Before I Burn: A Novel Read online

  As he was leaving, Alma bounded down the stairs and across the yard. There was something she had forgotten to give him, a little envelope, which he wasn’t allowed to open until he was on the train to Fornebu Airport. She hugged him, and all of a sudden it felt strange and unnatural. He pressed her lean body against his as he scanned the plain towards Breivoll feeling that he didn’t want to travel at all. Alma went into the house wringing her hands in the pocket of her apron while Ingemann accompanied him to the crossroads by the shop and helped him to stow the suitcase in the bus luggage compartment. There were people on board they knew, so it was just a brief, everyday farewell from his father. When the bus set off, Ingemann stood at the crossroads alone, not really knowing where to go.

  He was on his way, the long journey had begun. He broke his promise and opened the envelope when the bus was passing Kaddeberg’s shop. There was five hundred kroner in the envelope and she had written on the enclosed slip of paper: Fancy that, our lad is going out into the big, wide world. Don’t forget Mamma and Pappa.

  II.

  I WRITE FOR A FEW HOURS EVERY DAY. Autumn is drawing in from the south-west. The heavens open, and the rain glistens over Lake Livannet. After a night of howling gales all the leaves have been blown off the trees. So we are back to long, quiet days. It is getting colder. One morning there is hoar frost on the grass. The lake is like liquid glass and reveals a perfect reflection of the sky. On such days, writing comes to a halt. I get up, walk to the window, place my hands on it and lean my face against it. Not a bird in sight.

  A few days after my visit to Alfred I rang Karin. I have known Karin all my life. I remember her from the library. She was the person I sought when I wanted to borrow books; she sat behind the counter and stamped the back of the book once, then the brown slip and put it into the card index tray. That was how it was. Two stamps and I could take the book home. The library opened in new rooms when I was four years old. I can just remember the room on the first floor of the community centre from when I was there with my father, but since 1982 it has been in the same place, in the middle of Lauvslandsmoen, by the crossroads where the road splits into four: one road to Dynestøl, the second north to the church, the third to Brandsvoll and Kilen and the last westwards, up past our house. I cycled down to the library in the evening, and returned with cold books after the ride. When the wind came from the north-west the library door used to blow open. The wind pushed it ajar and that happened several times while I walked down the aisles between the shelves. I remember the distinctive sound through the door, it howled and moaned, and I will never forget it. Whenever the wind picks up, my thoughts turn to books.

  Karin was the daughter of Teresa, who had so much music in her, who played the old church organ and held the Christmas concert with Bjarne Sløgedal on 23 December 1945, when he was a mere eighteen years old. I found the programme in the loft at Lauvslandsmoen School, and I was surprised to see what the two of them had devised. The stoves were stoked up high while they played ‘Weihnachten’ by Wenzel, Schumann’s ‘Abendlied’ and finally Charles Gounod’s version of ‘Ave Maria’, before everyone wrapped up warmly and went out into the winter’s night.

  Anyway.

  Teresa was Alma and Ingemann’s closest neighbour. She almost lived inside the magic circle. They were only separated by the road and the small, clear river that flowed placidly through the fields. As I’ve said, Teresa also extends into my life. I went to see her for a whole winter to learn to play the piano. She can’t have been far off eighty then. She stood behind me, watching my fingers; I remember her regular breathing somewhere above and behind me. The little coughs and the twitches, if I made a mistake. She took children and adults from the whole region, everyone who wanted to play an instrument. She had done so all her life. I sat on the tall stool in her lovely and warm living room with her standing behind me following my every movement. I went there on Wednesdays, with frozen fingers, and played the same part of ‘Amazing Grace’ over and over again. She had to drum it into me before it stuck. I don’t recall any other tunes; however, I can still play ‘Amazing Grace’ with relatively little effort. I don’t know if I was a good pupil, but at least I did what I was told. I always did. I remember she said that I had to relax my fingers over the keys and let them practically move of their own accord. And I did as she said, I let my fingers relax over the keys and tried to let them move of their own accord.

