Before I Burn: A Novel (30 page)
Read Before I Burn: A Novel Online
Authors: Gaute Heivoll
It was about then that I craned my neck and caught a glimpse of the man sitting behind me. It took me a few seconds. And then:
That’s him, isn’t it?
We soared up again. I saw the forest and all the lakes scattered around and about. A rainbow was cast far into the land like gauzy yarn. I saw Lakes Gardvannet, Kvedansvannet, as shiny as liquid pewter. I saw lakes Stomnevannet, Sognevannet. I saw lakes Livannet, Traelevannet, Homevannet, where the sky was reflected between the pine-clad headlands, and all the time my mind was saying: That’s him. That’s the pyromaniac. We banked over Dynestøl in a deep curve and I felt as if I were lying outstretched on my side in the air. Finally we were over Lake Bordvannet and descending towards the grass pitch. And then at last I had terra firma beneath my feet, and could feel the weight of my own body.
He had sat behind me without saying a single word, and I watched him walk across the pitch, past all the parked cars. He had moved back to the region after he was released from Eg, and lived there for large parts of my childhood. Naturally, everyone knew who the pyromaniac was, even I. I simply hadn’t recognised him at once.
That was the closest I ever came to him. That was the helicopter trip, and there was the letter to Alfred, which read as follows:
Kristiansand, 12 June 1978
Dear Alfred
,
This may be the first letter you have received from a pyromaniac. You will have to make up your own mind about whether or not to regard me as a scoundrel. I hope you don’t. Anyway, I will probably have to reckon on a fair stretch in prison. I am hoping the fact that I came clean to the police, that I haven’t got a record and that I cooperated during the interviews will help to commute the sentence. I can’t remember everything from the final night. It is like a fog. But you know all that, of course. I heard you were considering visiting me, and I would really appreciate it if you did. I may not be lonely exactly, but time drags when you don’t have anyone else to talk to apart from yourself. Hope you will drop me a line anyway, but don’t forget to write your address on the envelope. Take care, say hello to everyone I know and tell them I am well, considering the circumstances.
He had tried to return to life. During his confinement he trained as a nurse. That made sense; after all, he had always been good-natured. He served his period of detention and moved back to the house at Skinnsnes, but in his home district he noticed that people were afraid of him. He applied for job after job, but was never accepted; he tried to flee from himself and his past, travelling back to northern Norway, where he married and lived for some years. But it didn’t work. The marriage broke up. He returned to the house at Skinnsnes. Alma was ill. It was said that she had smoker’s legs, and it had got so bad that in the end she had to have both legs amputated.
Had them cut off
, as they say. She was in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Alma died ten years to the day of the Dynestøl blaze, when Olga’s house and barn went up in smoke. Dag tried to get his life back on track. He sat upstairs in his room listening to music while Ingemann sat alone in the living room. During the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer they watched the broadcasts together without speaking. They never spoke about what had happened almost sixteen years ago. In 1995, in the spring, Ingemann suddenly collapsed in his workshop. Dag was there and tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation; he was, after all, a trained nurse. But it didn’t help. His father died in the workshop with Dag kneeling beside him. When he realised what had happened Dag strode to the post, wound the handle and the alarm went off like a torrent from the heavens.
He stayed on in the house at Skinnsnes, alone, in the middle of the magic circle. Eventually he got himself a permanent job, as a council refuse collector. He started at the crack of dawn, drove round the village in a blue council pickup and threw the black bin bags on the back. It was work he enjoyed. He was made for this kind of work. He had a fixed route, and he began to time himself. No one could do the job as fast as he did, and he always managed to knock off a few seconds. He jumped out of the pickup, ran up the drive, slung the refuse on the back, jumped in and moved off. He collected the rubbish from my house at Kleveland, and from my grandmother at Heivollen. I remember it, I remember someone drawing my attention to the fact that it was him. I remember a certain expectant scepticism among people.
Who was it driving up at the crack of dawn? Wasn’t that the pyromaniac? The boy who had rocked the region. The boy who reduced eight buildings to ashes and almost took the lives of four elderly people nigh on twenty years ago. Wasn’t that him?
