Before I Burn: A Novel Page 4

  When I arrived the sun was still high in the sky.

  In some way or other, Alfred was a part of my childhood. I remember him from the time Finsland Sparebank had offices in Brandsvoll Community Centre, right at the end facing the road. I went there with Pappa. It was down a long corridor and then to the right. I often had my piggy bank with me, which had to be cut open to disgorge the money. This opening of the piggy bank was always a matter of great sorrow. Alfred was the bank manager and a cashier at Finsland Sparebank, and he generally sat with a serious expression in an office on the other side of the counter, isolated as it were from the world around him. He never had anything to do with my paltry savings, his head was filled with great and weighty thoughts, or so it seemed. That is why I remember him. Likewise the postman. That was Rolf. I remember him from Kilen Post Office, which has gone now. He would stand there sorting mail without looking up from his work. I can also remember him arriving in a post van, getting out, distributing newspapers and letters to the mailboxes on the old milk ramp by the road as though he was only doing it this once, and never again.

  Alfred was a member of the voluntary fire service in 1978. There must have been around twenty members in all, and they lived within a radius of a few kilometres from the alarm, which was attached to a post next to the fire station at Skinnsnes. All you had to do was place a compass point on the station and draw a circle. No one was allowed to live beyond hearing distance of the alarm. Apart from that there were no special requirements for joining the voluntary service. Actually, yes, there was: you had to have a car. The fire engine had space for only two men.

  The fire station lay at the geographical centre of the region, just a few hundred metres from the large house where Alfred had made his home and started a family, to the west of the chapel and the old co-op building which had been converted into stables. I suppose it is a trifle misleading to call it a fire station; in reality it was a fairly ample concrete garage with a metal shutter, an adjacent door and an outside lamp. That was all. Only the fire chief lived closer. That was Ingemann, who was married to Alma. Ingemann was sixty-four years old in the summer of 1978. In addition to his job as fire chief he had his own workshop in an outbuilding across the drive. The post of fire chief in Finsland was, strictly speaking, not a job. There were never any fires. You were talking maybe a couple of call-outs a year, and then as a rule it would be to minor forest fires. Nonetheless, he had a suit that hung in the workshop and that he donned whenever the alarm went off, which was why they called it the fire suit. Ingemann and Alma had only one son. They had had him late in life, when Ingemann was over forty. His name was Dag; he was born at the height of the summer in 1957 and had been very much wanted. There was Dag, Ingemann and Alma. All three of them lived within the magic circle.

  I sat talking to Else and Alfred for a long time. They were so calm and level-headed; I didn’t need to give any further explanations as to why I had come, why I wished to write about the fires. It appeared to be obvious to them. They had read my earlier books and seemed to have complete confidence in my ability to write about the fires as well, and to believe that I would do it in a proper, dignified manner. I took as good as no notes, so engrossed was I in what they told me. They spoke in hushed tones, as everyone did when conversation turned to the fires. They lowered their voices and told their story slowly, dwelling on precise details. It struck me that in a way they were afraid of being seen with me.

  ‘It’s quite some time ago now, you know,’ Else said, as if suddenly giving up. ‘It’s over thirty years ago, it is. That’s a human lifespan, isn’t it.’ Then she pointed at me.

  ‘Yes…and you,’ she said, ‘you’d just been born.’ She added, with a strange gleam in her eyes: ‘And look at you now.’

  Then Alfred told the whole story. He had set aside time to remember before I came, and now he told me everything as he recalled it. He spoke quietly and in a businesslike fashion, just as an old bank man would. Now and then, however, he drew a deep breath.

  And so.

  When he had finished there was a second’s silence. Alfred sat staring at a point to the left of me, out of the window from which you could see the whole road down to the community centre.

  Afterwards Alfred told the story of the man who blew himself up, and the mother who subsequently walked around collecting the fragments in her apron. I don’t know how we got onto this, strictly speaking it had nothing to do with the fires, but somehow it was appropriate. Once again Alfred adopted the same sober narrative style, and that made the story even more shocking. I didn’t need to take notes; the story is unforgettable.

