Before I Burn: A Novel Read online

  The next thing I remember is when the heart was cut out. Kasper did that, because he knew exactly where the heart was positioned and how to cut so as to remove it in one piece. He too had to strip off his jacket, roll up his sleeves and lean forwards over the empty elk. By then Pappa was hunkered down by a stream rinsing his arms and hands. I remember watching him and the blood being rinsed off into the cold marshy water, and thinking it was his own blood. Kasper lunged into the cavernous animal and was soon covered with blood right up to his elbows. All of a sudden he jumped to his feet, holding the lead bullet between his fingers, the one that had opened like a flower, and in the end there he was, holding the dark heart in his hands, holding it up so that everyone could see the perfect hole right through.

  I was somewhere in the middle of the Skagerrak. I leaned over the railing and stared down into the turbid wake which followed behind us and disappeared into the darkness. The wind tousled my hair, the diesel smoke whirled and the sea foamed and frothed beneath me. I opened my mouth, spat out the glass shard and felt blood oozing over my lip. I stood like that for a long time, until there was no more blood, until it was gone, until everything was gone. Then I clambered onto the rail, closed my eyes, held tight, and let go.

  VIII.

  IT WAS HALF PAST TWO in the morning of Monday, 5 June 1978. The road had been cleared after the accident. The two boys on the motorbike had been transported to Kristiansand in separate ambulances. The condition of one was said to be serious but stable. The other had only minor injuries. He was the one who had been wearing a helmet. Vatneli was still burning, but Olav and Johanna’s house was now a pile of glowing embers. Pappa had driven home. After sitting for a while on the front steps with his gun he went back indoors. He sat in the living room at first, but as day began to break he finally headed for bed. Cars were still criss-crossing the length and breadth of Finsland, but no new fires were found.

  There was a sense of quiet conviction that the two houses in Vatneli were the sum of the night’s activities. Two residential houses destroyed. A married couple who had lost everything, and on top of that a serious motorcycle accident.

  Surely that was enough, wasn’t it?

  Dag drove slowly past the scene of the accident in Fjeldsgård on the Brandsvoll road. The cuts to his forehead were throbbing, but they no longer hurt, and he wrapped his hands around the wheel. Then he switched on the radio. Edited highlights of the match between Austria and West Germany were being broadcast. On the Fjeldsgård Plain he was waved into the roadside.

  The police officer shone a torch into his face.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m the fire chief’s son,’ he answered.

  ‘And where are you going?’

  ‘Home.’

  The officer hesitated, then switched off the torch.

  ‘Get your headlamps fixed,’ he said. ‘Light’s going in all directions.’

  Then he was allowed to drive on.

  The score was 2–2 as he passed Brandsvoll Community Centre. He came to the crossroads by the shop, but did not turn right for Skinnsnes. Instead he carried on past the old doctor’s surgery on the bend opposite Knut Frigstad’s house, the one with only two rooms and walls that were so thin everyone in the waiting room could hear what was going on inside. That was where Kåre Vatneli had sat with Johanna while Dr Rosenvold examined his leg that time in the fifties.

  At the top of the hill he extinguished the headlamps. It made no difference, he could see just as well without them, after all, it was light enough everywhere now. He felt a tingling sense of well-being spread from his stomach out to his arms. He had warmed up in the car and now he drummed his fingers on the wheel. In Argentina, Hans Krankl had the ball. Only a few minutes of the match were left now. Krankl surged forwards to the right, found himself without support and ran across towards the penalty box. The roar in the stadium grew louder. The reception went fuzzy, he tried to adjust it, but lost the station altogether. Now there was just low white noise, and with this in the background he kept driving. He felt light-bodied, felt the blood throbbing in his temples and the cuts on his forehead. He was tired no longer; he just felt light. Light and strangely excited. He reduced his speed, humming a song with neither a beginning nor an end.

  He turned right, below Anders Fjeldsgård’s house, stopped the car, twisted the dial backwards and forwards until he found another, a better frequency. Krankl had dribbled past Müller and Rummenigge, suddenly he had space, he hit a superb shot and the stadium exploded.

