When the Devil Holds the Candle (3 page)

Andreas was actually quite remarkable. He was more like a mood than an actual presence. He didn't belch, even when he got drunk. He didn't cough and he didn't hiccup. Everything around him was quiet. And he didn't have any particular kind of smell. Zipp used Hugo Boss aftershave when he could afford
to buy it, or when he felt confident enough to steal a bottle from the Cash & Carry. Andreas never used aftershave. He always looked the same. His hair never got greasy; he was always clean, but not too clean. If Zipp happened to wake him up on a Sunday morning, and he appeared in the doorway wearing his bathrobe, he never looked tired. His eyes were wide open. His hair was always the same length. His shoes never looked worn out. It was strange.

Right now Andreas was waiting for his paycheck. Between them they were worth the princely total of sixty kroner. Not even enough for two beers.

"What are you thinking about?" Andreas said, out of the blue.

Zipp grimaced. "I'm thinking about Anita."

"Shit, is she really worth thinking about?"

"What do you mean?" Zipp looked sullen.

"The girl's as dead as a doornail."

"You can say that again." Zipp looked out of the window to hide his face. "How much buckshot is there in one cartridge?" he asked tonelessly.

"Depends. Why do you ask?"

"I'm thinking about her face. How it looked afterward. Anita was so pretty."

Andreas shrugged. "If you stand close enough, the shot comes out like one huge bullet. By the way, I talked to Roger. He said her nose was sticking out and her whole jaw was wide open. One of her eyes was gone." He took a drag on his cigarette. "And Anders," he said, "he was standing right behind Anita when the shot was fired. The top of his skull was totally perforated."

Zipp sat in silence, painting the picture in his mind. There was no end to the details. His brain was stuffed with images from films: X-rated, wide-screen, with digital sound effects.

"Fucking hell."

Andreas rolled his eyes. "Why are you carrying on like this? It's not like she was your sister. That's life, Zipp. 'All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.'"

Andreas was quoting Roy Batty. But Zipp was still thinking about Anita. He thought about her laugh, her voice, and her scent. He remembered the tiny green gemstone in her nose. Everything blasted to smithereens.

"Well, you know I've been in the sack with Anita. It's weird to think about it," he said in a low voice.

"Is there a single jam jar in the whole town that you haven't dipped your wick in?"

"Ha, ha. Not many." He snorted up the snot running from his nose. "The Devil must have got into Robert," he muttered. "I know Robert. Something must have made him go crazy."

"Okay, so that's what we'll say. He was possessed. But not by the Devil."

"No?"

"Good Lord, man. He was dead drunk! He was possessed by alcohol. His brain was pickled. Blotto, unpredictable, and insane! There's your Devil."

"I think I'm going on the wagon," Zipp said gloomily. This preposterous idea made Andreas burst out laughing. Then the moment passed, the mood lifted, and Zipp erased the bloody image from his mind. For a while they drove in silence.

"Were you with the Woman yesterday?" Out of the corner of his eye Zipp glanced at Andreas's thighs in the light-colored slacks.

"Yes, I was," he replied. Zipp heard the smile in his voice, and the warning not to ask anything more. Not that it was a secret. He had plainly told Zipp that they were sleeping together. Or had he? Maybe he was just pulling his leg. Andreas was so secretive, so difficult to work out.

"I can't understand why you bother," Zipp said, laughing.

"A few extra kroner," Andreas said curtly. His voice didn't sound annoyed, but there was a wariness in it. "You're always so thirsty."

And then he added, with great pathos, "I'm doing it for us, Zipp."

Zipp tried to listen for everything he wasn't saying. Andreas was modeling for an artist. She painted him in the nude. Zipp tried to imagine what pose he took, whether he was lying on a sofa or sitting on a chair, or maybe standing up in some impossible position. He hadn't dared to ask, but he was curious. The thought of a man taking off his clothes in front of a woman and letting her look at him while he stood there, passive, made him uncomfortable. Of course they'd had sex afterward—according to Andreas. But how did it feel, Zipp wondered, to stand there, motionless, while the Woman examined his body in every detail. Not that Zipp was ashamed of his body. He wasn't too fat or too small, or anything like that. But to be observed like that, by a woman!

