Before I Burn: A Novel (26 page)

Alfred was ushered into the old boardroom where a makeshift office had been set up with a desk, three chairs and a typewriter. He was asked to take a seat in the chair on one side. Two police officers occupied the others. Then the interrogation began. It took him a while to realise that this was actually about him.

Perhaps it wasn’t quite accurate to describe it as an interrogation. The tone was relaxed in spite of everything. He was offered coffee from the huge boardroom flask, the one that used to last a whole board meeting in the old days. Then he was invited to tell them about the last three fires, the two in Vatneli and Sløgedal’s barn. Meticulous notes were taken. One officer sat with his back to them, hammering the questions and answers into the typewriter. Alfred spoke quietly, pausing occasionally, leaning forwards to drink from the steaming cup and coughing, at which both looked up attentively from their papers. He was asked how much he had slept in the last seventy-two hours. He replied that he had no idea, as indeed was the truth. It was suggested that he must be dead on his feet, which he confirmed. He was asked about the Skogen fire, why he thought it had been started in the morning and not in the middle of the night, as had been the pattern with the others. He said he had no idea. He was asked if he believed there was a pattern, but to that question he had no answer. He was asked why he had joined the fire service. To which he answered that he had been recruited, and that furthermore his experience was that it was a meaningful job. The word
meaningful
elicited more questions. Could he expand? He made an attempt. Finally, he was asked what his experience of the last few days had been. He considered the question for a while, leaned forwards and answered:
Unreal. Unreal. Absolutely unreal.

After roughly twenty minutes he was allowed to leave. Before getting up, he asked:

‘Why are you actually questioning me?’

‘It’s part of the investigation,’ came the answer.

‘Does it mean that I’m a suspect?’

‘It means neither one thing nor another.’

Then he left.

When he arrived home, Else had a meal on the table, and he told her about the interview while they ate. He said that the police might be working on the possibility he was the arsonist. She looked up. She looked at his hands, his mouth and the whole of his face. She saw the steam from the coffee cup rising in front of his eyes.

Then she laughed.

They listened to the six o’clock news. The fires were the second item. The first was a terrible train accident outside Lyon, in which eight people had been confirmed dead so far. Then about the four latest blazes in Finsland. Two arson attacks with intent to kill. Four elderly people who had come within an inch of death. Lensmann Koland was interviewed; his voice was firm and assured. He said the police still had no definite leads. The two cars were mentioned. Followed by Agnes Fjeldsgård’s sighting: a thin, young man. That was all they had for the moment. Finally the lensmann urged everyone to be vigilant at night. That was all there was about the Finsland fires. Next there was a brief mention of the World Cup. Austria had been knocked out, as had France, Spain and Sweden.

Else got up to switch off the radio, while Alfred drained the last drop of coffee and was on his way towards the living room for a lie-down.

That was when Else caught sight of a man walking across the field. She immediately recognised who it was, but was taken aback by how old he looked. Ingemann was walking across the field alone. It was the shortest route between the two houses, although it was seldom used. The sun was behind him and he cast a long, thin shadow, which must have been four times his height. It was as if ten years had passed before Else’s eyes without her noticing. Ten years had passed and Ingemann had become well over seventy within a few days. There was something about the way he was walking, or there was something about his back, the bent neck, perhaps the arms, the way they swung as he walked. This was an old man walking towards them.

Alfred and Else sat quietly in the kitchen waiting for the bell to ring in the hallway. Then Alfred got to his feet, went into the porch and opened the door.

‘So it’s you, is it?’ he said.

At first Ingemann was unable to utter a word. He just stood there in his dark overalls, the ones he usually wore for emergency call-outs, the ones that smelt of old fires and had the vague semblance of a uniform. Seconds passed, then he stretched out his hand.

‘Look at this,’ he said.

At once Alfred recognised the cap from one of the fire service’s white jerrycans. Only a few hours ago he had refilled some of the jerrycans with petrol. Ingemann’s hands were black with soot; the cap was white.

‘I’ve…I’ve found this,’ Ingemann said.

‘Uhuh,’ Alfred replied.

‘And I’ve come to tell you.’

