Before I Burn: A Novel (22 page)

‘What are you goggling at?!’ I shouted. I can’t remember what he answered, or even
if
he answered, I only remember that the next thing I did was to smash the glass on the edge of the table. It was unbelievably easy, and I stood there holding the stem like a broken bone, and the table glittered with tiny shards. I vaguely remember several people jumping to their feet and stretching out their hands in defence. I remember that everyone’s attention was suddenly focused on me; at least it was for those who were nearest and had seen my performance. Then I grabbed one of the small pieces of glass, held it up triumphantly, and made a show of putting it into my mouth as if it were a pill. I remember with amazing clarity what the glass felt like on my tongue, I remember thinking it could have been a sweet to crunch between my teeth or dissolve, and I remember the ice-cold yet liberating feeling I had when I started to knead the glass with my tongue. I remember standing beside myself and observing. I remember understanding and not understanding what I was doing. I remember the taste of blood in my mouth. Not feeling any pain, just the sticky taste of blood. I remember thinking: if I open my mouth the blood will gush out. But I didn’t open my mouth. Instead I turned and left the bar with unsteady but rapid strides. I went down a quiet corridor, still with the glass in my mouth. I continued up a staircase where I met some other night birds without seeing their faces clearly or hearing what they said. Somewhere far away I thought: ‘Now they’re coming to get you.’ Now someone will come running from the bar, or two security guards will clap you in irons, and then you will be incarcerated in a place below the waterline for the rest of the journey. But no one came. I was alone on the boat. I made my way back up to the top deck, and everything was utterly still, just a regular, sombre rumble, and that was the rumble from the engines deep beneath me. I stood there while the whole world lurched. I felt as if I had an ocean of blood in my mouth. Then I found the door that led outside onto the deck. It was as heavy as lead. I remember the howl through the crack in the door, and the wind pressure that seemed to resist all my strength. Somehow I managed to open the door. I struggled onto the deck and the night air washed over me like rain. I stumbled along holding the railing, beneath the three lifeboats that rocked above me in the darkness. There was no one else outside. It must have been the middle of the night. I looked around for the moon, but it was gone, apparently sunk into the sea. I went astern, where sudden bursts of wind blew the ship’s smoke over me. I closed my eyes, and I saw the dead elk before me again, it lay in the grass staring at me, and I remembered what happened afterwards.

We were still alone. The other hunters were probably making their way towards us – they must have heard the shot and known approximately where we were – but there was no time to wait. We had to remove the intestines as fast as possible: that much he did know. At first I watched while Pappa tried to tip the elk onto its back. The animal was both limp and heavy, and it toppled onto one side. It was the head that was causing the problem. It fell to one side and dragged the rest of the body with it. Someone had to hold the head. I scrambled forwards on my knees until I had the elk’s head between my thighs. Still that was not enough. I had to inch even closer and get a better grip; I had to lift its whole head so that I sat with the weight of it in my lap. It was much heavier than I could have imagined, and I could feel its heat. Minutes ago this head had been somewhere in the forest listening carefully, turning into the wind as its ears twitched. It had been listening and keeping a lookout, and perhaps it had had our scent in its nostrils, but by then it had been too late. At the moment of impact the bullet had penetrated its body and opened like a flower.

Initially Pappa seemed a bit unsure of himself. He stood with the Mora knife in his hand, the blade dark with blood after the stab to the neck. Then he pushed the point into the belly, quite a long way down, where the hide was soft and the hair thin and very fair. He mumbled something as he carefully pressed it in and hacked away from him with tiny jerking motions. The skin parted and a greyish-white sac immediately pushed up against the aperture. I thought I detected an instant twitch of the elk’s head, or a shudder running through the colourless eye, but that was all. As the cut grew, the sac grew too; it had a fine network of veins coiled round the outside. Later the ribbed dark blue intestines came into view, in the end everything tumbled out of the opening, steaming and soft like foam, like silk. The acrid smell rose to meet me. I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t even do that. I sat there with the limp, heavy head in my lap and stared at the knife slowly slicing open the belly. Pappa had to throw off his jacket and roll up his sleeves. He took hold of the stomach and the intestines, tried to drag them out of the elk carcass, there was a squelching sound, unlike anything I had heard before, followed by a deep sigh as something loosened and the whole mess poured out over the ground and his boots. I don’t know how long we were there on our own, but we were almost finished by the time the other hunters appeared at the edge of the forest.

