Where Monsters Dwell Page 5

  It was from Morris.

  7

  Trondheim, September 2010

  When Vatten woke up on Sunday, it was way past breakfast and the usual time for his Sunday walk. He drank his coffee and looked out the window. Then he put on a pair of worn but sturdy hiking boots and rain gear and went out. He walked all the way up to Kuhaugen Hill, sat down on a bench, and looked out over the town and the fjord. The drizzle landed like drops of dew on his face, and he hoped for a moment that the rain would clear his thoughts enough to remember more than just blurry glimpses of what had happened in the library the day before. Or that it would also wash away the unpleasant feeling that he had done something terribly stupid after drinking those two mugs of Spanish red wine. But the rain did nothing but make his face wet.

  On the way back he took a detour, and unexpectedly ran into Siri Holm, the new librarian. She was walking in the vicinity of Kvilhaugen with a smug-looking Afghan hound. It was the dog who saw him first.

  “Well, if it isn’t our security officer,” she said with a smile.

  “Oh, hi. I almost didn’t see you. Lost in my own thoughts,” he said apologetically, with a strained smile. He looked at the dog, who was staring haughtily into space.

  “Your dog?”

  “No, I found her here and caught her with a leash I just so happened to have with me,” she said with a teasing laugh. “I’m sure she belongs to the local tribe of Afghan hounds.”

  “Dumb question. I just didn’t picture you as a dog person.”

  “I’m probably a lot of different things you can’t imagine.” She smiled and held his gaze so long that he blushed. “If you’re out for a Sunday walk, maybe you have time for a cup of tea at my place?”

  He hesitated.

  “Come on, I promise not to put the moves on you. Not right away, anyway.”

  Siri Holm was fifteen years younger than Vatten. He didn’t know many women her age, but he didn’t think that young women had changed much since he was in his early twenties. He realized that she wasn’t just young. She was something altogether unique. If he took her at her word and was interpreting her signals correctly—the smile, the way she put her hand on his shoulder when they were talking—then he had to assume that she was flirting with him. Still, he wasn’t sure. It was more like she was coming on to the whole world.

  “Have you got any coffee?” he asked.

  She didn’t, but he followed her to her place anyway. She lived in a two-room apartment in a wooden building at the top of Rosenborg, with a view over the whole town and the fjord. She told him that she’d gotten the apartment from her father, who, according to her, had made a bit too much money a bit too easily.

  Vatten knew how places could get messy. Several rooms in his house were filled with old books, magazines, newspapers, and other useless items he didn’t have the energy to clean up. But at least he had some kind of order; things were in boxes or stacked up. Siri Holm’s apartment, on the other hand, was utter chaos—he’d never seen a messier place. Apart from a bookcase along one wall of the living room, where the books stood in surprisingly neat rows, everything looked like it was out of place. There were clothes on the floor and dirty dishes everywhere: on the coffee table, on the rug, under the couch. There was a hodgepodge of antiques and stuffed animals scattered over the floor and piled on the tables. On one of the wide windowsills lay a trumpet, one of the few objects not covered with a layer of dust. In the middle of the room stood a mannequin wearing a tae kwon do outfit. Around its waist was an ominous black belt.

  The dog ignored the mess completely, sauntering across the living-room floor without stepping on anything, and lay down with a lethargic expression on a pillow near the door to the kitchen. Vatten watched Siri through the doorway as she fixed the tea. She had to fish out the teapot from underneath a pile of mail and old newspapers.

  “Welcome to my cabinet of curiosities,” she said when she entered the living room carrying two cups. She set them down on two bare spots on the coffee table that he hadn’t noticed at first. Then she cleared off some books and magazines from the couch and invited him to have a seat.

  When he sat down a bit hesitantly on the sofa, she came and sat down right next to him, so close that he could feel her thigh against his own. It was firmer than his was.

  “When I get my first paycheck I’m going to hire a cleaning service. I hate housework. It’s such a waste of time, don’t you think?”

  “I thought you were a librarian,” he said laconically.

  “I keep my thoughts organized, and my books,” she said, pointing at the bookcase. “All the rest are just things in the way.” She laughed. “I think I have to get myself a boyfriend who’s a neat freak. At least for long enough so he could set up a couple of big cabinets for me that I could put everything in.” Then she put her hand on his knee. “Maybe you’d like the job?”

  “May I take a look at your books?” he asked, getting up and smoothing out his slacks.

  “That’s not all you need to ask a lady to take a look at,” she said. “Go for it.”

  The bookcase covered the whole wall across from the windows, and to Vatten’s great surprise, it contained only one genre.

  “I see you like mysteries.”

  “It’s more of a mania than a real fondness, I’m afraid.” She had left the couch and was standing next to him. “I collect solutions.”

  “Solutions?”

  “Yes. Look here.” She took out a book with no lettering on the spine. It was a thick, leather-bound diary, obviously expensive. When she opened it he saw that it was filled with short, handwritten entries. Each of them began with what was evidently the title of a mystery novel. Then there was a name—under the heading Murderer. After that was a page reference.

