Before I Burn: A Novel (4 page)

I have no idea where they came from, but they stood there, silent, serious, pale and reserved, waiting for me to begin.

They had come to listen to me.

Somehow I managed to collect myself enough to get through the three or four pages I had chosen. I read a story about a father who falls off a ladder and a son who knows he cannot carry him indoors to the sofa.

When I finished there was a burst of applause. I wasn’t prepared for it. After all, I had read the passage in Norwegian, and no one, apart from my interpreter, would have understood a word. Nonetheless, the applause was resounding and sincere. Like a storm around me, the clapping merged with the wind, and the moment I raised my eyes I saw Pappa. He was right at the back, at the top of the church steps, with the massive door behind him. I had seen him once before, a few years earlier. On that occasion we had both been sitting in our respective cars. It was night. I had been driving in the deserted, well-lit tunnel beneath Baneheia, the Nature Park in Kristiansand. Then a car came towards me. I could see from quite some distance it was him. Yet only after he had passed by did it strike me that neither of us had waved. And so it was this time, too. Neither of us waved. Not long afterwards I saw Grandma standing there as well, with Grandad directly behind her. They stood to the right of Pappa. I don’t know whether they were smiling. I don’t know what they were thinking. But I saw them. And they saw me.

The next day I took a taxi to Bologna airport. I was behind schedule, and we sped off at a 170 kilometres an hour on a motorway called the A1, which went straight to Rome. I just made it to the airport in time, boarded the KLM flight and found my seat by a window on the right, at the front. I sat down and, full of a kind of expectation, watched all the others who would be traversing Europe, all the way to Schiphol, Amsterdam. But I was unable to recognise any of those who entered and took their seats. All the dead had remained with the crowd in the darkened square in Mantua. Somehow I was reassured, and as the plane roared up the runway and lifted into the air I fell into a doze. We made a wide arc over the Po Plain; I saw the river winding like a snake, the tin roofs of the houses shining with a matt gleam, not a sign of life. Just flat, rust-red countryside. After a while the plane straightened and before long I could see the Alps rising beneath us. With a strange serenity, bordering on happiness, I thought of all the newspaper cuttings lying at home waiting for me, how I always feel before a job which, from a distance, appears both alluring and intimidating, and as we passed over Lake Constance I saw a ripple extending outwards in the water like a feather.

So, I had to go to a little square in Mantua to begin my story about the fires, that was how it felt at any rate as I sat high above Germany flicking through my black notebook, the one in which I had written nothing while at home staring across Lake Livannet.

There, at a height of 8,000 feet, I began to write about the eighth fire, the one that began early in the morning of 5 June 1978, the one that broke out in the kitchen and culminated with Olav and Johanna Vatneli’s house in ruins. Every so often I peered out of the window and looked down on the continent gliding peacefully by beneath me. Lake Constance slipped slowly behind us and was gone, and I turned back to my notebook. Across Europe, high above Stuttgart, Mannheim, Bonn and Maastricht, until we descended towards Amsterdam I wrote about these two people I had never met but whom I soon felt I knew. And it wasn’t until we had taken off again, from Schiphol on course for Kristiansand, that I managed to get the fire out of my head. As we flew over the North Sea I was at ease, clear in my mind, and I stared out of the window, through my reflection, into the blackness and down at the sea I knew was beneath me.

VI.

THE FOLLOWING NIGHT I knuckled down, and ever since sitting in the darkness over the North Sea I had known where I was going to start.

I set off from home in the dusk, turned left at the crossing outside the library in Lauvslandsmoen and continued northwards. The drive took only four or five minutes and I left the car by a high granite wall. It was a quiet September evening, no one was around, only the cows in the fields. A gentle wind from the west. A storm was approaching, heading in from the sea. I am always so at peace when a storm is on the way. I don’t know why, but that was how it was this evening as well; I felt like sitting on a bench, lying down, stretching out, sleeping.

I didn’t see any swallows even though I stood very still for a long time. Perhaps they had migrated south, or perhaps it is only in my dreams that they have nests in the church tower?