The next thing I remember is when the heart was cut out. Kasper did that, because he knew exactly where the heart was positioned and how to cut so as to remove it in one piece. He too had to strip off his jacket, roll up his sleeves and lean forwards over the empty elk. By then Pappa was hunkered down by a stream rinsing his arms and hands. I remember watching him and the blood being rinsed off into the cold marshy water, and thinking it was his own blood. Kasper lunged into the cavernous animal and was soon covered with blood right up to his elbows. All of a sudden he jumped to his feet, holding the lead bullet between his fingers, the one that had opened like a flower, and in the end there he was, holding the dark heart in his hands, holding it up so that everyone could see the perfect hole right through.

I was somewhere in the middle of the Skagerrak. I leaned over the railing and stared down into the turbid wake which followed behind us and disappeared into the darkness. The wind tousled my hair, the diesel smoke whirled and the sea foamed and frothed beneath me. I opened my mouth, spat out the glass shard and felt blood oozing over my lip. I stood like that for a long time, until there was no more blood, until it was gone, until everything was gone. Then I clambered onto the rail, closed my eyes, held tight, and let go.

VIII.

IT WAS HALF PAST TWO in the morning of Monday, 5 June 1978. The road had been cleared after the accident. The two boys on the motorbike had been transported to Kristiansand in separate ambulances. The condition of one was said to be serious but stable. The other had only minor injuries. He was the one who had been wearing a helmet. Vatneli was still burning, but Olav and Johanna’s house was now a pile of glowing embers. Pappa had driven home. After sitting for a while on the front steps with his gun he went back indoors. He sat in the living room at first, but as day began to break he finally headed for bed. Cars were still criss-crossing the length and breadth of Finsland, but no new fires were found.

There was a sense of quiet conviction that the two houses in Vatneli were the sum of the night’s activities. Two residential houses destroyed. A married couple who had lost everything, and on top of that a serious motorcycle accident.

Surely that was enough, wasn’t it?

Dag drove slowly past the scene of the accident in Fjeldsgård on the Brandsvoll road. The cuts to his forehead were throbbing, but they no longer hurt, and he wrapped his hands around the wheel. Then he switched on the radio. Edited highlights of the match between Austria and West Germany were being broadcast. On the Fjeldsgård Plain he was waved into the roadside.

The police officer shone a torch into his face.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m the fire chief’s son,’ he answered.

‘And where are you going?’

‘Home.’

The officer hesitated, then switched off the torch.

‘Get your headlamps fixed,’ he said. ‘Light’s going in all directions.’

Then he was allowed to drive on.

The score was 2–2 as he passed Brandsvoll Community Centre. He came to the crossroads by the shop, but did not turn right for Skinnsnes. Instead he carried on past the old doctor’s surgery on the bend opposite Knut Frigstad’s house, the one with only two rooms and walls that were so thin everyone in the waiting room could hear what was going on inside. That was where Kåre Vatneli had sat with Johanna while Dr Rosenvold examined his leg that time in the fifties.

At the top of the hill he extinguished the headlamps. It made no difference, he could see just as well without them, after all, it was light enough everywhere now. He felt a tingling sense of well-being spread from his stomach out to his arms. He had warmed up in the car and now he drummed his fingers on the wheel. In Argentina, Hans Krankl had the ball. Only a few minutes of the match were left now. Krankl surged forwards to the right, found himself without support and ran across towards the penalty box. The roar in the stadium grew louder. The reception went fuzzy, he tried to adjust it, but lost the station altogether. Now there was just low white noise, and with this in the background he kept driving. He felt light-bodied, felt the blood throbbing in his temples and the cuts on his forehead. He was tired no longer; he just felt light. Light and strangely excited. He reduced his speed, humming a song with neither a beginning nor an end.