"Isn't that damned painting ever going to be finished? You've been going there for months."

Zipp inhaled more smoke. Without understanding why, he sensed that he was approaching a dangerous place. At the same time, he felt compelled to go on. It occurred to him that he had never seen Andreas get angry. He was always calm, soft-spoken, and reassuringly the same. For eleven years he had been the same.

"It takes a year to make a good painting," Andreas said firmly, as if he were instructing a child. He twisted the ends of his scarf, which matched his shirt.

"A whole fucking year? Well, then you've got a whole lot of shit ahead of you."

Zipp flicked the ash from his cigarette out of the window. "Just think, what if she gets famous and they hang the painting up so that God and everybody else can see it. In the bank, for example. Or at the Saga cinema. Shit, that would really do me in."

Zipp put the car in neutral. Andreas patiently watched the red light.

"No one will recognize me," he said, his voice calm.

"No? Is it one of those Picasso things with both ears on the same side of the head?"

Andreas uttered a weary laugh at his friend's boundless ignorance.

"It's going to be a good painting," was all he said.

"How old is this chick, anyway?"

Andreas winked. "Old enough to know more tricks than any of the schoolgirls you hang out with."

This was the kind of remark that Zipp loved. Anything that referred to his performance in bed, of which he had the highest regard. Oh yes!

"You whoring pig," he sneered. "Is it possible for a choirboy like you to learn any tricks?"

That was when Andreas turned to face him, just as the light went green. He looked Zipp up and down, from his bristly hair that refused to lie flat, to his turned-up nose and the cleft in his chin, to his plump thighs and the ridiculous tight jeans he always wore. Stretch to fit. But the small head and powerful torso reminded Andreas of what Zipp really was. A stud. He started sweating. Andreas sat there, assessing him, his body, every last detail. And he rejected it! Zipp wouldn't have a chance with the Woman.

Zipp regretted having started this conversation. This was how it always ended up. He would try, but he never got anywhere. If only he had some damn money for a beer! Surreptitiously he studied his companion. Andreas had style. He wore wide-legged trousers and baggy shirts. Nothing gaudy. Moccasins on his feet, never running shoes. In the summer he rolled up his sleeves and unbuttoned his shirt. But always loose clothing, light-colored and lightweight. His clothes seemed to flutter about him, making him look slimmer and lankier even than he
was. Zipp squeezed the exact same number of pounds, 139, into tight jeans and T-shirts that fit him like a second skin. Above them he wore a leather jacket. It was short-waisted and wide in the shoulders, but somehow it didn't give him the athletic look he was after. Instead it made him look puffy, which surprised him, because he wasn't overweight. He was slightly bowlegged and he had a ponytail, but his appearance was pretty ordinary. He envied Andreas his elegant style, but he couldn't emulate it. The effect wouldn't be the same. Not that he was unlucky with the ladies. But even in that department Andreas had bested him: he ignored them. Except for the Woman. And Zipp still didn't know how old she was. Thirty? Or more? Forty, or fifty even? Zipp had an aunt who was fifty. The thought gave him the creeps. A fifty-year-old woman. With children and stuff like that. How did women look—down there—after they'd squeezed out a brood of children? They had to look different from girls.

"Does she have any children?"

"Quite a few," Andreas said, nodding. "Four or five."

"Shit, there must be plenty of room inside a bitch like that, huh?"

Andreas rolled up the window, and a sour little smile appeared on his face.

"I've seen things you wouldn't believe."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"They're much, much deeper, Zipp."

High above the town, with a view of the river, stood an imposing house from the early twentieth century. In need of repair here and there, but the green paneling was still holding up to all kinds of weather. This was where the artist Anna Fehn lived.

