Copenhagen Noir

That’s how it was. It was in the writing that he was able to see himself. You think you have a mandate on truth, and through your very faith you make everyone else an exception. I spit on that!

Father Pietro had for a short time been Nils Forsberg’s father confessor. The aging priest, who’d been exiled to the edge of the world, had been Forsberg’s path into the church, into what he imagined was the world. And then the real world came along and changed everything. The world where death attacked like a splash of ink on a white sheet of paper. Between the inner and the outer world, boundaries were no longer possible.

Body and spirit.

The city is Malmø.

The year is 2008.

The old year left only senseless tragedies behind, incidents that could just as well have been stopped in time before the wheel of death started rolling.

Now it’s January. The month when everything stands in the balance. When everything is both too late and too early.

A series of deaths occur within a very limited time, and within a very limited geographical area.

Everyone is dumbfounded.

The general public. The police. The media.

The cruelty. The meaningless violence. The ominous sense of aggression. It has become like an itch that can never be stilled.

The press is full of meaningless speculations, not the least of which are supported by Alexander Hofman’s inflammatory editorials. There’s a rising sense of anxiety that always sets in when weaker groups become even weaker. Everything rolls along, takes on a life of its own. There’s a small part of the larger picture which at first you cannot see, a pattern not decodable at first. The light of truth is blinding, impossible to grasp.

A crime scene might very well be compared to an archeological excavation. You want to know what has happened and who is involved. There are clues, suggestions, a sense that something lies hidden.

The world is a riddle to be solved. We all become more or less suspect. Guilt is a disease, contagious, transmittable. He who turns his face away, he who starts walking faster, she who laughs off the facts, uncomfortably.

Nils Forsberg finished his letter to Father Pietro: There is no longer any reason for me to not say exactly, and I mean exactly, what I think. And that way is, as everyone knows, a blind alley. We lie because we don’t have the energy to tell the truth! Truth does not make us free, it makes us lonely.

Of course, a social and ethical explanation can be found to interpret the reasons why a particular person commits a crime. There are also psychological models. For Nils Forsberg the answer to the “Why” has crystalized into a “Therefore”: greediness, terror-because it was possible, because you could.

January is a month when everything hangs in the balance, when quick or well-thought-out decisions take on unknown consequences. To allow yourself to let go, or to deny yourself the right to act out your dark side. To kick someone lying down one more time, or to let it be. To jump out into it, or not to. Violence vibrates in the air: repressed hatred is like a dense fog rolling through all the alleys and squares of the city.

Life is unfair and cruel, and so is time. Cities grow, cities disappear, children grow older, stars fall and incinerate. Everything is in movement, the only constant is the actual feeling of meaninglessness. That we are on our way somewhere and that we don’t know why.

Between us, the living, there is a transparent wall. Stay or leave. We never touch each other, we just turn our faces away, look down at the ground.

In the end, that’s what it’s all about. That some disappear, while others stay around. That we are weighted down to earth, as though we are carrying an invisible yoke. The dead can be whirled off into time, be recreated, placed into some context, delivered the justice they are thirsting for, and then even the memory of them will be gone.

The final problem is, of course, that any kind of fundamental justice is lacking. That we cannot see the whole picture, only parts of it. That we grope for each other in the dark. And the murderer remains alone, blood singing in his body, images haunting him. He is who he is, he owns this bottomless thirst and this voraciousness that fills him. He knows it should not be this way, he also knows he cannot stop himself. It’s like an invisible wound that can never be healed, an itch you must not touch, and yet you cannot help yourself.

Is this how we become what we’re supposed to be? Nils Forsberg is doubtful, he still believes there is a hope for mercy, for change, that life is not static.