Before I Burn: A Novel Page 6

  The New Year came. The year was 1978.

  January arrived with short, bitterly cold days. Dag was outside in the workshop with Ingemann. Helping to keep it tidy, clearing away any junk that had accumulated during autumn. He swept the floor, burned old rubbish and splashed diesel on it to make it light. Then there was nothing else to do. He took to lying in again. He dug up all his old comics. Donald Duck, Silver Arrow and The Phantom. In the evenings he went somewhere in the car. The car Ingemann had bought for a song and done up in time for Dag’s eighteenth birthday, the summer almost three years ago. He could be out for hours on end. Alma had no idea where he was. She used to wake up in the darkness, not knowing whether he had come home. What was the time? One? Three? Six? She lay listening, cold and tense. But he always came home eventually. Nothing ever happened.

  February came. With a metre of snow. Power cuts came and went. In March, mild weather swept in from the southwest, trees dripped, roofs ran and roads were as slippery as soap. Then it veered back to the south-east and they were in deepest winter again. For three days snow came down like a carpet, and when at last it stopped, there were mild, sunny days when the world seemed to stand still. Slowly, spring came. April arrived with long, bright days. The river flowed quietly. The ice vanished, the water glittered. At night there was a smell of raw, damp earth. His hair was almost as long as when he went into the army.

  One evening when he was about to drive off, Alma asked where he was intending to go.

  ‘Out,’ he said pithily.

  ‘Where?’ she asked.

  ‘That anything to do with you?’ he snapped, then slammed the door and drove away. She didn’t react, but afterwards she couldn’t shake his words out of her head. They sank inside her, lay still and ached. She lay awake in bed that night as Ingemann slept soundly beside her. That anything to do with you? That anything to do with you? She could hear his voice. It was Dag, yet she wasn’t sure. Good, kind Dag. She thought she heard him laugh. She dozed off, woke up with a start. She had dreamed that she was standing by a cradle, that he was a baby, but he wasn’t there. The cradle was empty, but it was still rocking. She got up, crept barefoot to his door. Knocked, and opened it wide. He was lying awake on top of the duvet, fully dressed, a Donald Duck comic open on his stomach. At first he appeared frightened, as though for a few seconds he thought something terrible had happened. Then he was calm. Then he smiled.

  ‘Mamma,’ he whispered. ‘Is that you?’

  IV.

  6 MAY, 1978. The flames by the roadside grew, caught hold of the grass, moved into the heather, the juniper bushes, then spread quickly into the forest. Spring had indeed been dry, unusually dry. All it needed was a spark. A cigarette tossed from a window, a moment’s thoughtlessness.

  The alarm went off.

  It wailed across the region until people realised what it was. It had hardly been heard before. People stopped and exchanged looks.

  That was the fire alarm, wasn’t it?

  Then the fire engine came down from the station with sirens blaring. Down round the tight bend, past the house, over the tiny bridge. It turned left, sped up and continued past the disused co-op with the balcony and the flagpole above the road. It raced down the hill past the chapel and the community centre and on to Kilen.

  Dag was driving while Ingemann sat beside him clinging onto the handle above the door.

  The fire engine was quite new, no more than five years old. It was an International with room for a thousand litres of water in the tank and equipped with a twenty-five-kilo pump at the front. The vehicle held the road well, and Dag drove quickly and efficiently. They met a couple of cars, which slowed down, swerved onto the verge and let them pass. In Kilen the sirens had been heard approaching, and there was a little crowd standing outside Kaddeberg’s waiting to see what was going on. By the shop Dag had to jump on the brakes and sling the fire engine to the left, into the road to Øvland, making the water in the tank slop around and the whole vehicle roll from side to side.

  They were the first to arrive at the scene of the fire. Immediately, however, a man came running out of the forest. It was Sjur Lunde, the owner of the land. He had rung the station. While waiting for the fire engine he had been trying to get the blaze under control on his own.

