Before I Burn: A Novel Read online

  The flames billowed across the sky, but Olav and Johanna didn’t see them. The light changed from white to rust-red, then purple and orange. What a sight it was. A shower of sparks was sent flying into the air as the frame of the house collapsed, it hovered weightlessly for a few moments, then died. The leaves on the trees crinkled. The wild birds were gone; they had finally broken free of one another. Now the fire burned quietly with tall, vertical flames. More cars arrived. People got out, left the doors open, wrapped their jackets tightly around them and slowly approached the fire. Among these was my father. In my mind’s eye he came in the blue Datsun, stopped some distance away and got out like the others, but I have never been able to see his face properly. He was there, I know he was there outside Olav and Johanna’s burning house on that night, but I don’t know what he was thinking or who he spoke to, and I can’t see his face.

  Ash lay all over the garden; large, lazy flakes floated through the air, then fluttered over the trees and covered the parked vehicles as quietly as snow. A motorbike started up and left, ridden by two young men. One with a helmet, one without.

  There was nothing you could do. Olav and Johanna Vatneli’s house was razed to the ground.

  In the end all that remained was the chimney. By then it was almost morning and most of the vehicles had gone. Only the smoke hung like a thin, transparent haze over the garden and between the closest trees. The two people in Knut Karlsen’s cellar had no clothes apart from the nightwear in which they stood. And the bag. Containing three thousand kroner.

  At four o’clock it was so light that the birds began to sing. Theirs was a strangely intense song, a steady exultation that mingled with the drone of the water pumps. A huge amount of water had been needed, so the hoses had been rolled down the rough slope to Lake Livannet, and the water pumped up thirty metres.

  Three journalists and a number of photographers circled the site of the blaze. First of all, they talked to the rural police chief, Lensmann Knut Koland, then they walked up the slope and knocked on the cellar door. They were allowed to talk to Johanna; Olav was lying on the divan with a rug over him and staring up at the ceiling, in a different world. Johanna answered with controlled composure, giving identical answers to all the questions. She spoke slowly, so they had plenty of time to take notes. Then photographs of her were taken. Several, from various angles, but only those showing her despondent face appeared that same day in the local newspapers: Faedrelandsvennen, Sørlandet and Lindesnes. She had singed eyebrows, soot on one cheek and a cut to her forehead, and she looked like a survivor of a mining accident.

  By and large, she was composed.

  After they had all gone, it occurred to her that she didn’t have her teeth, they were in the glass beside Olav’s on the vanity shelf, but then she remembered there was no longer any shelf, nor any glass, nor any teeth; neither her teeth nor Olav’s existed any longer. In my mind’s eye I have seen this, the strangely lucid, chilling instant when she realised she had lost absolutely everything, even her teeth, and only then did tears start to trickle quietly down her cheeks.

  II.

  EVER SINCE EARLY CHILDHOOD I have been told the story of the fires. At the beginning it was my parents who told me, but it wasn’t until I grew up and heard it from others that I realised that in fact it was all true. For long periods the story has seemed to disappear, only to crop up unexpectedly in a conversation, a newspaper article or simply in my consciousness. It has pursued me for thirty years although I have never known exactly what happened or indeed what it was all about. As a child I remember sitting in the back seat of a blue Datsun going to my grandparents’ at Heivollen, and on the way there we would pass the house where the pyromaniac lived. It was as though I could feel a waft of something outlandish and alluring as we drove past. Immediately afterwards we passed the house belonging to Sløgedal, the composer and organist at Kristiansand Cathedral, and my father used to point to the old barn bridge which didn’t meet the new barn that had been erected. It burned down when you were christened, he said, and so it went on until in some way or other I connected the fires with myself. Yet there was so much I didn’t know, which was why I had never thought of writing about the fires. It was too big a subject, too far-reaching and too close to home.

  The story had been there like a shadow until the moment I decided to write it down. This happened suddenly, in the early summer of 2009, after I moved back home. It came about in the following way:

  A few weeks earlier, in April, I was sitting on my own up in the old loft of Lauvslandsmoen School rummaging through boxes of old text books, yellowing exercise books and miscellaneous papers. I remember this loft from my schooldays as being extremely messy and full of jumble. We used to hide up there sometimes, that was when we had a woodwork class in the cellar, and we would tiptoe up all the steps, past the music room, up the final, darkened staircase and sit in the freezing cold loft, as quiet as mice, waiting for someone to notice that we had absented ourselves.

  The books were cold and my fingers left marks on the damp papers, which must have been up there for twenty or thirty years. After a while I stumbled on a pile of black and white photographs wrapped in plastic, and with a vague sense of anticipation I began to flick through them. I recognised the faces straightaway but was unable to place them. Most of the photos were of children, but among them was one of a group of adults. Gradually it dawned on me that the photos were of my own time at the school. They were of kids from my class, there were a few older children, a few younger ones too, pictures of the school playground or inside the classrooms, and there were a number in which my teachers appeared. There was also a photo of a small boy singing on a stage. His hair had recently been cut and he was wearing a knitted jumper with a shirt that barely protruded over the top. The occasion must have been some kind of Christmas celebration because I could make out a decorated Christmas tree and paper chains in the background. More people were there with him, and everyone was holding a lit candle. It took me four, maybe five seconds. Then it clicked: That’s me!

