The Happiest People in the World (11 page)

G
ood morning.” This was Matty, talking to Ellen. It was three in the morning. It was after three in the morning. She'd just gotten home, had tiptoed into the room, and had slipped into their bed. Now she was just lying there, hands clasped over her chest, staring at the ceiling, in the way of married people who have slunk into bed too late and think they've gotten away with it and are now wondering, Now what? Matty knew this because he'd been, and somewhat still was, the slinker, the wonderer.

“Good morning.”

“Jesus!” Ellen said, sitting up straight. “I thought you were asleep.”

“Well,” Matty said. “I'm not.”

The wind roared. It would be even colder tomorrow. It would snow some more, too. The wind roared, the windows rattled in their frames. Matty had grown up in this house; he'd bought it from his parents right before they moved to Florida and then died—not on the beach or the golf course, as is the dream, but from a carbon monoxide leak in their condo while they watched television in the middle of the afternoon. Anyway, Matty had lived in this house his entire life, more or less. When the wind was up, the windows had always rattled in their fucking frames. His father had never done anything about it, and so neither had Matty. God, it sounds like the glass is going to break. But no, the glass won't break, because the glass has never broken. God, I should have lived somewhere else, Matty thought. Anywhere else. But where?

Ellen lay back down. Matty was on his back, too. She was as close to touching him as she could possibly be without actually touching him. Matty remembered when they were in high school and they'd gone to see a movie and their elbows were on the same armrest and Ellen was as close to touching him as she could possibly have been without actually touching him. This was exactly the opposite of that.

Still, they didn't talk. Matty's mind was nervous. It flitted from Locs to Ellen, Locs to Ellen. Where are you? his mind asked Locs. Where have you been? it asked Ellen. He turned a little and watched his wife watch the ceiling, watched her watch the ceiling for an unbearably long time, thought of the most irritating question one person can ask another person, remembered how Ellen had reacted to his asking that particular question many times over the years by answering as truthfully and pain-givingly as possible, tried to stop himself from asking that question, failed.

“What are you thinking?” he asked her.

“That I want a divorce.”

“Seriously?” he said, and Ellen nodded, still looking at the ceiling, and then Matty rolled onto his back to look at it, too. Why did people look up in times of great distress or sadness? Matty could imagine a student paper on the subject
: Throughout the history of mankind, in times of great famine or strife or war, people of all faiths and persuasions would look to the stars for guidance and comfort.
That paper would probably get an A–, despite the gross generalizations. But he and Ellen weren't looking at the stars; they were looking at the ceiling, which needed some serious replastering. Not much comfort there. The whole thing might fall on their heads at any time. Maybe then they could see the stars. Of course, they might already be crushed dead by the fallen ceiling. And possibly
there
was your comfort.

“Wow,” Matty said.

“You asked,” Ellen said.

“Fair enough,” he said.

“I'm sorry, Matty,” Ellen said, and she sounded like she meant it. She even put her hand on Matty's forearm and left it there for a little while, and by the time she moved the hand, Matty felt like he was married again, marriage being in this case something you feel like fighting for only after you've already lost it.

“Am I really going to lose you?” Matty asked.

“Yes,” Ellen said. “I'm going to sleep now.” Then she rolled away from Matty and did that.

I am not going to lose you. I am going to fight for you! Matty thought but did not say—mostly because of the transparent emptiness of the sentiment, but also because he wasn't totally sure whether he was thinking it about Ellen or Locs. And in either case, with what weapon would he fight? And at whom would he aim it?

PART FOUR

I
have blood on my hands, Søren had decided to say to Jens Baedrup's widow.

“I'm going to tell her I have blood on my hands,” was what he said to his friend Tarik.

“Not literally,” Tarik said.

“Well, I might not use that exact phrase.”

“No, I mean you don't literally have blood on your hands.”

“Gasoline.”

“And not even that anymore,” Tarik said. He'd had gasoline on his hands, too. But not blood, literally or figuratively. And in any case, it had been four years ago. Tarik's general feeling on the matter was, Come on, that was four years ago.

“That's easy for you to say,” Søren said. “You don't have blood on your hands.”

They were walking along Skagen Havn. It was a Saturday, early fall, which felt a lot like early winter. The cold wind was making the sailboats wag and bobble and strain at their moorings. The light was low and giving shine to the dull tankers as they chugged in and out of port. Søren and Tarik had worked all day at the boatyard. Their jobs were decent, decent jobs they hadn't had four years ago. Four years, four years. The wind gusted and the white awnings flapped over the red fish houses.

Tarik said, “Why do we paint the fish houses red when we paint every other building in this town yellow?”

Søren didn't miss the “we.” Four years ago, Tarik would not have said “we.” That was why they both had gasoline on their hands now, except that Søren had more than just gasoline. That's why he needed to go see Jens Baedrup's widow.