  Dag got out of the car. The house was situated high up on rock by the roadside, and it was unlit. The windows were black and shiny. On each side of the front steps there were two trees, dark with thick foliage. He sauntered to the rear of the house, where he knew the main entrance was, and cautiously pressed the door. Locked. Then he returned to the car, got in, and was about to turn the ignition key, but changed his mind. He darted soundlessly from the car to the front door. There was a kind of staircase in the lawn, small steps cut into the ground. He took these stone steps in three strides. Then he was at the top. An old door with eight inlaid glass panes. He carefully tested the handle. Also locked. Then he scampered back to the car, pulled the jerrycan out from under the pile of clothes and within seconds he was back on the front steps, listening. Mist lay over the fields, just as it did down in Kilen, still, white and pure. He noticed the stars above, pale, distant, in another universe. Then he thrust the corner of the can into the lowest pane in the door. The glass, old and brittle, smashed easily. He held his breath, his heart thundering in his ears. The cap on the jerry can was stuck, and he tussled with it until he managed to get it loose. He waited a few more seconds before going into action. Not a sound anywhere. No shouts from inside, no quickened steps. Nothing. Just the sound of gushing petrol. His hands and arms went numb as he emptied the rest of the can into the dark hallway.

  Meanwhile, inside the house, Agnes Fjeldsgård was trying to rouse her husband, who lay fast asleep beside her. Anders, a solid rock of a man, was then seventy-seven years old. She had to shake him hard before he exhibited any signs of life.

  ‘He’s here,’ she whispered in the darkness.

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Agnes said. ‘I saw him through the kitchen window. He’s outside.’

  She didn’t have a moment to waste, donned her dressing gown and hurried out of the bedroom, through the kitchen and into the living room.

  There, she saw the black figure outside the glass veranda door. The man was bent over in an odd pose, silent and unmoving. She detected the distinctive smell and heard the equally distinctive sound of petrol being poured through the smashed glass and over the wooden floor. Everything ground to a halt. Everything except her heart. She didn’t think. She wasn’t even frightened. She just stood there rooted to the spot, just as Johanna Vatneli had stood some hours earlier, staring through the mass of flames at the shadow on the other side. Except that now there were no flames, there was only a shadow. For seconds they stood face to face. With only a few metres separating them. At last she filled her lungs and screamed, and then he struck the match, held it in his hand with part of his face visible in the sudden flare: some of the chin, the corner of the mouth, the nose, the eye.

  Then he threw the match towards her.

  It was getting light, but the birds were still silent. In the large house in Brandsvoll, Else had been sitting awake ever since Alfred left shortly after twelve. She didn’t know what was happening, only that there was a fire in the east of the region. When the alarm had gone off at around midnight she had seen the blue lights flashing behind the bedroom curtains. She had dashed to the window, looking for the fire engine.

  ‘It’s going towards Kilen,’ she had shouted.

  When Alfred got up she hadn’t dared to go back to bed; after all she had three children sleeping in the loft, the youngest of whom was only ten. She switched on the TV, but lowered the sound. For a long time she sat at the far e
nd of the sofa watching the players running around on the pitch as if following a pattern she couldn’t comprehend. Now and again she went to the stairs and stood listening. She saw nothing, heard nothing. Had she walked around to the eastern side of the house, she would presumably have seen the flames billowing across the sky. But she hadn’t; she didn’t dare venture outside the house. The furthest she went was to the door, and it faced west. From there she could see the light in Teresa’s windows, while Alma and Ingemann’s house lay hidden behind a pine-clad hill.

  In the end she sat on the sofa under a blanket. She began to feel drowsy, but was determined not to fall asleep. She sat in this state for quite a while. Then she fell asleep.

  She woke with a start at a little after half past three.

  In seconds she was in the porch, where she grabbed a jacket and ran to the front steps. She just caught sight of the car headlamps turning off the main road, they dazzled her for a brief instant, before they were dipped and the car drove into the yard. One of them was obviously broken because it was pointing up into the sky. She didn’t know who it was until the door opened and he got out. She was at once reassured.

  ‘Ah, it’s you,’ she said. ‘I thought you were driving the fire engine.’

  ‘It’s in Vatneli,’ he answered. ‘We need it to put out the fire, so I had to use my own car.’ He approached her, rubbing his hands. It was obvious he was cold.

