many words at all, despite having shared a house every summer for years, she living in the basement and he up in the attic, and neither of them needing to have anything to do with the other. But now: the gutters.

“Why are you calling
me
about this?” Jon asked.

“Well, because Ola was here and he said it was time we got the gutters cleaned,” Irma said.

“Can’t Ola do it?” Jon asked. “Or you, for that matter?”

“Ola’s too old,” Irma said, “and I’m too big and heavy, I’m afraid of heights. I don’t know anything about gutters.”

“Well, neither do I,” Jon said.

“Ola says the gutters are full of leaves and twigs, and something about if they freeze they could burst in the spring when it thaws.”

Siri said Jon
had
to go. This was an overture from Jenny and Irma. And such an overture had to be accepted. Siri was afraid that suddenly one day Jenny would be on her deathbed and that she wouldn’t be there.

“You know … 
be there
for her,” she said. “And it could happen anytime, the way she’s drinking and going on. It’s not like
Irma is taking care of her. Not really. And anyway, I should be the one taking care of my mother.”

So Jon googled “cleaning gutters,” then drove down to Mailund, spent the night in the attic, and cleaned the gutters as well as he could, and since he was there anyway, Irma wondered whether he could do a couple of other little chores. He stayed for three days, but didn’t see much of Jenny or Irma, which suited him fine. He actually wrote a few pages too, in between the odd jobs, and he found himself thinking that it was nice to get away for a little while. Now and again he would get up from his desk and look out the attic window at the meadow, which was covered with frost in the mornings, and sometimes when he did that he thought of Milla. But he didn’t want to think about Milla and he didn’t want to think about the letter he had never gotten around to writing to Milla’s parents and he certainly did not want to think of how he might have been able to save her that evening, had he gone to meet her as she suggested.

I’ll be around this evening if you feel like getting away from the party and having a glass of wine with me, at the Bellini, maybe?

On his last evening at Mailund, Jon took a walk with Leopold down the long road to the jetties and the shop. They normally went for a walk in the woods, but Jon wanted to pick up a couple of beers and some peanuts. The evenings were dark now and he and Leopold barely missed bumping into a boy of about ten who came tearing toward them on his bike.

“Hey, you,” Jon cried. “Watch where you’re going.”

Simen stopped and looked back.

“You’re Jon Dreyer,” he said, unfazed by Jon’s attempt at a stern voice. “You’re a writer, aren’t you?”

“That’s right, yes,” Jon said with a little laugh. “But how did you know that? I don’t expect you read my books?”

“No, I don’t,” said Simen. “Neither does my father, he tried to read one of your books, but he thought it was boring. My father likes books based on real life. But my mother likes you. She’s read all your books. But it’s a long time since you wrote anything new, my mother says. She’s in this book group in Oslo, with five other women, and I think they once read something by you. She’s talked about you because you stay at Mailund in the summer. You’re kind of like a neighbor, she says. You’re Alma’s father, aren’t you?”

Jon nodded.

“Alma used to look after me sometimes when I was younger. That was a long time ago.”

“Oh, yes,” Jon said. “I think I remember you now.”

“But you weren’t there this summer,” Simen said.

“No,” Jon said.

“That girl Milla, she lived in your house a year ago, when she disappeared?” Simen went on.

“Yes, she did,” Jon said.

“Was it because she couldn’t be found? Was that why you weren’t here this summer?”

“No,” Jon said. “We were here for four days, but then we went back to Oslo to work.”

He checked himself. He did not have to explain himself to this boy. His cell phone trilled and Jon pulled it out.

She had so many plans. A
.

“I’m a Liverpool supporter,” Simen said. “Who do you support?”

Jon stuffed his phone back into his pocket and said, “I’m a Liverpool supporter too, but I haven’t really kept up with them lately.”

Simen had been cycling around him during this conversation. Round and round and round. His cycling was as effortless as his speech, as instinctive, or more so: The turn of the pedals, the whir of the wheels, the hum of his voice, it was as if, Jon thought, he were actually talking through the bike, breathing through the bike, as if he and the bike were one. Jon walked ahead and Simen and the bike circled around him as they carried on down the road.

