Norwegian by Night (39 page)

‘You want me to block the road?'

‘I want you to drive up the dirt path as far as the car will go.'

‘It's not four-wheel-drive.'

‘No. Why would it be?'

‘I don't think we should get there first,' says Petter.

‘I think someone needs to be there now,' Sigrid says. ‘Drive the car up that path until there's no more path or no more car,' Sigrid says. ‘That's an order.'

Petter turns hard onto the path that Lars uses for the motorcycle. He puts the car in low gear and thunders up the path. The car shakes and bounces. He drives it like a rally car. They are making ground, and they are both thinking the same thought. It is Sigrid, though, who says it first.

‘If the fucking airbags go off in this Volvo, I am invading Sweden, so help me God!'

‘There. Up there. It opens into the field we saw on the map.'

‘I don't see any action. Do you see any action? Where are those men?'

‘There's radio silence. I can't get between those trees.'

‘That's it, then. We're on foot.'

It is dark inside the house. Sheldon holds the broken rifle tucked under his left arm in the way that a British earl cradles a shotgun after a good duck hunt. His right hand holds his knife. In the foyer there are boots, scarves, hats, and jackets. There are fishing poles and a box of candles. More than that, he cannot tell. It doesn't matter, anyway. It is no longer his physical surroundings that count. He is no longer Donny, the boy soldier from the green hills of western Massachusetts who would grow up to be a New Yorker, a husband, and a failed father. He is no longer the man he was at war. The man who struggled to find a place. Now, here, dressed like a fool among the mad, he becomes the man he needs to be.

Facing the darkness, a rifle under his arm, he announces loudly and clearly so that no one in the house can possibly have any doubt about what is being said: ‘I am General Henrik Horowitz Ibsen. And you are surrounded!'

Chapter 23

In the living room, near the kitchen that connects to the foyer, Gjon has been handed the Black's pistol and is checking it when the General announces himself. Burim is sweating and clenching his knife tightly. Enver looks into the kitchen with incredulity.

He speaks to
Zezake
in Albanian.

‘You said we were not alone.'

‘I was right.'

Enver grunts. The Black is still holding his own rifle. Enver has his knife in his belt.

‘Shall I go and take care of him?' the Black asks.

‘Stay with the girl. We may need her as leverage.'

‘What do you want us to do?'

‘Me, I'm going to Sweden with my son. You,' he says, ‘and you, and you are going to stand your ground and make sure that happens.'

Burim's sweat has now dripped into his eyes, and when Enver says this he wants to cry like a child into Adrijana's nape and take it all back, take back every argument and stupid objection he has ever made. Tell her she was right about everything. Tell her that it has all gone horribly wrong and that he never understood that none of this was ever a game. It had just seemed … surreal. Yes, like a dream or hallucination. He was dabbling in a universe he didn't understand, and he never intended any of this to happen. For any of it to go this far.

‘I'll go!' says Burim, and before any of the three men can even comment, he springs for the kitchen.

He is around the kitchen table in five long strides, and when he sees Sheldon he drops to his knees in front of him and looks up, pleading in English, ‘Let me go. Please. Let me go.'

‘Give me your gun.'

‘I don't have one.'

‘Is the girl OK?'

‘Yes. Please let me go.'

‘Where is she?'

‘Shh. She's in the living room. Please. Let me go. Please.'

‘OK.'

And Sheldon stands aside.

Burim gets to his feet and takes one look behind him. He has been in the house for a long time. His eyes are adjusted to the light. He sees more than shadows. He sees the evil itself that is around the corner. He will now go home. And he will apologise for all he has done.

He pushes open the door, bounds over the two steps, and then runs. He runs with every ounce of energy in his young body. He runs with fear and purpose. He sprints for the dirt road at the end of the mews where they ran the Norwegian and American off the motorcycle last night as they tried to escape. He will run to the centre of town and announce himself to the police. He will beg forgiveness and take his punishment, and try to become the man that Adrijana has always wanted him to be.

Sigrid and Petter are out of the Volvo and making for the house on foot when they see a single young man clenching a large knife running towards them with the conviction of the devil. He is coming straight at them. He is closing fast. Sigrid raises her Glock and takes aim.

She calls out in Norwegian, ‘Halt or I'll shoot.'

But Burim does not speak Norwegian.

‘Halt or I'll shoot,' she warns a second time.

But Burim, too afraid to stop, does not stop. He does not even know he is holding a knife, so it never occurs to him to drop it. He cannot imagine that he is even here.

Sigrid fires, and Burim falls.

For no particular reason, Sheldon checks his watch when he hears the shot from outside. It is twenty past two in the afternoon. This means absolutely nothing to him. What possible difference could it make?

He had this thought one time before when Saul was twelve. It was the middle of summer, and they were in New York. Something exciting — not to Sheldon, but to Saul and his friends — was about to happen at Union Square, and he had to rush out the door
right now.

But something caught Sheldon's eye. It was also about twenty past two in the afternoon, and Mabel was starting to get supper organised as Sheldon was polishing all the black shoes in the house.

The something that caught his eye was a wristwatch on Saul's wrist, which was not the wrist it was supposed to be on. Thinking back on it now, as Sheldon turns the corner into the living room of the summer house to see his granddaughter, he can't remember what kind of watch it was. Which is strange, really, because he had made such a fuss over it.

‘Hey. Where are you going?' he had asked Saul.