  I met Karin one Friday afternoon in late September. Sitting in her living room I could see right over to the house where Alma, Dag and Ingemann had lived. It had been painted brown since then, while in my childhood it had always been white. Otherwise there were no great changes: the workshop was still there, and between the trees I could glimpse the garage where the fire engine was housed.

  We sat chatting about this and that until the conversation turned to the fires.

  It transpired that Teresa had received two letters from prison. In addition, she had made daily entries in her diary. Karin had found all of this in a drawer after Teresa died. She passed me the letters and I read with the same mixture of feelings that I had experienced at Alfred’s. From one letter I gathered that Teresa had given him a guitar. However, it was unclear whether she had sent it by post or she had turned up at Kristiansand Courthouse and delivered it in person. At any rate, he wrote to her thanking her for teaching him to play the piano when he was a child, and at the same time told her he had already taught himself to play the guitar. And that music was becoming more and more important to him.

  So he had gone to Teresa to learn to play an instrument, too.

  The second letter was very incoherent, something about Our Lord God and several named individuals from the region. It is difficult to summarise. Altogether very disjointed.

  So there were now three letters, including the letter to Alfred. Furthermore, there were Teresa’s diaries. A whole boxful of them, the same editions every year: the small, green books published by the Norwegian Farmers’ Union. There were short remarks about the weather, about pupils she’d had. I flicked back quickly. As far as I could see, my name wasn’t mentioned. However, there was quite a bit about Dag, especially around the time of the fires and afterwards. The last pages, the undated ones entitled Notes, were covered with her slightly forward-sloping handwriting. These last pages were in the form of a letter, but I doubt if she ever transferred them to notepaper and sent it. If, contrary to expectation, I should be mistaken, the question is: To whom?

  Apart from the three letters I have seen, there were said to be more. From what I could glean, they poured out from the prison in the first months. Mention was also made of this during the trial; it was referred to as enormous correspondence. That was in the weeks after the arrest, when he was alone and the dream about the dog surfaced. And he started writing. It was as if something was forcing its way out. All the letters were stamped The Courthouse, Box 1D.

  He wrote to all his victims, but I don’t know how many answered. I have tried to find out who received a letter, what was in it and whether they replied. But it has been impossible. As a rule I was met with the same response: I don’t remember. I threw it away. He was out of his mind, wasn’t he?

  III.

  SHE HAD BEEN looking forward to seeing him again. He had written to them all autumn. Every week she waited expectantly for the small, brown envelopes postmarked Porsanger Garrison, with the Norwegian lion in the middle. At first he had written long, detailed letters that Ingemann read aloud at the kitchen table. Afterwards, she quietly reread them on her own, and Dag seemed to come even closer. He talked about his life in the garrison, about the other soldiers, who were, he said, either odd, hard work or likeable and who came from all over the country; he wrote about the food, which was monotonous and bore no comparison with Alma’s home cooking and he wrote about the exercises they went on by the Russian border. She tried to visualise everything, this strange, frozen world, and Dag right in the middle of it.

  In December they received a letter
in which he said he hadn’t been given any Christmas leave. Someone had to stay in the camp, so there was a lottery and he was one of the unlucky ones. Ingemann and Alma had taken the news with composure. On the morning of Christmas Eve he phoned. It was a short conversation because the coins were racing through the machine. He spoke to Ingemann first, then had a few words with Alma. She thought his voice sounded strange, but it probably wasn’t that surprising; after all, he was more than two thousand kilometres away.

  In the New Year, a letter was a long time in coming. However, in February they received a postcard. It showed a watchtower on the border between Norway and the Soviet Union. On the back they read: The soldier in the tower is me. At first they were excited. Just imagine! There couldn’t be many parents whose son’s photograph was on a postcard. Then the excitement faded. It was Ingemann who spoke first – the person in the picture could not possibly be Dag. He bore absolutely no resemblance to their son. Alma noticed that too, but she didn’t comment. She dried her hands on a tea towel and pinned the postcard to the window frame after Ingemann had gone to the workshop, and never mentioned it again. The card hung there for a few days, although neither of them said another word about it. Then one morning she unpinned the card and rested it against one of his trophies on the shelf above the piano.