“You must know Irma, too, then,” Simen said.

Jon confirmed that yes, he did know Irma, seeing that she lived with Jenny at Mailund.

“She hissed at me once,” Simen said. “I hadn’t done anything wrong, nothing at all. Was just cycling around the way I am now. Wasn’t even anywhere near her with my bike and suddenly she grabbed my handlebars and hissed at me.”

Simen reached his hand out to Jon and grabbed his arm, opened his mouth and let out a hissing sound, to show him what had happened.

Jon nodded slowly.

“I mean, I could have fallen off my bike,” Simen said.

“Maybe you scared her,” Jon suggested. “Maybe she thought you were going to run into her?”

Simen shook his head. “No, she didn’t look very scared.”

Simen and the bike reared up slightly, possibly in an effort to regain Jon’s full attention.

“Have you noticed that she glows?”

“Glows?” Jon said. “How do you mean?”

“That she shines in the dark,” Simen said. “I don’t know how to explain it.” He executed a perfect circle around Jon. “You’re the writer,” he added. “You explain it!”

“I’ve sometimes thought that she has the face of an angel,” Jon said. “Maybe that’s why she glows, if that’s what she does. I think she looks like the angel Uriel in that painting by Leonardo da Vinci, the one called
The Virgin of the Rocks
. You’ve heard of Leonardo da Vinci, right?”

“Irma doesn’t look anything like an angel,” Simen interjected, clearly annoyed with Jon for making such an inaccurate comparison. “I mean, she’s huge. She must be the biggest woman in the world. She’s even taller than Peter Crouch.”

“Who’s Peter Crouch?” Jon asked.

Simen slammed on his brakes and stared at Jon.

“I thought you said you were a Liverpool supporter.”

“What I said was that I used to root for Liverpool, but that I haven’t really kept up with them lately. Does Peter Crouch play for Liverpool?”

“No.” Simen sighed. “He’s with the Spurs now, but he
used to
play for Liverpool.
He’s big, he’s red, his feet stick out of the bed
. You know?”

Jon shook his head.

“He’s REALLY tall. Just like Irma.”

“Yeah, so you said,” Jon replied. “And you’re right, she is really tall. But I still think she has the face of an angel, and
there’s no saying that all angels have to be small and sweet. Like the angels on Christmas trees—”

“The point,” said Simen, interrupting, “is that she glows. And I was wondering whether you’d noticed this.”

“That she has a kind of inner glow, you mean?” Jon asked uncertainly.

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Simen said. He thought for a moment. “She glows in the dark. I know she does. I saw it. It was like she’d just swallowed a fireball.”

“Like she’d just swallowed a fireball,” Jon repeated.

“Yes, exactly,” Simen said. “That’s exactly what it was like.”

OLD AGE STRUCK
quickly. Who would have thought that in the prime of her life Jenny Brodal the bookseller would get sick and then go lose her mind?

One day in the early spring of 2010, on her way to the hairdresser, Jenny slipped on a patch of ice (or was she, in fact, drunk?) and broke her hip. From then on she was confined to a wheelchair and began to tell the same stories over and over again; people stopped coming to visit her and after a while they also stopped calling. Eventually her wits deserted her and she just sat in her wheelchair or lay in bed, rambling. She wasn’t suffering from dementia, the doctor said, as he endeavored, with a few carefully chosen words, to explain to Siri why, at the age of seventy-six, her mother had become this way. Jenny’s condition was the result of many little aneurisms.

Irma the giantess appointed herself deathbed nurse and decided that it was time to bolt the doors, shut everyone out, including Siri. The story of Jenny Brodal as helpless old loony was not one to spread around, she said. “Certain stories have to be kept under wraps.”

Siri stood in the garden, looking up at the big white house. The tall maple tree in the yard had started to rot and whenever it was windy large branches fell off and crashed to the ground.

“She doesn’t want you here!” Irma said. Then she said it again, more softly: “She doesn’t want you here, Siri.”