  ‘I thought you might want to hear the latest,’ he said.

  ‘The latest?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, coming closer.

  ‘Well then?’

  ‘The pyromaniac has struck in Solås.’

  ‘In Solås? Where in Solås?’

  ‘Agnes and Anders’s house,’ he replied in a quiet voice.

  She froze, the blood turning to ice in her veins, until it slowly thawed again.

  ‘Anders and Agnes,’ she repeated, as though she didn’t believe what he had said. ‘That’s not far from here, is it.’

  ‘He poured petrol through a window and lit it,’ he said.

  ‘And there’s me sleeping on the sofa,’ she muttered.

  ‘It’s dangerous to sleep tonight,’ he said.

  ‘But this is just sheer madness,’ she whispered. ‘This is the work of a madman.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, coming even closer. ‘This is the work of a madman.’

  She saw his face clearly in the light from the outside lamp. His eyes were shiny and bright. His hair was dishevelled. He had soot over his face and on his shirt. It struck her that he looked much as he did when he was a child. She remembered him, of course, from the days when he used to run across the field and she would give him juice in the kitchen. Alma and Ingemann’s well-behaved, clever son.

  ‘Have you hurt yourself?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he answered. ‘Just a few scratches.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to come in and warm yourself?’

  He gave a slight shake of his head.

  ‘The person behind this,’ he started, ‘the, the…We’ll catch him sooner or later. He won’t escape.’

  ‘It’s hard to believe, all these things going on,’ she said.

  She pulled her jacket tighter around her and looked up at the unlit windows where the children were asleep. When she turned back he was staring at her; it was as if he had changed in the few seconds she had looked away.

  ‘The worst thing that can happen now, do you know what that is, Else?’

  ‘No,’ she quavered.

  ‘It’s a fire breaking out here.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Here.’

  ‘Don’t say things like that, Dag,’ she said.

  ‘Now that all our equipment’s in Vatneli,’ he continued. ‘So if something were to happen, then…it would take ages to move it all.’

  ‘Let’s hope there are no more fires tonight,’ she said.

  ‘Right,’ he said, without averting his eyes.

  ‘I can’t take any more fires,’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘We’ve had enough of them now.’

  ‘I pray to God that nothing will happen.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said slowly, before turning and walking to his car. ‘That’s the best thing you can do, Else. Pray to God.’

  Alma was sitting by the kitchen window, fully clothed; the coffee pot stood on the stove, cold and gleaming. She had sliced a whole fresh loaf, one of those she had baked on Sunday morning while all had been peaceful. She had set out jam and cured sausage and some Prim cheese spread in case Dag had time to sit and have a bite, if he came home at all.

  Ingemann had stayed with her in the living room for a few hours, but then he had gone upstairs to bed. Shortly afterwards the alarm had gone off. He had sat there, fully dressed, in the dark blue overalls that still smelt of fire, but as he was about to go he had experienced stabbing pains in his chest.

  ‘It’s my heart, Dag,’ he had said. ‘It’s my heart.’

  Dag set off in the fire engine. Alma and Ingemann sat in silence, listening to the sirens wailing past the house, watching the blue lights flashing across the living room walls, over the piano and the trophy shelves. They sat there as the sirens slowly became fainter, but neither of them had said anything, not a word, and in the end Ingemann had gone upstairs, leaving the entire living room smelling of fire.

  A few hours later Dag returned home. He stood for some seconds in the hall, telling them between gasps about the two fires in Vatneli, and about the motorbike accident in Fjeldsgård, then ran to the door and Alma was left in the hall with the blood pounding in her temples.

  That was when she realised: he smells of petrol.

  Now she got up from her chair, crossed to the window, but there was nothing to see, only the hazy reflection of her own face. Went to the front steps. The mist hung like soft silk above the fields, and little by little day was breaking, but it wasn’t possible to see the main road yet. She was about to go in when she heard the car. It was coming from Brandsvoll, getting closer, moving slowly, changing gear, and turned into the drive. The headlamps caused the mist to gleam curiously. She saw who it was, but the car didn’t stop in the yard, it continued slowly up the hill to the fire station.