‘You’ve come to tell me what?’ Alfred queried, looking down at his old neighbour standing in the warm evening sun.

‘That I know who it is.’

Alfred had to support him into the chair under the clock. Else took him a glass of water. He sipped a little, but left most of it. There was an acrid smell of ash and soot about him. The petrol cap had been left outside on the steps, and Alfred went to fetch it. Ingemann sat in the chair under the clock twisting the lid between his fingers. There was a long silence, only the sound of the lid turning; then he began to talk.

He had walked up to Sløgedal’s razed barn and mooched around on his own. He had stood on top of the barn bridge and surveyed the ruins, just as they had stood with Reinert and Bjarne a few hours earlier. That was when he had suddenly spotted it, he said. He couldn’t understand why no one had seen the cap before. It was lying in the grass by the barn for all to see. He had been standing precisely where the bridge should have continued upwards, and he couldn’t understand why the petrol cap should be lying there in the grass. He stood there feeling the light summer breeze on his face, then raised his eyes and stared at the birch that had stood next to the barn. The closest branches were burned off, elsewhere only blackened stumps resembling bones protruded. The little foliage remaining was brown and withered and rustled drily in the wind.

Then, all of a sudden, he understood.

That is, he both understood and he did not, but it made no difference.

That was what he told Alfred and Else. He leaned back and rested his head on the wall beneath the clock. He closed his eyes, then opened them, and in the interim they had become narrow and dark and wise, yet they were quite alone in what they knew.

‘Now I’ve told you, Alfred, would you be so kind as to notify the police? I don’t think I’m capable of doing it myself.’

VI.

IT WAS TERESA WHO FOUND HER. She’d had an inkling that something was wrong, and she was sure Alma was at home – from her window she had seen her go in – yet no one answered the door when she rang. In the end, she pushed the door. It was unlocked. In the hallway, she called out. Still no answer. She took a few cautious steps inside. There was no one in the kitchen. Just the wall clock ticking blithely away, a solitary cup of coffee on the table, some washing-up on the drainer, the kitchen cloth over the tap, a bumblebee banging its head against the windowpane. Teresa was about to leave when she heard something on the floor above. She ascended the stairs and peeped through the one door that was open. Alma was lying on the duvet fully clothed. Her coat was buttoned up halfway. She was even wearing shoes.

‘Alma?’ Teresa whispered.

She wasn’t quite sure why she was whispering; perhaps it was the sight of the shoes on the duvet, perhaps the blank, staring eyes. Alma didn’t move, but she had called out, Teresa was sure of that.

‘Alma,’ she whispered again. This time it was not a question but a statement of fact. Alma lay stretched out and stiff like a damaged statue, but with her hair cascading attractively over the pillow. She was breathing through an open mouth, her eyes were staring up at the extinguished ceiling lamp and her chest was heaving.

‘It’s him,’ she whispered. ‘It’s him.’

Teresa stood at her bedside, but Alma wasn’t looking at her.

‘It’s all over,’ she whispered.

She turned her head towards Teresa, as though she had suddenly become aware that someone had entered. Her lips moved. Teresa bent down to hear. Her voice was hoarse and slightly ragged, sounding as if it was coming through a thin crack.

‘I can’t move.’

She didn’t say another word.

Teresa writes about how she took off Alma’s shoes. First the left one, then the right. Some sand and earth fell onto the duvet. She brushed it onto the floor and placed the shoes neatly beside each other by the door. Thereafter she unbuttoned the coat, opened it and folded it to the side. Took out her right arm, then her left. It was like undressing a sleeping child. But Alma wasn’t asleep; she was staring up at the lamp under the ceiling, and was beyond reach. Teresa removed all her outer clothing, then she spread Ingemann’s duvet over her.

‘Have a little rest,’ she whispered. She thought she saw a slight movement of Alma’s head, but she said nothing, just lay with her eyes open.

That was when Teresa heard the strains of music below. It was piano music, and she immediately recognised the piece that was being played. She looked at Alma, who had closed her eyes. Lying there, still and serene, her forehead smooth, some fir needles and other bits in her hair, she looked a great deal younger than she was in reality. It was as if she had been lifted and was floating off on the music pouring into the room beneath them.

