Friday. Egg.
The house was built in 1898 on a clay base that had since
sunk a tiny bit on the west-facing side, causing rainwater
to cross the wooden threshold where the door was hung. It
ran across the bedroom floor and left a wet streak over
the oak parquet, moving west. The flow rested for a second
in a dip before more water nudged it from behind and it
scurried like a nervous rat towards the skirting board.
There the water went in both directions; it searched and
somehow sneaked under the skirting until it found a gap
between the end of the wooden flooring and the wall. In
the gap lay a five-kroner coin bearing a profile of King
Olav’s head and the date: , the year before it had fallen
out of the carpenter’s pocket. But these were the boom
years; a great many attic flats had needed to be built at
the drop of a hat and the carpenter had not bothered to
look for it.
It did not take the water much time to find a way through
the floor under the parquet. Apart from when there was a
leak in – the same year a new roof was built on the
house – the wooden floorboards had lain there undisturbed,
drying and contracting so that the crack between the two
innermost pine floorboards was now almost half a
centimetre. The water dripped onto the beam beneath the
crack and continued westwards and into the exterior wall.
There it seeped into the plaster and the mortar that had
been mixed one hundred years before, also in midsummer, by
Jacob Andersen, a master bricklayer and father of five.
Andersen, like all bricklayers in Oslo at that time, mixed
his own mortar and wall plaster. Not only did he have his
own unique blend of lime, sand and water, he also had his
own special ingredients: horsehair and pig’s blood. Jacob
Andersen was of the opinion that the hair and the blood
held the plaster together and gave it extra strength. It
was not his idea, he told his head-shaking colleagues at
the time, his Scottish father and grandfather had used the
same ingredients from sheep. Even though he had renounced
his Scottish surname and taken on a trade name he saw no
reason to turn his back on six hundred years of heritage.
Some of the bricklayers considered it immoral, some
thought he was
in league with the Devil, but most just laughed at him.
Perhaps it was one of the latter who spread the story that
was to take hold in the burgeoning town of Kristania.
A coachman from Grünerløkka had married his cousin from
Värmland and together they moved into a one-room flat plus
kitchen in one of the apartment blocks in Seilduksgata
that Andersen had helped to build. The couple’s first
child was unlucky enough to be born with dark, curly hair
and brown eyes, and since the couple were blond with blue
eyes – and the man was jealous by nature as well – late
one night he tied his wife’s hands behind her, took her
down to the cellar and bricked her in. Her screams were
effectively muffled by the thick walls where she stood
bound and squeezed between the two brick surfaces. The
husband had perhaps thought that she would suffocate from
lack of oxygen, but bricklayers do allow for ventilation.
In the end, the poor woman attacked the wall with her bare
teeth. And that might well have worked because as the
Scottish bricklayer used blood and hair, thinking that he
could save on the expensive lime in the cement mix, the
result was a porous wall that crumbled under the attack
from strong Värmland teeth. However, her hunger for life
sadly led to her taking excessively large mouthfuls of
mortar and brick. Ultimately she was unable to chew,
swallow or spit and the sand, pebbles and chunks of clay
blocked her windpipe. Her face turned blue, her heartbeat
slowed and then she stopped breathing.
She was what most people would call dead.
According to the myth, however, the taste of pig’s
blood had the effect of making the unfortunate woman
believe she was still alive. And with that she immediately
broke free of the ropes that bound her, passed through the
wall and began to walk again. A few old people from
Grünerløkka still remember the story from their childhood,
about the woman with the pig’s head, walking around with a
knife to cut off the heads of small children who were out
late. She had to have the taste of blood in her mouth so
that she didn’t vanish into thin air. At the time very few
people knew the name of the bricklayer and Andersen worked
tirelessly at making his special blend of mortar. Three
years later, while working on the building where the water
was now leaking he fell from the scaffolding – leaving
only two hundred kroner and a guitar – and so it was to be
another hundred years before bricklayers began to use
artificial hair-like fibres in their cement mixes and
before technicians at a laboratory in Milan discovered
that the walls of Jericho had been strengthened with blood
and camel hair.
Most of the water, however, did not run into the wall, but
down it, because water, like cowardice and lust, always
finds the lowest level. At first the water was absorbed by
the lumpy, granular insulation between the joists, but
more followed and soon the insulation was saturated. The
water went right through it and soaked up a newspaper
dated July, 11, 1898, in which it said the building
industry’s boom time had probably reached its peak and the
unscrupulous property speculators were sure to have harder
times ahead. On page three it said that the police still
had no leads regarding the murder of a young nurse who had
been found dead from stab wounds in a bathroom the
previous week. In May, a girl mutilated and killed in a
similar way was found near the River Akerselva, but the
police would not say whether the two cases could be
connected.
The water ran off the newspaper, between the wooden boards
underneath and along the inside of the painted ceiling
fabric of the room below. Since this had been damaged
during the repair of the leak in 1968, the water seeped
through the holes, forming drops that hung on until they
became heavy enough for gravity to defy the surface
tension; they let go and fell three metres and eight
centimetres. There the water landed and terminated its
trajectory. Into water.