  “Here I’ve written down the names of all the murderers in the novels I’ve read and on which page I figured it out. It’s one of my specialties. I once had a boyfriend who claimed that it was my biggest talent: figuring out the murderer in a mystery novel. But he didn’t know me very well. And now that I think of it, I never gave him a decent blow job.”

  Vatten blushed.

  “Agatha Christie is the easiest. Lots of people think she’s hard, but I think she’s easy,” Siri went on. “But every author has his own pattern. That’s why the first book you read by a new author is always the hardest. How does this author think? How does she construct her books? Figuring out the murderer in a book isn’t the same thing as doing it in reality. The biggest mistake people make is that they try to stick to the facts of the case, but that doesn’t matter at all. It’s about the narrative flow, the way the story is laid out, what function the various characters have in the story, things like that.”

  “Interesting,” he said, and meant it. “Can you give me an example? I always get fooled.” The erection he had been trying to get rid of since he left the sofa was beginning to subside.

  “The rule of thirds,” she said.

  “The rule of thirds? And what’s that?”

  “The murderer is usually most visible in the first third of the book. That’s when the author dares to show a glimpse of him or her. The rest of the book is spent trying to present that character as being unimportant, irrelevant, while other possible suspects are put forward instead.”

  “And then the murderer is pulled out of the hat again at the end?”

  “Exactly. But as usual, knowing a rule isn’t enough. There are a lot of other signs you have to look for and keep track of. It’s a matter of experience.” She smiled, clearly aware of the curious and somewhat absurd nature of such insight.

  “You read Poe, I see.” Vatten took out a volume of collected works translated to Swedish from the bookcase and felt a rather alarming tingling in his body. This was the second time this weekend he had ended up talking about Poe with a woman, though he couldn’t remember how it had turned out the first time.

  “Sure, but I don’t really like him. I don’t like any sort of fantastic literature: horror
or fantasy or science fiction. I don’t see the point of it. It’s just too easy for the author when he can make up whatever he wants. It’s sort of the same with Poe as a mystery writer. The solution of ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ is just a gimmick. I mean, an ape as the murderer? You have to give the reader a chance. If you don’t, it’s not a crime novel, the way I see it.” She paused. “Have I disappointed you? You like Poe, don’t you? I can see it in your face. Not everything he wrote is bad. I like the one with the police officers who can’t find the letter.”

  “‘The Purloined Letter,’” said Vatten.

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  She leaned forward unexpectedly and kissed him on the cheek. She took the book he was holding and put it back on the shelf. He watched with fascination as she lined it up perfectly with the other books, so that it didn’t stick out or get pushed in too far. Then she took his hand and leaned toward him again. This time she kissed him on the lips.

  “Something has happened in your life,” she said. “Either you’re grieving over something, or you have a great secret, or maybe both.”

  Then she slipped her face down along his body, until she was squatting with her head even with his hips. She opened his fly and took him quickly into her mouth. His eyes swept over the spines of the books on the shelves, and then fled out the window on the other side of the room, out across the town and the fjord. At last he focused his gaze on the isle of Munkholmen covered by a drifting mist. When was the last time he was out there? It was before, when life was still normal. Back when he used to receive pleasures like this from his wife.

  Then he came. He felt her swallow, and then she wiped her hand playfully across her mouth, and laughed.

  “Oi, and here I promised not to come on to you.”

  “I think I’d better be getting home,” said Vatten.

  “Okay,” she said and went back to the sofa to sit down.

  * * *

  I never learn, Siri Holm thought after Vatten had left. But I’m sure that something good will come of this. The man is completely tied up in knots. He’ll relax more the next time we meet.

  She went into the cramped bathroom, which was just as messy as the rest of her apartment, found her toothbrush, which had fallen on the floor, and brushed her teeth. Then she got out her trumpet and stood in the living room playing a tune from Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue.

  The last thing she thought before her head was filled with music was this: She had heard all about what had happened to Vatten several years ago. But like everyone else, she wanted to know the answer to the question she had hinted at earlier. The solution to the puzzle that was Vatten. Was he in mourning, or was he harboring a secret that not even the police had managed to discover?

  8

  Near Trondheim Fjord, September 1528

  It was from the beard-cutter himself that he had learned the art of making vellum. It was tedious work. The dried calfskin was first softened in water, stretched on a frame, and then scraped until it had the proper pliable writing surface. Calf was considered the best, but the beard-cutter also taught him how to use other types of skin to produce writing material with different qualities. As he sat working with this skin, which was definitely not calf, he noticed what an excellent material it was, and he could not help but think back on the first time he had met the beard-cutter.

  Trondheim, 1512–14

  The boy was holding the cat by the tail, listening to the screeches that were so similar to those of a tiny, hungry baby.

  “Crybaby,” he said to the animal, watching it writhe to get loose. The hairs on the cat’s back were standing up. It was trying to scratch him, but he held it at arm’s length.

  “You are just a little crybaby.”

