When the Devil Holds the Candle by Karin Fossum Read Free Book Online Page B

drove to the emergency department. She cursed the two men who had robbed her. Hatred and anger came and went in her body like tongues of fire. May terrible things happen to them! May they crash their car on the way to town, suffer a head injury and be paralyzed from the waist down!
    The baby was sleeping, safe and sound—but he had that mark on his head. A tiny scrape. It took her eleven minutes to drive to the hospital. She lifted him out of the carrying cot and took him inside.
    A doctor examined the cut. Took off most of the baby's clothes and shone a light into the dark pupils of his eyes. The baby drooled and flailed his arms.
    "He looks fine," the doctor said. "You should report the handbag snatching."
    "No," she said wearily. "The only thing that's important is my baby."
    "What's his name?"
    She smiled shyly. "He hasn't been baptized yet. I'll know his name day when I find a name. None of them are good enough," she said proudly. The doctor wrote out a bill, since her cash had been stolen. It was really just a token amount. Forty kroner.
    Then she went home and nursed the baby for a long time. She sat next to his cot, couldn't make herself leave him. Then she changed her mind and carried him to her own bed. Spread the quilt over both of them and turned off the light. Tried to calm down, but couldn't. She didn't believe in God. She had formally withdrawn from the state church. But in the dark, lying under the quilt, she sensed the contours of some kind of purpose. This overwhelmed her: the fact that they did mean something after all, she and the baby, something beyond what she meant to herself when she thought clearly about her own life. Something was keeping them company as they lay there together. She felt herself observed. And later, another thought came: someday she would die, or the boy would, and that this
might happen suddenly. She placed her hand on the child's head. It fitted perfectly in the palm of her hand. He didn't move. He was sound asleep.

    Zipp and Andreas were busy drinking up her money. Zipp was hunched over like an old man; it had all been too much for him. Andreas was rocking his chair back and forth, silently making his point. Whoever mentioned the baby first—that awful, unexpected event which had befallen them—would ruin the evening.
    They had planned a quick and easy play, over in a couple of seconds. Wham! Four hundred kroner. No harm done.
    Andreas studied the fan on the ceiling. It was revolving slowly, reminding him of a scene in a film that he liked. They drank some more, patiently waiting for intoxication to spread over their brows like a cool rag. Life began to look better as time passed, the girls were prettier, the future brighter. Zipp wiped the foam from his upper lip. And then it slipped out.
    "What do you think happened to the baby?"
    Andreas uttered a huge, world-weary sigh. He set down his glass without a sound.
    "Babies are soft like rubber. The skull hasn't even grown together, it's elastic."
    He met Zipp's frightened eyes. "It's made up of soft plates that slide over each other under pressure. Clever, huh?"
    "You're making that up!"
    Zipp's eyes flickered. Andreas always had an answer, but he could be a shameless liar. At the same time, that's what he wanted: to have an answer at all costs. The woman with the stroller had been a bad choice. The beer tasted just as good as always; that wasn't it. But that baby, God damn it, he was just a tiny bundle. Zipp pressed against the edge of the table and tried to steady his heart. He could still see it: That ridiculous blue plush vehicle on its way over the edge. The way it shook and
lurched downward before ramming into a rock, tipping forward, and toppling over. The tiny hands flailing helplessly. A deserted kiosk, an abandoned car, shit, that was nothing. But a live human being!
    "If anything happened, it'll be in the papers tomorrow."
    "Cut it out, Zipp. Just relax!"
    Andreas stared up at the fan again. It was revolving in slow