Before I Burn: A Novel Page 12

  Right up until some days before he was admitted to the hospital for the final time he was talking about how he would probably get a car when he was discharged. The car would be in the yard waiting for him as soon as he returned from hospital. Most probably a Triumph Herald, or a Chevrolet Impala, or perhaps a black Buick. One of the three. Most probably. It was Olav, his father, who had sat at his bedside and told him that. Father and son had imagined them, all polished and shiny, standing in the yard between the house and the barn. Then Kåre had got in behind the wheel and started the engine, Olav slipped into the passenger seat, and they had raced off.

  Willy had been the last person to visit him. On the day before he died. Willy had been no more than fifteen years old and he travelled to Kristiansand with the sole purpose of seeing him. The visit lasted maybe half an hour. They didn’t exchange one word. Kåre lay under a white rug, skeletal. There was almost nothing left of him, only his chest rose above the level, white bed and resembled a rock beneath snow. And the head. And the eyes. He seemed to be floating. They didn’t say anything. Not even about cars. They just looked at each other. That was all. Johanna had been there with them. Willy remembered that he and Johanna had spoken, but not what they had spoken about. Most likely about quite ordinary things. The weather. The bus trip to town. Nothing one might remember fifty years later.

  Johanna had been calm. Quite calm.

  Then Kåre died, and the incomprehensibly happy and cheerful boy was gone.

  As I was about to go Tom and Willy started to talk about Pappa. They had both known him, it transpired, and something happened to them when we touched on the subject. I don’t know if it was out of consideration for me, but they talked about him in an affectionate yet measured way. They talked about his ski jumping, for which he had evidently become well known.

  ‘No one could jump like your father,’ Tom said, and I understood that I should take that as a very special compliment. They went on to say he could do things others never achieved. Or dared. As soon as he took off from the ski jump he leaned perilously far forwards. It had been scary standing on the flat and watching, the tips of his skis were tilted so far upwards they were almost in his woolly hat, and that was how he lay, waiting for the lift that came once he had left the ramp. He leaned forwards and the lift came, and he floated for longer than anyone else. He had done the Slottebakken jump, and he had jumped off Stubrokka, they told me, and he had done many more ski jumps, and they reeled them off, but I have forgotten what they are all called. It was as though they wanted to tell me this, it was important for them to say that Pappa had been such an exceptional ski-jumper. That no one jumped further than he did, and that his secret was that rare combination of daring, courage and recklessness, and all of this carried him further than anyone else.

  Or was there perhaps more to it? Something they didn’t say, something they thought, but omitted to say. That Pappa had actually crossed a line with these ski jumps. That something could easily have gone wrong. Terribly wrong. That it was his sheer good fortune that he had got down unscathed every time. That in fact they had never really understood it at the time: why he did it, what was so important to him about these ski jumps. That everyone was standing at the bottom while he climbed up the tower alone, with his skis on his shoulders, higher and higher in the darkness until he stood at the top, fastening on his skis. That no one really understood him when he launched himself, crouched down as his speed increased and the ramp approached, when he took off and immediately leaned into the wind and the noise and the cold, which drove into his face.

  After the visit I got into my car and drove west to Hønemyr. I felt as if I was somehow outside myself, and that the conversation about my father had led me there. It was as though I was contemplating everything from the outside. It wasn’t me driving in the dark, it was the person who used to live here, who was left behind when I moved, perhaps the person I really want to be but can never be.

  I came to the crossroads where the road divides into three, turned down towards Brandsvoll, passed the army camp and the disused firing range and continued towards Skinnsnes. As I drove I remembered the weeks in the summer of 1998 when I had driven around in my father’s car, stopped and tried to write. That all seemed such a long time ago now, but it came closer as I drove through this countryside where everything had happened.