“
We,
” Søren repeated.

“Just keep my name out of it,” Tarik said.

“You wouldn't say ‘we,' ” Søren said, “if you had blood on your hands.”

S
øren thought it would probably be difficult to find the address of the widow of a cartoonist whom he'd murdered in what the newspapers had called a terrorist firebombing, but that was not the case. It hadn't been difficult to find the cartoonist's address, either. It hadn't been difficult for Søren to burn down his house, or for Tarik to burn down the newspaper's offices. It hadn't even been difficult for them to escape capture after the firebombing, after the newspapers had reported that the cartoonist had died in the fire Søren had set. No one from the police or the Danish Security and Intelligence Service had ever questioned them, even though there were barely any Muslims in Skagen, and even though it had been the only murder committed in Skagen that year, and the year before that, and so on. Murder, murder; blood, blood.
That
was the difficult part: having the words
murder
and
blood
crawl through his head for the past four years. Although he supposed the murder hadn't been easy for the cartoonist, either. Not to mention his widow.

Anyway, she lived in Aarhus, just a couple of hours south. The newspaper reports had given him her name. The Internet had given him her address and then directions how to get there. But first Søren had to borrow his dad's car.

So he went home, which was less than a mile from the boatyard where he and Tarik worked, right across the street from OC Trawl, where his father worked, making fishing nets. His house was the house in which Søren had grown up and in which he still lived. It was yellow, of course, and had a red tile roof, also of course. His parents' names were Faruk and Benan, but they'd named him Søren, although their last name was Korkmaz. As far as Søren was concerned, they might as well have just named him Dane, Son of Turks.

Søren walked in the front door. His father was sitting on the couch, watching professional handball on TV. Handball was his father's favorite sport, even though he didn't understand the rules, because pretty much no one understood the rules. You were allowed to run and leap and catch and hurl the ball, except, in some circumstances, for some mysterious reasons, when these activities were forbidden.

“Kolding and Aalborg,” Søren's father said. “Don't tell me who won.”

“What?”

“It was actually played last night,” Søren's father said. “They're replaying it on TV now. Don't tell me who won.”

Søren sat down next to his father, who smelled of salt and fish, even though the nets he made hadn't yet touched the sea. Or maybe it was Søren himself who smelled that way. He watched the handball for a minute, but then it started to hurt his eyes, and so he looked out the front window. It was dark, and darker still with the fog, which came right up to the window. A deep-throated horn blew out there somewhere, and the fog seemed to get somehow even thicker against the pane. It was one of those times when it was difficult to imagine that it wasn't six o'clock everywhere in the world. Søren turned back to the TV and saw a bunch of rangy white men in knee and elbow pads hugging each other.

“Goal?” he said.

“I believe so,” his father said.

“I don't know how you can watch this stuff.”

His father shrugged. “It's better than making nets.” This was the way Søren's father talked. Something was always better than something else. When his wife, Søren's mother, had died several years earlier of breast cancer, he'd gone back to work making nets the day after, and when someone had asked him how he could go back to work making nets so soon after his wife's death, he had shrugged and said, “It's better than sitting at home.”

“Can I borrow the car tomorrow morning?” Søren asked. And then he added, “Don't look at me like that.”

“Look at you like what?” Søren's father said, still looking at him like that. His father's look: it had always been there. But it had gotten more intense, more squirm inducing, more
knowing,
since Søren had accidentally murdered the cartoonist. Or was that just Søren's imagination? In any case, Søren didn't know how much longer he could take it, the look, the look, the look that was made up of a litany of don'ts: don't disappoint me, don't make me look bad, don't make your people look bad, don't you know we moved to this country so you could be your own person, don't be someone else's person, don't forget that you're my son, don't do anything stupid, don't hurt the car, don't hurt yourself, don't you know that your mother told me before she died not to let anything happen to you, don't you know I'd die if something happened to you, don't make me die, don't kill me, don't kill yourself, don't kill anyone else, don't get caught if you do, don't do anything terrible, don't you know that I love you no matter what terrible thing you've done, don't forget that, don't do it again, don't make it worse, don't you know I know everything about you, don't cry, for crying out loud, don't cry because then I'll cry, just don't, don't,
do not
.

“Just don't forget to put gas in the car,” Søren's father said, and he turned back to his handball.

I
sn't it Saturday?” the imam said. Søren was looking into the tiny eye at the top of his computer but was also looking at the screen itself. On it was a man his father's age with a long gray-black beard grown high on his cheeks, wearing thick-framed glasses with slightly tinted lenses and a white turban and white robes. At least Søren assumed they were robes: Søren had only ever seen the imam from the shoulders up. “Isn't it a Saturday night?” the imam asked.