  As I was about to go we broached the subject of the letter. There was a letter. Else and I sat in the living room while Alfred went to look for it. While he was away she said absent-mindedly, almost to herself: ‘Such a good boy. The best boy in the world.’

  I believe Alfred knew exactly where the letter was because he was back within an instant and I took it while Else and Alfred quietly awaited my reaction. It was a thin piece of A5 paper, written on both sides. The handwriting sloped gently; there was a rather childlike quality about it. I began to read with a mixture of reverence and immense curiosity. Once I had finished, I said:

  ‘He must have been…intelligent.’

  ‘He was,’ Alfred said. ‘He was a smart lad.’

  That was all. Then I re-read the letter, as if there were something I had overlooked or misunderstood.

  ‘You can take it with you,’ Alfred said as I folded it for a second time. ‘I don’t need it. Just take it with you.’

  At first I hesitated, but then I dropped it into my inside pocket. I was unsure whether I should thank him or Alfred should thank me, and the situation ended with neither of us saying anything. I stood up and cast a glance through the window. I saw the fields outside and the lights by the road. Before going into the hallway I looked at the picture on the wall above the TV. It was all black apart from some letters in gold: By God’s Grace.

  Alfred accompanied me to the front door, and out into the cold night air. It was as though he didn’t want me to go, or he felt there was something he had forgotten to say. A detail from the story, or a crucial recollection, something he had omitted but which might appear from nowhere and cast everything in a new light. The forest around us was by now completely black; it seemed to have crept closer in the few hours we had been together. It was like a dark, impenetrable wall, but the sky was still clear and light with long, sleigh-shaped clouds. We went down the steps and Alfred walked with me to the car. All that could be heard was the sound of our footsteps. We exhaled transparent, frozen breath from our mouths as we spoke. Then Alfred said: ‘You’re so like your father, you are. We liked him a lot, all of us. He was a fine man. It’s such a shame he’s no longer with us.’

  I.

  HE WAS VERY MUCH WANTED, and when he did finally arrive, it was as if a miracle had taken place. A perfectly formed boy. And as an only child, he didn’t have to share their love with anyone. He was on his own a lot and liked to sit at the kitchen table drawing while Alma cooked. He learned to read early. Even before he started school he had sounded his way through several of the popular books displayed on the first floor of the community centre. He used to cycle there, and return home with a full carrier bag of books hanging from the handlebars. Later he became the best in his class at reading, and writing. He wrote long stories, all with a violent, and often bloody, end. These dramatic, harrowing tales seemed out of character. He was so quiet, and rather shy. Good-natured to a fault. Not to mention how polite he was. No one bowed as deeply or thanked as emphatically as he did. No one was as helpful or as considerate as he was. If anyone asked, they never received no for an answer. He often helped the elderly, checking if there was any snow-shovelling, wood-carrying or house-painting to be done. Ingemann and Alma lit up when the conversation turned to Dag. Sometimes people asked how they had got such a wonderfully well-behaved boy. They had no answer, but their faces were radiant. It
was as if all the love they had given him ever since he was an infant was blossoming in the boy, and he passed it on to those he met. That had to be the explanation, their unrestrained love. Indeed, he was loved by everyone. And he knew that himself; he cast down his gaze when anyone spoke to him.

  Twice he had seen a house burn to the ground. That was before he was ten years old. Both times he had been utterly silent, and afterwards he hadn’t mentioned the fires.

  Of course, the alarm didn’t go off very often, but when it did he was allowed to go with Ingemann in the fire engine.