  It was Nils, the son of Erik the smith, who had told him that cats always land on their feet no matter how you drop them. To see if that was true, he was going to throw the cat in the river. Then it would land softly, and it could swim. He knew that. He did not want to kill the cat. With one hand he gripped its tail, with the other he held the cat’s neck. Then he turned the animal over so its back faced the water below. The distance was at least the height of two men from the edge of the wharf where he was standing, alone in the shadows between two warehouses.

  “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,” he said. And then he let go.

  He saw the cat turn in midair, just as Nils had said. Its paws were now pointing straight down, the skin under its front legs spread out, almost as if it had wings. An angel. Then the cat hit the water and disappeared in a swirl of bubbles and foam. When it surfaced, the little head looked even smaller out there in the current, which caught the cat and swept it along. He ran after it but could not keep to the edge of the wharf the whole way. In some places the warehouses stood at the very edge, and he had to run around them. He lost sight of the cat several times, but always managed to locate it again. The little head, the bravely struggling paws. The cat kept itself afloat but was being pulled farther and farther away from him. Where the wharf ended, a path ran along the river toward the fjord. He followed the cat the whole way but could do nothing to save it. All he could do was watch it being swept along by the current. When he reached the mouth of the river, he saw the animal for the last time, before it vanished into the white foam where the seawater met the river. Then the cat was gone. He sat down in the grass by the riverbank. He was seven summers old. He would no longer have the cat to sleep with at night, no one to lie awake with as he listened to the bellowing men who visited his mother in the bed right next to his, the ones who left money to put food on the table. There was no longer anyone to share his food with, or to rub against his leg when he came home after a long day on the streets or in the smithy with Johan, his mother’s friend. The smith never shared his mother’s bed, but he gave the boy work to do on the days when it was busy.

  “That was a stupid thing to do,” he said out loud to himself, but he did not cry.

  “I saw you,” said a voice behind him. “I saw you in-between the warehouses back in town.”

  He gave a start and abruptly turned around. He hated surprises. They made him feel so small. A man with a big, dark beard and clear green eyes stood behind him wearing a blue woolen cloak. Under it he was dressed in fine, clean linen. The clasp on his cloak showed that he had money. The man looked tired, as if that was a constant condition for him.

  “That didn’t go the way you thought it would, did it?” said the man.

  The boy shook his head slowly, then looked out over the fjord. It was dark today. Maybe it was going to rain.

  “You’ll see the cat again in heaven,” said the man.

  “Do animals go to heaven?” asked the boy, looking the man in the eye for the first time. He did not usually look men in the eye. Not even the smith. What he really wanted to ask was, Will I go to heaven?

  “Animals that are loved do,” said the man. He leaned over and put his hand on the boy’s head.

  “Did I love the cat?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know.” The boy looked out toward the fjord again, at the cloister on the island. He saw it every day from the smith’s window, but it belonged to a different and more peaceful world than his.

  “I think you did,” said the man. “And I think you’ve learned something from this. Remember that the way you treat animals says a lot about what sort of man you are.”

  The boy understood that the man with the fine cloak regarded him not as a boy, like his mother and the smith did, but as a man. He had waited a long time for someone to realize that. He was a man.

  “Come with me,” said the man, “and I’ll buy you a beer.”

  * * *

  The beard-cutter stayed in Trondheim for two winters. He made some attempts to get himself a cabin where he could carry out his work, but he could not find one for a good price, nor could he find a widow to marry. But he was not trying very hard. He had plenty of money after selling a house in Bergen, and could spend his tim
e as he liked. Mostly that meant reading the books at the school, where he got along well with the headmaster, buying beer and food for the boys from the Latin school, and going on fishing trips up the river. He lived with his guild brother, and as time went on, he became better and better friends with the boy’s mother. Gradually more food appeared on the table, and the first autumn he was in the town, the beard-cutter managed to get the boy admitted to the Latin school. His mother no longer had to entertain the little group of craftsmen who had kept them alive until then. After a while they were able to move in with Ingierd Mattsdatter, the widow of Odmund the carpenter, a hot-tempered fellow who people had simply called Odmund the Hammer. Few missed him, least of all Ingierd.

  After two years had passed, there were no more books for the beard-cutter to read, either at the school or at Archbishop Erik’s estate, and he began to feel restless. The boy was the first to notice, but his mother mentioned it one evening when the beard-cutter came to supper. The boy was sitting on the bed he shared with his mother, now that she was no longer sharing it with other men. His mother spoke softly, afraid that he might hear, but he heard it anyway.

  “Are you leaving soon?” she said.

  “I’m afraid so. There’s not much for me to do in this town. There never was.”

  “Then why did you stay so long?”

  “I don’t know. There were things I had to put behind me. But now I’m ready to move on.”

  “I want you to take the boy with you,” she said.

  “You can’t mean that,” said the beard-cutter, but the boy could hear from where he was sitting that he was not surprised.

  “You can give him what I cannot. The boy has a good head on his shoulders. I’ve always known that, but I’ve never understood him. I can never seem to reach him. It’s as if a little demon lives inside, locking him away from me.” His mother sighed. “Maybe it’s just because he’s a boy.”