Red Handler

PRAISE FOR JOHAN HARSTAD

Like Jonathan Safran Foer, Harstad combines formal play and linguistic ferocity with a searing emotional directness.—Dedi Felman, Words Without Borders

The fact is that Johan Harstad has a wholly unique voice, simultaneously both concrete and soaring … to be able to write in this way, to conjure a situation and construct space and time around it with such linguistic fluency, cannot be learned. You are born with it.—Jakob Levinsen, Jyllands-Posten review

As entertaining as it is astute, and as amusing as it is melancholic.… Have we ever read a book that deals with so much, has such high aims and works with so many references to art, theatre, literature and film, all without failing?—Berliner Zeitung

"This paradoxical desire to be seen without being heralded sets [Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?’s] hero apart from other tormented young men of contemporary literature … [an] ambitious debut."—Publisher’s Weekly

"The austere landscape and people of the Faeroes become players in Harstad’s [Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?], half-dramatic and half-comic, which takes on memorable turns with every page as Mattias realizes just how not in control of his destiny he really is. A modern saga of rocketships, ice floes and dreams of the Caribbean, and great fun to read."—Kirkus Reviews

ALSO BY JOHAN HARSTAD IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Fiction

172 Hours to the Moon

Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?

Non-fiction

Blissard - A Book About Motorpsycho

The Red Handler

Collected Works

ANNOTATED EDITION

A Novel

Johan Harstad

TRANSLATED BY DAVID M. SMITH

Originally published in Norwegian as Ferskenen by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Copyright © 2018 by Johan Harstad

Translation copyright © 2023 by David M. Smith

BASED ON AN IDEA FROM ARILD ØSTIN OMMUNDSEN

First edition, 2023

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available

ISBN (pb): 978-1-948830-80-5

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-948830-93-5

This project is supported in part by an award from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the governor of New York and the New York State Legislature

Printed on acid-free paper in the United States of America.

Cover Design by Luke Bird

Photo © Studio Firma/Stocksy; (gun) © Michal Boubin / Alamy; (blood) © merahn saeed / Alamy

Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press: Lattimore Hall 411, Box 270082, Rochester, NY 14627

www.openletterbooks.org

That there

That’s not me

BIOGRAPHY

Frode Brandeggen (1970-2014) was born in Stavanger, Norway and grew up in the neighborhood of Tjensvoll. An only child, Brandeggen soon took a liking to literature and wrote his first short story at the young age of eleven, the thirteen-page Knutsen Finds Something Exciting in the Garden. The text, written in a careful cursive and given its own painstakingly decorated title page, was unfortunately thrown out by his father during a fit of rage and was therefore never read by anyone. Brandeggen’s first publication came in 1990 in the literary zine Kakofoni, a short story entitled An Anomaly, written during his studies at the University of Oslo. Two years later, his avantgarde debut novel, Conglomeratic Breath, was published by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. As a result of its forbidding length and complexity, Conglomeratic Breath was ignored by reviewers and quickly forgotten. It sold poorly, and is nearly impossible to find today in any bookshop or antiquarian bookseller. Gyldendal destroyed all remaindered copies in the autumn of 1993.

The year following this disappointing debut, Brandeggen moved back to Stavanger and worked at various odd jobs, including garbage collection, while tenaciously (though in secret) working to develop a new way of writing, one that would enable him to realize his own artistic potential while also appealing to a wider audience. The result was a fifteen-book series featuring a private detective called the Red Handler; written in a kind of micronovelistic form inspired by the French Mouvement artistique du banalisme, a literary movement that championed anti-climax, cliché, and omission as worthy literary techniques. The novels were never submitted to Gyldendal or any other Norwegian publisher.

Frode Brandeggen died from emaciation in his Stavanger apartment in the autumn of 2014.

His novels are collected for the first time in this posthumous edition, annotated by Brandeggen’s German friend and professional annotator, Bruno Aigner (1934 –), who, in addition to his extensive knowledge of the author, has had the benefit of access to Brandeggen’s papers.

