Before I Burn: A Novel (5 page)

Alfred accompanied me to the front door, and out into the cold night air. It was as though he didn’t want me to go, or he felt there was something he had forgotten to say. A detail from the story, or a crucial recollection, something he had omitted but which might appear from nowhere and cast everything in a new light. The forest around us was by now completely black; it seemed to have crept closer in the few hours we had been together. It was like a dark, impenetrable wall, but the sky was still clear and light with long, sleigh-shaped clouds. We went down the steps and Alfred walked with me to the car. All that could be heard was the sound of our footsteps. We exhaled transparent, frozen breath from our mouths as we spoke. Then Alfred said: ‘You’re so like your father, you are. We liked him a lot, all of us. He was a fine man. It’s such a shame he’s no longer with us.’

I.

HE WAS VERY MUCH WANTED, and when he did finally arrive, it was as if a miracle had taken place. A perfectly formed boy. And as an only child, he didn’t have to share their love with anyone. He was on his own a lot and liked to sit at the kitchen table drawing while Alma cooked. He learned to read early. Even before he started school he had sounded his way through several of the popular books displayed on the first floor of the community centre. He used to cycle there, and return home with a full carrier bag of books hanging from the handlebars. Later he became the best in his class at reading, and writing. He wrote long stories, all with a violent, and often bloody, end. These dramatic, harrowing tales seemed out of character. He was so quiet, and rather shy. Good-natured to a fault. Not to mention how polite he was. No one bowed as deeply or thanked as emphatically as he did. No one was as helpful or as considerate as he was. If anyone asked, they never received no for an answer. He often helped the elderly, checking if there was any snow-shovelling, wood-carrying or house-painting to be done. Ingemann and Alma lit up when the conversation turned to Dag. Sometimes people asked how they had got such a wonderfully well-behaved boy. They had no answer, but their faces were radiant. It was as if all the love they had given him ever since he was an infant was blossoming in the boy, and he passed it on to those he met. That had to be the explanation, their unrestrained love. Indeed, he was loved by everyone. And he knew that himself; he cast down his gaze when anyone spoke to him.

Twice he had seen a house burn to the ground. That was before he was ten years old. Both times he had been utterly silent, and afterwards he hadn’t mentioned the fires.

Of course, the alarm didn’t go off very often, but when it did he was allowed to go with Ingemann in the fire engine.

It would start with the telephone ringing in the hall. Ingemann picked up.
Yes?
he said. Alma came through the kitchen door, drying her hands on her apron. It was quiet for a few seconds. Then came Ingemann’s voice:
Fire, fire.
It was like a magic formula. Everything else was put on hold. Now all that mattered was the fire. Ingemann, who was usually a calm, sober-minded man, suddenly became agitated. But even in the midst of the ensuing chaos he always remembered Dag. Dag followed him out of the door to the post outside the workshop. There, his father lifted him up so that he could reach the large, black handle that activated the fire alarm. It was as much as he could do to turn it. But he managed. Then the alarm went off like a cascading torrent from the heavens. He followed his father to the workshop and watched Ingemann put on the fire suit, then followed him round the corner to the fire station while holding his hands over his ears. That was how it was. He had to cover his ears until they reached the fire station. Then he clambered into the fire engine, slammed the door and they drove off. They barrelled along, his father switched on the sirens, and Dag’s blood seemed to solidify in his veins, at first it solidified, then it throbbed ferociously, then he glanced over at his father and he could feel how proud Ingemann was of him. He had to cling on tight, and as they approached the fire he was told to keep a good distance from the flames, to stay in the background, not to touch anything, not to get in the way, not to be a nuisance. Just watch. And he obeyed. He stood watching a house being transformed. At first smoke poured out of the windows and up between the roof tiles. The whole house steamed as though it were being subjected to enormous pressure. Then the flames broke through the roof and a coal-black column soared to the sky. The smoke was sucked up into the air. Then it eased, floated across the sky like ink and began to drift with the wind. Next came the lament, or the tone, or the song, or whatever one might call it. A loud, high-pitched, singing tone that did not exist anywhere else but in the middle of a burning house. He asked his father what it was, but Ingemann just gave him a strange, uncomprehending look. Nevertheless, he was sure about the tone. He had heard it. The wailing. The song. The first time he heard it he was seven years old. That was the time with the dog. He had climbed up a tree some distance from the fire engine and the house and the flames. Up in the branches, he sat staring, as quiet as a mouse. He was the only person who had heard the desperate barking and whimpering inside the smoke-filled kitchen, but he didn’t climb down and tell someone. He just sat tight, exactly as his father had stressed he should. He stared down at the men rolling out the hoses and dashing to and fro across the yard. He felt the immense heat that billowed towards the tree in great, chilling waves. He saw the jets of water rise, gather momentum and become swallowed up by the smoke. There was the sound of tinkling glass, there were cracks and creaks, as if the whole house were a ship on its way to open sea. Then flames burst through one first-floor window and licked up the wall. It was as if something had finally broken loose. By then the kitchen had gone quiet.