  They didn’t hear any more until well into March. There was a card saying he was coming home. Nothing else. Not even his name. Just: Coming home on 14th. He had signed it The soldier. It was Ingemann’s opinion that he had been given leave. After all, that wouldn’t be unusual. Alma wasn’t sure. There was something about the signature. It wasn’t like Dag. She didn’t understand it. She wished she had a telephone number to call him on, but there wasn’t one, or at least that was what Dag had told them in one of his first letters.

  Late in the afternoon of the next day, as Alma was washing up, she caught sight of a man on the road from Brandsvoll. He was walking without any apparent haste and she could see there was something familiar about him. It took a few seconds. Then she clicked.

  It was him.

  All of a sudden he was there, in the yard, it was the thirteenth, in other words, the day before he was due to arrive. He was wearing the uniform soldiers wore on leave, his long blond hair was gone, now you could see his bare skull.

  ‘Is that you?’ she asked.

  He just stood there with the March sun at his back and smiled. She approached slowly and then embraced him.

  ‘You’ve been so far away,’ she said.

  ‘But now I’m home, Mamma,’ he said. ‘I’ll never go away again.’

  He stated that as a fact. It seemed a little odd, but Alma didn’t pay it any further attention, she was just happy to see him. Happy and surprised and slightly apprehensive.

  ‘How have you been?’ she asked.

  ‘Fine,’ he replied.

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said. Then they just dilly-dallied in the yard as the roofs dripped. They heard the workshop door open, and there was Ingemann in the doorway.

  ‘Is it you?’ he asked.

  ‘Looks like it,’ Dag said.

  Ingemann wiped his hands on a filthy rag, and went over and shook his son’s hand.

  ‘I hardly recognised you,’ he said with a strained chuckle. All three of them stood there in the low March sun. Their shadows were long and lean and stretched all the way to the house. They didn’t talk about the postcard or the signature or why he had suddenly come home.

  ‘I’ve got to get some shut-eye,’ he said, and no wonder after travelling for almost twenty-four hours.

  That night, after she had gone to bed, Alma lay awake for a long time. She stared up at the ceiling listening to Ingemann’s regular breathing. She lay there feeling strangely empty, as though she had talked and talked all day and now she didn’t have a single word left.

  The following day he didn’t tell them anything. He was still worn out after the journey, he said. He needed to rest and sleep. They ate in palpable silence, then he went up to his room and back to bed.

  He had a long lie-in every morning. April came. The snow melted, the fields lay dark and bare, a gentle breeze soughed through the forest. He stayed at home all spring. Long lie-ins became a habit. Occasionally he didn’t get up until after twelve o’clock, and then he hardly had the energy to go downstairs. Everything seemed to be very heavy; every day was suddenly full of insuperable obstacles. And under these circumstances it was best of course to stay in bed. Alma said nothing. She cooked food she knew he liked, took it to his room and put the plate on his bedside table without a word. Concern was mounting in a visible frown between her eyes. Like a gash.

  Then things brightened up.

  After a few weeks it was almost as before. He no longer lay in bed all morning. He got up, had a shower and seemed happier than he had been for ages. It had been a fleeting transition and had passed on its own. One evening he went into the kitchen while Alma was baking a cake. He tiptoed up behind her and gently placed his hands over her eyes. She was bewildered; this was the first time he had done anything of the kind. It felt strange, but at the same time quite nice.

  ‘Who is it?’ she asked, teasing.

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘I think I know who it is,’ she continued.

  Still he didn’t answer.

  ‘You’ll have to let go now,’ she said at length. And then she laughed as she struggled to get free, she laughed and laughed as he held on. He was holding her tight and she twisted from side to side. Then he let go.

