Medusa Read online

  He managed only one of the social security forms during his lunch break, and as soon as he was finished with the day’s last patient, he put the phone on voicemail and set about the rest of the documents, as well as test results from the last four days. He made a note of the ones requiring further attention. Mostly trifles and probably false readings. Some possibly serious. And one that he sat studying in his hand. Cecilie Davidsen, the results of the biopsy test on that lump in her breast. Findings consistent with invasive glandular carcinoma stage III. Multiple mitosis, severely atypical and glandular metastasis. It was less than a week since the patient had come to see him. He had realised at once that the tumour was malignant and that same week had arranged for a mammography. Being on friendly terms with the right people helped, as did a reputation as a good general practitioner.

  He opened her notes and found her number, picked up the phone. A child’s voice at the other end.

  – Is your mother there? he asked.

  – Who are you?

  – I’m … I have a message for her.

  The child called for its mother; a little girl, he could tell, about Marlen’s age. He replaced the receiver.

  In the taxi, the image of Miriam again. She had a tiny freckle on her chin, directly below her ear. And another one just like it on the side of her neck. When she was listening, her eyebrows would rise quickly and quiver a few times before sinking again. He glanced at his watch, not sure whether he would have time to see his mother in the nursing home before catching the boat. You must always pay your dues, Axel. For his father, there was only one real sin here in life. Judge Torstein Glenne had come across so many people who had stolen, betrayed, killed. The only real sin is to lie. Everything else can be forgiven as long as you own up and make amends. When you lie, that’s when you’re really done for. It puts you on the outside. That is what Brede seems incapable of understanding.

  Axel asked the driver to wait, opened the gate into the garden. The Davidsens had a big garden, with apple trees and a raspberry hedge, and something that looked like clematis covering the whole of the front of the house. He rang the doorbell and heard a dog barking and someone calling inside, then the door was opened and a girl was standing there. She had a thin braid on each side of her head and a small, red, turned-up nose, and he realised this must the girl who had answered the phone twenty minutes earlier. She was holding a cocker spaniel by its collar, not much more than a puppy.

  – I’d like to talk to your mother.

  She looked at him and seemed afraid. The dog too; it pulled free and ran off.

  – You’re the person who rang, she said, not releasing him from her gaze.

  He nodded.

  – You hung up. When Mummy came, there was no one there.

  – It was better to come here and talk to her, he said.

  Just then Cecilie Davidsen appeared behind her daughter. She was wearing glasses; her hair was browner than last time and combed forward at the temples. It was the fashion, but it didn’t suit her. In her hand she was holding a book, an arithmetic primer for nursery school he noted. When she recognised him, her pupils widened and her face seemed to collapse.

  – Is it you … was it you that rang?

  He felt clumsy and helpless, and only now realised what a mistake it had been to come in person, bringing this news into her home.

  – I’ve got a visit to make in the neighbourhood. I thought I might just as well call in.

  She held the door open for him. All the colour had drained from her face. The girl put her arms around her waist and buried her face in her pullover.

  The messenger, thought Axel Glenne as he stepped over the threshold of the large villa in Vindern carrying the results of a test done on a tissue sample full of cells multiplying out of control and spreading death around them. There was a smell of dinner in the hallway, stronger in the living room. Meat and melted cheese, rice perhaps. He waited until the girl had been sent to her room with the puppy and the arithmetic book and a biscuit in her hand.

  – It’s about your tissue sample, he said, though he could see that the woman sitting opposite him knew exactly why he had come.

  15

  Thursday 4 October

  MARLEN’S FRIENDS HAD been invited for six o’clock. Axel had to drop his bicycle ride; he’d promised to get home early and arrange things. An hour before the party, he went and picked up the fizzy drinks and the pizza. The night before, Bie had baked a chocolate cake, buns, tea cakes and made a jelly. She was on an assignment in Stockholm and wouldn’t be back until the celebrations were over. She was happy enough to be missing all the racket and grateful to Axel for standing in. He’d asked Tom to help with the preparations, and his son had grunted something that might have been a yes, but a few moments later Axel had seen the back of his black leather jacket disappearing through the garden gate.

