Before I Burn: A Novel Page 17

  More people came. The first boy was gradually calming down. A young man ran over and crouched beside Pappa. He was wearing only a thin white shirt, but he didn’t seem to feel the cold. He had blond hair and was talking in low tones to the motionless boy. He bent down and laid his ear against the boy’s chest, took his limp hand and squeezed it. He remained in that position for a considerable time, as though he could hear something in the chest that rendered him incapable of doing anything else. Then he got up and went over to the car that had collided with the motorbike. The driver was clearly in a state of shock, still sitting behind the wheel with his head in his hands. The man in the shirt crouched down beside him and spoke softly to him as though explaining directions. Eventually he straightened up and went to the pillion rider who had been injured, sat with him too, then returned to kneel by Pappa, who kept checking that the boy was breathing. He was like an angel, I remember my father telling me; at that juncture Pappa didn’t know who this person was, of course. In the minutes following the accident he went around giving solace and help to those affected. He ensured that the driver in shock wasn’t left on his own, he ensured that the injured pillion rider was being attended to and, on the carriageway, in the light of car headlamps, he knelt beside the body with the outstretched arms. He spoke to the boy in a low, insistent voice. It was like a kind of conversation even though the boy was lying mute on the tarmac without any visible sign of life. My lad, my poor, poor lad, he whispered. Whom he was addressing was not clear. But he whispered it again and again while Pappa sat watching, unable to do anything. There seemed to be a large silent space opening up around them, it was unreal and frightening, as though the whispering voice came from somewhere they couldn’t see, and that was how they sat until the ambulance arrived. The boy was taken care of, a mask was placed over his mouth and nose, the blue lights flashed across their faces, the dark space dissolved and the angel in the white shirt was gone.

  VII.

  THE LAST THING I DID for my father was to lie to him. I stood in his room at the rest home and promised to drive his pickup back to Kleveland where Mamma was waiting. The idea was that she would drive to the home later in the evening and spend the night with him. I had promised to park the pickup under the old ash tree in the yard, and spread the tarpaulin over the back so that it wouldn’t fill up with leaves. But I didn’t. I sat behind the wheel, twisted the ignition key, drove out of the car park and turned left instead of right. Rather than going home to Finsland I headed for Kristiansand. I drove the way we had just come, continued eastwards on the E18 in the sporadic traffic, bore right after passing under the high bridge in Vesterveien, just below the ever-staring bronze giant, Krag, where we had just sat staring as well, then I swung down towards the ferry terminal and all the juggernauts and motorhomes already queueing in the numbered lanes with the sea as a dead end. I joined them and bought a ticket for the crossing, for the next ferry due into the harbour and departing at a quarter past eight, the one taking all the lorries and motorhomes to Hirtshals in Northern Jutland. I drove on, following the line of vehicles winding slowly into the gaping bow gate. There were parents with children in overloaded cars, or elderly couples sitting quietly beside each other. And then there was me, twenty years old, alone in a red pickup, 1984 model, with old leaves stuck to the flatbed floor. I followed the slow-moving queue into the boat, and for the first time in my life it felt as if I was really doing something, that I was performing an action that would have some significance later. I sat behind the wheel feeling that what I was doing now would come to characterise who I was, though I didn’t know how. I was beckoned deeper into the ship, drove up a floor and finally came to a halt in the middle of a bend behind a German motorhome, where I yanked on the handbrake. I had driven on board the ferry to Denmark, and frankly I had no idea what I was doing there, or where I was going, apart from across the sea. I was crossing the sea. I had lied to my father, and Mamma was sitting at home waiting for me while I would soon be on my way across the Skagerrak. I locked the doors of the pickup and walked up the soft, carpeted stairs from the car deck. There were already quite a few passengers strolling around the boat, older people on shopping trips or youngsters out for some fun, and everyone was walking around orientating themselves. On the top deck I found a bar, ordered a half-litre as if it were nothing special and sat there with the ice-cold glass, waiting for the ship to set sail. I felt the rumble of the engines and a slight tremor went through the chair I was sitting in and up to my fingers holding the glass. Gazing out of the window, I saw that at last the ferry was moving. I saw the pine-clad headlands and the dark crags on the western side of town glide by. I drained the glass. Then I ordered another, without any shame or fear that someone from home might see me, although the odds of this happening on the Danish ferry leaving Kristiansand were, of course, higher than if I had been drinking in an obscure Oslo pub. I was alone in the bar and the ship was not yet out of the fjord. I thought about Pappa’s car locked somewhere beneath me; I saw Oksøy lighthouse glide serenely past, and straight afterwards the boat began to rock and I knew we had reached the open sea.

