Aftermath Read online

  Encircling 3

  AFTERMATH

  BOOK THREE OF

  THE ENCIRCLING TRILOGY

  Also by Carl Frode Tiller,

  available in English from Graywolf Press

  Encircling

  Encircling 2: Origins

  Encircling 3

  AFTERMATH

  A Novel

  Carl Frode Tiller

  Translated from the Norwegian by

  Barbara J. Haveland

  Graywolf Press

  Copyright © 2014 by Carl Frode Tiller

  English translation copyright © 2021 by Barbara J. Haveland

  First published in Norway in 2014 as Innsirkling 3 by H. Aschehoug & Co. (W. Nygaard), Oslo.

  The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Significant support has also been provided by Target Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

  This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA.

  Published by Graywolf Press

  250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600

  Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

  All rights reserved.

  www.graywolfpress.org

  Published in the United States of America

  Printed in Canada

  ISBN 978-1-64445-058-1

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-64445-151-9

  2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

  First Graywolf Printing, 2021

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944393

  Cover design: Scott Sorenson

  Cover photo: manicproject.com

  For Marita, Oline, Othilie, and Cornelia

  Encircling 3

  AFTERMATH

  MARIUS

  Trondheim, June 21st, 2006. Is that all you get?

  I OPEN THE BATHROOM DOOR and go back into the living room. Sounds like they’ve finished discussing business policy, Julie’s talking about the wedding again, although I can’t imagine the others are all that interested in our wedding, it’s a bit embarrassing the way she goes on about it at such length and in such detail. I glance at Kjersti and Jan Olav and force a little smile as I sit down, but they don’t catch it, they’re focused on Julie, nodding and trying to seem interested in what she’s saying. I pick up my wine glass and take a sip, glance at Kristian as I do so, he’s sitting there twirling his beard, then he stops, lowers his hand discreetly and shoots his wrist out of his shirtsleeve, steals a quick peek at his watch, then raises his hand and starts twirling his beard again, his eyes on Julie.

  “Luckily, though, my mom’s making my wedding dress, so that’s a big saving right there,” Julie says, reaching out and picking up her wine glass, trying hard to look sober but not quite managing it, she’s pretty drunk now, her smile is a little too big and soppy; she blinks slowly, puts her glass to her lips to take a drink, then stops, lowers her glass, and looks at Kjersti again. “She made my friend’s wedding dress as well and it was lovely, really simple, but that was because she wanted a simple dress. Me, I want a long train, a veil, the works, but that’s me, that’s just how I am,” she says with a rippling red-wine giggle. “Well, anyway, everybody loved it and wanted to know where she’d bought it. Didn’t they, Marius?”

  I haven’t said anything for a while and my throat feels a bit dry, I’m not sure my voice will hold, so I put a hand over my mouth and give a little cough.

  “Uh-huh,” I say, then I cough again, look at Kjersti as I do so, she’s sitting with both hands on the table, sliding her little ring up and down the lower part of her fourth finger and smiling at Julie.

  “How wonderful,” she says.

  “Have you had any thoughts about your speech, Jan Olav?” Julie asks.

  “Not yet,” Jan Olav says.

  “Will you be making a speech?” Kjersti says.

  “Well, I am going to be best man.”

  “You’re going to be best man?” she says. Jan Olav obviously hasn’t said anything to her and she sounds as though Jan Olav is just about the last person she would have expected to be best man.

  “Yeah,” Jan Olav says, trying to sound as if he doesn’t know why she’s so surprised, but it doesn’t quite work, there’s a hint of irritation in his eyes and his voice, he doesn’t like it that she looks and sounds so surprised, I can tell by his face, maybe it’s because he’s trying to spare me somehow. Kjersti’s surprise suggests that Jan Olav and I aren’t as close as the bridegroom and best man are supposed to be and that in turn gives the impression that I exaggerated our friendship when I asked him to be my best man, it’s probably the embarrassment attached to this that he wants to spare me. I look at him for a moment, then my cheeks start to burn. Maybe Kjersti’s right, maybe I did think Jan Olav and I were closer than we actually are, or at any rate closer than he thinks we are. “What?” Jan Olav says, looking at Kjersti and raising his eyebrows, like he’s trying to insist that him being my best man is the most natural thing in the world, that’s what that look on his face is saying, he’s trying to spare me, wants me to go on believing that we’re as close as I thought we were, but it’s too late, it was an odd thing for me to do, to ask him to be my best man, I see that now, feel my cheeks getting hotter and hotter, my face suddenly turning red. I pick up my wine glass, take a sip, try to hide behind the glass.