  That was when it all started, with the sight of this boy innocently standing there and singing. I looked at myself, stared at my own face for several seconds without seeing who it was. It is difficult to explain why, but the experience had such an impact on me. It was as though I understood yet didn’t understand that it was me. And that it made no difference. Why I don’t know. But that was when the story of the fires made its re-appearance, as a kind of extension of this discovery. It was this picture of me, with a thin, steady flame rising from my hand, as it were, that led, a few weeks later, to my realisation one evening at the beginning of June that I would attempt to write the story of the fires. It was like taking a deep breath.

  And so.

  III.

  WHEN THE FIRST BUILDING was set alight in the region of Finsland in Southern Norway at the beginning of May 1978, I was not yet two months old. A few days after my birth, my father collected Mamma and me from the maternity ward in Kongens gate in Kristiansand. I was laid in a dark blue travel bag and driven the forty kilometres home to Finsland, and when I was taken from the car to our Kleveland homestead for the first time it was in a tremendous snowstorm, which didn’t abate until two days later. Thereafter it was sunshine and silence, white winter days, until the wind turned southwest and spring arrived. At the end of April there was still snow lying where the sun didn’t reach, but the warmer temperatures had well and truly arrived, and on 6 May, the day it all began, the forest was already perilously dry.

  A month later, just before midnight on 5 June, it was all over. There had been ten fires, and it was the day after my christening, which was held on the third Sunday after Whitsun. It had been hot and sultry for weeks, and that Sunday was the hottest day yet. The heat shimmered and quivered above the rooftops and made the tarmac bulge at the end of the plain in Lauvslandsmoen and Brandsvoll. In the afternoon there was an enormous deluge and all of a sudden the world felt fresh and new. The weather cleared, insects whi
rred through the air and the evening was warm and still.

  It was the evening before the worst night of all.

  In fact, the story of the fires is closely entwined with the very first months of my life and culminates the night after my christening. However, it was far from certain that there would be any christening on that Sunday. Early that morning, at seven minutes past twelve, a dark car had been observed travelling at great speed towards the church. By that point panic had set in. The car was advancing on the church, as I said, climbing, but then it disappeared from sight, and no one knew where it had gone. Events were monitored hour by hour. Minute by minute. The worst was feared. So long as the church is spared, people thought. So long as the church is spared. It wasn’t said out loud; however, everyone was thinking it. The worst of all would be if the church burned down. That was why they kept watch. Not just near the church but throughout the entire region. People sat on their doorsteps, listening. My father sat outside our brown house on Kleveland farm while I lay asleep indoors. He had a gun with him, Grandad’s rifle, which I would see him use later, but on this night he hadn’t been able to obtain ammunition for it. Nonetheless, it was a gun, ammunition or no ammunition. The bottom line was that you kept watch. No one had the remotest idea who the arsonist was. Or who might suddenly emerge from the darkness. Nothing like this had been experienced since the war. Indeed, during those weeks there was an atmosphere in the region that was reminiscent of war. Even those who were too young to have lived through the war also thought about it in those terms. That is what everyone has told me. War had returned.

  On Monday night it was all over, barely twenty-four hours after Olav and Johanna’s house had been set alight. It was still 5 June, just before midnight, after interviews lasting three hours. Before that, Alfred had conveyed the sad message to Lensmann Knut Koland, who, along with detective colleagues from Kristiansand and KRIPOS from Oslo, had set up a base in the old council room in Brandsvoll Community Centre. The sad and liberating message. Alfred had to do it, not Ingemann, even though the latter had probably put two and two together a long time ago. When the evidence came to light, however, he couldn’t do it himself. Neither Ingemann nor Alma could – Alma, who at that time was lying in bed, unable to move.

  An arrest soon followed, and then the quiet avalanche of events.

  During the final thirty minutes before midnight, cars drove from house to house around the whole district. There were four police patrol cars, plus a number of private vehicles. There was no need to knock: generally there was someone sitting on the front steps keeping watch. The vehicle would stop, or drive by slowly, as someone shouted through the window:

  He’s been arrested.

  The news spread. People walked in the darkness, over the night dew, across fields to neighbours’, identified themselves and passed on the message that he had been arrested. They said the name, and then all went quiet for a few seconds until the listeners could collect themselves.

  Him?

  Everyone was notified, including Sløgedal, the cathedral organist, who sat in hiding a short distance from his homestead at Nerbø, waiting with a loaded gun. Later he told me about that night. How light and celestial it had been, how dark and earthbound and unreal, all at once. The police knew Sløgedal had taken up this position; they were the ones who gave him the gun, so they drove up with the news. At last he was able to get to his feet, return the rifle and ask:

  Who is it?

