Before I Burn: A Novel Page 7

  Then she was awoken by someone descending the stairs. Keys jangled as he threw on his jacket. The lock clicked. Silence in the house after the sound of the car faded.

  After a while she got up.

  She sat listening to the clock’s regular tick above the refrigerator. Steam rose from her cup like long, ragged flags fluttering in the wind and dissipating.

  Much later, she saw a car approaching from across the plain at great speed. It was still dark outside. The headlights shook. The car slowed down as it came to the crossroads, then turned left, and the headlights cut like a knife through the white, transparent mist hanging over the field.

  It was him.

  The car drew to a halt outside the kitchen. She heard the car radio blaring for a few seconds before it went quiet, she heard the door opening, his steps on the gravel. She heard him talking to himself in the yard. She was almost used to it now. He would suddenly ask himself a question. Or reprimand himself. She had heard that on several occasions, but had said nothing about it to Ingemann. Initially it had happened while the music was playing, later also when there was complete silence. At first this had frightened her. She had been sitting alone in the living room with some sewing when she heard Dag talking upstairs. She had the impression there was someone with him. A second person. Someone from his old class? She had gone upstairs and knocked on his door, and when he opened it only he was there. His face had frozen into a strange grimace, and it was this expression that had frightened her. But then his whole face softened, everything melted, the bizarrely distorted face seemed to slide away, and she saw it was him.

  She got up now, went to the door and stood listening with the steaming cup in her hand. The yard had gone quiet. Then he came in.

  ‘What are you doing up?’ he asked.

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’ she said.

  ‘Coffee in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Why not?’

  She filled a large, white cup and put it down on the other side of the kitchen table, in what was actually Ingemann’s place.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked. ‘We’ve got some fresh bread, you know.’

  He sat down at the table while she took some bread from the cupboard and cut three white slices that fell to the side one after the other. He said nothing. He smelt of spring nights and exhaust fumes.

  ‘Have you been gadding about?’ she asked.

  ‘You could say that,’ he replied.

  She put out some jam that had been in the freezer since the previous summer, some clove cheese and Prim spread. All of this she served in a semi-circle around him. She got out some milk, too, and poured it into a glass.

  ‘Come on, eat,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t need to wait up for me,’ he blurted, raising his eyes.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said with a little smile, flicking the hair off her forehead.

  ‘You couldn’t sleep?’

  ‘No. I suppose I’m just like you,’ she said. ‘You don’t sleep either, do you.’

  He didn’t respond, just looked at her and smiled. They didn’t say anything for a long while. It felt good. There was quite some time before morning broke, before Ingemann got up and the day began. Only the two of them now. It was good, somewhat unaccustomed, crystal clear, and she wished it could go on and on. He ate greedily; she sliced more bread and placed it on the edge of his plate while essaying a smile. It was wonderful to see him showing a healthy appetite. That was how it had always been: the more he ate, the better she felt.

  ‘It’s cold out tonight,’ he said, chewing and looking out of the window pensively.

  ‘Are you cold?’ she asked. ‘Shall I get you a jumper?’

  He shook his head, drained his glass of milk and stood up, ready to go. She knew at once it was over.

  ‘I suppose it was cold in Porsanger, too, wasn’t it?’ she asked out of the blue.

  ‘Minus forty,’ he answered, without looking at her.

  She got up.

  ‘Couldn’t you tell me a bit about it, Dag?’ she asked, feeling her face go hot and flustered. ‘Surely you can tell me…Pappa and I know next to nothing.’

  Dag relaxed, and his movements slowed.

  ‘What would you like me to tell you?’ he asked.

  ‘What really happened.’

  His gaze lingered on her, then he shook his head almost imperceptibly.

  ‘What really happened?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said with an even voice. ‘What happened to you.’

  ‘To me? What do you mean?’

  She moved closer while Dag stood rooted to the floor. She went up to him, and now she could smell the smoke.

  ‘You’re so…You’ve become…Can’t you tell me, Dag? Please. Just tell me everything.’

  They were standing in the middle of the kitchen floor. The light from the ceiling lamp engulfed them and made his hair gleam greasily. She sent him an imploring look, then dropped her gaze, saw his open shirt, hands, brown cord trousers, socks.

  ‘Are you crying, Mamma?’

  She didn’t answer. She was standing very close to him, with eyes closed now.

  ‘Do you want me to tell you?’ he continued nonchalantly.

  ‘Yes, Dag, it would make me so happy.’

  She heard him take a deep breath. She swallowed and felt her heart thump out of control. She looked up at him, and now he had that same stiff face she had first seen upstairs in his room. And at that moment she froze with fear.

  ‘Dag,’ she whispered.

  ‘Mamma,’ he said in a low, thick voice.

  ‘Don’t you want to tell me?’

  ‘It’s…Mamma, it’s…’

  He shook his head sadly.

  ‘Come on, Dag,’ she prompted. ‘Let’s go and sit in the living room.’

  She went ahead, and he followed hesitantly, then stopped in the doorway.

  ‘Don’t you want to?’ she asked again.

