Cockroaches(45)

“Why the hell, eh?” She wriggled on her chair. “I suppose it’s usually girls who ask, is it?”

He chuckled. “Are you trying to embarrass me? Tell me about your boyfriends.”

“Which one?” She kept her left hand hidden in her lap and raised her beer glass with her right. With a smile playing on her lips, she leaned back and fixed him with her eyes.

“I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you think.”

Harry almost spat a mouthful of juice over the table.

“Why should I be?” she said, putting the glass to her lips.

Yes, why should you be? Harry thought.

“Are you shocked?” She put the beer glass down and assumed a serious expression.

“Why should I be?” It sounded like an echo, and he hastened to add: “I believe I made my debut at about your age.”

“Yes, but not when you were thirteen,” she said.

Harry breathed in, considered her comment carefully and slowly released air through his teeth. He would be happy to drop this subject now. “Really? And how old was he?”

“That’s a secret.” She had her teasing expression back. “Tell me why you don’t have a girlfriend.”

He paused for a moment before speaking, an impulse, perhaps to see if he could reciprocate the shock tactics. And tell her that the two women he could say, in all honesty, he had loved were both dead. One by her own hand, the other by a murderer’s.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “I lost them.”

“Them? Are there several? I suppose that’s why they dumped you, was it? Two-timing?”

Harry could hear the childish excitement and laughter in her voice. He was unable to bring himself to ask what kind of relationship she had with Jens Brekke.

“No,” he said. “I just didn’t pay enough attention.”

“Now you look serious.”

“Sorry.”

They sat in silence. She fiddled with the label on the beer bottle. Glanced at Harry. As if trying to make up her mind. The label came off.

“Come on,” she said, taking his hand. “I’ll show you something.”

They went down the steps, between the students, along the pavement and up a narrow footbridge over the broad avenue. In the middle they stopped.

“Look,” she said. “Isn’t that beautiful?”

He watched the traffic streaming toward and then away from them. The road stretched as far as the eye could see, and the lights from the lorries, buses, cars, motorbikes and tuk-tuks were like a river of lava thickening into one yellow stripe at the furthest end.

“It looks like a snake twisting and turning with a luminous pattern on its back, doesn’t it?”

She leaned over the railing. “Do you know what’s strange? People in Bangkok would happily kill for the little I have in my pockets at this moment. And yet I’ve never been afraid here. In Norway we always went up to our mountain cabin at the weekend. I know the cabin and all the paths blindfold. And every holiday we went to Ørsta where everyone knows everyone and shoplifting is front-page news. And yet this is where I feel safest. Here where I’m surrounded by people on all sides and I don’t know any of them. Isn’t that strange?”

Harry was unsure how to reply.

“If I could choose I’d live here for the rest of my life. And then I’d come up here at least once a week and just stand here watching.”

“Watching the traffic?”

“Yes, I love the traffic.” She turned abruptly to him. Her eyes were shining. “Don’t you?”

Harry shook his head. She turned back to the road.

“Shame. Guess how many cars there are on the roads of Bangkok now? Three million. And the number increases by a thousand every day. A driver in Bangkok spends between two and three hours in a car every day. Have you heard about Comfort 100? You can buy it at petrol stations. It’s a bag to pee in when you’re stuck in a queue. Do you think Eskimos have a word for traffic? Or Maoris?”

Harry shrugged.

“Think of all they’re missing,” she said. “Those people who live in places where they can’t be surrounded by crowds like here. Hold your arm up …” She held his hand and lifted it.

“Can you feel it? The vibration? It’s the energy from everyone around us. It’s in the air. If you’re dying and you think no one can save you, just go out and stretch your arms into the air and absorb some of the energy. You can have eternal life. It’s true!”

Her eyes were glowing, her whole face was glowing, and she laid Harry’s hand against her cheek.

“I can feel you’re going to live a long life. Immensely long. Even longer than me.”