Vibeke Knutsen sucked hard on her cigarette and blew smoke
out of the open window on the fourth floor of the
apartment building. It was a warm afternoon and the air
rose from the sun-baked asphalt in the back yard, taking
the smoke up the light blue house front until it
dispersed. On the other side of the roof you could hear
the sound of a car in the usually busy Ullevålsveien. But
now everyone was on holiday and the town was almost
deserted. A fly lay on its back on the windowsill with its
six feet in the air. It hadn’t had the sense to get out of
the heat. It was cooler at the other end of the flat
facing Ullevålsveien, but Vibeke didn’t like the view from
there. Our Saviour’s Cemetery. Crowded with famous people.
Famous dead people. On the ground floor there was a shop
selling ‘monuments’, as the sign said, in other words,
headstones. What one might call ‘staying close to the
market’.
Vibeke rested her forehead against the cool glass of the
window.
She had been happy when the warm weather came, but
her happiness had soon worn off. Even now she was longing
for cooler nights and people in the streets. Today there
had been five customers in the gallery before lunch and
three after. She had smoked one and a half packets of
cigarettes out of sheer boredom. Her heart was pounding
and she had a sore throat; in fact, she could hardly speak
when the boss rang and asked how things were going. All
the same, no sooner had she arrived home and put the
potatoes on than she felt the craving in the pit of her
stomach again.
Vibeke had stopped smoking when she met Anders two years
before. He hadn’t asked her to. Quite the contrary. When
they met on Gran Canaria he had even bummed a cigarette
off her. Just for a laugh. When they moved in together,
just one month after getting back to Oslo, one of the
first things he had said was that their relationship would
probably be able to stand a little passive smoking, and
that cancer researchers were undoubtedly exaggerating.
With a little time he would probably get used to the smell
of cigarettes on their clothes. The next morning she made
up her mind. When, some days later, he mentioned over
lunch that it was a long time since he had seen her with a
cigarette in her hand, she answered that she had never
really been much of a smoker. Anders smiled, leaned over
the table and stroked her cheek.
‘Do you know what, Vibeke? That’s what I always thought.’
She could hear the pan bubbling behind her and
looked at the cigarette. Three more drags. She took the
first. It didn’t taste of anything.
She could barely remember when it was that she had started
smoking again. Perhaps it was last year, around the time
he had started staying away for long periods on business
trips. Or was it over New Year when she had begun working
overtime almost every evening? Was that because she was
unhappy? Was she unhappy? They never rowed. They almost
never made love either, but that was because Anders worked
so hard, he had said, putting an end to any discussion.
Not that she missed it particularly. When, once in a blue
moon, they did make a half-hearted attempt at love-making
it was as if he wasn’t really there. So she realised she
didn’t really need to be there, either.
But they didn’t actually row. Anders didn’t like raised
voices.
Vibeke looked at the clock: .. What had happened
to him? Generally he told her if he was going to be late.
She stubbed out the cigarette, dropped it into the back
yard and turned towards the stove to check the potatoes.
She put a fork into the biggest one. Almost done. Some
small black lumps bobbled up and down on the surface of
the boiling water. Funny. Were they from the potatoes or
the pan?
boiling water. Funny. Were they from the potatoes or the
pan?
She was just trying to remember what she had last
used the pan for when she heard the front door being
opened. From the corridor she could hear someone gasping
for breath and shoes being kicked off. Anders came into
the kitchen and opened the fridge.
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘Rissoles.’
‘OK . . . ?’ His intonation rose at the end and
formed a question mark. She knew roughly what it meant.
Meat again? Shouldn’t we eat fish a little more often?
‘Fine,’ he said with flat intonation, leaning over the pan.
‘What have you been doing? You’re absolutely
soaked with sweat.’
‘I didn’t do any training this evening, so I
cycled up to Sognsvann and back again. What are the lumps
in the water?’
‘I don’t know,’ Vibeke said. ‘I just noticed them.’
‘You don’t know? Didn’t you work as a sort of cook
once upon a time?’
In one deft movement he took one of the lumps between his
index finger and his thumb and put it in his mouth. She
stared at the back of his head. At his thin brown hair
that she had once thought was so attractive.Well groomed
and just the right length.With a side parting. He had
looked so smart. Like a man with a future. Enough future
for two.
‘What does it taste of?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said, still bent over the
cooker. ‘Egg.’
‘Egg? But I washed the pan . . .’
She suddenly paused.
He turned round. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘There’s . . . a drip.’ She pointed to his head.
He frowned and touched the back of his head. Then,
in one movement, they both leaned backwards and stared up
at the ceiling. There were two droplets hanging from the
white ceiling fabric. Vibeke, who was a little short-
sighted, wouldn’t have seen the drops if they had
glistened. But they did not.
‘Looks like Camilla’s got a flood,’ Anders said. ‘If you
go up and ring her bell, I’ll get hold of the caretaker.’
Vibeke peered up at the ceiling. And down at the
lumps in the pan.
‘My God,’ she whispered and could feel her heart
pounding again.
‘What’s the matter now?’ Anders asked.
‘Go and get the caretaker. Then go with him and
ring Camilla’s doorbell. I’ll call the police.’