  Within a quarter of an hour all the firemen were there. They parked in a line behind the tender. Alfred was there. Jens was there. Arnold. Salve. Knut. Peder. Everyone was there. From a distance the line of vehicles looked like a long train with the red tender as the locomotive pulling the blue, white and brown carriages after it. A relatively limited area was ablaze. There was no wind. And a little lake was close by. The fire was a formality. The pump was lifted down from the vehicle. It took four of them to carry it, but it shot the water out at a decent rate. For a while Ingemann gave a hand, but then the others took over and he stood back and watched. He was getting tiny intermittent stabs in his chest – it felt like his heart – but they went as soon as he quietened down.

  Dag was holding the hose when the water came through. The pressure was good and he directed the jet straight at the flames. For a good while he knelt and sprayed the flames while the others stood behind him watching. Then he turned and shouted for someone else to take over. At once one of the men grabbed the hose from his hands, and Dag strolled back to the fire engine and joined his father. Dag’s face was red, and a cut to his hand was bleeding. He was out of breath, yet collected and somehow at peace. He seemed happy.

  ‘You did a fine job,’ Ingemann said, so low that no one else could hear.

  V.

  MAY 1978. I slept during the first weeks; later Mamma took me in the pram to and from the school in Lauvslandsmoen. It was no more than a kilometre and I slept on the way.

  One fire isn’t a topic of conversation. It is soon forgotten. It passes.

  But a second?

  It came a mere ten days after the first. It took hold of the Tønnes’ old hay barn, the one at the bottom of the Leipsland ridge, just a few hundred metres from my grandmother’s house. I remember the four cornerstones that remained standing in a perfect square for all of my childhood, but neither my grandmother nor my grandfather nor anyone else told me what had happened there.

  The barn was ablaze when the fire engine arrived; all you saw was the building’s framework like an intensely burning cobweb at the centre of the fire. Water was quickly pumped into the hoses, but nothing could be saved. The alarm had gone off too late. It was a controlled burn-out.

  Bit by bit, a crowd had gathered and they stood facing the raging flames. The news spread, even though it was the middle of the night. More and more cars stopped along the road. People got out and approached in silence. They were so close they felt the heat on their faces and hardly spoke; all they did was stare. It was quite dark, and the sight was both frightening and almost enticing. After twenty minutes the framework collapsed, a shower of sparks rose like fireflies into the sky and fierce flames burst into life again. Someone laughed. It was dark and impossible to see who it had been.

  Two fires in ten days. What could you say?

  The following day was 17 May, Norway’s Constitution Day. As usual, it started with a service in the church, which on this occasion was as full as ever it was. The sun shone through the window above the altarpiece of Jesus’s last supper, making the dust in the room sparkle. Two birch twigs had been bound to the Roman arches, and fresh birch leaves wreathed the lectern. Omland was conducting the service. He wore a black cassock and spoke about a log branded with the owner’s mark floating in the river. In backwaters, where it cannot reach its destination, it still carries the mark, and even from there it can find its way into the correct channel and be what it was originally intended to be.

  Nothing about the fires. Of course not. These were the days before anyone had an inkling of what was to come.

  Then there was food for everyone in the cramped cellar beneath the community centre, where the ceiling was so low that almost everyone had to stoop
when they entered. The procession then departed from Brandsvoll and marched for three kilometres past Knut Frigstad’s house, past the old doctor’s surgery on the bend, past Anders and Agnes Fjeldgård’s house, to continue alongside glittering Lake Bordvannet, where birch trees stood with their thin foliage, and culminated at Lauvslandsmoen School, where the flag was hoisted and all the old people sat waiting in the sun.

  My parents were there, too, and I lay asleep in a deep pram. The procession was coming over the Lauvslandsmoen Plain, headed by the flag-bearer, then the band in their red uniforms and cylindrical hats, and I woke and Mamma lifted me out so that I could see where the music was coming from.

  In the evening there was a party in the Brandsvoll Community Centre. Grandma and Grandad were in the hall. As were Ingemann and Alma. Aasta was there with her husband Sigurd. Olga Dynestøl sat on her own, right at the back next to the wood-burning stove. My parents, however, were not there. They needed to sleep, which was quite understandable, given they had a two-month-old child.