  ‘Mamma, I…’

  ‘Couldn’t you play something first?’ she asked hastily.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Not too loud, though. Then we can have a chat afterwards.’

  He vacillated, watching her, then smiled, and a warm flush surged through her.

  They had bought the piano for his sake. That was after he had started going to Teresa on a regular basis. He needed to be able to practise at home. And so they had ensured he could. Ingemann had acquired the piano at a house clearance sale; he had lashed it to the small trailer belonging to the fire service, and then he and Dag had driven it home. They had managed to transport it indoors with the help of Alfred and several other neighbours. She could remember the day so well. It was the day the piano came, they said later, as though they were talking about a child. It was only when she saw them carrying it that she realised how heavy it was, and when they had finally got it into position by the window, she said, loud enough for everyone to hear, that this piano would never be moved again.

  He sat down on the piano stool, looking up at her expectantly.

  ‘What shall I play then?’

  ‘You decide,’ she replied. ‘Anything you like.’

  ‘Anything?’

  He flexed his fingers like a concert pianist. Then he played. Very softly so that only the two of them could hear. She noticed that he was rusty, he hit a false note now and then, but nevertheless. It was slowly coming back. He was playing. She stood a little way behind him, studying his back, neck, head, the hair that had grown quite long, almost as it had been before. She looked up at the postcard that still leaned against the cups, she saw the picture of the soldier in the watchtower, she saw the endless snow-covered plains and the Russian border, like a white, treeless road leading past the tower and beyond into infinity.

  When he had finished he sat with bowed head staring at the keys.

  ‘That was lovely,’ she said in a hushed voice.

  ‘Would you like to hear more?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  Then he played
‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’, for he knew this was the one she really wanted to hear. She sat on the edge of the table and closed her eyes. The tears began to flow, she couldn’t hold them back, the ground gave way inside her, and he played simply and crisply, without a single false note. She was sitting like this when he sprang to his feet and slammed the lid with a crash and a doleful echo.

  ‘Now you can tell me,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me everything, Dag,’ she said, rising to her feet as well.

  Then the telephone rang.

  She stared at him in horror for a second. There was no time for more, because he was already in the hall picking up the telephone and speaking in a low voice. She went to the door and watched him making notes on a pad.

  Then he called Ingemann.

  Fire! Fire!

  She hastily prepared two packed lunches, slicing more bread and spreading it with Prim and some cheese, and then she poured the rest of the coffee into the thermos. At just that moment the alarm went off in the half-light. It was Dag who had been outside to sound it; he must have run because he came back in almost straightaway, sweating and panting. The sound was so ear-splitting that the elegant glasses in the cupboard jangled. Ingemann came down the stairs doing up the last of the buttons on his shirt. He was groggy with sleep, his eyes swimming, his hair pointing in all directions, but that made no difference. A house was ablaze, and he was the fire chief. There was no time to waste. Get the fire engine out, start the sirens, put on the blue lights. Drive for all you were worth. Arrive. Assess the situation. Dag had been ready for some time; he had buttoned his shirt up to the neck and was shuffling his feet in the hall.

  ‘Aren’t you going to put on any more clothes?’ Alma asked.

  ‘There’s a fire, Mamma. I don’t have the time.’

  ‘But you’re only wearing a shirt, Dag.’

  That was all she managed to say. He was already out of the door and bounding through the dawn towards the fire station. A few minutes later she heard the sirens merging with the protracted wailing of the alarm. She hurriedly slipped the packed lunches into a bag, which Ingemann grabbed on his way out of the door to the fire engine and Dag, who was waiting behind the wheel.

  VIII.

  ON 7 JUNE 1978, Faedrelandsvennen carries a lengthy interview with Olav and Johanna Vatneli. It is a good two days after the fire. It is the same interview that I remembered when I was standing by the grave, the one in which Olav referred to himself as soft and Johanna as calm.

  The two of them are sitting in Knut Karlsen’s basement flat. Olav on the edge of the bed, wearing a checked shirt and loose braces, staring into the air apathetically. Johanna on a chair alongside him with her hands limp in her lap and a faint smile around her mouth, as though none of this really concerns her. Behind them a bracket lamp with the plug dangling down.

  The previous day they had gone to town to buy clothes. Two summer dresses, a pair of trousers, shirts, underwear. Two pairs of shoes. In addition, they had both been measured for new dentures.

  Bereft of everything, Olav and Johanna sit in their neighbour’s flat wondering what will become of them.

  Johanna talks about the blaze again, the explosion in the kitchen, the sea of flames, the shadow outside the window and the events that followed. Earlier that day, they had received a visit from Alma and Ingemann. This is said in one sentence, never to be mentioned again, yet the sentence seems to lie there, flashing on the page.

  Later in the interview they talk about Kåre. I suppose it felt natural to talk about him, after all, they had lost everything else. There, in Knut Karlsen’s cellar, it is nineteen years since he died. He was the only child they had. After Kåre there was nothing, and after the house and the rest were gone, Kåre seemed to return.

  That is the situation.