  While he laid the table with the paper tablecloth and the paper plates and blew up the balloons, Marlen sat underneath playing with the present he had given her that morning. She wanted a dog, or at least a cat. She couldn’t have either because she was allergic. A pig was rejected for the same reason, though from a medicinal point of view, the reasoning was doubtful. So he’d bought her a tortoise. It was good for everybody. It didn’t moult, didn’t need to go walks every hour of the day and night, was easy to feed and didn’t need contraceptive pills or vaccinations, didn’t pee on the carpets, and obeyed house rules without making a fuss. Marlen at once announced that it was her best friend. After a few trial baptisms she finally named it Cassiopeia, after another tortoise in a book Axel had read to her, and with that the creature also had its own constellation up in the night sky. Weeks ago Marlen had decided that all the birthday guests should come dressed as some kind of animal. She was going to go as Cassiopeia’s big sister, to which end Axel had fastened a brown plastic bowl to her back and pushed all her long hair inside a woollen hat. Now she was lying beneath the table babbling away in tortoise language and waiting for the first guests to arrive.

  With the pizza in the oven, Axel sent the twelve little girls in their animal shapes down into the basement, where they could dance to the flashing of disco lights. He went to fetch his mobile phone to see if Bie had been delayed. There was one message. It was from Miriam. He stood out in the hallway, unsure whether or not he should open it. Three days had passed since he had gone up to her flat. He had kissed her. For the rest of that day she had rustled around inside him. Her voice, the smell of her. When she didn’t turn up at the office the following day, he had several times picked up his mobile to call her or send a message. But he’d forced himself not to do anything, and it was as though her hold on him was released. Today he had hardly thought about her at all. He had relinquished control and then regained it.

  Miriam had written: I’m better now. See you Monday. The message was accompanied by a smiley. He knew nothing about her. He didn’t want to know. Had made a point of not asking anything that might have led to her talking about herself. Whom she was seeing. Where she was from. Family, friends, former lovers. He had everything to lose.

  The alarm from the oven told him that the pizza was ready. He had had fantasies about Miriam. Almost without realising it. Only now did he recognise that in his mind he had started to turn her into something she almost certainly wasn’t. Was that why he had been able to go up to the attic flat with her? Was that why it would be possible to see her again? He knew it would happen. Afterwards he would let her go.

  Axel had been responsible for most of his sons’ birthday parties over the years. Compared to them, girls’ birthdays were straightforward enough. Nobody threw slices of pizza around. No one squeezed tomato ketchup across the table. No one put a straw into the ear of the child sitting beside him and blew it full of fizzy lemonade. He could pad about filling glasses for a throng of pink rabbits. There were a few cats too, a couple of ponies, a ladybird and a lugubrious donkey. Natasha, Marlen’s best friend, was a lion, apparently, the crown of Afro hair pu
shed up into a mane and every question answered with an ominous growling. But she laughed until her eyes rolled back in her head when she saw how frightened Axel was, and reassured him that she was really very nice, as long as she got enough pizza.

  – My grandad was nearly killed by the Germans, Marlen boasted. – Isn’t that so, Daddy?

  – That’s true enough.

  Marlen picked up Cassiopeia and kissed it on the shell.

  – Tell about the time Grandad had to escape to Sweden, she said.

  Axel declined, didn’t want to invite Colonel Glenne to this particular party. He’d hidden bags of sweets in various places around the house and drawn pirate maps with hidden messages showing where they were. But Marlen wouldn’t give up.

  – Then tell us about Castor and Pollux, she insisted. – The one who had to go into the underworld to visit his dead brother.

