Before I Burn: A Novel (2 page)

‘I can’t find Olav.’

Odd Syvertsen moved first, leaping for the phone while Johanna rushed down the slope and back onto the road. The house was now fully ablaze. Loud crackles and bangs were still echoing around Lake Livannet and into the mountain ridges westwards. It sounded as if the sky itself was being torn apart. The flames were like large wild birds twisting around one another, above one another, into one another, they wanted to break free, but could not. In the space of minutes the fire had grown tall and powerful. Yet all around her there was this strange silence. I have seen all of this. A house is burning at night. It is the first few minutes, before people have been alerted. All around there is silence. There is only the fire. The house stands there alone and no one can save it. It has been left to its fate, to its destruction. The flames and the smoke are being sucked up into the sky, or so it seems; there are creaks and groans, like distant responses. It is frightening, it is terrible and it is beyond comprehension.

And it is almost beautiful.

Johanna called Olav’s name. First once, then twice, then four times. It was eerie to hear your own voice alongside the sound of the flames. The trees seemed to have moved even closer to the house. They were extending their branches. Curious, panic-stricken. With stabbing pains in the pit of her stomach she ran around to the outbuilding. To her it felt as if a huge abscess inside had been lanced and hot blood was escaping.

He was standing between the house and the barn, caught in the intense light. His nightshirt flapped around his body, although there wasn’t a breath of wind and he stood without moving. Coming closer, she discovered that the wind was issuing from the fire itself, a gust that boded ill, a gust that was both ice cold and voraciously hot. She pulled him away and they ran back up to the road, where they stood, huddled together, as Odd Syvertsen came bounding down the incline. He was flurried and out of breath as he joined the elderly couple. He tried to move them away from the overpowering heat, but it was impossible. They wanted to watch their house burn to the ground. Neither was able to utter a single word. Olav stood like stone, though the nightshirt softened his appearance with the cool white fabric wrapped around his shoulders and arms. Their faces were lit up, clear, pure, as if age had been erased. Then the fire suddenly took hold of the old cherry tree outside the kitchen window. The one that always flowered so early and that Kåre had always climbed. In late summer it was laden with fruit, I have been told, and the largest and sweetest cherries always hung on the branches furthest from reach. Now it was alight. The fire swept through the blossom and branches, and then seared the entire crown of the tree with a distinctive crackle. Afterwards a high-pitched voice was heard, but it was impossible to tell whether it belonged to either Johanna or Olav:
Lord God Almighty. Lord God Almighty.

I have seen it all in my mind’s eye. It was the eighth fire, it was a little after half past twelve, early on the morning of 5 June 1978.

Then the fire engine arrived.

They heard the sirens from as far afield as Fjeldsgårdsletta, or perhaps even further away, perhaps right up by the chapel at Brandsvoll, perhaps they heard the fire alarm wailing in Skinnsnes, too? It is not inconceivable, since you can hear it from the church. But, anyway, they heard the fire engine. The sirens grew louder, shriller, more piercing, and soon they could discern the blue lights racing past the old sand-casting works at the end of Lake Livannet, past the slaughterhouse, the Shell petrol station and the priest’s house with the balcony, past the old schoolhouse in Kilen and Kaddeberg’s shop, before the fire engine slowed as it climbed the hill to the few houses at Vatneli.

It stopped and a young man jumped out and came running towards them. ‘Anyone inside?’ he yelled.

‘They got out,’ Odd Syvertsen said, but the man didn’t seem to hear. He ran back to the fire engine, unhitched several coiled hoses and threw them out in no particular order. They rolled down the road like wheels and toppled over. Then he opened some sliding doors, tossed a couple of axes onto the ground, and a solitary helmet, which rocked to and fro on the gravel. He stood for a few seconds gazing at the flames, his arms hanging limply by his sides. For a few seconds he stood beside Olav, Johanna and Odd Syvertsen, and they had the appearance of a group, observing the incomprehensible event that was taking place.

Four cars arrived at great speed. They each parked some way behind the fire engine, turned off their lights, and four men dressed in black came running over.