Saul practically skidded to a halt and launched into such a rapid slew of words Sheldon knew that whatever he was saying had to be true, and he immediately regretted asking because, really, what difference did it make?

Interrupting him, he held up his hand and said, ‘Yeah, yeah. OK. What are you wearing on your wrist?'

Saul looked down as though it were a trick question of some kind.

‘A watch.'

‘My watch.'

‘Well, yeah. So what? I wear it all the time.'

‘But you still have to ask.'

‘I wear it all the time! I always ask and you always say “Yes.” Can I go now?'

‘Not so fast. Asking is important. Every night after dinner, I ask your mother if I have to do the dishes. She always says “Yes”, but I still ask.'

‘I don't think that's the same thing.'

‘Why not?'

‘I don't know. It just isn't. Can I go now?'

Saul. My son. Outwitted me at age twelve. But he failed to do it when it mattered most
.

Sheldon steps into the living room.

They are waiting for him. Two men — the one he failed to kill, and the one in the white Mercedes. Sheldon looks at their shoes.

‘My men have you surrounded. Give up. Let the girl and the child go. Maybe you'll live.'

Enver studies his face intensely. Sheldon can feel him trying to penetrate his own stare. He is trying to make a connection beneath the layers of fabric and brush and bravado. And as close as Sheldon is to success in his charade, the one quality he cannot mask is his age.

He is, underneath it all, an old man.

‘I recognise you,' says Enver.

‘And I've recognised you since before you were even born.'

It is only then that Rhea believes her ears, and only her ears. Though he is standing directly in front of her, she had not recognised him by sight. And she wouldn't have, had he stood there in a bathrobe and slippers with his mug, because it is impossible for him to be here. To exist here, in this world, at this moment.

‘Papa?'

‘Rhea,' he says.

Lars is not here, and Sheldon fears he must be dead.

The boy — physically unharmed — stands in the corner. He is, as ever, too traumatised to speak.

‘Papa!' she yells.

Enver is going to leave with the boy now. And before he does, he is going to kill the old man.

Sheldon stumbles backwards a step as Enver advances. Sheldon drops the rifle and raises the knife for one last attack. He wants to plant the blade in Enver's throat, but he lacks the strength. The arbitrary laws of time have taken away his last defences.

With valour, he lunges for Enver's chest. But he misses.

Enver's strike is hard and experienced. It cuts Sheldon down the left carotid artery in his throat and across the chest.

Sheldon's right hand grasps his throat, and he staggers backwards into the kitchen and against the table.

The task done, Enver grabs the boy — who screams now — and takes him under his arm and out through the back door. The boy's screams are deafening, and Enver shouts at him in Albanian to shut up. To quit the yelling. To knock it off or he'll smack him. But the boy will not stop.

He does not stop when Enver drags him to the quad runner at the back of the house that is waiting to take them to Sweden.

He does not stop screaming when he catches a glimpse of a man in a black uniform holding a small black rifle.

And he does not stop screaming when he sees Lars Bjørnsson emerge like a ghost from behind a mighty beech with a compound bow, and release a carbon-composite arrow directly into the heart of the monster.

Sheldon cannot be certain of what he sees or hears next any more.

Life — whatever this life may be — is draining from him. It may be that Rhea leapt to her feet and shoved the man that Sheldon failed to shoot into a window and somehow, as she did this, his chest exploded as though silent bullets had penetrated his thorax from outside the window; those very same bullets then crossing the room to enter and remain in the chest of the last man.

It may be that she ran to him and held him up, pulling him to the front door, calling him, ‘Papa, Papa.'

It may be that together they fell, out the front door, their bodies tumbling down to the cool ground, his blood flowing to the earth.

It was certain, though, that the light around him was radiant and wonderful.

A woman appears. She is in uniform and has a kind face. A nurse, he presumes. He sees men in dark outfits scurrying around him. Perhaps they are hospital orderlies. This nurse is smiling at him. It is the warm and loving smile of someone with good news.

Mabel must have given birth. It must all be over now.

Sheldon reaches up his hand and touches Sigrid gently on the cheek.

‘My son. Is he OK? Is he well?'

‘Your boy is fine, Mr Horowitz. He is just fine.'

Acknowledgements

This book was written in 2008 in Geneva, Oslo, and Fornalutx. The ending came to me in the moments before my son, Julian, was born that April.

I am not sure how much of this book was written by me and how much was written by Sheldon himself. So I extend, here, my thanks to him for all his assistance. Which isn't to say he was easy to work with …

I lifted the definitions of ‘snarf' and ‘twerp' from Kurt Vonnegut's 1977 interview with
The
Paris Review
. I suspect he'd be delighted.

The lighthouse at Palmi-do at Inchon, Korea, was built in 1903. In 2006 it was made obsolete and replaced by a modern one. But the diminutive eight-metre tower still stands in the shadow of its big brother.

Unusually, this book was first published in Norway in 2011, in Norwegian, despite it having been written in English. The story has undergone additional revisions since then. I consider the English-language publication definitive.

In 2012, sixty-seven years after the end of World War II, the Norwegian government formally apologised to the Jewish population for its actions during the occupation.

My special thanks to Henry Rosenbloom and Lauren Wein for their editorial assistance.

Deepest thanks of all to my wife, Camilla, who makes everything possible and gives it meaning. And to my daughter, Clara, you are already an inspiration.