Earlier that day I had been to see the church verger in Nodeland, and had been allowed to see the cemetery records, a leather-bound book with the number 5531 on the title page. I was given permission to take it home. It contained 616 names. Minus the stillborn babies, that is; they were merely given a number, but they were still included. All were allocated a row and a grave number. Everything was ordered and well organised. This was the closest I could get to a map of the cemetery.

However, it transpired that I didn’t need a map. Now, I walked straight to the grave. It was the second one on the right after entering the gate. I hadn’t known beforehand that was where it would be. It was almost frightening. But there they were, Olav and Johanna, the woman who had gone into the burning house and up to the first floor for her bag. The man who had been in shock at that point, standing outside gawping like a child, and who later that morning, when the sun was rising, lay on a sofa in Knut Karlsen’s house, screaming.

As I stood by the grave I remembered the interview that was carried out a few days afterwards. Once everything was over and Olav was back to his normal self. I remembered almost verbatim what he had said:
I am so soft like that. Johanna is quite different. She’s so calm, she is.

That was what he said, the old stonemason. He was so soft. She was so calm.

I stayed in the cemetery until I felt the first raindrops on my hair. At length I found Ingemann and Alma thirty paces away, and beside them, Dag. They were separated by a two-metre-wide wall of earth. He had been given a black headstone, a bit smaller than the others, with room for only one name.

Before getting into my car I walked over to Pappa, whose last wish had been to be buried in the same grave as Great-Great-Grandfather Jens Sommundsen. And so it came to be. His wish was fulfilled. It was – according to the records – grave number 102. Jens, who had faced so many ordeals in his life and had become so gentle as a consequence. He lost two wives. And two children. He was the type of man people sought out if they needed to unburden themselves. I think Pappa had a desire to be like him, and that was why he wished to be buried in the same grave.

I didn’t find Kåre. According to the ledger he should have been in grave number 19, but that wasn’t much use. Grave number 19 no longer existed.

VII.

A FEW DAYS LATER I RANG ALFRED. Briefly I explained the reason for my call. As always when I am nervous, I struggled to find the words. He answered in a voice that was measured and distant and close all at the same time.

‘I remember everything as if it were yesterday,’ he said.

We spoke for two, perhaps three, minutes about the fires. Then I told him about the TV news item in which he had been standing with his back to the camera, hosing down Sløgedal’s ravaged barn. He hadn’t seen the item himself, he told me; it had been shown on the evening of 5 June, when he had been in quite a different place. He said, ‘I wasn’t aware of anyone filming me.’

I went to visit him and his wife Else that same evening. I took my black notebook with me, nothing else. It was a mild night, and I set off from home at a little after six. The trees had begun to bud, and this had happened almost without my noticing; some leaves were lemon-yellow, others were orange, akin to a flaming red, and then there were those the wind had blown off, which lay on the tarmac, brown and shrivelled. In the gardens forgotten apples hung from the branches, and wild rose bushes blossomed with blood-red hips which we always used to prise open with our teeth. I remembered the smooth skin, the taste on my lips and the sight of the furry seeds huddled together like tiny sleeping children.

When I arrived the sun was still high in the sky.

In some way or other, Alfred was a part of my childhood. I remember him from the time Finsland Sparebank had offices in Brandsvoll Community Centre, right at the end facing the road. I went there with Pappa. It was down a long corridor and then to the right. I often had my piggy bank with me, which had to be cut open to disgorge the money. This opening of the piggy bank was always a matter of great sorrow. Alfred was the bank manager and a cashier at Finsland Sparebank, and he generally sat with a serious expression in an office on the other side of the counter, isolated as it were from the world around him. He never had anything to do with my paltry savings, his head was filled with great and weighty thoughts, or so it seemed. That is why I remember him. Likewise the postman. That was Rolf. I remember him from Kilen Post Office, which has gone now. He would stand there sorting mail without looking up from his work. I can also remember him arriving in a post van, getting out, distributing newspapers and letters to the mailboxes on the old milk ramp by the road as though he was only doing it this once, and never again.