  She got the support of the other animals for her demand, and Axel saw that there was nothing for it but to tell the story. Even as a child he had always liked to tell stories. If he managed to make them exciting enough, he would have his mother’s attention. Astrid Glenne would look at him with her big blue eyes wide open and sit down and listen until he had finished. He considered it particularly successful if he managed to frighten her. When his stories were about Frankenstein and vampires and werewolves, she would be genuinely afraid and hold her hands out in front of her as though she didn’t want to hear any more, though more was exactly what she did want. And when he conjured up a picture of Count Dracula sneaking into the bedroom of a half-naked woman, shadowless and driven on by his insatiable lust for blood, then Axel had his mother in the palm of his hand. The more afraid she was, the closer she was to him.

  He didn’t try to frighten the little girls in their animal costumes with the story of the twins, but wove in new, dramatic episodes that came to him as he was going along. They sat there spellbound. The little one in the donkey outfit, the only one of Marlen’s friends whose name he couldn’t recall, had black wrinkles painted on her forehead and cheeks and looked like an old lady. Something about her wide eyes made him think of the daughter of the patient he had visited earlier. That feeling of being a messenger of death invading their home in Vindern hit him again. And with it came the thought of Miriam: return her message. Call her. Go there. He had to talk to her.

  – You’ll find Castor and Pollux if you look up into the night sky, he concluded. – Not too far away from the Ethiopian queen, Cassiopeia.

  – Did everyone know Cassiopeia was a queen? shouted Marlen. – We’re going out to see if we can find her.

  She raced across the room and opened the terrace door with the other animals in tow. Axel followed. The night had cleared, and much of the sky was visible. He pointed out the Twins to them, and Cassiopeia.

  – But right next to them is a star you must never look at.

  He said no more, and all the girls turned to him.

  – What star is that? asked Natasha.

  – Its name is Algol; it’s in the constellation Perseus, he said. – That’s the name the Arabs gave it. It means the spirit that eats corpses.

  None of the girls said anything; they stood staring up into the dark.

  – Sometimes Algol is bright and clear, other times you can hardly see it; it changes all the time. Actually … Axel lowered his voice – actually it’s Medusa’s evil eye we can see up there. It’s winking at us. But you don’t want to hear any more about that …

  This was greeted by a chorus of complaints, and Marlen threatened to beat him up if he didn’t continue.

  – All right then, he said with a heavy sigh. – You leave me with no choice.

  He told them about Perseus, the son of the gods who was sent to the land of the Gorgons to capture the terrifying Medusa. He described the monster in minute detail, the snapping snakes that were her hair, the poisonous sulphur gas she breathed out. Lowering his voice to a whisper, he told them the most terrible detail of all: the eyes that were so ugly that anyone who looked into them was turned to stone. A kind of shiver passed through the flock of girls in fancy dress, and that sad little donkey, the one who reminded him of Cecilie Davidsen’s daughter, bit her lip and looked as though she was on the verge of tears. Fortunately Axel was able to tell them how Perseus, with the aid of a mirror, managed to cut the monster’s head off and squash it down into a sack. The girls sighed with relief.

  – The story doesn’t end there, he announced. – But I’ll spare you the rest.

  A new wave of protests, and reluctantly he had to continue the tale of Perseus’s triumphs.

  – Wherever he went, he took with him the sack with the monster’s head inside, and whenever he encountered any wicked enemies, he would pull it out. It was a terrible weapon, because anyone who met the Medusa’s gaze, even after she was dead, was turned to stone. And that’s the way things are still: no one who looks into the eyes of the Medusa lives to tell the tale.

  The girls all glanced at each other. No one said anything.

  – Perseus was proclaimed a superhero and he got his own constellation in the sky, Axel said in conclusion. – And in his hand he’s holding the head of the Medusa with her evil eye. But of course, I can’t show you that.

  Bie was seated at the kitchen table with a glass of red wine when he came down from the loft.

  – I’ve been down with Marlen, she said. – She’s still awake.

  Axel gave a broad smile.

  – She’s probably not come back down to earth again after the party. But I swear I didn’t give them coffee. Not even Coke.