  I think it was the thought of his pickup, and the alcohol beginning to seep into my veins, that reminded me of one autumn day in the eighties when I went hunting with Pappa.

  That day was as clear as crystal in my mind and it still is. Early one morning in late autumn we had breakfast together at the round table in the kitchen. Just him and me, the gurgle of the coffee machine and the pan of milk crackling on the stove. Just him and me, the knife cutting into the tenth slice of whole-wheat bread, the fifth slice with cervelat, the fourth piece of greaseproof paper and the third hard-boiled egg. Just him and me, and the golden autumn morning and the first frost on the grass beneath the window.

  We each had a combination rucksack with a collapsible stool. Pappa took the packed lunches, the two thermos flasks of coffee and cocoa, and last of all a bar of Freia’s dark chocolate, the one with the picture of a stork standing on one leg with its head down as though it were sleeping or didn’t want to see. Next he grabbed the rifle in the hall, the wooden buttstock with the grain undulating like waves towards a beach, the long, black barrel with the hole at the end into which I could just poke the tip of my little finger.

  Then we went outside, and it was a lot colder than I had anticipated. My face smarted and my boots made dark tracks in the rimy grass, but that was how it should be. My face should smart, and my rucksack should bang and chafe against my hipbone with every step that I took. Everything was as it should be after there had been a frost and the morning was hazy and milky-white like the film of ice on the windscreen of the pickup, which I remember was then quite new.

  I remember nothing else until we were sitting alone in the forest. We were somewhere up on Hundershei, because I can remember looking down on Lake Hessvannet, which lay black and still between the pine-clad promontories. The day hadn’t grown any warmer, but the sun had risen clear of the mountain ridges in the south, and the hoar frost on the grass had almost melted. The long, green blades of grass in front of my boots sparkled. I was sitting right behind Pappa, and my knees were frozen. I sat as I had been told without a murmur or a movement. I stole furtive glances at Pappa, at him and the rifle, and I couldn’t quite make it fit that he and I were waiting in the forest with a loaded gun. That wasn’t how it should be. We should have been somewhere very different. I should have been at home in my room, lying on my bed with a book, and Pappa should have been in the living room leafing through a local history book, Finsland: Gard og AEtt, or Trygve Gulbranssen’s trilogy, or simply sitting in the kitchen and looking out of the window. Anything, but not here, in the middle of the forest with a loaded rifle across his lap. I don’t remember how long we sat there, it couldn’t have been that long, when suddenly two large creatures leaped through the brushwood not far away. At first they were silent and glided past the tree trunks at great speed like two boats, but as they came closer I heard twigs snapping and heather and jun
iper being swept aside and birch saplings being knocked to the ground. Pappa raised his gun and whistled a long note. The whistle brought them to a halt. I don’t think I had ever heard him whistle before, and I was so surprised that I quite forgot to cover my ears. Then he took aim. I had never believed that any animals would appear, and when they did I had never thought they would stop. But they did. They had come from nowhere, and stopped, and Pappa took aim, and everything was unreal. I didn’t look at the animals, but I knew they were standing still. I was looking at him. At the neck, at the ear, at the cheek resting gently against the surging waves. Then he fired. The two animals set off again and disappeared behind a small copse. I was sure he had missed, and that furthermore I had lost my hearing, for there was a ringing sound in my ears or from somewhere deep inside my head, and my first thought was that I would have this whine in my head for the rest of my life. Then he got up calmly from the folding stool, re-loaded and said: ‘Now you go and have a look.’