Afterwards he climbed down and ambled towards his father. He stood beside him until Ingemann lifted him into his arms, and he was sitting on his father’s arm as the house collapsed.

At the time he didn’t tell anyone about the dog, but it came out during the trial. He said that in prison he had started dreaming about the dog. He would wake suddenly in the night, not knowing where he was, and lie beneath the duvet without moving, frozen with terror, feeling the weight of the dog on his feet.

He was so very much wanted. And when he did finally arrive he was loved above all else. He grew up and was liked by everyone. But he cast down his eyes when he spoke to people.

Ingemann taught him how to use a gun. First of all, a small-bore gun, then a rifle. The two of them used to rig up a target at the end of a field – a white disc with a much smaller black circle in the centre – and they lay down beside each other on an empty sack, aimed and fired. When the shots had fallen silent, they got up and strolled down the field to inspect the targets. It turned out that he had talent. He concentrated his shots closer and closer together inside the black circle. His father took him to shooting meets in Finsland and surrounding areas. They put the gun on the rear seat and drove off while Alma stayed in the kitchen and had food ready for when they returned. He won cups, usually first prize. On the rare occasion he was beaten there was always an excuse: either the wind had suddenly changed direction or the sights had been set incorrectly or the mat was slippery or he was tired or he had eaten too much or too little before they set off. There was always an explanation, apart from when he won, no explanation was necessary then of course, that was the norm. He was the best. He carried the cups home and placed them on the living room table, where they were allowed to stay for a day or two so that Alma and Ingemann could admire them, and then they were moved to the shelf above the piano. Every fortnight or so Alma removed them, placed them on the table, dusted the shelf and put them all back. The cups were like a victory for all three of them.

That was the way it felt: a victory for all three of them.

Every day he cycled to the crossroads by the disused shop, and then headed along the road to Lauvslandsmoen School. He was happy there. School was like a game. What was his best subject? Norwegian? History? Maths? He was equally good at all of them. He was the best student in the class. It was almost the same as with shooting, no one could compete with him; he was right at the top, and he was on his own. And that was what he wanted to be. He was beginning to target that. It became a necessity. He was not going to be overtaken by anyone, so he started competing with himself. Still, there were occasions when he made mistakes. A test didn’t go as well as he had anticipated. Tiny slips crept in, or bigger errors, or he had quite simply made a huge howler. He had taken the corners a little too fast. Sometimes he got a B, even a weak B. And then he went silent and broody and glared daggers at the teacher, it was Reinert Sløgedal, who had been a teacher in the region since the war. Dag sat there for a long time just glaring, and if anyone asked how the test had gone, they would see something in his eyes they didn’t understand, something alien, something stubborn and intransigent and ice cold. They left him alone until the alienness was gone, and they never asked again about the test result because they only wanted Dag to be himself once more.

One winter he went to the priest. That was in 1971. He knelt in front of the altarpiece with the others, and prayers were said for each and every one of them.