CONTENTS

THE RED HANDLER HOT ON THE TRAIL

THE RED HANDLER STUMBLES ACROSS IT

THE RED HANDLER AND THE GLIMMER MAN

THE RED HANDLER AND THE GREAT DIAMOND HEIST

THE RED HANDLER AND THE MUSICAL BANDIT

THE RED HANDLER AND THE SECRET MASSAGE STUDIO

THE RED HANDLER AND THE LUCKY MURDERER

THE RED HANDLER AND THE TRAVELING SALESMAN WHO DIDN’T WORK FOR MICROSOFT

THE RED HANDLER AND THE UNSOLVABLE MYSTERY OF THE BURMESE CAT

THE RED HANDLER AND THE DIFFICULT SABBATH

THE RED HANDLER ON VACATION IN DENMARK

THE RED HANDLER AND THE PRESUMPTUOUS MURDERER

THE RED HANDLER AND THE OUT-OF-CONTROL URINE

THE RED HANDLER COMES TOO LATE

THE RED HANDLER LANDS IN TROUBLE WITH THE AUTHORITIES

ENDNOTES

THE RED HANDLER HOT ON THE TRAIL

CHAPTER 1

Rain-soaked streets. One of the town’s lost souls flew past like a leaf in the wind.¹ In the old Opel with Haugesund plates sat the Red Handler, private detective. He took a gulp from a flask etched with the words, To my dear husband.² He envisioned his ex-wife for a brief second, before the liquor flushed the painful memory down the sewers of oblivion.³ He turned on his car stereo. From the speakers flowed the tones of Glenn Gould’s recording of the Goldberg Variations.⁴ The later recording, the one from the 80s.

The Red Handler closed his eyes as the eminent piano tones played with his ears.

CHAPTER 2

Suddenly, he heard a sound. He could see nothing. He opened his eyes. That helped.⁵ Someone was trying to break into a house a little ways down the street.⁶

The Red Handler burst out of his vehicle. A short chase ensued. Then it was over. Before the thief could protest, the Red Handler had laid him out, smack on the ground.

Now I’ve got you, whispered the Red Handler.

The thief knew at once the jig was up.⁷

CHAPTER 3

The weather had cleared. The city was safe once more.

The Red Handler lit a cigarette and got back into his car. After the divorce, this was his sole source of pleasure. To smoke in his own car, free from that bitch’s constant sniping.⁸

He turned up his car stereo full-blast. From it came some sort of rumba melody.⁹ That’s just how it was sometimes.

THE RED HANDLER STUMBLES ACROSS IT

CHAPTER 1

The clouds resembled coagulated blood.¹⁰ For the public at large it was just another glorious summer day, but not for the Red Handler. For him it was the prelude to one more night in service to the people, among the town’s seedy criminals.¹¹ The air was already thick with their misdeeds.

CHAPTER 2

He flew down the city’s main thoroughfare with one goal—to buy a pack of mints before the evening got underway—when suddenly he felt himself lose balance;¹² both feet left the ground, while the rest of his body seemed to hang in the air a second or two, before he came down hard on the gray asphalt with an audible smack.

He had stumbled.¹³ Turning over on his side, he caught sight of the perpetrator: a hole in the pavement where someone or something had smashed the concrete to bits. I’ll be damned if this town isn’t falling apart, he thought to himself, bitterly.

His left knee was throbbing. Most people would’ve applied a cold compress, checked for anything broken. But not the Red Handler. To him pain was nothing more than weakness leaving the body.¹⁴

He was about to get up when an open basement window only a half meter from his face caught his attention. Inside, a killer was bent over his victim, laughing.

With perfect disregard for his own safety, the Red Handler pushed himself up on his arms and legs and crawled in through the window. With a tiger’s precision, he seized the killer’s throat and pulled him down to the dirty basement floor.¹⁵ A short fight ensued. Drama, too.¹⁶ But under the onslaught of the Red Handler’s right hook and merciless jabs, the killer didn’t stand a chance.¹⁷

Now I’ve got you! exclaimed the detective as he helped the killer to his feet so he could handcuff him.

