I Can See in the Dark by Karin Fossum Page B

again on the first of December, and hey presto, it’s Christmas. I like doing things the easy way. Just like you. Help yourself to another drink,’ I coaxed, and nodded towards the bottle. ‘The drink’s all right, isn’t it? And you might as well fill your hip flask while you’re about it, so you’ll have something to keep you going when you wake up tomorrow.’
    Arnfinn nodded, and drank deeply. I thought I was an excellent host, despite my lack of experience. I poured the vodka and let him talk about himself and his life.
    ‘Why don’t you switch the light on?’ he asked, after a long silence. ‘It’s so dark.’
    I didn’t mention my excellent night vision. I switched on a light above the sofa, and the hours went quickly by, having a visitor was a totally novel experience. A stranger, admittedly, but we would gradually get to know each other, if he should decide to return, and I was fairly certain he would. Then he told me about all the black days, about his bad back, it was bad enough for him to claim Disability Allowance, about all the countries he’d been to, all the ports, as he put it, all the women who’d come and gone, and all of them
had
gone because, as Arnfinn pensively assured me, taking a pull at his glass, nothing good lasts. He drank himself into great glittering halls, of light and laughter and warmth. When, after four hours, he finally left and the vodka bottle was empty, I stood at the front door watching him go. He vacillated on the drive for a moment, shining like a torch, unsure, almost, if he really did want to go, perhaps I had another bottle, and maybe his journey home was a long one. I stood at the top of the steps and was aware of something new.
    Arnfinn, I could say when I went to work. Oh yes, he’s an old friend of mine, he often pops in for a visit. I felt happy, standing there on the steps, I liked this new condition of having a friend. He was an alcoholic, it was true, but that was better than nothing.
    ‘Will you be all right getting home?’ I enquired.
    He coughed contemptuously and began walking.
    ‘You’re talking to an old skipper,’ he said.
    Then he moved off down the road and vanished.
    A lone, burning soul.

Chapter 15
    IT’S TOO LIGHT and too hot in summer. The days never end, I can’t stand all this germinating and sprouting and growing. It’s like an unbridled force, a cornucopia without meaning: worms that peer out during wet weather, flies and wasps, ladybirds and lice, moths and daddy-long-legs in the curtains, spiders in the corners, mice in the wall, I can hear them scratching. They swarm, creep or crawl, my thoughts get badly disrupted, and I slowly go mad.
    I gradually realised that something was taking shape deep within me. An incomprehensible longing whose contours I was in the process of discerning. I wanted to be something. Become something, mean something, be on everyone’s lips like a bitter pill. It wasn’t enough to wander up and down Løkka’s corridors pinching Nelly Friis, or whispering nasty threats in Waldemar Rommen’s ear. It wasn’t enough. I was a nobody. I was totally insignificant, nothing to look at, nothing to the world at large, eminently forgettable, and this knowledge was insufferable. I wanted people to turn and watch me pass, remember me and speak of me with reverence and respect. This yearning grew big. It filled my heart and head. Cost what it might, I had to make a difference. In some way or other, I had to check nature’s headlong rush.
    Like cutting branches off a tree.
    Like pouring poison down a well.
    It was as if I’d fallen in a river, I was going with the current, as fragments of images flitted past my mind’s eye. Like pennants in a summer breeze. Images of Arnfinn, his glass raised. Images of Oscar falling through the ice, images of Ebba with her crocheting, images of Miranda with her thin ankles. Images of Sister Anna, my angel, my little sugarplum.
    If only I had a woman!
    I went about observing life