Stella Descending by Linn Ullmann

remarked.
    We sat in silence for a while. The silence was getting on his nerves. The silence gave me the upper hand. He drummed on the table with his fingers.
    “What are you thinking?” he asked eventually.
    “I was thinking about the sofa,” I said. “That’s it there, isn’t it?” A sliding door divided the room in two. We were sitting in the dining area, and the green sofa was in the living area.
    “It’s not often that people in my line of work have anything to do with magic sofas. I once had a case involving a flying carpet, but a magic sofa . . . never! I don’t suppose you would let me sit on it, so I could make a wish?”
    “What would you wish for?” Martin asked.
    “Ah, that I can’t tell you.”
    Martin produced a pack of cigarettes and offered me one, but I turned it down. He lit up and sat there gazing at the smoke rings he was blowing.
    “I don’t think anyone as fat as you has ever sat on it,” he said.
    “D’you want to see it break in two?”
    “Just like my grandfather,” he says.
    “The man who lay down on the railroad tracks?”
    “Yeah, him.”
    Again we fell silent. I had plenty of time. My fellow officers never take their time. I tell them: You have to take your time. But taking things slow scares them, as does silence. I pulled a nail file from my purse and proceeded to file my nails. I have exceptionally beautiful hands. If you saw me, your first thought would be that there isn’t anything beautiful about me, not one single thing. But that would be because you hadn’t noticed my hands.
    For a long time not a word was spoken. Martin stared at the ceiling. I filed my nails. The dining table stretched out between us. To lighten things up a little I suggested that we tell each other stories. A police detective and a furniture salesman must have plenty to say, and there’s no reason why circumstances, in this case an unexplained death, should prevent two people from getting better acquainted. The other detectives on the squad feel I waste too much time on stories that are not really relevant. But I tell them it is there, in the small talk, in the idle chitchat, in the little asides, that the solution lies.
    “Yeah, right, Corrie,” they say. “You and Miss Marple!”
    And I say, “Trust me. There is an order to this. Faint, I grant you, but no less human for all that.”
    So I told Martin about a case I had a long time ago.
    “How long ago?” he asked.
    “Almost a hundred years,” I said.
    He nodded.
    “Once upon a time there was a man not unlike you in manner and looks. This man was such a good liar that it was impossible to catch him out,” I said. “I had no proof, just a suspicion, a twinge in my stomach. And besides, I could smell it. I can, you know,” I told him. “I can smell whether a man is guilty or innocent.”
    “You don’t say,” Martin replied, making no move to pull farther away from me.
    “On that occasion I didn’t even have a body,” I continued. “I did, however, have three hundred and fifty-eight witnesses, quite literally an audience. On the night when a conjurer of some repute magicked his wife away for good.
    “This conjurer, who went by the name of El Jabali, was considered to be one of the best in Scandinavia. As a boy he had dreamed of becoming the new Houdini. Spurred on by the idea of being able to wriggle out of even the trickiest situations— chains, blocks of ice, a sea of flame, you name it—he eventually managed to worm his way into the good graces of the top magicians in Norway, from whom he tried to pick up a few pointers. He was a quick study and was soon performing at functions and parties all over the country, doing tricks with cards, dice, silk scarves, a top hat, two doves, and a rabbit. But he was no Houdini. He practiced and practiced, but he could never get out of his self-imposed restraints quickly enough, never succeeded in presenting himself to the audience as a free man, a living declaration: I exist! I am!