  Syvert Maessel read the opening address in a firm voice, as he always did. He stood alone on the small podium with the woven tapestry hanging behind him. Everyone sat still with a solemn expression because what he said always had gravitas and substance. Perhaps the audience thought about everything he had seen and heard during his three years in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Afterwards they sang ‘Finsland, My Homeland’.

  Soon shines the sun over snow-white dell,

  The evening sun blazes through cloud so well,

  Finsland, she sleeps under winter’s fell,

  Lies there so frozen and hard.

  Five verses. Teresa sat at the piano, which was situated beneath the podium.

  In the interval, several people went over to Ingemann to enquire about the fires. Two fires in such a short time. What was going on? Ingemann shrugged. They looked at him, and he looked at them with an indefinable expression. He had no answer. He cast down his eyes.

  Then there was food and coffee and entertainment, and before everyone went home they got up and sang the national anthem.

  That night all was still.

  The new fire engine had really been put through its paces. After each emergency the equipment had to be cleaned. The hoses had to be unfurled to dry in the sun, then rolled up and attached to the vehicle. The pumps had to be lubricated, checked and given a round with the grease gun. All this was Ingemann’s responsibility. He rolled the hoses out on the tarmac outside the fire station and left them there for a few hours before painstakingly rolling them up again. This was a job that took the whole morning, and he couldn’t go at it too hard because as soon as he did he felt stabbing pains in his chest. At twelve o’clock he went in to eat. Dag was still in his bedroom asleep, so Ingemann and Alma ate alone, and in silence.

  When they had finished, Alma cleared the table while Ingemann lay down on the sofa in the living room with the newspaper on his chest. After a brief nap, he returned to the fire station and resumed his work.

  He had painted some of the equipment white. It was so easy to lose things in the dark. That was why he had painted all the fire service’s petrol cans. They were the so-called jerrycans that were used by the Germans during the First World War. Hence the name. Their special feature was the handles, which meant two men could carry them. That made them quicker and easier to move, which suited the fire service down to the ground. He picked up the paint pot again and stirred its contents. After placing the cans in a row outside the fire station, he knelt down and with a slim black brush painted on each one FB, for Finsland Brannvesenet, Finsland Fire Service.

  While he was engaged in this task he heard footsteps on the gravel. It was Dag coming up the path, and he stopped in front of Ingemann, blocking the sun.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t old sleepyhead,’ Ingemann said with a bright chuckle.

  Dag didn’t answer; he just watched his father’s hand and the brush slowly and fastidiously painting the black letters. When Ingemann had finished, Dag helped him to carry the jerrycans back to where they had been, after which the fire engine had to be reversed into the station. Dag did this while his father made sure the vehicle was backed as far as it could go. He stood in the darkness, inside the garage, as the fire engine slowly reversed towards him. It was so tight that he would be crushed against the wall if it didn’t stop in time. He waited, unperturbed, as the vehicle inched closer and the room was filled with exhaust fumes. Then it came to a halt with a metre’s clearance from the wall.

  ‘Perfect!’ he shouted.

  Afterwards they ambled the short distance back to the house, chatting in low voices. They, too, had begun to speak in low voices.

  ‘Let’s hope that was the last fire,’ Ingemann said.

  ‘Yes, let’s hope so,’ Dag replied.

  ‘I’m getting too old to be putting out fires,’ Ingemann said.

  ‘Too old?’ Dag pulled up and studied his father. ‘You’re not too old. I’m sure you’ll be with us next time as well.’

  The latter took Ingemann aback, but he said nothing. Instead he shook his head and smiled at his son, and by then they were home, and on entering the hall they could smell Alma’s rissoles and forgot everything else.

  The following night, all was still.

  People went to bed. Lights were extinguished, doors locked, cool sheets parted.

  Only the outside lamps were on. The white domes, the moths and all the nameless insects fluttering towards the light in fear.

  VI.

  THE AIR IS CLEARER, SHARPER. Three degrees centigrade. The birds seem confused, they are zigzagging across the sky as though no longer sure where south and north are. The water is black, smooth, like oil. The reflection of the closest houses is nigh on perfect. Sometimes I wish I had never left this region. I should never have gone to Oslo, should never have started studying, should never have started to write. I should have stayed here, right here, in the midst of this serene landscape, in the peaceful woods with all the shining pools and lakes, among the white houses and red barns and the placid cows in the summer. I should never have left all this that I love so deeply. I should have stayed here and lived a different life.