Dammit! whispered the killer, most of all to himself.¹⁸

CHAPTER 3

The Red Handler shook his head. He’d seen almost everything, but the sight of a life extinguished never lost its sting. He forced the killer to look at his victim.

This is your deed, is it not?

The killer hesitated as long as he dared. You are too good, Red Handler. Yes …

That spells jail for you, mister. You’ll be climbing the walls before they let you out of that joint. It’s a good thing you admitted it, in any case. I’ll make sure that goes down in the records. It might mean the difference between Alpha and Omega for you.

At this, the killer’s face showed terror.

… and Omega? Are you sure?

I am, said the Red Handler gravely. "After alpha comes Omega.¹⁹ That’s how it works. You know, causality."

That’s a hard word, sighed the murderer.

It’s a hard town, replied the Red Handler.

I’ll agree with you there.

Come along.

The Red Handler laid a consoling arm around the murderer’s shoulders as he led him out from the basement and into the inferno of the evening. They might’ve been on different sides of the law, but they were also two sides of the same coin.²⁰

THE RED HANDLER AND THE GLIMMER MAN

CHAPTER 1

No one knew for certain where he was from. It was said he came from Haugesund, by car.²¹ That he had a past. That he wasn’t from Haugesund, but it was there he had burned all his bridges. Already that was long ago.²² The person he was before no longer mattered.²³ Now he was the one forever catching murderers and crooks red-handed, just after dusk, through nights endless and strange, and the mysterious morning hours. He was the one who never gave up and never got tired. Now he was simply the Red Handler. The one who had come to watch over this city.²⁴

CHAPTER 2

The Red Handler put on his coat and picked up the keys that lay on today’s newspaper in the hallway. "Murderer Caught Red-Handler’ed Last Night—Again!" The same headline, in some form or another, every day for the past few months. He left the paper where it was. He’d been there, no point reading about it, and something had to stay behind his eyes so the alcohol could wash it away. He took a sip. One was enough, had to stay sharp. There would be time to resume as soon as morning arrived. To drink, before slowly sliding into sleep and unconsciousness on the couch in front of the TV. Before starting all over again.²⁵

He locked his apartment door and stepped into the street.²⁶

On the other side of town, another man was doing the very same thing.²⁷ His keys lay on a newspaper with the same headline, but it wasn’t about him, a fact of which he was all too aware. That’ll all change after tonight, he told himself. The man locked the door to his enormous apartment and polished the brass name plate with the sleeve of his expensive designer suit: GLIMMER MAN, it read.²⁸ He’d installed it himself; no one else called him that.

Yet.

CHAPTER 3

In an opulent villa somewhere between the two men, in a part of town where neither of them could afford to live and had scarcely ever set foot, the beautiful woman let her negligée fall to the floor and positively floated into her walk-in closet, where she carefully chose an appropriate bathing suit and slid into it. She nonchalantly picked up a flirtini from the coffee table and strode out to the deck chairs by the swimming pool.²⁹ She threw herself into one of them and sipped her cocktail while resting her gaze upon the water. She must have nodded off shortly after, for she failed to notice the detective in his overcoat suddenly sitting in the chair next to hers.

She gave a start. Oh my God, who are you? she shouted.

The Red Handler stood up and looked out across the plot of land. I think you know, he said with his back turned.

She nodded. He saw it. He had eyes on the back of his head.³⁰

The Red Handler picked up her glass and studied it. Flirtini, I presume?³¹

"Is there anything you don’t know?"

Just this, he answered while looking straight at her. Why are you lying here sunning yourself now?

The woman shot him a sly grin. She wasn’t the first to do that.

Last time I checked, it wasn’t a crime to sunbathe in one’s own garden, she said sarcastically.

The