One evening in early summer she was wandering around in the town square, observing people. She had a trained eye.
Most people aren't especially attractive,
she thought.
Most of them are
a random selection of genes from the two sets which served as the basis for their existence. Long arms and legs from the father, tiny hands and feet from the mother. Almost no one comprises a harmonious whole. Almost no one makes an impression.
Yet she knew that it wasn't a matter of heavy or light, rough or fine, but of how they carried themselves, how they moved—either with a consciousness of who they were, with pride as the dominant force, or squeezed into a nature, a form, they refused to acknowledge. But then she caught sight of Andreas. He was sitting at an outdoor café with a companion. Her first thought was that he looked bored. Life wasn't enough for him. There was something important that he had yet to find. Not unique—the same was true of most people. But he wasn't sitting there with the usual gaping expression, forever turning his head to look at girls, or preoccupied with whether anyone might be looking at him. He sat there in utter peace, his long legs stretched out under the table. Anna took in the leather shoes on the pavement, the cotton shirt against his pale skin. His hair moved very faintly; his slender fingers were wrapped around his glass. He was practically lying in his chair, tilting it onto its back legs. Imagine being able to sit like that, and though at risk of toppling over and banging your head on the concrete to appear so relaxed. So uninterested. So impregnable. It made an impression on her. She glanced at his companion. They seemed an unlikely pair. Each of them had downed the best part of a pint, but they weren't yet drunk. Otherwise they looked like most young people their age. Didn't belong to any specific group, not headbangers or punks, just ordinary boys about twenty years old. Yet Andreas had a lazy elegance about him and a splendid head of hair reaching to his shoulders. She tried to define the color. If she mixed carmine, burnt sienna, and a light ocher, and then added some ivory nuances, she might come close.

Anna moved nearer. She divided his face up into sections—forehead, cheeks, eyes, jaw—the way artists do and saw that he
wasn't strikingly handsome in the classic sense. His eyes were set a little too deep; his nose was long, narrow, and crooked, and the tip bent down toward his mouth; his mouth was a bit too small, but evenly shaped and nice-looking. His chin was narrow and jutted out. Over his left eyebrow, exactly on his hairline, he had a birthmark. Yet taken together his features made a strong impression, impossible to ignore. He was thin, long-limbed, and well-defined in spite of his youth. She played with the idea of how he would look naked. There was something about young boys that disappeared as they crossed the boundary and became grown men. That moment when their bodies hesitated just before that last step toward adult gravity. He was at that point right now. His skin had a sheen to it that reminded her of cream. He was either a university student or a young man in his poorly paid first job. Undoubtedly he needed money. For a moment she turned her back on him and stared at a lit-up window, at a dress that she couldn't afford.
No, be honest, it's too short for you!
She laughed at herself and then turned back. She didn't want to approach him as long as his friend was there, in case it might embarrass him. So she waited, patiently: sooner or later one of them would need to find the toilet below the square. While she waited, she placed him in the pose she instinctively thought would show him at his best. That lazy, casual expression was also a pose, a form of protection that he used. His friend hadn't seen through him—he looked younger, and maybe a little less shrewd. And then, abruptly, he got up and disappeared. Anna Fehn took quick action. She walked to the table and leaned toward the boy.

"I'm a painter, and I'm always looking for models. If you're interested in earning a few kroner, call me at this number. My name is Anna."

She held out her card. He wasn't startled, just looked back at her with a certain curiosity. And then he took the card and stuck it in the pocket of his baggy shirt, which was unbuttoned. She caught a glimpse of his boyish chest.

"Just to be clear," she added, "I'm talking about posing in the nude."

He nodded: he understood. That very night he called her, from a pay phone. She guessed that he lived at home and didn't want to involve anyone else. He was at her door the next evening. He undressed without embarrassment, only cast a quick glance at her and said he'd never done this before. Businesslike, she explained to him what to do, but she allowed herself to show a maternal warmth. She would have liked to show something else, but she was old enough to be his mother, for heaven's sake. On that first evening she made only a rough sketch, to assure herself that he could hold the pose for a reasonable length of time, without discomfort. Then he put his clothes on and left. After that he came back every week at the same time.

They didn't really get to know each other. Andreas never talked about himself, and he wasn't interested in knowing anything about her, either. He had no plans or desires for the future. Now and then he talked about his friend Zipp, or, occasionally, about a film that he liked. Or about music. Nothing else.