  ‘But they ran off, didn’t they?’ I said.

  ‘Go and have a look,’ he repeated.

  ‘Where?’ I asked.

  ‘Just go,’ he said. ‘Follow them.’

  He flicked on the safety catch as I ambled hesitantly through the long grass, jumped over a ditch and stood on a rock covered with thick moss some way in between the trees.

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ I shouted.

  ‘A bit further,’ Pappa said.

  I walked a little further into the trackless terrain, crossed some soft boggy ground and mounted flat rock from which I could see far and wide.

  The elk lay no more than a few metres from me. In a little marsh. Not moving. Eyes wide open. As clear as glass.

  ‘It’s dead!’ I shouted.

  He didn’t answer, and I couldn’t see him from where I was.

  I still couldn’t understand how it had happened. One shot. Just one shot. The two animals ran off effortlessly, and now one was lying here. Some light red, almost pink, blood flowed from its nostrils. Otherwise there were no visible marks. I approached with caution. It felt as if the animal was following me with its dark, wide-open eye. As if it was waiting for me to get closer, and when eventually I stood beside it, it said:

  So there you are.

  Pappa seemed quite unmoved when eventually he came over. It was as if he had done this sort of thing many times before, even though I knew it was his first kill. He came towards me through the brown grass with the rifle over his shoulder. He looked like a genuine hunter, it struck me: he went over, drew his knife and stood for a while regarding the elk. It was the blue Mora knife, the one with a thumb shield, that had been bought from Kaddeberg’s a few days before. I had been allowed to select it. The choice had been between the red ones and the blue ones. I had gone for a blue one, but I hadn’t imagined that this was what it would be used for. Pappa resolutely drew it from its sheath and then stabbed it into the soft neck, with no reaction from the animal.

  As I sat in the bar feeling the shaking of the ferry right through to my fingertips, I visualised the knife being plunged into the neck and withdrawn. He pulled out the knife, and it was followed by a little spout of dark, frothy blood, which quickly dwindled and dried up. I could see it all. The knife. The blood. The knife. The blood. Soon I had downed the fourth beer, I got up, paid and left. The sea was quite rough so no one paid any attention to me even though I was staggering a little. I walked around the ferry without knowing where I was going. I remember vague faces, bubbling sounds from the game machines, the crush in the shops, the pleasant silence in the corridors. I remember the smell of vomit, alcohol and perfume. I had no idea how long we had been at sea or how far it was to land. At length I found myself in another bar, or maybe it was a kind of discotheque. I didn’t know what the time was, but it must have been night because I saw the moon through one of the solid plastic windows. I was sitting at a table screwed to the floor, something stronger than beer in front of me, and the music was deafening. My mind moved slowly and sluggishly as if it were living its own life, independent of me. I sat there, and I wasn’t there. I saw my hands gripping the glass, I felt my lips meet the smooth rim and I felt the liquid burn my mouth and throat. In fleeting glimpses I saw Pappa floating in bed with the puma leaping from his chest, I saw Mamma sitting at home and waiting, I saw her getting up from the kitchen chair, going to the window, then the front door, I saw her opening it, going onto the steps and listening.

  There were lots of people in the bar and I had the feeling they were watching me on the sly. I remember finishing the drink. I stood up and pointed to the person sitting closest to me.