  It would start with the telephone ringing in the hall. Ingemann picked up. Yes? he said. Alma came through the kitchen door, drying her hands on her apron. It was quiet for a few seconds. Then came Ingemann’s voice: Fire, fire. It was like a magic formula. Everything else was put on hold. Now all that mattered was the fire. Ingemann, who was usually a calm, sober-minded man, suddenly became agitated. But even in the midst of the ensuing chaos he always remembered Dag. Dag followed him out of the door to the post outside the workshop. There, his father lifted him up so that he could reach the large, black handle that activated the fire alarm. It was as much as he could do to turn it. But he managed. Then the alarm went off like a cascading torrent from the heavens. He followed his father to the workshop and watched Ingemann put on the fire suit, then followed him round the corner to the fire station while holding his hands over his ears. That was how it was. He had to cover his ears until they reached the fire station. Then he clambered into the fire engine, slammed the door and they drove off. They barrelled along, his father switched on the sirens, and Dag’s blood seemed to solidify in his veins, at first it solidified, then it throbbed ferociously, then he glanced over at his father and he could feel how proud Ingemann was of him. He had to cling on tight, and as they approached the fire he was told to keep a good distance from the flames, to stay in the background, not to touch anything, not to get in the way, not to be a nuisance. Just watch. And he obeyed. He stood watching a house being transformed. At first smoke poured out of the windows and up between the roof tiles. The whole house steamed as though it were being subjected to enormous pressure. Then the flames broke through the roof and a coal-black column soared to the sky. The smoke was sucked up into the air. Then it eased, floated across the sky like ink and began to drift with the wind. Next came the lament, or the tone, or the song, or whatever one might call it. A loud, high-pitched, singing tone that did not exist anywhere else but in the middle of a burning house. He asked his father what it was, but Ingemann just gave him a strange, uncomprehending look. Nevertheless, he was sure about the tone. He had heard it. The wailing. The song. The first time he heard it he was seven years old. That was the time with the dog. He had climbed up a tree some distance from the fire engine and the house and the flames. Up in the branches, he sat staring, as quiet as a mouse. He was the only person who had heard the desperate barking and whimpering inside the smoke-filled kitchen, but he didn’t climb down and tell someone. He just sat tight, exactly as his father had stressed he should. He stared down at the men rolling out the hoses and dashing to and fro across the yard. He felt the immense heat that billowed towards the tree in great, chilling waves. He saw the jets of water rise, gather momentum and become swallowed up by the smoke. There was the sound of tinkling glass, there were cracks and creaks, as if the whole house were a ship on its way to open sea. Then flames burst through one first-floor window and licked up the wall. It was as if something had finally broken loose. By then the kitchen had gone quiet.

  Afterwards he climbed down and ambled towards his father. He stood beside him until Ingemann lifted him into his arms, and he was sitting on his father’s arm as the house collapsed.

  At the time he didn’t tell anyone about the dog, but it came out during the trial. He said that in prison he had started dreaming about the dog. He would wake suddenly in the night, not knowing where he was, and lie beneath the duvet without moving, frozen with terror, feeling the weight of the dog on his feet.

  He was so very much wanted. And when he did finally arrive he was loved above all else. He grew up and was liked by everyone. But he cast down his eyes when he spoke to people.

  Ingemann taught him how to use a gun. First of all, a small-bore gun, then a rifle. The two of them used to rig up a target at the end of a field – a white disc with a much smaller black circle in the centre – and they lay down beside each other on an empty sack, aimed and fired. When the shots had fallen silent, they got up and strolled down the field to inspect the targets. It turned out that he had talent. He concentrated his shots closer and closer together inside the black circle. His father took him to shooting meets in Finsland and surrounding areas. They put the gun on the rear seat and drove off while Alma stayed in the kitchen and had food ready for when they returned. He won cups, usually first prize. On the rare occasion he was beaten there was always an excuse: either the wind had suddenly changed direction or the sights had been set incorrectly or the mat was slippery or he was tired or he had eaten too much or too little before they set off. There was always an explanation, apart from when he won, no explanation was necessary then of course, that was the norm. He was the best. He carried the cups home and placed them on the living room table, where they were allowed to stay for a day or two so that Alma and Ingemann could admire them, and then they were moved to the shelf above the piano. Every fortnight or so Alma removed them, placed them on the table, dusted the shelf and put them all back. The cups were like a victory for all three of them.