“Please, I know,” Søren said. There were no mosques in Skagen; there were no Muslim prayer groups in Skagen, either; there were no Muslims in town at all except for Søren and Tarik and their families. Before Søren had killed the cartoonist, he had not been religious; he had not felt religious; he had not felt the need to feel religious. But ever since then, ever since he had committed a crime that everyone seemed to think was a crime that could only be committed by a religious zealot, Søren had felt the need to feel something else, something greater that might keep him from feeling something worse than what he already felt. So he went online. The problem with going online was that the kind of people who wanted to give advice online tended to be people who were big advocates of things like burning and killing, and Søren had already done that. But finally, a few months earlier, Søren had received what seemed like a mass e-mail from this imam, a Turkish Dane from Copenhagen who claimed to be all the things Søren wanted—he was wise, he was gentle, he was measured, he was compassionate, he had a reliable Internet connection and the ability to skype—and it turned out he was all those things, although he could also be a bit of a nag when it came to the subject of how Søren spent his Saturday nights.

“It's a Saturday night,” the imam said. “You should be out with your friends.”

It is not Saturday night in my heart, Søren thought but did not say, because the imam tended to get very impatient with Søren when he said this kind of thing. “I don't really have any friends,” Søren said.

“What about . . . ,” the imam said, searching for the name of the friend Søren had mentioned before.

“Tarik,” Søren said.

“Yes,” the imam said. “Him.”

“He's probably out with his friends.”

“Is there a reason his friends can't be yours?”

Søren thought about this. He'd been out with Tarik and his friends on previous Saturday nights. Tarik's friends were all white Danes—people with whom he and Søren had gone to school, people with whom they worked down at the boatyard, random people from around Skagen, friends of friends. They often gathered at Tarik's apartment before they went out and did whatever. After work, Tarik would tell him, “Go home, shower, then come to my apartment. It'll be fun. Don't be such a mope.” Søren would go home, shower, walk to Tarik's apartment. And then he would be such a mope. He couldn't seem to help himself. Every time Søren caught himself having even a little bit of fun, he would think, But I'm a murderer. Whenever one of Tarik's friends seemed to be looking at him even a little bit funny, Søren would think, I bet you think I killed that cartoonist. And then he would add, And you're right: I did. “You're such a mope,” Tarik would say. “What's your problem?” But Tarik knew his problem.

“Yes,” Søren said. “There's a reason.”

“Is it a good reason?”

Søren shrugged. He'd never come close to telling his father what he had done, but several times over the past month Søren had come close to telling the imam. The urge is great among those guilty of serious crimes to confess to relative strangers who nevertheless seem, in some obscure way, trustworthy. But Søren never could quite do it. The imam might be affected by the confession, but he hadn't been directly affected by the thing to which Søren wanted to confess. He would confess to the imam, and still he would feel the need to confess to the cartoonist's widow. Søren shrugged again. “They just don't seem like my kind of people,” he said. The imam just stared into the screen, waiting, and so Søren added, “I don't think they like me very much.”

“And why is that?” the imam asked. When Søren shrugged again, the imam said, “Sometimes, in order to understand our enemies we must put ourselves in their place; we must try to see ourselves from their point of view.”

“Is that from the Koran?” Søren asked. The imam had seemed shocked that Søren had never read the Koran, not once in his twenty-two years. So he made Søren buy a copy, suggested he read a page or so a night. Søren had done that. Perhaps it was wrong to say, about reading a holy book, that you were kind of enjoying it, but Søren was kind of enjoying it, although it also had the effect of making much of what the imam said seem like he might be quoting from the Koran.

The imam smiled. “No, that's all mine,” he said. And then: “What about your father? What's he doing tonight?”

“He went out for a walk.” This was true, although it was also true that Søren had no idea where his father went when we went for his Saturday night walks. After dinner on Saturday, Søren's father often went out for walks and then didn't come back until an hour or two later. Søren suspected that his father had a girlfriend, a suspicion that made him feel happy and also made him feel like the loneliest person in the world.

“Poor Søren,” the imam said. “Everybody is out doing something. Everybody but you.”

This was the kind of tough love the imam practiced when pushed. He could be kind, and gentle, and patient, but he also liked to mock Søren when those things didn't seem to be working. Usually Søren just shrugged and took it, because he didn't want the imam to give up on him. But not tonight. Tomorrow Søren was going to confess to the cartoonist's widow, and everything was probably going to change then anyway. So why not start changing things tonight? “Not everybody,” Søren said. “It's a Saturday night for you, too. You're just as pathetic as I am.”

The imam blinked once, twice. He smiled sadly at the computer screen. “Maybe you're right,” he said. He leaned forward, into the screen, reached out his right arm, and then disappeared.