  “No, no … it’s just that I haven’t known Marius very long,” Kjersti says. “And we’ve been together for a few years now, so it’s easy to forget that you had a life before I came on the scene, so to speak.”

  “Well, believe it or not, I did,” Jan Olav says, chuckling.

  “But why didn’t you tell me?” Kjersti says.

  “Marius just called a couple of days ago to ask me. And I haven’t been home much lately, we’ve hardly spoken to each other.”

  Kjersti turns to me and smiles, turns back to Jan Olav.

  “But that’s fantastic,” she says.

  “Absolutely,” Jan Olav says, sounding pretty convincing, although he doesn’t look at any of us, keeps his eyes lowered as he picks up his wine glass and takes a sip. Maybe he doesn’t want anyone to see that he’s lying, maybe that’s why he’s so quick to take a drink, it rather looks like it, looks as if he’s trying to do much the same as I just did, he’s afraid his face will betray how he really feels about being my best man, so he’s trying to hide behind his wine glass.

  “Thank you for a lovely dinner,” Kristian says.

  “Mm, yes, thank you, it was lovely,” Julie says.

  “You’re welcome,” Kjersti and Jan Olav say. Jan Olav puts down his glass and clasps his hands behind his head, tips his chair back, and sits there, looking replete. I smile at him as well as I can and he smiles back at me, there’s nothing in his expression to indicate that he thinks there’s anything awkward about being my best man, not at this moment anyway, on the contrary, he looks extremely relaxed, so I could be wrong, I do have a bad habit of looking for signs that all is not as it should be and that’s probably what’s making me think like this, it’s probably just my imagination.

  “That was so good,” Kristian says.

  “Delicious,” Julie says.

  Silence.
/>   “Is something the matter, Marius?”

  It’s Kjersti who asks. I turn to her, don’t answer straightaway, I’m not quite sure what she’s talking about, so I just sit there staring at her for a moment, then I hear Kristian start to laugh, he’s laughing at me now, he hasn’t changed a bit, doesn’t bother to hide what he thinks or feels about anyone, doesn’t care whom he might offend. I turn around, he’s looking at his lap, shaking his head and sniggering at how weird he thinks I am. This is exactly how it was fifteen years ago, I feel myself getting as annoyed at him as I used to do back then. He can be so insensitive sometimes, Kristian, but still, I would have thought he was above this, sitting there like that, sneering at me, especially now, when I’ve got Julie with me, this is only the second or third time she’s met these people whom I call my best friends and now one of them is sneering and making fun of me, doesn’t he realize that this might lead her to see me through his eyes, so to speak, that she might start to think I’m as weird and ridiculous as he does.

  “Marius?” Kjersti says. I turn to her again, suddenly feeling the sweat breaking out on the back of my neck and my brow. I raise my hand as casually as I can, smile at Kjersti as I wipe it away. “Is something the matter?” she asks.

  “No,” I say, then add quickly: “Thanks for dinner. It was delicious.”

  She looks a little surprised.

  “Good to hear it,” she says, smiling warmly as she takes a sip of her wine. “I’m so glad you enjoyed it. Although it’s even better with saffron,” she adds, then she drums her fingers together, glancing sidelong at the table with a mock huffy look on her face, trying to tell us guests that this last comment was meant as a playful dig at Jan Olav.

  “Okay, okay,” Jan Olav says.

  “Do we detect signs of a marital disagreement?” Kristian laughs, knocking back the last of his red wine, slipping his hand around one of the candelabra and reaching, almost coincidentally, for the wine bottle. He refills his glass and places the bottle back on the table. Julie’s not the only one who’s pretty drunk now, Kristian isn’t entirely sober either, I can tell, he has those bleary, wine-sodden eyes and I can see the reflection of the flickering candles in them.