  That was the way it felt: a victory for all three of them.

  Every day he cycled to the crossroads by the disused shop, and then headed along the road to Lauvslandsmoen School. He was happy there. School was like a game. What was his best subject? Norwegian? History? Maths? He was equally good at all of them. He was the best student in the class. It was almost the same as with shooting, no one could compete with him; he was right at the top, and he was on his own. And that was what he wanted to be. He was beginning to target that. It became a necessity. He was not going to be overtaken by anyone, so he started competing with himself. Still, there were occasions when he made mistakes. A test didn’t go as well as he had anticipated. Tiny slips crept in, or bigger errors, or he had quite simply made a huge howler. He had taken the corners a little too fast. Sometimes he got a B, even a weak B. And then he went silent and broody and glared daggers at the teacher, it was Reinert Sløgedal, who had been a teacher in the region since the war. Dag sat there for a long time just glaring, and if anyone asked how the test had gone, they would see something in his eyes they didn’t understand, something alien, something stubborn and intransigent and ice cold. They left him alone until the alienness was gone, and they never asked again about the test result because they only wanted Dag to be himself once more.

  One winter he went to the priest. That was in 1971. He knelt in front of the altarpiece with the others, and prayers were said for each and every one of them.

  He started gymnas, upper secondary, in Kristiansand. That was in 1973, at Cathedral School. He had to get up early to catch the bus, which stopped outside the chapel in Brandsvoll. He was happy in the town, but it was always good to get back home. When winter came he left for school in darkness and didn’t arrive home before nightfall. Alma had his meal ready. She and Ingemann always waited for him, they had an extra portion for him warm in the oven and saw the lights of the bus as it approached over the plain, and when he finally entered he had red cheeks and snowflakes in his blond hair and his eyes were full of all the things he had seen and experienced that day. He hung his jacket on the hook in the hall, went to wash his hands while Alma drained the water off the potatoes, and then they could all sit down to eat.

  He felt how good it was to come home.

  He went from being the class’s undisputed number one to merging more into the background. That is, he still got good grades, sometimes excellent, but he was no longer the best. He became more anonymous. From th
e outside he seemed to be coping with this well. However, his new classmates learned to leave him in peace when they were given back their tests or other work. They, too, saw the ice-cold eyes and the strangely stiff face. And they also only wanted him to be himself. Everyone just wanted him to be himself.

  Everything was fine so long as he was left alone.

  He was coming to the end of school. It was the spring of 1976. The birch trees broke into leaf. There was an explosion of green. The school-leavers’ magazine said of Dag: Apart from school and shooting, his main interest is the local fire service. A burned child dreads the fire, as they say, but this doesn’t apply to Dag. Over the years he has prevented a lot of valuable property from falling prey to flames, but that’s mostly because he loves to drive a fire engine.

  That was indeed true. He did love driving the fire engine, but emergencies were few and far between.

  At the end of May he took the written exam in Norwegian. One of the essay titles ran as follows: What does it mean to be an adult, according to the prevailing rules in our society? Give an assessment of these rules from your perception of what characterises an adult. Heading: Adulthood.

  That was the one he chose. He described the main features of adulthood, and was awarded a grade B. He had taken the exam and passed it with flying colours. His average was B. Everything had gone well. Not top grades, but nonetheless he was eligible to enter university. No one in the family had achieved that before him. Alma was proud and Ingemann whistled to himself in his workshop. Now the way was open. Dag had become an adult, he was still good-natured, he had his life and his future ahead of him and he had taught himself that he didn’t have to be top dog.

  Later that summer he was called up to do military service. He had chosen the infantry, and was posted to Porsanger Garrison, in Finnmark. It was a journey of more than two thousand kilometres. And that was for someone who had never been further afield than Hirtshals, in Northern Jutland.