  After passing Sløgedal’s house, acting on a spur-of-the-moment feeling, I braked and turned into the area in front of the fire station. Then I switched off the engine and got out. It was cold and I wasn’t suitably dressed. I lingered for a while, examining the dark building. Some grass had grown between the gravel in front of the garage door, and it must have been a long time since the fire engine had been given an outing. There were almost never fires. I tried to peer through the frosted glass in the door, but I couldn’t see anything; it was completely black inside where the fire engine was. Instead of getting back into the car and driving home I began to walk up to Sløgedal’s house. I had never taken this path before, and it turned out to be further than I had imagined. I was walking in the dark. I could hear only the sound of my own footsteps. So I started humming. It was a tune without beginning or end, I just made it up on the spot, and then, after a while, it was gone. Soon I had walked far enough to be able to discern Sløgedal’s house, a large, grey building somewhere in front of me in the darkness. Gradually I began to distinguish the window frames, which had been painted white, and I glimpsed the outline of the barn, which had been erected on the ruins of the old one. I decided to go right up to it. Just as I had made my decision I saw the lights of a car approaching from the north. I don’t quite know what happened, but I was immediately gripped by a kind of panic. It was, as I said, too late to turn and go back, and it was still too far to the house – the car would be round the bend before I could take refuge behind the corner of the house. In the end I broke into a run. I sprinted as fast as I could to Sløgedal’s house while the light from the car grew and spread across the sky, and I was reminded of the sea of fire from the summer thirty years ago, about which so many first-hand witnesses had spoken. As I was about to leave the road the car lights appeared before me, and with that I came to a halt. I was caught, and some way from the house. The headlamps shone into my face, I stood there staring helplessly into them, for several seconds I was blinded, the car slowed down, loomed nearer, for a moment I thought it would stop, and I strove to find something to say. However, it didn’t stop, it drove slowly past, and I was left in the darkness as the car snaked down to the fire station and was gone.

  XII.

  AT SHORTLY AFTER SEVEN O’CLOCK he set off down to Kilen, filled up with petrol at the Shell station, bought cigarettes, a few sweets and the latest Donald Duck comic, then continued past the community house, towards Øvland. It was a warm evening, Friday evening what was more, he was free, he had no plans and he didn’t have to return to work in Kjevik until Monday at 6 p.m.

  He accelerated, caught up with some young girls on their bikes, waved to them, noticed that they giggled back. That was all. Reaching the brow of the hill, he switched on the radio. There was a live transmission from Argentina tonight as well. That was why it was so deserted and still: everyone was indoors watching TV. The match had kicked off at seven, Italy against France in the Mar del Plata stadium, which had been transformed into a seething cauldron. He pulled into a lay-by and listened as he ate the sweets and flicked through the comic. After twenty minutes or so the match began to bore him – no goals, no chances, nothing. Just the endless roar of the stadium. It made your mind go fuzzy. At length he got out of the car, lit a cigarette, leaned against the bonnet and stared into the forest, at the straight tree trunks glowing with the heat of the sun, the unmoving branches.

  When he drove on it was slightly after eight, and half-time in Argentina, where the score was 0–0. He crossed through Hønemyr, came to the crossroads where the road split into three, and turned down towards Brandsvoll, skidding the car and, in the mirror, saw the gr
avel flying. He turned up the volume on the radio. Turned it down. Switched it off. He stopped at the old shooting range, lit another cigarette, but dropped it after a few drags, trod it hard into the gravel until it stopped smoking. He stood listening for a long time. Dogged tiredness was spreading into his arms like a kind of poison. Then he spotted the rifle on the back seat. He adopted a stance leaning on the car roof, took careful aim, then fired. It must have been a good hundred metres to the road sign with the black elk. Then he got into the car and drove over to check the result. There was a dark hollow in the middle of the triangle, in the middle of the black animal. A perfect bullseye.

  He drove slowly down the long hills past Djupesland; no one to be seen there, either. It was as if the whole region had been abandoned, everyone had gone, there wasn’t a single person left, only him. He passed Sløgedal’s house, which lay empty and still, and turned finally into the fire station. He waited for a few minutes with the engine idling. Night had begun to fall. The sky was still light in the west, but the forest was dark and uniform, the trees merged into one another like shadows, forming a black, impenetrable mass. Then he killed the engine, groped in the glove compartment, found the fire station key and let himself in. There was a smell in the gloom of lubricating oil, diesel and stale smoke. It had smelt like that inside for as long as he could remember. Whenever he wanted he could close his eyes and recall this precise smell. The fire engine seemed to be gleaming in the light from the outside lamp, shiny and red, almost black. He ran his hand down the side. The metal was cold and smooth, providing hardly any resistance to his fingertips. Then he opened the sliding door at the back of the vehicle. He had to use force. In all there were three jerrycans in the boot; he lifted them one by one. The can on the left was half full, not too heavy: excellent. He picked it up without a sound and carried it to the car. Put it on the floor at the back and threw some clothes over it. Then he locked the garage door, got into the car and drove the few metres home.

  He went up to his room, turned on the radio and remained upstairs for several hours. The next match from Argentina started at a quarter to eleven. Alma and Ingemann were in the living room watching TV. It was Holland versus West Germany, and there was a constant cacophony coming from more than 40,000 spectators.