Alfred was a member of the voluntary fire service in 1978. There must have been around twenty members in all, and they lived within a radius of a few kilometres from the alarm, which was attached to a post next to the fire station at Skinnsnes. All you had to do was place a compass point on the station and draw a circle. No one was allowed to live beyond hearing distance of the alarm. Apart from that there were no special requirements for joining the voluntary service. Actually, yes, there was: you had to have a car. The fire engine had space for only two men.

The fire station lay at the geographical centre of the region, just a few hundred metres from the large house where Alfred had made his home and started a family, to the west of the chapel and the old co-op building which had been converted into stables. I suppose it is a trifle misleading to call it a fire station; in reality it was a fairly ample concrete garage with a metal shutter, an adjacent door and an outside lamp. That was all. Only the fire chief lived closer. That was Ingemann, who was married to Alma. Ingemann was sixty-four years old in the summer of 1978. In addition to his job as fire chief he had his own workshop in an outbuilding across the drive. The post of fire chief in Finsland was, strictly speaking, not a job. There were never any fires. You were talking maybe a couple of call-outs a year, and then as a rule it would be to minor forest fires. Nonetheless, he had a suit that hung in the workshop and that he donned whenever the alarm went off, which was why they called it the
fire suit.
Ingemann and Alma had only one son. They had had him late in life, when Ingemann was over forty. His name was Dag; he was born at the height of the summer in 1957 and had been very much wanted. There was Dag, Ingemann and Alma. All three of them lived within the magic circle.

I sat talking to Else and Alfred for a long time. They were so calm and level-headed; I didn’t need to give any further explanations as to why I had come, why I wished to write about the fires. It appeared to be obvious to them. They had read my earlier books and seemed to have complete confidence in my ability to write about the fires as well, and to believe that I would do it in a proper, dignified manner. I took as good as no notes, so engrossed was I in what they told me. They spoke in hushed tones, as everyone did when conversation turned to the fires. They lowered their voices and told their story slowly, dwelling on precise details. It struck me that in a way they were afraid of being seen with me.

‘It’s quite some time ago now, you know,’ Else said, as if suddenly giving up. ‘It’s over thirty years ago, it is. That’s a human lifespan, isn’t it.’ Then she pointed at me.

‘Yes…and you,’ she said, ‘you’d just been born.’ She added, with a strange gleam in her eyes: ‘And look at you now.’

Then Alfred told the whole story. He had set aside time to remember before I came, and now he told me everything as he recalled it. He spoke quietly and in a businesslike fashion, just as an old bank man would. Now and then, however, he drew a deep breath.

And so.

When he had finished there was a second’s silence. Alfred sat staring at a point to the left of me, out of the window from which you could see the whole road down to the community centre.

Afterwards Alfred told the story of the man who blew himself up, and the mother who subsequently walked around collecting the fragments in her apron. I don’t know how we got onto this, strictly speaking it had nothing to do with the fires, but somehow it was appropriate. Once again Alfred adopted the same sober narrative style, and that made the story even more shocking. I didn’t need to take notes; the story is unforgettable.

As I was about to go we broached the subject of the letter. There was a letter. Else and I sat in the living room while Alfred went to look for it. While he was away she said absent-mindedly, almost to herself: ‘Such a good boy. The best boy in the world.’

I believe Alfred knew exactly where the letter was because he was back within an instant and I took it while Else and Alfred quietly awaited my reaction. It was a thin piece of A5 paper, written on both sides. The handwriting sloped gently; there was a rather childlike quality about it. I began to read with a mixture of reverence and immense curiosity. Once I had finished, I said:

‘He must have been…intelligent.’

‘He was,’ Alfred said. ‘He was a smart lad.’

That was all. Then I re-read the letter, as if there were something I had overlooked or misunderstood.

‘You can take it with you,’ Alfred said as I folded it for a second time. ‘I don’t need it. Just take it with you.’

At first I hesitated, but then I dropped it into my inside pocket. I was unsure whether I should thank him or Alfred should thank me, and the situation ended with neither of us saying anything. I stood up and cast a glance through the window. I saw the fields outside and the lights by the road. Before going into the hallway I looked at the picture on the wall above the TV. It was all black apart from some letters in gold:
By God’s Grace.