Before I Burn: A Novel (16 page)

There are a few minutes or hours missing from my memory before I found myself again, walking along the deserted street from St Olavs plass in the city centre. I walked, trying to support myself on tenement walls, as the world around me rocked and swayed. I was surrounded by a sudden silence; all I could hear was my own unsteady, shuffling steps.
Silence
, I remember thinking.
Silence. Silence. Silence.
I met scattered huddles of people, I saw them approaching like shadows and from far away, and then there they were, in front of me, I shouted something, brandished my arms and barred their way, I don’t remember what I was thinking or what I wanted to accomplish, but straight after I felt a stinging pain on my cheek, by my ear, and realised someone had punched me in the face. Again I was alone, the people had gone and the world was moving sideways. I tried to establish what had happened. Someone had punched me. I had no idea why. All I knew was that my cheek was throbbing. Eventually I reached Ullevålsveien and took a left. I didn’t have a clear thought in my head, yet there was something in me observing all of this. Something that was always lucid and rational. It was this lucidity I had had when I walked out of the exam, and it was the same lucidity steering me across the street and through the gates of Vår Frelser cemetery.
You failed the exam on purpose
, a sober voice said inside me.
You failed the exam and you’ve drunk yourself senseless. You’ve lied to your father, and you’ve just been knocked to the ground and now you’re going into a cemetery.
Inside it was as black as pitch. There had been a number of attacks here recently, but that didn’t deter me. I rather wished that someone
would
attack me, that someone would sneak up on me from behind, hit me over the head with a hard object, causing me to lose consciousness and keel over. I hadn’t felt much of the punch to my cheek and now I wanted a bit more, with some oomph, a real belter from behind to make glass shatter and stars spin. So that someone would find me the day after and by then it wouldn’t really matter if I was dead or alive. Such were my thoughts as I staggered along the gravel path leading to the Grove of Honour, where all the great authors and composers were buried. My thoughts were unclear, fuzzy, yet in fact strangely clear. I lurched around in the darkness among the gravestones, not knowing where I was going. Occasionally I registered a car passing in Ullevålsveien, but it was only as a distant puff of air from another world. Then I straightened up and had a pee. I didn’t know what was in front of me. That is to say, I knew it was some grave, but I had no idea whose. I was just having a pee. It felt wonderfully liberating. Afterwards I sat down on a headstone with both shoes planted in the flower bed. Part of me was aware of the recent additions there, the pansies arranged neatly in groups in soft, wet earth. Then a chilling sensation took root in me: this was my father’s grave. He was dead and had been buried without my knowledge; attempts had been made to contact me but I had been unreachable, and so they had buried him, and now I was sitting there convinced that it was my father lying beneath the soft earth. I hardly dared look to see what was inscribed on the stone. I just knew. It’s him, I told myself. It’s him. It’s him. In the end I bent forwards anyway, until my head was between my knees. I managed to read the name on the stone. It was a very simple name, so it couldn’t be him. Then I vomited. It gushed over my shoes and the flowers and splashed onto the soil. I stood up and stumbled a few metres, then vomited a second time and stooped over another gravestone. I immediately felt a bit better, but my mind was still at sea. I walked between two dark trees weighed down with foliage and with large branches that spread low over the ground. I knew that the writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson was buried beneath these trees. I walked under the branches and sat down on a big block of stone, which was his grave, with a stone flag spread across it. I was sitting on Bjørnson’s grave and felt that I was still drifting away. I leaned back. That was good. Immensely good. It was as though I had been waiting all my life for just this moment. I lay back, stretched out my arms and felt myself getting heavy, and in the end I must have fallen asleep, stretched out like an angel, for I remember nothing else.

XIV.

