Death By Water Read Online Free

closer. Jacket is still wearing the khaki shorts and short-sleeved black shirt.
    – Everything okay now? The business with your mother and all that?
    Jo doesn’t answer.
    – Why not sit down for a few minutes? Jacket waves his hand towards the neighbouring deckchair. Jo perches on the edge of it.
    – What are you reading? he asks, just for something to say.
    Jacket holds up a little sliver of a book. – A long poem.
    – Poem?
    – Actually a story. A journey through a dead world. Or a world of the dead.
    – Like a ghost story?
    – Exactly, Jacket exclaims. – I’ve read it lots of times. But I still don’t know what’s going to happen in the end.
    Jo wonders what he means by that.
    – The part I’m reading now is called ‘Death by Water’.
    – So maybe it’s about drowning, Jo guesses.
    – Yes. A young man. A Phoenician.
    – Phoenician? Jo interrupts. – You mean the people who lived here thousands of years ago?
    Jacket’s eyebrows rise and form twin arches. – Well I must say, Jo, you sure do pay attention in school.
    Jo does. He’s as clever as he can be bothered to be.
    – So he drowns, this Phoenician, he affirms, trying to make his voice sound as if it doesn’t matter. – A soldier, maybe?
    – Actually a travelling salesman, it would seem. He’s been floating in the sea for fourteen days already. Not much left of him; skin and muscles have stripped away from the bone. He was probably quite rich, but that’s not much use to him now. Lying down there in another world in the depths, can’t even hear a seagull cry.
    Jo suddenly feels cheered up. Jacket likes to talk to him. He isn’t just pretending.
    – Pretty good way to die, he says quickly, with a glance across at the grown-up in the flickering candlelight.
    Jacket sits there and studies his face. – I’ve been thinking about the conversation we had last night, he said finally.
    This man has been on TV lots of times, and now he’s sitting here one metre away, in the flesh, and thinking about things a twelve year old said to him. Suddenly Jo is on the alert.
    – Was there all that much to think about?
    Jacket lights a smoke.
    – How about one for me too?
    – What do you think Mother would say if a grown-up stranger started you smoking?
    Jo snorts. – It’s got nothing to do with her. She’d never find out. If she did find out, she wouldn’t give a damn. Anyway, I’ve smoked lots before.
    Jacket hands him the cigarette. – You’ll have to make do with one drag. If you squeal, I’ll be in trouble. Wouldn’t take a lot more than that to get me on the front page of VG and Dagbladet and Seen and Heard and you name it.
    Jo grins. – I’d get well paid for it. The thousand-kroner reward.
    – Exactly, says Jacket. – Celebrity on sunshine holiday lures child with cigarettes.
    Jo has to laugh. He takes a deep drag on the cigarette and holds it down, feeling at once that delicious dizziness.
    – I always see you alone here, he observes after another puff.
    – I am alone here.
    – You go away on holiday on your own? Don’t you have a family and all that?
    Again Jacket looks at him for a long time.
    – I needed to get away for a while, he answers, leaning back in the deckchair. – Made up my mind the night before, jumped on board a plane, ended up here by chance. Surprisingly good place. Might buy a house here.
    Not many grown-ups live like that. Suddenly just up and off on a plane. Buy a house on Crete if they can be bothered to.
    – So that business with your mother, it’s all okay now?
    For some reason or other Jacket returns to the subject Jo least of all wants to talk about. He doesn’t answer, and maybe Jacket finally understands; at least he stops going on about it. Instead Jo begins to talk about the girl in the next-door apartment. She’s got long legs and tits and she’s a real looker. Just the right haughtiness, a bit of a princess like.
    – What are you going to do? Jacket wants to know, and offers Jo the