  Bie looked at him.

  – Marlen said, This is the best birthday party in my whole life, imitating her daughter’s common-sense delivery, making Axel laugh. – Not to say the best day of my life.

  – Fortunately she says that every time, said Axel and sat down.

  Bie poured him a glass of wine.

  – You’ve always been good at playing. Unlike me. She’s lucky, Axel. She couldn’t have wished for a better father.

  He looked up at the ceiling. He experienced a sudden and almost irresistible urge to tell her about Miriam. About being in her flat. At that moment, Marlen called out.

  – You stay there, said Bie and stood up. As she passed him, she stroked his hair, then leaned over and kissed his ear.

  It was 10.30. Tom was still not home. Axel had sent him a text but got no answer, and it struck him that it was his son he should have spent the evening with. Taken him to the cinema, or a coffee bar.

  Bie came back up.

  – She wants to talk to you. No one else will do. She just won’t give up.

  Marlen lay with her head beneath the duvet. He pretended he couldn’t find her, felt around on the bed until he came across a foot, which he tickled under the toes.

  – Can’t you sleep? he asked as she emerged.

  – I daren’t.

  He sat on the edge of the bed.

  – What are you afraid of?

  – That monster, she whispered. – Medusa. I’m never going to look up into the sky again.

  Marlen had a tendency to overdramatise things, but he could hear now that she was genuinely afraid. He’d been too successful in bringing the story of Perseus alive; he hoped her classmates weren’t all lying awake in bed too.

  – All this about Medusa is just a fairy tale, Marlen. I’ll tell you why that star winks at us. Actually there are two stars there. When the weaker one passes in front of the strong one, the light gets cut off.

  He demonstrated with his hands how the two stars orbited around each other.

  – After a few days, the strong one appears again, and from down here it looks like it’s flaring up. The two stars make us believe they are one and the same.

  He had to repeat the explanation several times to convince Marlen that it wasn’t an evil eye up there looking down at the earth and winking. Eventually she calmed down and went to sleep. The myth of Medusa had released her from its hold.

  I
T IS THE sixth of October. Not when you hear this but now when I’m speaking to you, it is the sixth of October. I’ve killed today. I think about it and it makes me feel calm. Then I think of how I’m saying this into the Dictaphone so that you’ll hear it and I feel a thrill of expectation. You’ll be lying here where I’m sitting now and hearing my voice saying this. You can’t move and you can’t interrupt me. For the first time you realise it’s going to happen to you too.

  I didn’t plan to kill. Not even when I saw her walking along the forest path towards me. It was nine days ago. I stopped and talked to her. She liked to talk. In the end I had to tell her to shut up. She went rigid and stared at me. Suddenly she turned and began to run back along the track. Then I knew she would die. I caught up with her and grabbed hold of that skinny neck. She started screaming. I was angry as fuck and I closed her shrieking mug. But it wasn’t going to happen just yet. She had to know about it for a while first. Same way you’ll know about it. I dragged her in among the trees. Had to tape her mouth shut. Tape her hands that kept trying to scratch my face. Found somewhere to tie her up to wait until I could come back and fetch her. It took a couple of hours and by then she was all screamed out. She’d messed herself like a baby in nappies. Didn’t weigh much more either, stinking old bag.

  I couldn’t face taking her clothes off the way I’d planned. But I like to change plans. The best plans are the ones that just come along. Like the way I’m sitting here talking to you. I don’t know how it’ll be. Nor what’ll happen to you. All sorts of eventualities can crop up and get in the way. As I’m recording this, you still don’t know that this whole thing is about you. You’ve done everything you can to forget. But we are joined together. That’s what you were trying to say that time you told me about the twins that no one could part. No matter how much you have let me die in your thoughts. You said once that everyone has his own animal. You read that somewhere and wanted me to think about it. We were sitting in the classroom then too, but we weren’t alone there. It was just before the lesson began. And when I couldn’t think of anything, you said a bear, that was my animal.