Encircling (29 page)

We took a few shots and if we had left it at that this incident would probably have been forgotten by now, but we didn’t leave it at that because, in an attempt to expand upon the narrative contained within the image, we fetched a thick length of rope from the basement (an old fire rope, as far as I remember) and used this to make a real hangman’s noose. We fixed this to the beam a little in front of the light bulb so that when we stood on the spot from which we had taken the first shot, we had the weeping crowd in the foreground, then the gallows and finally – as if framed within the noose – the light bulb, which was of course supposed to call to mind the Light itself.

As always when working on our art projects we were pretty hyped up and in our excitement we forgot to take the noose down again when we were finished. It wasn’t until late that same evening, some time after Mum and I had left for the hospital to see Gran, who was failing fast by then, that you went out to the garage to remove it. It was dark outside, and when Arvid came to drop off a bedside table, some board games and a box of books that you’d left behind when you moved out, his car headlights looked to you like the eyes of a wild beast at night, or so you told me later. He had turned slowly into the drive and kind of coasted straight towards the garage. Then he spotted you, standing on a stool, fiddling with a noose – a sight which caused him to slam on the brakes, fling open the car door and dash over to you, sure that you were about to kill yourself.

Nothing would convince him that this had not been the case – well, it wasn’t that long since Berit had died and he thought you were still devastated by her loss. I cycled down to the vestry and told him all about our photography experiment, thus confirming your version of events (or so I thought). But Arvid was convinced I was lying out of a misplaced sense
of loyalty to you and he subjected me to a veritable tirade of platitudes on the nature of brotherly love. Not until I got home did it occur to me that the photograph would prove I’d been telling the truth, but when I mentioned this to you, feeling a little flustered and sure that you would be pleased, you told me that you had already destroyed both the photo and the negative.

You had never destroyed a negative before, nor would you ever have dreamed of doing so, it was a matter of principle with you so I knew you were lying, and since I could only see one reason for you to lie, namely, that you didn’t want Arvid to see the photo, I realized that at some point you had made up your mind to let him think that you actually had been about to do away with yourself, and this you did eventually admit, claiming that it was a part of the work.

Since this act constituted a realization, so to speak, of the narrative contained within the image, I could see the logic in what you said, but just as I had hated lying about what we had seen and heard during the Holseth Landslide, and just as I had hated leaving that ladies’ scarf in poor, dead Åge Viken’s car, I hated you doing this to Arvid. You would send him the noose picture later and tell him the whole story, you said, just as you had sent an anonymous letter to Anita Viken to explain how that scarf had come to be in her husband’s car, but it made me feel sick to think how worried Arvid would be about you until he received the photograph, and how let down he would feel afterwards. I got really mad, I remember, yelling at you and telling you how selfish and cold and cynical you were, but at the same time I couldn’t help admiring you for being so uncompromising in the pursuit of your ideals, and if I am right in suspecting that you have not in fact lost your memory at all, but that all of this is
simply another art project that you’ve embarked on (you crafty devil), then I can only say that I admire you for still being as uncompromising as ever.

I have to say that I had a suspicion, right from the start, that your memory loss was a piece of performance art. I’m only mentioning this now, though, before closing this letter, partly because I’ve enjoyed fooling you into thinking that I had been totally taken in and partly because I’ve never been, and I’m still not, altogether sure that I’m right in my suspicion. Maybe it’s the liar in me that I see when I’m so suspicious of you? Maybe I’m exaggerating and placing too much emphasis on that side of you? Maybe the person whom I think may be pulling the wool over the eyes of everyone he knows is actually a reflection of myself? On the other hand, the fact that you liked to play Russian roulette, and had such an urge to risk life and limb every now and again, makes it all the more likely that you would put yourself in a situation in which you could end up suffering from shock, brain damage or some other trauma that would result in amnesia. I really don’t know what to believe. I hold both scenarios to be equally possible.

ENCIRCLING by CARL FRODE TILLER

This English translation first published in 2015 by

Sort Of Books
PO Box 18678, London NW3 2FL
www.sortof.co.uk

First published in Norway as
Innsirkling
(2007) by H. Aschehough & Co.
(W. Nyggaard), Oslo.

Copyright © Carl Frode Tiller, 2007, 2015

Translation © Barbara J. Haveland/Sort Of Books, 2015

The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for the quotation of brief passages in reviews.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

e-Book ISBN 978–1–908745–30–9