  ‘What are you goggling at?!’ I shouted. I can’t remember what he answered, or even if he answered, I only remember that the next thing I did was to smash the glass on the edge of the table. It was unbelievably easy, and I stood there holding the stem like a broken bone, and the table glittered with tiny shards. I vaguely remember several people jumping to their feet and stretching out their hands in defence. I remember that everyone’s attention was suddenly focused on me; at least it was for those who were nearest and had seen my performance. Then I grabbed one of the small pieces of glass, held it up triumphantly, and made a show of putting it into my mouth as if it were a pill. I remember with amazing clarity what the glass felt like on my tongue, I remember thinking it could have been a sweet to crunch between my teeth or dissolve, and I remember the ice-cold yet liberating feeling I had when I started to knead the glass with my tongue. I remember standing beside myself and observing. I remember understanding and not understanding what I was doing. I remember the taste of blood in my mouth. Not feeling any pain, just the sticky taste of blood. I remember thinking: if I open my mouth the blood will gush out. But I didn’t open my mouth. Instead I turned and left the bar with unsteady but rapid strides. I went down a quiet corridor, still with the glass in my mouth. I continued up a staircase where I met some other night birds without seeing their faces clearly or hearing what they said. Somewhere far away I thought: ‘Now they’re coming to get you.’ Now someone will come running from the bar, or two security guards will clap you in irons, and then you will be incarcerated in a place below the waterline for the rest of the journey. But no one came. I was alone on the boat. I made my way back up to the top deck, and everything was utterly still, just a regular, sombre rumble, and that was the rumble from the engines deep beneath me. I stood there while the whole world lurched. I felt as if I had an ocean of blood in my mouth. Then I found the door that led outside onto the deck. It was as heavy as lead. I remember the howl through the crack in the door, and the wind pressure that seemed to resist all my strength. Somehow I managed to open the door. I struggled onto the deck and the night air washed over me like rain. I stumbled along holding the railing, beneath the three lifeboats that rocked above me in the darkness. There was no one else outside. It must have been the middle of the night. I looked around for the moon, but it was gone, apparently sunk into the sea. I went astern, where sudden bursts of wind blew the ship’s smoke over me. I closed my eyes, and I saw the dead elk before me again, it lay in the grass staring at me, and I remembered what happened afterwards.

  We were still alone. The other hunters were probably making their way towards us – they must have heard the shot and known approximately where we were – but there was no time to wait. We had to remove the intestines as fast as possible: that much he did know. At first I watched while Pappa tried to tip the elk onto its back. The animal was both limp and heavy, and it toppled onto one side. It was the head that was causing the problem. It fell to one side and dragged the rest of the body with it. Someone had to hold the head. I scrambled forwards on my knees until I had the elk’s head between my thighs. Still that was not enough. I had to inch even closer and get a better grip; I had to lift its whole head so that I sat with the weight of it in my lap. It was much heavier than I could have imagined, and I could feel its heat. Minutes ago this head had been somewhere in the forest listening carefully, turni
ng into the wind as its ears twitched. It had been listening and keeping a lookout, and perhaps it had had our scent in its nostrils, but by then it had been too late. At the moment of impact the bullet had penetrated its body and opened like a flower.

  Initially Pappa seemed a bit unsure of himself. He stood with the Mora knife in his hand, the blade dark with blood after the stab to the neck. Then he pushed the point into the belly, quite a long way down, where the hide was soft and the hair thin and very fair. He mumbled something as he carefully pressed it in and hacked away from him with tiny jerking motions. The skin parted and a greyish-white sac immediately pushed up against the aperture. I thought I detected an instant twitch of the elk’s head, or a shudder running through the colourless eye, but that was all. As the cut grew, the sac grew too; it had a fine network of veins coiled round the outside. Later the ribbed dark blue intestines came into view, in the end everything tumbled out of the opening, steaming and soft like foam, like silk. The acrid smell rose to meet me. I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t even do that. I sat there with the limp, heavy head in my lap and stared at the knife slowly slicing open the belly. Pappa had to throw off his jacket and roll up his sleeves. He took hold of the stomach and the intestines, tried to drag them out of the elk carcass, there was a squelching sound, unlike anything I had heard before, followed by a deep sigh as something loosened and the whole mess poured out over the ground and his boots. I don’t know how long we were there on our own, but we were almost finished by the time the other hunters appeared at the edge of the forest.