Helene

Helene is the woman Simon Kefas remembered as the love of his life, and the lost relationship that Else recounts to Kari explains much of the grief, shame, and guilt surrounding his later actions. Her story is told after Simon’s death through Else’s memories: a brief relationship with Simon ended amid his gambling debts; she then left with Ab Lofthus, whom Simon believed had saved her from the chaos he brought into their lives. Her later death marked a further loss for Simon, while a photograph he carried until his own death kept her present in the story’s final recollection of him.

Identity and place in the story

Helene is defined chiefly through her relationships with Simon and Ab. The account does not follow her independently or provide a detailed biography; instead, her significance emerges through what Simon told Else and what Else chooses to share with Kari. In that retrospective conversation, Helene is not merely a lost romance in Simon’s past: her place in his life helps explain the personal history behind his gambling, his bargain with the Twin, his betrayal of Ab, and the remorse that later governed him.

Else recalls that Simon never forgot Helene and called her the love of his life. He had believed that Ab and Pontius Parr, the other men who courted her, were kinder, stronger, and more intelligent than he was, but that he alone truly saw her. Else connects this judgment to Simon’s capacity to perceive other people’s better and worse qualities even as he struggled against his own compulsions. Her recollection thus presents Helene as both the object of Simon’s enduring love and the person through whom his self-understanding becomes visible.

Relationship with Simon

Simon and Helene began seeing one another, but Simon’s gambling debt made their life together chaotic, and the relationship did not last long. He felt that he was dragging Helene down with him. When Ab came along, Simon believed Ab had saved her from that destructive situation, and Helene and Ab moved out. The separation left Simon heartbroken; it was not simply a romantic disappointment, but a break in the life he had hoped to share with her, occurring while his gambling was already consuming his stability.

Shortly after Helene and Ab left, Simon learned that she was pregnant. Else links this news to a decisive collapse: Simon gambled recklessly, lost everything, and came close to what she describes as the abyss. He then sought out the Twin and offered the only thing he felt he still possessed—his soul. Helene’s pregnancy is therefore a concrete turning point in Else’s account of Simon’s bargain, though the evidence does not establish that Helene knew about the bargain or participated in it.

Simon’s loss of Helene also helps explain why his conduct toward Ab became so damaging. He hated Ab for taking what had mattered most to him, yet he later drew Ab into the Twin’s criminal arrangement. When Ab and Helene were deep in debt as the banking crisis drove interest rates up, Simon offered Ab a way to obtain quick money. Ab initially refused and threatened to report him, but Simon appealed to Ab’s concern for his son and argued that the child would otherwise suffer for his father’s pride. Simon later said that watching Ab lose his moral footing was the worst part of what he had done, even as the shared degradation made him feel less alone. Helene’s relationship with Ab thus places the personal loss at the center of a wider chain of financial pressure, manipulation, and betrayal.

Loss and Simon’s later life

Helene later died. Else presents her death as the point at which Simon reached the end of the road: he had lost everything he could lose and, in consequence, no longer felt he had anything to fear. He stopped being the Twin’s mole and spent the rest of his life trying to make amends. His pursuit of corrupt officers was relentless, but it also made him lonely within the police force; he believed that loneliness was deserved rather than something for which to pity himself. In Else’s account, Helene’s death does not erase Simon’s responsibility for his earlier choices. It marks a further loss after which he turned toward penance.

Else distinguishes between her own love for Simon and Simon’s capacity to save himself. Although he called her his angel, she rejects the idea that being loved rescued him. She says that his love for her did so: in her telling, his eventual change came from within him, not from the mere fact that another person loved him. Helene’s earlier place in his life makes this distinction resonant without making the two relationships interchangeable. The evidence presents Helene as Simon’s great lost love and Else as the person who later heard his confessions and witnessed his attempt to live differently.

Memory and the photograph

Else’s account reaches Kari during a visit some weeks after Simon’s funeral. Later, in the hallway, Else shows Kari a photograph of three people standing in front of a cairn and tells her that Simon had the photograph on him when he died. She identifies Helene in it. The image provides a material counterpart to the story Else has just told: Helene is not only a figure in Simon’s remembered past but someone whose image remained among his possessions at the end of his life.

Kari recalls having seen a photograph of Helene in the yellow house before it burned down and having told Simon that Helene looked like Mia Farrow. Else remembers that Simon took her to see Rosemary’s Baby so he could look at Helene, though he denied seeing the resemblance. This recollection gives the story of Simon’s attachment a small, specific recurrence: the resemblance was noticed by others, and Simon’s effort to deny it did not prevent it from becoming part of the shared memory of Helene.

Narrative significance

Helene’s role is conveyed through retrospective testimony rather than through scenes from her own perspective. Else chooses to disclose what Simon had told her about Helene, his debts, and his shame, and the memories reshape Kari’s understanding of the dead man. The account places Helene at several points in Simon’s history—the beginning of a relationship, its painful end, the news of her pregnancy, and her later death—while the surviving photograph carries that history into the aftermath of Simon’s own death.

This structure gives Helene lasting importance without presenting her as responsible for Simon’s decisions. His gambling, bargain with the Twin, manipulation of Ab, murder of his best friend, and later repentance remain his actions. Helene’s significance lies in the intimate history against which those choices are recalled: Simon’s love for her was profound, but it did not make his conduct harmless or undo the damage he caused. In Else’s testimony, the photograph and the confession together preserve both sides of that legacy—the person Simon never forgot and the culpability he spent his remaining life trying to face.