  She made a sudden decision. She went and put on Ingemann’s windbreaker, the one with pockets and zips on both arms, then she went outside into the grey morning light, crossed the yard and scampered up the hill. When she saw the car outside the fire station she was neither relieved nor surprised. As she approached she slowed down so she was walking at normal speed. The car was there, the door was wide open, but Dag was nowhere to be seen. The hot engine was ticking. There was a smell of exhaust and wet earth, forest and summer darkness. The fire station door was locked. There was no light apart from the single bulb above the gateway. He wasn’t there. She stood weighing up the pros and cons, but then continued up the road anyway. It wasn’t far up to Nerbø, where Sløgedal’s house was. She had the constant sensation that Dag was walking ahead of her in the grey dawn. She visualised it: he was ahead of her, and she was following. Or vice versa: he was walking behind her, he could catch her up at any moment, and put his hands over her eyes as he had done in the kitchen that time. She thought she heard footsteps, but whenever she stopped there was complete silence. She pictured his face and she heard him talking to himself upstairs in the house. His voice was much higher than usual, as though he were a child again. She pictured the weird, stiff face that he had put on over his old one, that stayed for fleeting seconds, then cracked and was gone.

  She walked faster and faster until she was running, all the jacket zips jingling. Then she caught sight of the house. It was completely isolated. All the windows were black. The walls grey. Slightly to the left was the barn, also grey with hazy contours, like an ancient ship on a foggy sea. She slowed down again. She wasn’t used to running; her heart was beating painfully and she had a taste of iron in her mouth. Clambering down from the road, into Sløg
edal’s garden, she stopped under the old fruit trees and listened. Nothing, just her heart racing in her chest. She held onto a tree until her breathing steadied. Then she moved a few steps closer to the barn, and that was when she saw him. There were no more than ten, perhaps fifteen, metres between them. She gave a little start, even though, deep down, she had always known he would be here. He was bent over in a strange position as though studying something on the ground by the barn wall. Then he put the white can down on the grass. She both heard and saw everything with total clarity. She seemed to have acquired an animal’s hearing. It was like the first days after she had given birth: all of a sudden her senses had been heightened. For several months she saw and heard with greater precision than at any other time in her life. Now it was occurring again. She half-opened her mouth, her lips moved, but no sound came out. It was like a large flower opening somewhere in her chest. It thrust out petals, it hurt so much she wanted to scream, but the scream wouldn’t come, her lips moved, but still there was no sound. She heard the last drops of petrol slopping around in the can. She heard the rasping of the matchsticks. She heard the flare of the matchsticks. Then his face was lit up. She thought of all the times she had sat at his bedside while he was asleep. She had never said a word to anyone, but she had often sat at his bedside crying soundlessly. She hadn’t been able to help herself. It just came. He had been lying there so peacefully, his face both open and closed; he was very near and he was unapproachable, and then the tears had flowed in torrents. And she hadn’t known if it was with happiness or sorrow. The little boy had come to them as a miracle. They had been allowed to keep him for a while. But then they would lose him. It had hurt so much. She hadn’t been able to think of anything else except that they would lose him. A wave surged up from her stomach, it rolled through her chest, hot, washed through her throat, but came to a halt in her mouth. She had learned to cry without making any noise at all. She was standing perhaps ten metres behind him, but now she was incapable of crying. She just stood there and saw his face merge into the darkness as he lowered his hand and threw the burning match. The flames burst into life. It was like an avalanche of fire. At once everywhere around them was lit up. It was a restless yellow light that made all the shadows tremble. He staggered backwards a couple of paces while she remained motionless. The flames were already licking high up the wall. She saw the closest trees, the spruce forest, strangely illuminated, like a gathering of old people – wise, mute and sombre with all they knew – a weeping birch nearby, almost rigid with terror, and the fruit trees around her with their white flowers raised high against the sky. She was numb, yet felt as if she were sinking. Her feet, ankles were sinking slowly into the earth. At first it hurt, thereafter it was no more than faint discomfort. In the end, she felt nothing. The pains in her chest vanished. The flower was there, but it no longer hurt. Within seconds the whole of one barn wall was ablaze. From it came a sort of wind that was both freezing cold and burning hot. The wind drove the flames, goaded them, not allowing them any peace. She felt the wind on her face, on her cheek, on her brow.