  He was himself again, the good boy she knew so well. She smiled and said: ‘Now you’ll have to let your hair grow.’

  The weeks passed. Dag and Ingemann were in the habit of shooting at a target every Saturday morning, just like in the old days, while she was alone in the kitchen baking bread. They fired a round of five shots each, then they got up and walked down the field to study the black circle, Dag first, Ingemann following with his hands in his pockets, and when they returned they ate the hot bread that steamed as Alma sliced it.

  It was midsummer. The heat came. It came in waves from the end of the plain towards Breivoll. He turned twenty. The swallows circled high in the sky. In the evenings he drove to Lake Homevannet to go swimming. She didn’t know that he went alone. Or that he swam alone to the underwater rocks about thirty metres from the bathing area.

  His hair grew. It wasn’t long before his skull was covered. She was glad to have him back. She felt it in her stomach whenever she looked at him. It wasn’t that. Of course she was glad. She smiled, and she hadn’t done that for quite a while. Yet there was still a gash between her eyes. It wouldn’t go.

  He spent the whole of the summer upstairs in his room. He had a radio and an old record player, and music blared out every evening and night. He didn’t tell them anything about his stint by the Russian border, only that he had once seen a wolf. During the initial days she had attempted to be cheerful, and both she and Ingemann had asked questions and prodded him about all sorts of things. But his eyes had seemed to darken at every question, something happened to his face, it stiffened, and a strange, oppressive atmosphere spread around the table. From then on, questions from either of them became rarer and rarer. Then they stopped, neither she nor Ingemann asked anything. It was best to let sleeping dogs lie, and carry on as before. All they had was the story of the wolf. It went as follows:

  One night he was sitting alone in the watchtower with the temperature registering minus forty degrees centigrade. Suddenly the animal trotted across the snow; he had been tracking it through his binoculars. Every so often the wolf stopped and listened, then it went on. The snow was crusted, the moon shone and the animal left no paw marks. Then it crossed the border.

  That was the story of the wolf; otherwise nothing.

  Through the autumn he began to increase the volume of the music. Alma lay awake listening. At times she thought she could hear his voice, singing or talking. For long periods there was total silence. Then the music blasted
out and she thought she heard someone laughing.

  In October, Alma started cleaning for people, as she had done in years past. By choice, for neighbours, people who lived within walking distance. She didn’t like cycling, she preferred to walk. She walked to Omdal, to Breivoll and to Djupesland. She washed the hall and kitchen floor of the chapel in Brandsvoll, and she cleaned for Agnes and Anders Fjeldsgård in the big, white house by the Solås road.

  In December the first snow came. One morning the whole world was white and pure. Alma baked seven kinds of Christmas biscuit, exactly as she used to, and Dag came into the kitchen and was allowed to taste them while they were still warm. Warily, she asked what he had considered doing when Christmas was over. He said that he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  ‘But surely you’re going to do something, aren’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he answered. ‘I’ll find something.’

  ‘You could start some course or other, with your school-leaving grades and all that.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’ll see.’

  That was the end of the conversation about the future. Christmas came. All three of them were in church on Christmas Eve. They sat among neighbours and acquaintances from the region, all with a singular gleam in their eyes they never usually had. Alfred and Else and their children were there, Anders and Agnes Fjeldsgård, Syvert Maessel, Olga Dynestøl, and many, many others. Everyone was there, Teresa was perched in front of the organ, high up, and glanced in the console mirror as she approached the end of ‘Deilig er jorden’. My father was there, too. He sat in a front pew beside his mother and father and Mamma, and she had a growing child in her stomach, and that child was me. There was something quite special about sitting stiffly, dressed up and solemn, among all those you knew so well, it was as though everyone was showing themselves from a new and unfamiliar side, it was wonderful and a little strange, and Alma could feel the Yuletide peace settling over her and she was almost calm.