  Alma sat with her knitting in her lap, only looking up every time the commentator – it was Knut Th. Gleditsch – raised his voice. It was a draw, 1–1. It had just gone half past eleven. Frenetic knitting needles were clicking. Alma thought she could hear Dag’s voice upstairs. Her fingers stiffened and she looked over at Ingemann, but he was slumped in his chair and his eyelids were fluttering. She put down her knitting, got up in a flash, went into the hall and stood listening with one hand on the banister. She could hear him talking upstairs. It was unmistakeable. It wasn’t the radio. It wasn’t the television. It was him. She went to the kitchen, glanced at the clock, ran hot water in the sink, then just stared down at the water before pulling the plug, drying her hands on the kitchen towel and returning to the hall. It had gone quiet upstairs. No voices, nothing.

  Then the door opened and he slowly descended the staircase.

  ‘Are you down there, Mamma?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, trying to catch his eye.

  ‘Aren’t you watching the match?’

  ‘No,’ she replied.

  ‘It was a damned draw,’ Ingemann shouted from the living room, suddenly awake and stretching in his chair.

  ‘They got what they deserved,’ Dag said.

  ‘Who did?’ asked Alma.

  ‘The ones who were unable to win.’

  Alma fixed her gaze on him. He seemed tired. His eyes were red and swollen. One eye was slightly smaller than the other. It went like that when he hadn’t slept. It shrank. He had been like that ever since he was a child.

  ‘You look tired, Dag,’ she said.

  ‘Do I?’ he answered. There was a hint of merriment in his expression, she recognised it from the time he had tiptoed up behind her and placed his hands over her eyes.

  ‘Aren’t you going to bed? You need the sleep.’

  ‘To bed?’

  ‘It’s close on midnight,’ Ingemann said, struggling up from his chair. ‘We’ll have to hope it’s a quiet night.’

  ‘I’m going to scout around for anything suspicious,’ Dag said, going into the kitchen. She heard the fridge door open.

  ‘Surely you don’t want anything now, do you?’ she said, following him. He was leaning against the fridge door and staring into the dim light.

  ‘Someone has to keep watch,’ he said, closing the door and turning to her. He peeled a banana and devoured it in a trice. ‘If no one keeps watch there’ll be another fire. There’s no knowing what the nutter might get up to.’

  ‘But not tonight,’ she said. ‘You…you’ve got to sleep as well, you know.’

  He scrutinised her, and at that moment she thought she detected a change in his face. She recognised it straightaway. Just for one brief, chilling instant, it had gone hard. Then it softened. He went over to her, so close that she could smell it on him. Exhaust fumes, diesel and a faint whiff of banana. He was almost a head taller than her; she could feel his breath in her hair.

  ‘Mamma,’ he said, so softly that only she could hear. She had a sudden sense of feeling unwell, as though she couldn’t get enough air.

  ‘But, Dag,’ she whispered. ‘Dag, my love, you need your sleep.’

  He laid his hand on her shoulder, and it was so heavy it might have forced her through the floor, and yet so light it could have made her float. His hand filled her with warmth, a warmth she had never experienced before, a warmth that could only come from Dag and in the whole wide world only she could receive it. And she was the only person in the world who heard his voice. It whispered close to her ear:

  ‘Mamma, Mamma, good little Mamma.’

  XIII.

  THE NIGHT AFTER the examination I joined the others at the post-exam party in the cellar under the old university buildings. First, though, we got into the mood in a cramped bedsit by the square known as Tullinløkka, and after a few hours and several beers we continued in the city centre. I sat with the others and yelled one skål after another, draining my glass, getting a refill and skål-ing again. I noticed the others sending me looks, their eyes a touch apprehensive but kind. They had never seen me like this before, after all. Everyone was happy and excited and exhausted after weeks of studying. No one talked about the exams or the questions we had been set. Most of them were just relieved to have them over and done with, and were looking forward to the summer and the long holidays, and thereafter the autumn semester with its new challenges, like another step on the ladder that would lead to the final goal. I sat there smiling and skål-ing and singing along to the music that pounded through the vaulted cellar, but in reality I was drifting quietly away. All the time I was strangely clear-headed and focused, despite the mounting inebriation. It was indeed this clarity of mind that characterised the state I had found myself in since my father had fallen ill. I was clear-headed and distant and strangely outside myself, and in a break between songs I remember I stood up with a large beer in my hand. I didn’t write a line! I shouted. I handed in blank papers. That’s me for you. Skål to that! There might have been a couple of seconds’ silence as people looked at each other, a couple of seconds of bewilderment, no more, before they burst into laughter. Everyone laughed, they raised their glasses and skål-ed, and I laughed and skål-ed with them. The party continued at an ever faster pace, and with ever vaguer images, faster music, warm bodies, roars of laughter, long embraces, lips to ears, all as I drifted quietly away. At some point we left the university cellar and carried on partying in the city as my head grew more and more fuzzy. I didn’t know what the time was, but it was a cool evening at the beginning of June and I remember smiling faces and laughter in the streets. I remember a large crowd of people, a swaying dance floor, sharp flashes of light, sweaty bodies, hair over my face, arms rou
nd my shoulders, the scent of perfume and the bass vibrating deep in my stomach. I was surrounded on all sides by a hot, pulsating darkness and people shouting and laughing, yet I was quite, quite alone. I was drifting away. And no one noticed. And no one imagined. It was a party. We were on the town to party. I drank four cocktails in quick succession, all with a little umbrella which I tossed over my shoulder. I had no idea where the cocktails came from, whether I had been given them or bought them myself, but I remember the tiny parasols and I remember the floor beginning to whirl. I screamed into the face of a girl with long, dark hair and blurred eyes. She was standing right up against me as I shouted something or other, yet she didn’t seem to hear a word, or perhaps I was mistaken, perhaps I wasn’t shouting at all, perhaps it was me standing there with my eyes blurred, not saying a word while she shouted. I’m not sure. Shortly afterwards, however, everything went black.