Now he was driving round and collecting people’s rubbish. And he did it faster than anyone else. After a while there started to be complaints. He drove so fast that the bags slid off the back and were left lying in the road. I found a bag in a roadside ditch in Vollan once when I was walking away from the bus. But I wasn’t aware of the connection. He was doing the route faster and faster, and was dropping even more rubbish. He screeched into the drive, jumped out, ran to collect the bag, slung it up, leaped behind the wheel, shot down the road. On. On. Next house. And the next. Faster. Ever faster in a frenetic spiral. Again he was the best, by some distance.
In the end he was given the boot. He sat at home in his large, empty house. Then one day he sold it and moved, but even though new people occupied the white house at Skinnsnes, it was still
the pyromaniac’s house.
Now he was in free fall. He had nothing and no one. He who had been so wanted and so loved. He who had been so good-natured and so well liked by everyone. He who had been such a good boy. He who had had his whole life before him. What did he have now?
He was taking a first and last helicopter trip over the area he had loved so much and to which he had such an attachment, the region where it had become impossible for him to be. He sat staring down at the major and minor roads that wound through the forests. All these roads he knew so well, which had enabled him to make a quick getaway time after time during that summer twenty-seven years ago. He saw the white houses and the red barns. He saw the fire station almost hidden between the trees, he saw Sløgedal’s house, Teresa’s house and Alfred and Else’s house, he saw the community centre and the old chapel in Brandsvoll, which was no longer a chapel but a storehouse. And he saw the house at Skinnsnes, which in fact stood all on its own. He saw everything. But he didn’t see any people.
He died almost two years later, in the spring of 2007, twenty-nine years after the fires. He was in bed alone and the main artery in his stomach burst. Blood seeped all through his body like ink. It must have been quite painless, almost like falling asleep, gliding into the beyond, going. Night, sleep came, and it came as a friend.
I am sitting on the first floor of the disused bank surveying Lake Livannet. I have moved the desk a bit, so that I can see only the sky and the lake beneath me, and it gives me the feeling of being on a ship’s bridge. I see the clouds drifting in from the sea; the birch tree outside sways in the wind and the shadows wander up the wall as before. It is spring. I will soon have finished; there is no more to write. I get up, walk to the window and lay my hand against the glass.
And so.
Teresa writes about an incident that took place during the last summer Alma was alive. They were still neighbours and from the kitchen window she could see Ingemann wheeling Alma onto the veranda and into the morning sun. There she sat the entire morning, as a rule all alone, until the shadow of the house finally caught up with her, and then he wheeled her back inside. One day, however, Teresa had spotted Alma being pushed along the road on the flat. She was being pushed by a young man; it was only when they came closer that she could see who it was. He was walking behind her. At that time she had no idea that he had even been released from Eg. It was the last time she saw them together. They didn’t seem to be saying anything, both had their gazes fixed intently ahead of them, and they cast two amorphous shadows that soon merged into one. The whole incident is written in the form of a letter. It is dated 23 May 1988. Ten days later, Alma died and was laid in her coffin without her legs. I don’t know who Teresa was writing to, but the letter was never sent. It was neatly folded in an unaddressed envelope. It starts as follows:
My dear, Let me put this into words before I burn.
Gaute Heivoll studied creative writing at Telemark College, law at the University of Oslo, and psychology at the University of Bergen. He has conducted courses in creative writing in Norway and France and has worked as a literary critic for Norwegian newspapers. He made his literary debut in 2002 with the short-story collection
Liten dansende gutt [Small Dancing Boy]
and since then has written poetry, children’s books, short stories, and novels.
Before I Burn
was a best seller in Norway, where it won the Brage Prize and was nominated for the Critics Prize and the Booksellers’ Prize. It has been published in more than twenty countries.
Don Bartlett lives in Norfolk, England, and works as a freelance translator of Scandinavian literature. He has translated, or co-translated, Norwegian novels by Per Petterson, Lars Saabye Christensen, Roy Jacobsen, Ingvar Ambjørnsen, Kjell Ola Dahl, Gunnar Staalesen, Pernille Rygg, and Jo Nesbø.
The Lannan Translation Series
Funding the translation and publication of exceptional literary works
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Before I Burn
is set in Minion. Book design by Nicky Barneby @ Barneby Ltd. Manufactured by Friesens on acid-free, 100 percent postconsumer wastepaper.
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