He turned right, below Anders Fjeldsgård’s house, stopped the car, twisted the dial backwards and forwards until he found another, a better frequency. Krankl had dribbled past Müller and Rummenigge, suddenly he had space, he hit a superb shot and the stadium exploded.

Dag got out of the car. The house was situated high up on rock by the roadside, and it was unlit. The windows were black and shiny. On each side of the front steps there were two trees, dark with thick foliage. He sauntered to the rear of the house, where he knew the main entrance was, and cautiously pressed the door. Locked. Then he returned to the car, got in, and was about to turn the ignition key, but changed his mind. He darted soundlessly from the car to the front door. There was a kind of staircase in the lawn, small steps cut into the ground. He took these stone steps in three strides. Then he was at the top. An old door with eight inlaid glass panes. He carefully tested the handle. Also locked. Then he scampered back to the car, pulled the jerrycan out from under the pile of clothes and within seconds he was back on the front steps, listening. Mist lay over the fields, just as it did down in Kilen, still, white and pure. He noticed the stars above, pale, distant, in another universe. Then he thrust the corner of the can into the lowest pane in the door. The glass, old and brittle, smashed easily. He held his breath, his heart thundering in his ears. The cap on the jerry can was stuck, and he tussled with it until he managed to get it loose. He waited a few more seconds before going into action. Not a sound anywhere. No shouts from inside, no quickened steps. Nothing. Just the sound of gushing petrol. His hands and arms went numb as he emptied the rest of the can into the dark hallway.

Meanwhile, inside the house, Agnes Fjeldsgård was trying to rouse her husband, who lay fast asleep beside her. Anders, a solid rock of a man, was then seventy-seven years old. She had to shake him hard before he exhibited any signs of life.

‘He’s here,’ she whispered in the darkness.

‘No, he isn’t,’ he mumbled.

‘Yes, he is,’ Agnes said. ‘I saw him through the kitchen window. He’s outside.’

She didn’t have a moment to waste, donned her dressing gown and hurried out of the bedroom, through the kitchen and into the living room.

There, she saw the black figure outside the glass veranda door. The man was bent over in an odd pose, silent and unmoving. She detected the distinctive smell and heard the equally distinctive sound of petrol being poured through the smashed glass and over the wooden floor. Everything ground to a halt. Everything except her heart. She didn’t think. She wasn’t even frightened. She just stood there rooted to the spot, just as Johanna Vatneli had stood some hours earlier, staring through the mass of flames at the shadow on the other side. Except that now there were no flames, there was only a shadow. For seconds they stood face to face. With only a few metres separating them. At last she filled her lungs and screamed, and then he struck the match, held it in his hand with part of his face visible in the sudden flare: some of the chin, the corner of the mouth, the nose, the eye.

Then he threw the match towards her.

It was getting light, but the birds were still silent. In the large house in Brandsvoll, Else had been sitting awake ever since Alfred left shortly after twelve. She didn’t know what was happening, only that there was a fire in the east of the region. When the alarm had gone off at around midnight she had seen the blue lights flashing behind the bedroom curtains. She had dashed to the window, looking for the fire engine.

‘It’s going towards Kilen,’ she had shouted.

When Alfred got up she hadn’t dared to go back to bed; after all she had three children sleeping in the loft, the youngest of whom was only ten. She switched on the TV, but lowered the sound. For a long time she sat at the far end of the sofa watching the players running around on the pitch as if following a pattern she couldn’t comprehend. Now and again she went to the stairs and stood listening. She saw nothing, heard nothing. Had she walked around to the eastern side of the house, she would presumably have seen the flames billowing across the sky. But she hadn’t; she didn’t dare venture outside the house. The furthest she went was to the door, and it faced west. From there she could see the light in Teresa’s windows, while Alma and Ingemann’s house lay hidden behind a pine-clad hill.

In the end she sat on the sofa under a blanket. She began to feel drowsy, but was determined not to fall asleep. She sat in this state for quite a while. Then she fell asleep.

She woke with a start at a little after half past three.