‘There may be people inside,’ the young man shouted. He was wearing a thin, white shirt that fluttered around his lean chest. He uncoupled two of the hoses from the powerful water pump at the front of the fire engine while two other men stood waiting for the water to issue forth. At that moment there was such a huge explosion within the blaze that the ground shook and everyone doubled up as if they had been hit in the stomach by a shell. Someone burst into laughter, it was impossible to see who, and Odd Syvertsen put an arm around Olav and Johanna, and shepherded them away with an affectionate but firm pull, leading them up the slope to his house. This time they obeyed without a word. He got them inside and dialled Knut Karlsen’s number. He and his wife came at once – they had been awoken by the sirens and the vivid mass of flames – and in the ensuing hours it was decided that Olav and Johanna could move into their cellar until things had eased.

The flames billowed across the sky, but Olav and Johanna didn’t see them. The light changed from white to rust-red, then purple and orange. What a sight it was. A shower of sparks was sent flying into the air as the frame of the house collapsed, it hovered weightlessly for a few moments, then died. The leaves on the trees crinkled. The wild birds were gone; they had finally broken free of one another. Now the fire burned quietly with tall, vertical flames. More cars arrived. People got out, left the doors open, wrapped their jackets tightly around them and slowly approached the fire. Among these was my father. In my mind’s eye he came in the blue Datsun, stopped some distance away and got out like the others, but I have never been able to see his face properly. He was there, I know he was there outside Olav and Johanna’s burning house on that night, but I don’t know what he was thinking or who he spoke to, and I can’t see his face.

Ash lay all over the garden; large, lazy flakes floated through the air, then fluttered over the trees and covered the parked vehicles as quietly as snow. A motorbike started up and left, ridden by two young men. One with a helmet, one without.

There was nothing you could do. Olav and Johanna Vatneli’s house was razed to the ground.

In the end all that remained was the chimney. By then it was almost morning and most of the vehicles had gone. Only the smoke hung like a thin, transparent haze over the garden and between the closest trees. The two people in Knut Karlsen’s cellar had no clothes apart from the nightwear in which they stood. And the bag. Containing three thousand kroner.

At four o’clock it was so light that the birds began to sing. Theirs was a strangely intense song, a steady exultation that mingled with the drone of the water pumps. A huge amount of water had been needed, so the hoses had been rolled down the rough slope to Lake Livannet, and the water pumped up thirty metres.

Three journalists and a number of photographers circled the site of the blaze. First of all, they talked to the rural police chief, Lensmann Knut Koland, then they walked up the slope and knocked on the cellar door. They were allowed to talk to Johanna; Olav was lying on the divan with a rug over him and staring up at the ceiling, in a different world. Johanna answered with controlled composure, giving identical answers to all the questions. She spoke slowly, so they had plenty of time to take notes. Then photographs of her were taken. Several, from various angles, but only those showing her despondent face appeared that same day in the local newspapers:
Faedrelandsvennen, Sørlandet
and
Lindesnes.
She had singed eyebrows, soot on one cheek and a cut to her forehead, and she looked like a survivor of a mining accident.

By and large, she was composed.

After they had all gone, it occurred to her that she didn’t have her teeth, they were in the glass beside Olav’s on the vanity shelf, but then she remembered there was no longer any shelf, nor any glass, nor any teeth; neither her teeth nor Olav’s existed any longer. In my mind’s eye I have seen this, the strangely lucid, chilling instant when she realised she had lost absolutely everything, even her teeth, and only then did tears start to trickle quietly down her cheeks.

II.

EVER SINCE EARLY CHILDHOOD I have been told the story of the fires. At the beginning it was my parents who told me, but it wasn’t until I grew up and heard it from others that I realised that in fact it was all true. For long periods the story has seemed to disappear, only to crop up unexpectedly in a conversation, a newspaper article or simply in my consciousness. It has pursued me for thirty years although I have never known exactly what happened or indeed what it was all about. As a child I remember sitting in the back seat of a blue Datsun going to my grandparents’ at Heivollen, and on the way there we would pass the house where the pyromaniac lived. It was as though I could feel a waft of something outlandish and alluring as we drove past. Immediately afterwards we passed the house belonging to Sløgedal, the composer and organist at Kristiansand Cathedral, and my father used to point to the old barn bridge which didn’t meet the new barn that had been erected.
It burned down when you were christened
, he said, and so it went on until in some way or other I connected the fires with myself. Yet there was so much I didn’t know, which was why I had never thought of writing about the fires. It was too big a subject, too far-reaching and too close to home.