He started
gymnas
, upper secondary, in Kristiansand. That was in 1973, at Cathedral School. He had to get up early to catch the bus, which stopped outside the chapel in Brandsvoll. He was happy in the town, but it was always good to get back home. When winter came he left for school in darkness and didn’t arrive home before nightfall. Alma had his meal ready. She and Ingemann always waited for him, they had an extra portion for him warm in the oven and saw the lights of the bus as it approached over the plain, and when he finally entered he had red cheeks and snowflakes in his blond hair and his eyes were full of all the things he had seen and experienced that day. He hung his jacket on the hook in the hall, went to wash his hands while Alma drained the water off the potatoes, and then they could all sit down to eat.

He felt how good it was to come home.

He went from being the class’s undisputed number one to merging more into the background. That is, he still got good grades, sometimes excellent, but he was no longer the best. He became more anonymous. From the outside he seemed to be coping with this well. However, his new classmates learned to leave him in peace when they were given back their tests or other work. They, too, saw the ice-cold eyes and the strangely stiff face. And they also only wanted him to be himself. Everyone just wanted him to be himself.

Everything was fine so long as he was left alone.

He was coming to the end of school. It was the spring of 1976. The birch trees broke into leaf. There was an explosion of green. The school-leavers’ magazine said of Dag:
Apart from school and shooting, his main interest is the local fire service. A burned child dreads the fire, as they say, but this doesn’t apply to Dag. Over the years he has prevented a lot of valuable property from falling prey to flames, but that’s mostly because he loves to drive a fire engine.

That was indeed true. He did love driving the fire engine, but emergencies were few and far between.

At the end of May he took the written exam in Norwegian. One of the essay titles ran as follows:
What does it mean to be an adult, according to the prevailing rules in our society? Give an assessment of these rules from your perception of what characterises an adult. Heading: Adulthood.

That was the one he chose. He described the main features of adulthood, and was awarded a grade B. He had taken the exam and passed it with flying colours. His average was B. Everything had gone well. Not top grades, but nonetheless he was eligible to enter university. No one in the family had achieved that before him. Alma was proud and Ingemann whistled to himself in his workshop. Now the way was open. Dag had become an adult, he was still good-natured, he had his life and his future ahead of him and he had taught himself that he didn’t have to be top dog.

Later that summer he was called up to do military service. He had chosen the infantry, and was posted to Porsanger Garrison, in Finnmark. It was a journey of more than two thousand kilometres. And that was for someone who had never been further afield than Hirtshals, in Northern Jutland.

As he was leaving, Alma bounded down the stairs and across the yard. There was something she had forgotten to give him, a little envelope, which he wasn’t allowed to open until he was on the train to Fornebu Airport. She hugged him, and all of a sudden it felt strange and unnatural. He pressed her lean body against his as he scanned the plain towards Breivoll feeling that he didn’t want to travel at all. Alma went into the house wringing her hands in the pocket of her apron while Ingemann accompanied him to the crossroads by the shop and helped him to stow the suitcase in the bus luggage compartment. There were people on board they knew, so it was just a brief, everyday farewell from his father. When the bus set off, Ingemann stood at the crossroads alone, not really knowing where to go.

He was on his way, the long journey had begun. He broke his promise and opened the envelope when the bus was passing Kaddeberg’s shop. There was five hundred kroner in the envelope and she had written on the enclosed slip of paper:
Fancy that, our lad is going out into the big, wide world. Don’t forget Mamma and Pappa.

II.

I WRITE FOR A FEW HOURS EVERY DAY. Autumn is drawing in from the south-west. The heavens open, and the rain glistens over Lake Livannet. After a night of howling gales all the leaves have been blown off the trees. So we are back to long, quiet days. It is getting colder. One morning there is hoar frost on the grass. The lake is like liquid glass and reveals a perfect reflection of the sky. On such days, writing comes to a halt. I get up, walk to the window, place my hands on it and lean my face against it. Not a bird in sight.