  Every now and then I have the feeling that I am living two parallel lives. One is secure, simple, a life without so many words. The other is apparently real life, with me in the middle of it, at my desk writing every day. The first life can disappear for lengthy periods, but makes an occasional appearance, it is as though I am suddenly close to stepping inside it, I am on the verge and I have a sense that at any moment I will catch sight of the person who perhaps really is me.

  After a while it becomes too cold to sit by the window. I have turned up the heat, but it doesn’t help. In the end, I fetch my jacket and wrap it around me. From the window I can see up to where Olav and Johanna’s house used to be, and some way down, by the old post office, is the house they rented for the last months before she fell ill and was accommodated in the rest home in Nodeland. The fire must have been reflected in the lake. That must have been a sight.

  I read Dag’s letter several times, slowly, assiduously, as though I might get closer to him if I just read carefully enough. As though the mystery around him lies in the words themselves.

  I write a sentence in my notebook: Who is it we see when we see ourselves?

  That is the question.

  I remember one episode. I must have been in the first class, in which case I would have been seven or eight years old. I was standing in front of the class and telling a story. I don’t remember what the story was about, but I know it was very exciting because it had me and everyone else in its thrall. I remember thinking: Hold your horses now, you mustn’t exaggerate, you mustn’t tell any more lies, soon you’ll have gone too far, soon they won’t believe you any more, soon they’ll see through you, soon they’ll see that you’re lying, soon they’ll all get up and walk away and you’ll be left all alone.

  But they believed me. It worked. They didn’t rum
ble me. It was as quiet as the grave until the story was finished, and for a few seconds afterwards. Then I heard: More!

  However, what happened next was very important. When the bell rang and everyone made a beeline for the door, our teacher held me back. Her name was Ruth; I liked her a lot. She crouched down in front of me with a hand on each of my shoulders, as though I had hurt my face or done something wrong. I remember her face, her eyes, her expression. Where did you get that story? she asked. She seemed concerned, and so as not to worry her further I shrugged and cast down my eyes. I didn’t dare say that I had made it up. That it had all come to me on the spur of the moment. That it was a fabrication from beginning to end. I wanted to free myself from her grip, but I didn’t know what to say. She continued to stare at me with those concerned eyes of hers, and I promised myself that I would never tell a story like that again. For the first time, I had done something illicit. Me, who was always so well behaved, who always did what was right. Now I didn’t know what lay in store for me. You’re a writer, that’s what you are, Ruth said, looking at me with a strange smile. I’ll n-never do it again, I stuttered, feeling a vague sense of shame force its way up from my stomach to my chest and face. Then she let go of me and I charged out to join the others, but her words didn’t let go of me, they were impossible to escape. Ruth had planted them, and quietly, oh so quietly, they began to grow. I was not like the others. I was a writer. I felt it could be seen all over me. It was written on my face, or in my eyes, or on my forehead. I had promised I would never tell stories again, I would just behave myself and do what was right, and I hoped for a long time that all of this would pass of its own accord.

  VII.

  AT A FEW MINUTES PAST 1 A.M. she got dressed and went down to the kitchen. She put the kettle on the stove and waited for the water to boil. When the coffee was ready she took a clean cup from the cupboard and sat down in Dag’s seat at the kitchen table, from where she could see across the plain towards Breivoll. There was something light inside her, something that was totally weightless and never rested, which made it impossible to sleep. It was like this almost every night; she lay beside Ingemann staring for ages at the ceiling. She heard the music in Dag’s room, and whenever it went quiet she pricked up her ears. She could hear him getting out of bed and mumbling something, but she couldn’t make out the words. Then she dropped off and snatched a couple of hours’ sleep at around midnight. She slept lightly, as though hovering just under the surface. Fragments of dreams drifted by, but everything was distorted and unrecognisable as if it belonged to someone else.