AS HE PASSED LAUVSLANDSMOEN SCHOOL he switched off the headlamps. At first he couldn’t see anything, then his vision improved, and soon he could see without a problem. He just had to get used to it. He switched the lights on again. By the playground he turned left onto the Dynestøl road. The fence by the football pitch was damaged in places. The school buildings lay shrouded in darkness. Whenever he drove past the school it felt as if he had hardly left it. Everything seemed to come back to him, even though it was nine years ago now. He remembered what it had been like. Being the best in all the subjects, being at the top, on his own. Sometimes he could still hear Reinert’s voice:
Could you read for us, Dag? Could you play the first bars for us, Dag? Could you write this sentence on the board, Dag, as your writing is so neat?
It had been Reinert who had given him the belief that he could be whatever he wanted to be. It had been Reinert who had seen him. Who had understood who he was, what he was good at, that he was quite unique. He wasn’t like the other children, and Reinert had realised that. The others would be farmers, electricians, carpenters and plumbers, and perhaps police officers.

But him, Dag? What would Dag be?

Now and then they would sit round the kitchen table at Skinnsnes discussing his future, and it was as though they were inside a magic circle. It didn’t happen so often any more, but he remembered the feeling that they were all filled with something great and rather solemn. And he knew that this greatness and solemnity lay in his hands. What he would achieve in his life, what he would become, everything lay in his hands.

Ingemann had wanted him to be a doctor. Or a lawyer.
You can be whatever you want, you’re so clever
, his father had said.
You can be whatever you want, except a fireman, because that’s what you are already
, he had said. And then they had all laughed. But he knew his father was right. At that moment he had felt anything was possible, he had unlimited gifts, the world lay at his feet, all he had to do was start walking.

He drove into the playground. Stopped the car, got out. It was dark everywhere, and quite, quite still, apart from the ticking of the hot car engine. He strolled past the building, peered in through the dark windows and glimpsed the rows of tables, the teacher’s desk, the board, a line of letters, some children’s drawings on the wall.

What would he actually be?

It would have to be something impressive, something that would make people open their eyes wide. He could hear what they would say:
Has Dag become a doctor? Has Dag become a lawyer? Well, we knew he had it in him.

There were no limits. He could move to Oslo and start studying medicine this autumn; he could finish the course in two, three years. No problem. He could take piano lessons on the side. Or he could start a law degree. Or, vice versa, he could concentrate on music and do a law course in the evenings. That was another option. Perhaps it might be best to focus his efforts on law. After all, it was so useful. He could find himself a job as a top lawyer. In the Ministry of Justice, perhaps. Or in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He could apply to do a course with the ministry. Learn French properly, or perhaps Spanish. Get a posting to Paris, or Madrid. He could be a diplomat. He visualised Alma and Ingemann going to the Norwegian Embassy in Paris to visit him. He drove the black embassy car and picked them up at Charles de Gaulle Airport; his mother would clap her hands, hug him and whisper:
Is this really you, my boy?
Then they would drive to Paris while he showed them where everything was, all the places they had heard of: the Tour Eiffel, the Champs Élysées, the Arc de Triomphe. The daydream always stopped there, at the Arc de Triomphe; he had never been to Paris, of course.

He could be a diplomat. Or why not a defence counsel? After all, he had seen the famous lawyer Alf Nordhus on TV, and had instantly been fascinated. The caustic wit, the beard and the smoking cigarette. He imagined himself wearing a black cap and conducting some court case. That role would have been right up his street. He had the ability to defend anyone. Even if it was a murderer. He could persuade everyone that he was right and the others wrong. Prove that the murderer had behaved in a rational way. Contend that the others should understand what lay behind his actions. If they did, there was no longer a crime. And the murderer was no longer a murderer. He would be acquitted, and Dag would bask in the glory and the amazement.

He could imagine it, hearing his own voice. All that was required was some understanding. The murderer wasn’t a murderer; the murderer was a human being. Was that so difficult to grasp?

He got back into the car and drove on towards Dynestøl. He took the long road past Lake Homevannet. A white veil of mist hung a few metres above the surface, as though it had detached itself from all the darkness and was now rising to the sky with infinite languor. He couldn’t see land on the other side, just a black wall of forest. Then he extinguished the lights. He passed the cabin belonging to Kristiansand Automobilklubb, or the KAK cabin as it was called, and immediately below was the bathing area with the underwater rock jutting thirty metres out from the shore. The cabin was inhabited, he could see – there were several cars parked higgledy-piggledy outside – but everyone was asleep. It was just past one o’clock. He had switched off the radio, and proceeded towards Dynestøl. The road was narrow and winding, and a line of grass grew between the ruts made by wheels. Birch branches brushed the side of the car, making him jump; they sounded like limp human hands. There was no light anywhere. No houses, no outside lamps, nothing. He decided to drive back, and started to look out for a suitable place to turn.