  “No-oo, not at all,” Kjersti says, raising her eyes from the table and fixing them on the ceiling instead, still drumming her fingers.

  “But I told you, they were out of saffron,” Jan Olav says.

  “Hmm,” Kjersti says, nodding and pursing her lips as if to say Jan Olav would have to do better than that. “It’s funny how they’re always sold out when you do the shopping,” she goes on. “I’ve never known the supermarket to be out of saffron when I go there, but you—you come back with turmeric every time. If I were the suspicious sort, I might think there was a connection between this and the fact that you always put less meat and more beans in chili con carne than the recipe says, but of course I don’t, I know you and you’re not the slightest bit stingy.”

  I look at Jan Olav, don’t know anyone as stingy as him, he was a real tightwad when we were students anyway, and I doubt he’s changed much, it doesn’t look like it anyway, looks like he knows she’s right on target too, because he’s having a good laugh at his own expense, he and Kjersti and Kristian, they’re all laughing, Julie and I are the only ones not laughing, she doesn’t know Jan Olav so she doesn’t know how stingy he is, she just smiles and sips her wine, suddenly looking left out.

  “Hey, Jan Olav, how much does a lawyer earn these days?” Kristian asks, sitting back, putting his hand up to his beard and twirling it again.

  More laughter.

  “Ah, but it’s not the money that matters,” Kjersti says. “It’s the satisfaction he gets from saving it.”

  “Money was tight when I was a boy, Kjersti, and the memory of that has stayed with me,” Jan Olav says, spreading his hands, looking at her with his Labrador eyes and biting his lower lip to stop himself from laughing at his own droll wit. “I don’t expect you to understand, of course, coming as you do from a wealthy, middle-class family, but the need to scrimp and save is deeply ingrained in me.”

  “I understand,” Julie pipes up, looking across at Jan Olav, she doesn’t realize that he was being ironic, she blinks and nods solemnly. “Money was tight when I was a kid as well,” she says, slurring her words slightly and taking a little pause for breath between “as” and “well.” “Not that we were poor, exactly, but there was little to spare. Especially after my dad was paralyzed and needed care, because then we had to manage on Mom’s earnings,” she adds, then she picks up her wine glass and takes a sip. I look at her, am just about to tell her that Jan Olav was being ironic, but I don’t, and I won’t, it would only upset her. Jan Olav and Kjersti smile at her, looking interested; fortunately they’re kind enough not to point out that she’s not quite following, instead they make her feel included and listen to what she says, I feel grateful for that, they’re good friends. “I remember, for example, how embarrassing it was to be the only girl in the class who wore homemade clothes until I was twelve or thirteen,” Julie goes on. “Nowadays, when almost everything we wear is made by child workers in Asia, most Norwegians can afford to buy clothes, but in the seventies and eighties things were expensive, right? And my mom couldn’t afford to buy new clothes for us so she sewed or knitted just about everything I wore,” she says, then she blinks slowly and takes another sip of her wine.

  I pick up my glass and take a little drink as well, my eyes meeting Kjersti’s over the rim. She smiles at me as if to say I shouldn’t let this worry me.

  “It didn’t matter so much when I was in elementary school, lots of kids there wore homemade clothes,” Julie goes on. “But when I started junior high, oh … oh, it was awful,” she says. I look at her, struck by how much I love her. I don’t know why, but there’s something so pure, almost noble about the fact that she didn’t detect the irony in Jan Olav’s voice; the way she simply assumes that he meant what he said, the way she responds by talking seriously about her own childhood, it makes her a little less degenerate than the rest of us, somehow, a little more genuine. I look at her, I even love the way she dresses and does her makeup, everyone else here thinks there’s something pathetic about her style, I know they do: the rather slapdash way she applies her lipstick, the pink eye shadow that is supposed to match her pink sweater but doesn’t quite, they think it’s pathetic, bordering on tasteless probably, but I love it, in fact that pathetic, slightly gauche air is exactly what I love about her, maybe because that too makes her seem that bit more genuine.