Teresa rose to her feet and went downstairs. The music became louder. She went into the living room and looked at the figure sitting at the piano.

‘You play well,’ she said.

He gave a start, removing his fingers from the keys as though they were red-hot. The notes lingered in the air, merged into each other, sank and were gone.

‘Do you think so?’ he asked.

She nodded.

‘It’s a long time since you taught me this one,’ he said.

She nodded again.

‘Would you like me to play a bit more?’

He didn’t wait for an answer but turned back to the keys. Struck some chords. It was only now she noticed the acrid smell of fire pervading the room. He was wearing a white shirt that was stained down the back and sleeves, there was a long tear over the shoulder where she could see the pale skin beneath, his hair was unkempt, his hands dirty. She forgot to listen; it was unlike her, she usually listened to her music pupils. She forgot everything to do with technique or expression or presentation. Instead she seemed to sink into the music, or it sank into her. She just stood staring at Dag as he played, staring at his dirty fingers, which left not one mark on the white keys.

She didn’t hear the knock at the door, barely noticed the people entering the hall, the shout, neither she nor Dag noticed anything until a police officer entered the living room. Followed by Alfred. And last of all Ingemann. Only then did he take his fingers off the keys, and there was silence. He looked at each and every one of them. No one said anything. Ingemann’s face was ashen; Teresa couldn’t remember having ever seen him like that before. He was leaning against the door frame, and for a moment she thought he was going to lose balance and fall over, but he didn’t, he remained upright. He stepped forwards, into the middle of the room, and he seemed to be carrying the whole house on his shoulders.

‘Dag,’ he said. That was all he managed to utter.

‘You have to come with us,’ the policeman said.

‘Where to?’ Dag asked.

‘It’s best you go along,’ Alfred said quietly.

Dag carefully lowered the lid over the keys, then let it go with a sudden bang. A mournful, barely audible swell of notes came from the instrument’s dark innards. Then he got up and the officer held him warily by the arm, and as he left the room he turned to Teresa and smiled.

I.

LAKE LIVANNET, WHITE AND STILL. No birds. Just sky. Wind and ice. At some point the thermometer creeps down to minus twenty-five degrees. Can only write for short periods before my fingers go stiff. Later the weather brightens, February and March come, westerlies arrive and slowly it becomes milder.

I try to gather everything together.

Grandma writes in her diary on 22 January 1998, the day after Pappa’s lungs were drained of four and a half litres of fluid:
I have been buried.

Just that. He was still her child, of course.

And I was still his son.

I remember going to Olga Dynestøl’s barn. When I went there with Pappa all the animals were still hanging from the ceiling. There were three in all, and one was the elk Pappa had felled with a single shot, but I didn’t know which. Hanging from their rear legs, all three looked alike: dark red, skinned, laid bare. Then, one by one, they were slowly lowered. Three men held the rope; two others sliced the carcass into ever smaller parts. A compass saw was used to cut the throat, and out shot a tidal wave of blood that had collected inside the animal. An extra feed sack was found and placed underneath. There was a sweet-acrid smell of tobacco smoke. The pulley on the tackle in the ceiling groaned as the carcass was lowered even further. A man held it as a large piece was sawn off. In this way the carcass decreased in size, and in the end it could be sawn into two equal halves. Two men held a thigh each, and as the carcass was parted they both reeled under the weight. Pieces of meat were cut off the carcass and carried over to the bandsaw where they were sliced into even smaller portions. The saw sang through the meat, groaned through the big thigh bones and stuttered through the ribs while one man kept squirting water so that the operation ran as smoothly as possible. I remember the spicy smell of sawn leg, and I wasn’t sure whether I liked it or it made me feel nauseous. Finally the portions were thrown onto the slaughter table where bone, sinew and bloody shreds were cut off. The bullets were also dug out and placed beside each other on the edge of the table. After penetrating the bodies they had been transformed beyond recognition. Some had become little flowers with torn petals, others tiny bleeding birds. All were lined up as though in some way or other they had value, even though no one wanted them and ultimately they were discarded.