  The whole business is so unreal. It is unimaginable. Olav struggles to his feet, but as yet he isn’t strong enough to venture down and see the scorched ruins. He still wants to wait a few days, then he will go down, and he will go on his own. The outbuilding was saved, you see, he says, and he has a lot of good oak there. He thinks the oak will come in handy now. The only problem is that they don’t have a stove in which to burn it, nor a house to heat. In the outbuilding with the wood there is also a bike. I don’t know for certain, but it may be Kåre’s. He did eventually teach himself to ride.

  They are seventy-three and eighty-three years old and have to start a new life. They have a little wood, a few thousand kroner and an old bike. That is all.

  It was through the visit to Alfred and Else that I came to Aasta. I wanted to know more about Johanna and Olav, and about Kåre. All of a sudden it felt important. Aasta, Johanna Vatneli’s sister-in-law and therefore Kåre’s aunt, was forty-eight years old in 1978, and now, fifty years after he died, she was one of the few still to remember him.

  On one of the first evenings in November I left home and walked the kilometre or so to the yellow house where Aasta lived. She has known me all my life: she was one of those to visit my mother while she was still at the maternity ward in Kongens gate and I was no more than a few days old.

  We sat chatting for several hours. We talked about the fire, and the pyromaniac. I asked about Olav and Johanna. And about Kåre. I took notes.

  Kåre’s story was as follows. He had an open wound on his leg, from falling on a ski slope, Slottebakken Hill, the one with the meticulously constructed ski jump and the unusually steep landing area. It was a straight plunge. I recalled my father had spoken about Slottebakken, having jumped there himself many times. He was of course one of the very best – at least that was what he said – and he may well have been there on that evening in the 1950s when Kåre called out in the darkness, crouched down and set off.

  Kåre had performed an immense take-off and hovered high on his descent. A gasp ran through the watching crowd. No one had ever seen such a long jump. He continued to hover, his overalls filling out like a taut sail across his back, everyone held their breath, then the skis smacked down on the icy landing strip and scattered cheers broke out on that freezing cold evening. He landed safe and sound, but then fell headlong. It wasn’t a nasty fall, but was enough for him to call it a day. He sat in a snowdrift holding his leg.

  The next day he gave school a miss and stayed at home. It was a Friday. By Monday he was no better. Quite the contrary, he had a high temperature. Some days later he and Johanna went to see the doctor, who had surgery hours from eleven to four on the bend opposite Knut Frigstad’s house in Brandsvoll. His name was Dr Rosenvold, he had the gentle but elusive eyes that you never really saw behind his glasses. He was able to confirm that Kåre had a wound which wouldn’t heal. A glistening, evil-smelling liquid leaked from it, and for the time being there was nothing they could do. They would have to wait and see. Johanna tore rags into strips and dipped them in a special vinegar mixture and bound them round his leg. It was diagnosed as a fracture. Subsequently it transpired that it was a great deal more serious, but they didn’t dare to articulate the word. At that time he was fourteen years old and about to change schools and no one articulated the word. Dr Rosenvold visited Olav and Johanna’s home, the white house beside the road. It was late summer, the cherry tree in the garden was bulging with dark red fruit and the black car pulled up in the yard between the house and the barn. Dr Rosenvold ascended the stairs in leisurely fashion and went into the room where the boy lay in bed. He closed the door behind him and was inside for a long time. On his return downstairs, his eyes were still gentle but nowhere near as elusive.

  A few days later it was decided that the leg would have to be cut off, slightly above the knee. The left one. They had waited too long.

  So.

  The leg was cut off, as they say in common parlance, and some weeks later Kåre was hobbling across the yard, up the stairs and into the kitchen.

  He had to teach himself to walk on crutches. Everything had to be re-learned from scratch, and he lost a year
. He had to catch up with the rest of his life, and this delay seemed to give him the motivation to teach himself things that were considered scarcely possible. He learned to walk again, he learned to cycle and he even learned to ride a moped. It was as though nothing was impossible any longer. Aasta told me Kåre lived with her and her husband Sigurd for a short period while he went to school in Lauvslandsmoen. After all, he had to attend school like everyone else. That must have been the winter of 1958. It was easier to live there than at home. From Vatneli it was more than seven kilometres and Olav and Johanna didn’t have a car, while from Aasta’s house the school was only a couple of hundred metres. He slept in the loft, she said, in the room facing west, and they lit the wood-burner there so it was nice and warm. Her face lit up as all these hazy memories returned. She recalled things she hadn’t thought about in years: minor details and trifles she assumed would not interest me. Her eyes wandered, as though somewhere in the middle distance she could see life fifty years ago, like a flimsy, shimmering film. She told me she was always so frightened whenever Kåre had to negotiate the steep staircase on his crutches. The steep staircase without a rail, and Kåre wobbling downwards from step to step. But he always managed, and gradually he became a past master at getting around. He hobbled about on his crutches and sang, she could remember that. In the evenings he came down from the loft, singing as he swung, making the walls vibrate with the sound. It was a love song, she believed. Yes, it was; a love song. She didn’t remember which, it was in English; the only word that stuck in her mind was darling.