Frans Ekman creeps from his bed and looks out the window, where his own tiny piece of Bergen is revealed: a narrow street and a man walking his dog. The dog does his business as the man whistles at a woman in a purple suit who walks past. The man who whistles doesn’t seem to be aware that the attention doesn’t make the woman happy, only angry and upset. She suffers from a form of paranoia that means that she misinterprets everything: for example, if someone had said that her neat little purple suit was elegant and fitted her perfectly, she would think that they really thought it was horrible and that she had no taste, and was therefore pathetic. Because of her paranoid disposition, this woman once shot a man, her lover at the time, because she thought he was also fucking the caretaker’s wife. She served her sentence. And now the petite woman thinks that she’s had enough for today, yes, enough, she starts to cry, silently, but the man doesn’t see, he has to pick up the dog shit, and he still thinks it’s disgusting, even though he’s done it so often that you would think he liked it perhaps just a little: a warm, moist consistency between the fingers, maybe even a little rub back and forth, inside the plastic bag.
* * *
The man then throws the bag of dog shit up onto Frans Ekman’s small balcony with great confidence, as if his arm knows exactly how much force is needed for the bag to land on Frans Ekman’s balcony. Frans Ekman stands in the window and exchanges a look with the man, who is Frans Ekman’s brother. Then Frans Ekman opens the door to the balcony, without looking at his brother, picks up the bag, and, holding it between two fingers, walks straight through the flat, opens the door out into the hallway, goes out through the door, opens the cover in the wall opposite, and drops the bag of dog shit down the rubbish chute. Then he goes back into the bathroom. Washes his hands. Pulls off his pants, sits on the edge of the bath and suddenly feels that life is unbearable. That he can’t carry on like this. That something has to change. Somewhere, somehow.
* * *
Frans Ekman looks down at his feet. The floor heating has made them glow; he gets into the bath, turns on the shower. The warm water soothes his body like a caress, and he stands completely still for a while, letting himself be caressed. Then he masturbates to an inner picture of the young girl downstairs who Lena is so jealous of because she’s young, only seventeen, and also has large breasts, which of course Lena doesn’t, and she’s so blonde and beautiful and thin, unbelievably thin for having such large breasts, something’s not right, Lena often says, it’s not natural, she’s cheated, and he simply has to understand that when he looks at her breasts, it’s not breasts he’s looking at, but two disgusting bags of silicone, and if that turns him on, well then maybe it’s not breasts that turn him on, real breasts that is, at all; the real thing, and that is something totally different, has a life, has lived (like Lena, but Lena would never bring herself to say that, Lena is in no way young and thin, and perhaps not beautiful either). Lena is Frans Ekman’s “lover or,” as she’s called herself, and they share a smile, an understanding that’s grown from Lena’s persistent question: “Am I just your lover, or…?” an understanding that suits them quite well, as Lena, on a good day, thinks that the humorous twist is to her advantage, that she is or, in other words that she is more than a lover to him. Frans doesn’t see any point in denying this, as things work well as they are, even though he doesn’t really know what they are and what’s going on, he knows practically nothing anymore, apart from the fact that he’s now standing in the shower and thinking about the girl downstairs, and is she the one you think about when you stand masturbating in the shower, Lena has been known to ask, and if she’s the one you think about then, if it’s her you want, well, no, you don’t need to answer, I know that’s the truth, don’t even try to deny it, no, don’t touch me, go away, I don’t want to see you, OUT! And this is followed by a long monologue from Frans, who is standing on the other side of the locked bathroom door, reassuring Lena (who is standing inside the bathroom looking at her small breasts in the mirror and sobbing quite loudly, and thinking it’s always like this, always! And when is she ever going to experience anything else, to be loved, for example, when is she going to be loved, she never will be, never) that he never thinks of anyone other than her, that it doesn’t work like that for him, it might do for others, but not for him, that he thinks about Lena all the time, when he’s masturbating and when he’s not masturbating, and at that point, Lena says: DO YOU? Because her heart sparkles at the thought that he thinks about her even when he’s not masturbating, that she’s more than a sex object and a lover, that she really means something to him, and Frans says, in a slightly muted way, “Yes,” which makes Lena melt completely and open the door.