  There are a few minutes or hours missing from my memory before I found myself again, walking along the deserted street from St Olavs plass in the city centre. I walked, trying to support myself on tenement walls, as the world around me rocked and swayed. I was surrounded by a sudden silence; all I could hear was my own unsteady, shuffling steps. Silence, I remember thinking. Silence. Silence. Silence. I met scattered huddles of people, I saw them approaching like shadows and from far away, and then there they were, in front of me, I shouted something, brandished my arms and barred their way, I don’t remember what I was thinking or what I wanted to accomplish, but straight after I felt a stinging pain on my cheek, by my ear, and realised someone had punched me in the face. Again I was alone, the people had gone and the world was moving sideways. I tried to establish what had happened. Someone had punched me. I had no idea why. All I knew was that my cheek was throbbing. Eventually I reached Ullevålsveien and took a left. I didn’t have a clear thought in my head, yet there was something in me observing all of this. Something that was always lucid and rational. It was this lucidity I had had when I walked out of the exam, and it was the same lucidity steering me across the street and through the gates of Vår Frelser cemetery. You failed the exam on purpose, a sober voice said inside me. You failed the exam and you’ve drunk yourself senseless. You’ve lied to your father, and you’ve just been knocked to the ground and now you’re going into a cemetery. Inside it was as black as pitch. There had been a number of attacks here recently, but that didn’t deter me. I rather wished that someone would attack me, that someone would sneak up on me from behind, hit me over the head with a hard object, causing me to lose consciousness and keel over. I hadn’t felt much of the punch to my cheek and now I wanted a bit more, with some oomph, a real belter from behind to make glass shatter and stars spin. So that someone would find me the day after and by then it wouldn’t really matter if I was dead or alive. Such were my thoughts as I staggered along the gravel path leading to the Grove of Honour, where all the great authors and composers were buried. My thoughts were unclear, fuzzy, yet in fact strangely clear. I lurched around in the darkness among the gravestones, not knowing where I was going. Occasionally I registered a car passing in Ullevålsveien, but it was only as a distant puff of air from another world. Then I straightened up and had a pee. I didn’t know what was in front of me. That is to say, I knew it was some grave, but I had no idea whose. I was just having a pee. It felt wonderfully liberating. Afterwards I sat down on a headstone with both shoes planted in the flower bed. Part of me was aware of the recent additions there, the pansies arranged neatly in groups in soft, wet earth. Then a chilling sensation took root in me: this was my father’s grave. He was dead and had been buried without my knowledge; attempts had been made to contact me but I had been unreachable, and so they had buried him, and now I was sitting there convinced that it was my father lying beneath the soft earth. I hardly dared look to see what was inscribed on the stone. I just knew. It’s him, I told myself. It’s him. It’s him. In the end I bent forwards anyway, until my head was between my knees. I managed to read the name on the stone. It was a very simple name, so it couldn’t be him. Then I vomited. It gushed over my shoes and the flowers and splashed onto the soil. I stood up and stumbled a few metres, then vomited a second time and stooped over another gravestone. I immediately felt a bit better, but my mind was still at sea. I walked between two dark trees weighed down with foliage and with large branches that spread low over the ground. I knew that the writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson was buried beneath these trees. I walked under the branches and sat down on a big block of stone, which was his grave, with a stone flag spread across it. I was sitting on Bjørnson’s grave and felt that I was still drifting away. I leaned back. That was good. Immensely good. It was as though I had been waiting all my life for just this moment. I lay back, stretched out my arms and felt myself getting heavy, and in the end I must have fallen asleep, stretched out like an angel, for I remember nothing else.