The story had been there like a shadow until the moment I decided to write it down. This happened suddenly, in the early summer of 2009, after I moved back home. It came about in the following way:

A few weeks earlier, in April, I was sitting on my own up in the old loft of Lauvslandsmoen School rummaging through boxes of old text books, yellowing exercise books and miscellaneous papers. I remember this loft from my schooldays as being extremely messy and full of jumble. We used to hide up there sometimes, that was when we had a woodwork class in the cellar, and we would tiptoe up all the steps, past the music room, up the final, darkened staircase and sit in the freezing cold loft, as quiet as mice, waiting for someone to notice that we had absented ourselves.

The books were cold and my fingers left marks on the damp papers, which must have been up there for twenty or thirty years. After a while I stumbled on a pile of black and white photographs wrapped in plastic, and with a vague sense of anticipation I began to flick through them. I recognised the faces straightaway but was unable to place them. Most of the photos were of children, but among them was one of a group of adults. Gradually it dawned on me that the photos were of my own time at the school. They were of kids from my class, there were a few older children, a few younger ones too, pictures of the school playground or inside the classrooms, and there were a number in which my teachers appeared. There was also a photo of a small boy singing on a stage. His hair had recently been cut and he was wearing a knitted jumper with a shirt that barely protruded over the top. The occasion must have been some kind of Christmas celebration because I could make out a decorated Christmas tree and paper chains in the background. More people were there with him, and everyone was holding a lit candle. It took me four, maybe five seconds. Then it clicked: That’s me!

That was when it all started, with the sight of this boy innocently standing there and singing. I looked at myself, stared at my own face for several seconds without seeing who it was. It is difficult to explain why, but the experience had such an impact on me. It was as though I understood yet didn’t understand that it was me. And that it made no difference. Why I don’t know. But that was when the story of the fires made its re-appearance, as a kind of extension of this discovery. It was this picture of me, with a thin, steady flame rising from my hand, as it were, that led, a few weeks later, to my realisation one evening at the beginning of June that I would attempt to write the story of the fires. It was like taking a deep breath.

And so.

III.

WHEN THE FIRST BUILDING was set alight in the region of Finsland in Southern Norway at the beginning of May 1978, I was not yet two months old. A few days after my birth, my father collected Mamma and me from the maternity ward in Kongens gate in Kristiansand. I was laid in a dark blue travel bag and driven the forty kilometres home to Finsland, and when I was taken from the car to our Kleveland homestead for the first time it was in a tremendous snowstorm, which didn’t abate until two days later. Thereafter it was sunshine and silence, white winter days, until the wind turned southwest and spring arrived. At the end of April there was still snow lying where the sun didn’t reach, but the warmer temperatures had well and truly arrived, and on 6 May, the day it all began, the forest was already perilously dry.

A month later, just before midnight on 5 June, it was all over. There had been ten fires, and it was the day after my christening, which was held on the third Sunday after Whitsun. It had been hot and sultry for weeks, and that Sunday was the hottest day yet. The heat shimmered and quivered above the rooftops and made the tarmac bulge at the end of the plain in Lauvslandsmoen and Brandsvoll. In the afternoon there was an enormous deluge and all of a sudden the world felt fresh and new. The weather cleared, insects whirred through the air and the evening was warm and still.

It was the evening before the worst night of all.

In fact, the story of the fires is closely entwined with the very first months of my life and culminates the night after my christening. However, it was far from certain that there would be any christening on that Sunday. Early that morning, at seven minutes past twelve, a dark car had been observed travelling at great speed towards the church. By that point panic had set in. The car was advancing on the church, as I said, climbing, but then it disappeared from sight, and no one knew where it had gone. Events were monitored hour by hour. Minute by minute. The worst was feared. So long as the church is spared, people thought. So long as the church is spared. It wasn’t said out loud; however, everyone was thinking it. The worst of all would be if the church burned down. That was why they kept watch. Not just near the church but throughout the entire region. People sat on their doorsteps, listening. My father sat outside our brown house on Kleveland farm while I lay asleep indoors. He had a gun with him, Grandad’s rifle, which I would see him use later, but on this night he hadn’t been able to obtain ammunition for it. Nonetheless, it was a gun, ammunition or no ammunition. The bottom line was that you kept watch. No one had the remotest idea who the arsonist was. Or who might suddenly emerge from the darkness. Nothing like this had been experienced since the war. Indeed, during those weeks there was an atmosphere in the region that was reminiscent of war. Even those who were too young to have lived through the war also thought about it in those terms. That is what everyone has told me. War had returned.