* * *
Frans showers with the young girl from downstairs in his mind’s eye: she’s standing with her back to him when he goes into the laundry in the basement, carrying a basket of washing, she’s leaning over, pulling the wet clothes out of the washing machine, and she’s wearing a very short dress and Frans suspects she’s not wearing any panties underneath, but he can’t be sure, because it’s quite dim in the cellar, all he can see is a shadow and then she turns toward him with hooded eyes and tugs at her dress. Through the rush of the shower, he hears the phone ring, but he can’t face answering, suddenly he can’t face anything, he stands completely still until the phone stops ringing, then he gets out of the shower, dries himself with a towel that smells of perfume. The telephone starts to ring again and Frans sees on the display that it’s Lena calling from work, as she always does, in case he’s managed to find someone to be unfaithful with in the time it takes for her to get to work, take the elevator up to the fourth floor, walk along the corridor with a thumping heart and into the office to pick up the receiver, dial the number, and normally he answers, so he can be left in peace, he knows that she’s calling to see what he’s doing, whether for example he’s fucking the girl from downstairs, I’m eating, he says, I was still asleep, he says, yes, it is nice weather, but today he says nothing, he doesn’t answer the phone, and he realizes that it might be fatal, not to answer, and yet he doesn’t, it rings and rings, but he doesn’t answer. The ringing stops. He picks up the phone, records a new message on the answering machine: “Hi, it’s Frans. I’m afraid I can’t answer the phone right now, as I’m in the basement fucking the girl from downstairs up against a washing machine, but if you leave a message after the tone, I’ll get back to you as soon as I’ve shot my load.” Then he stands for a long time looking at the phone, with his heart pounding, until he finally grabs the receiver and changes the message back to the old one.
* * *
Frans goes into the kitchen and makes a cup of coffee, he sits with his head in his hands over the coffee that steams up into his face, but he can’t be bothered to move it, he thinks about Lena, sits there for a long time pondering. He doesn’t know if it’s worth it, he misses his brother, sighs heavily when he realizes for the first time, for real, that his relationship with his brother has shrunk to that one look every morning after the bag of dog shit has been thrown onto Frans Ekman’s balcony, and all because of Lena, who was Frans Ekman’s brother’s girlfriend a year ago. Frans suddenly has problems breathing, he stands up, goes into the living room, opens the balcony door, tries to breathe, and then lies down on the sofa and thinks what a crap day it is. And he thinks about Lena, that he should perhaps have said with more feeling that she suited the color of her new purple suit, when she stood there, ready for work, sashaying back and forth in front of him so he could see her from every angle, as he lay in bed and couldn’t face getting up. He should have said that it suited her, because it really did, she actually looked sexy in it, but then something possessed him to say in answer to her “No, you don’t really mean that,” that she was right, that he thought, if he was going to be honest, that it was a terrible color that made her look as old as she was. Whereupon she marched out and slammed the door, determined not to call him all day, as punishment, until he said something to make it all right again.
* * *
And now Lena’s coming up the stairs. But Frans can’t hear her, he can’t hear anything, he’s sleeping off his misery. Lena comes up the stairs, only this time, again, with a gun, she has a gun in her bag, and she’s standing in front of the door, rummaging around for her keys, she feels frozen inside, she sees what’s waiting for her, she knows what’s waiting for her, splayed legs are waiting for her, blonde hair, Frans’s ecstatic face, she is frozen inside as though she were cold, but she’s not shivering, she holds the gun in her hand in her bag and walks slowly into Frans’s flat, into the living room, where Frans is lying stretched out. She stops, looks at him, moves closer to study his face for signs of what she knows was happening on the sofa before she came in, she moves closer, listens to his breathing, deep in and deep out, his mouth is open, and he’s drooling onto the cushion, she sees that his hair is wet and as she stands there with the gun in her hand in her bag listening to his breathing, the drumroll reaches a crescendo, she feels a pain in her chest, or her back, which might at first be mistaken for affection, affection for the sleeping, innocent Frans, but which is in fact Frans Ekman’s brother’s knife, Frans Ekman’s brother is standing behind her and has stabbed her in the back, he thinks it’s about time that he showed them, got them back for all the pain they’ve caused him.
* * *
Good people, but still not able to get things right.