  “Oh, Julie, I do love you!” I say, it just comes out and I know with every fiber of my being that I mean it and she can see that I mean it, I can tell just by looking at her, her face suddenly seems to come alive, her real face seems to break through the rather dopey, drunk mask and she beams at me.

  “Aw,” Kjersti says. “That calls for a toast.”

  And they all raise their glasses. Kristian looks as though he’s trying hard not to laugh, he evidently thinks it’s totally nuts to blurt out something like that when everybody can hear, but he too raises his glass.

  “Cheers!” we all say.

  I hold Julie’s gaze as I raise my glass and drink, there’s fresh life in her eyes now too, a completely different light from a moment ago.

  “So, are you from Trondheim?” Jan Olav asks, looking at Julie.

  “Yep. I grew up on the east side, Lademoen,” she says. “And you?”

  “I’m from Oslo.”

  “Oh, right, whereabouts in Oslo?”

  “Do you know Oslo?”

  “Well, I’ve been working at the SAS hotel for four years, so …”

  “I grew up in Frogner.”

  “Oh dear,” Julie says. “That can’t have been easy, growing up in such a posh part of town. I mean, when I was a kid, Lademoen was a typical working-class neighborhood and even though things were even harder for us after my dad was disabled and needed care, we weren’t all that different from the other familie
s there. But to have to watch every penny when everybody around you is rolling in money, that must be tough.”

  Jan Olav and Kjersti exchange glances.

  Silence.

  “I think Jan Olav was joking when he said money was tight when he was a boy,” Kristian says, grinning broadly, as if to play down the misunderstanding and make the whole situation a little less awkward. Julie looks at him: his words don’t really seem to sink in right away, she just sits there staring at him in amazement for a moment, then she runs her eye around the rest of us and suddenly it dawns on her that she has misunderstood and I see how stupid she feels.

  “Oh, right,” she says with a strained little laugh. “Silly me.” She picks up her wine glass, gives that same little laugh again as she raises it to her lips, as if to disguise the fact that she’s upset, but it’s no good, everyone can both hear and see that she’s mortified and upset. I try to look as though this is nothing to worry about, look at her and smile, but she doesn’t smile in return, she knocks back the last of her wine in one big gulp and puts down her glass, then she sits there staring at the table with a rather stiff, expressionless smile on her lips.

  Silence.

  Jan Olav and Kjersti exchange a quick glance, they too finding this a bit unpleasant, their eyes suddenly serious.

  Then Kristian takes charge.

  “Would you like a refill, Julie?” he asks, speaking loudly, in a voice that says “Come on, people, lighten up.” He picks up the bottle of wine and holds it over Julie’s glass, giving her a big smile.

  Julie looks up at him, doesn’t answer straightaway, but then she seems to brighten up, smiles back.

  “Yes, please,” she says, accepting Kristian’s offer and seizing this chance to move on. I feel an immediate surge of happiness, look at her, and smile. She waits until Kristian has finished filling her glass, then she raises it to her lips, looking at me as she does so, but what sort of a look is that, suddenly there’s contempt and anger in her eyes. I raise my brows, puzzled, the expression on my face asking what’s she mad at me for? She holds my eye for a second, then she blinks slowly and looks away as she takes a swig of her wine, looks away in a manner that says she couldn’t care less about me. I look at Jan Olav and Kjersti as they get up and start to clear the table, look at Julie again. But why’s she so mad at me? I mean, I even told her I loved her, blurted it out in front of everyone, and I don’t think anyone doubted that it came from the heart, not even Julie, I could tell she didn’t. But maybe she’s interpreting what I said differently now that she knows Jan Olav was joking. Not only was she the one person who didn’t realize he was being ironic when he said money was tight when he was a boy, she then proceeded, in all seriousness, to relate stories of her own childhood and now, when she feels she’s made a fool of herself, maybe she thinks I meant something else entirely when I said I loved her: you’re thick as two short planks, but I love you anyway, maybe that’s how she’s interpreting my declaration of love, maybe that’s why she’s mad at me all of a sudden.