  John dropped by Kleveland. He stood on the lawn outside my parents’ bedroom, whispering until my mother woke. He kept whispering her name until she dressed and came to the door so that he, too, could say the four magic words that were passed from mouth to mouth that night:

  He has been arrested.

  And so it spread like wildfire. It even got onto NRK’s late-night news bulletin. The police had notified the Norwegian News Agency and asked them to circulate the information as quickly as possible to allay fears. But by the time it was read out from Marienlyst in Oslo, the whole region knew.

  He had been arrested.

  Everyone could go to bed, lights were switched off one by one, but doors were still locked, after all, you could never be certain. From now on, no one would ever be certain.

  Household after household in the region eventually settled down. At last you could sleep, and next morning you would wake up believing it had all been a dream.

  This had been no dream, though.

  Faedrelandsvennen published a total of three front-page spreads in four days, the first on the morning of Saturday 3 June when the region woke to news of four more torched buildings. In addition, there was a front page in Verdens Gang and in Dagbladet, both of them national newspapers. Two in Sørlandet. Two in Lindesnes as well. A front page and one inside page in Aftenposten, also a national paper. On this same Saturday there was also an interview with Ingemann on page three of Lindesnes; that was the one where he was pictured standing next to the fire engine with a hand on the water pump and an inscrutable expression on his face.

  Apart from this, there were a variety of minor mentions in regional newspapers and NRK’s daily radio updates. As well as a four-minute slot on the main TV news broadcast on Monday evening when in fact it was all over, but panic still hung in the air everywhere like fog. The news item showed a distant shot of Anders and Agnes Fjeldsgård’s house, the maple trees on either side of the front entrance where the windows had been smashed and petrol poured over the floor. The two maples are still there, and I was surprised to see that they hadn’t grown in more than thirty years. The clip showed the restless shadows of leaves flapping above the walls of the house while first the reporter, and then Lensmann Koland, described the sequence of events. Next, the cameras focused on the scene in Vatneli: the smoking ruins and the chimney that towered in the air like a huge tree bereft of its branches. That was all that was left of Olav and Johanna Vatneli’s house. Two firemen walked past on the road. They were both bare-headed. One was holding what looked like an ice axe, as though he were a glacier hiker on his way into the frozen wastes. The other was empty-handed, and I didn’t recognise either of the men. Towards the end of the item there was footage of the smoking heap of rubble, which was all that remained of the Sløgedals’ barn at Nerbø. That was fire number ten. A solitary man stood there hosing down the debris as if there were something planted in the heap of ashes that needed watering. Thousands of litres of water. It was Alfred. I recognised him even though he was more than thirty years younger and, what was more, had his back to the camera.

  IV.

  IT WAS SUMMER. Everything had turned green, leaves had appeared on the trees, the lilacs were in flower and throughout June I sat on the first floor of the ex-bank in Kilen trying to work out how all the pieces fitted together. I had rented the room for a spell in the hope that the silence and the view would bring me closer to myself and my writing. I sat alone in the room, which had been stripped bare of almost everything, with only the sky, the forest and a view of Lake Livannet in front of me. I had a basic chair, a rickety table and an old-fashioned, red office lamp that had been left in one of the storerooms, the kind that seems to stoop over your work like a curious onlooker. I settled myself and saw the birch tree swaying in the wind directly outside the window. I was sitting in the midst of the countryside in which I had grown up, in the midst of everything that had marked and shaped me and in some way made me who I was. I saw leaves fluttering and shaking and shadows darkening tree trunks, I saw the road and scattered houses leading up to Vatneli, I saw the sun glistening on an open window and continuing to glisten when the window was closed. I saw the sky and clouds drifting slowly in off the sea from the south-west, I saw them change form as I gazed, I saw the birds, which had long been busy in the short, hectic summer, I saw the winter-pale chicks splashing at the water’s edge on the other side, just below the garden belonging to what had been Syvert Maessel’s house and last of all I saw the lake, and the wind that caused the surface to ripple all day and sparkle,
even in the shadows where the water was usually black and still.

  The next day I was there again. Staring out. Didn’t write a thing. All of a sudden it felt impossible. The third day I became aware of a large bird by the shore. It was balancing on one leg with its head and a long, pointed beak lowered. It was a heron. I waited for it to take off, or to dive into the water, or at least to change legs. But it did none of those things. It stood there, unmoving, until I got up and went home.

  And so the days passed. I sat for a few hours with Lake Livannet in front of me. Tried to make things happen, without any success. Afterwards I let myself out, went down the steep staircase that had been erected on the outside of the building especially for me, and drove the few hundred metres to the shop to buy some things. I wandered around in the bright, congenial atmosphere, picked up some milk, bread and coffee. It was good to stroll around like this, picking up something solid and simple and putting it in the shopping trolley. In the aisles I bumped into people I knew, people who had known me all my life, who had known my parents and my father’s parents, who had seen me as a child, who had seen me grow up and move away, who had seen me become a writer, and who now said they were pleased I had moved back, even though I always emphasised that it was only for a shortish period. I hadn’t come back to stay, I said, but now, right now, I’m here.