That was when he caught sight of what he supposed was a house. It was on the side of the road a bit further ahead in the darkness, atop a small mound. There was a barn as well, which he didn’t see until he was nearer. Slowly, he drove right up to it. Then he stopped and got out. The night was chilly, and he was wearing only a thin shirt. He buttoned it to the throat and rolled down the sleeves. That helped a little. In addition, he found the jacket he had thrown onto the rear seat, put it on, and then he was nice and warm. All around him there was silence, again just the hot engine clicking as it cooled, otherwise nothing. He drew closer. It was an old house, you could see that even in the darkness. And it was big. The foundation plinth was massive, with small windows looking into the cellar. Steps with a handrail led up from the long grass. Between the house and barn there was a tractor, while the barn itself was tall, narrow and very black. That was all. He walked down a slight slope to the back of the barn. Beneath the building was an open space with hundreds of poles and other old junk piled in the murk.

He hurried back to the car, and uncovered the shining white jerrycan on the rear seat. It was easy to carry when it was only half full. Returning to the slope behind the barn, he lowered the can to the grass for a moment. He spotted a door and groped towards it, carrying the jerrycan. It was unlocked. He slipped into a dark room with a wooden floor. It was impossible to see a thing even though he waited patiently for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then he struck a match. It flared up. The room was empty. A low ceiling. Some straw on the floor. Two of the walls were the foundation wall. There was a smell of mould, decay, animals. Then the match went out. The cap on the jerrycan was stuck, but after a bit of fiddling it finally came off. He couldn’t see where he was pouring, but he heard the petrol splashing on the planks. When he had finished he went outside, put the can down on the ground and wiped his hands thoroughly before returning to the barn. The night was at its darkest now; in a while the light in the sky would slowly awaken, and then the birds would start singing, even though it was still night. He heard his own whispering footsteps in the long grass. His legs were wet up to his calves, and as he stood at the door, taking out the box of matches, he could barely see his own hands. Unhurriedly, he counted in his head. Then he struck the match. The flame was blown out straightaway. The same happened to match number two. He must have blown them out himself, for there wasn’t a breath of wind. He cursed through clenched teeth. Struck three at once. Got one decent flame, which seemed to soar straight up from his hand. He stepped back, opened the door a fraction, then threw the matches inside, shut the door and retreated until he was some way into the field. He had never dreamed that it could be so quick. The little room exploded. Then all was quiet, until a distant noise grew somewhere inside the barn. After two or three minutes the smoke began to seep out between the cracked outer cladding, and a few minutes later the first yellow tongues of fire broke through the roof. Gradually, the light became stronger. He saw the car parked on the road, the dense forest around him, the nearest trees, which seemed to become more distinct with their extended branches in the unreal glare. His face was white and shiny. His age was somehow erased. His eyes shone. The pupils were black. An unseen wind issued forth from the old barn. He recognised it. The hair over his forehead lifted. He had first felt the wind when he was sitting alone in the tree. That was while the dog in the kitchen was still alive, and the heat was billowing towards him. The wind was both ice cold and burning hot. The wailing and the singing tone would come much later. When everything was on the point of collapse. By then he would have made it home.

He tore himself away, ran to the car, replaced the petrol can and drove off without a second glance in the mirror. He didn’t switch on the headlamps until he reached the Løbakke hills. Once there, he stopped, got out of the car and looked back. The sky above Lake Homevannet was still dark. Not a sound. Not a puff of wind. There was an old storehouse just a few metres away, at the edge of a field. It was almost completely black, in the darkness, and couldn’t have been painted since the war. He opened the rear door and took the can. There was a fair bit left. Not a lot was needed; what was important was where the fire started. He broke down a door at the back and entered an ink-black room. It stank of old hay. And lime, and marsh and damp soil. That was how the grave must smell, he thought, and had to smile. He took a few soundless steps in, but then came to a sudden halt. It felt as if there was someone inside. Someone was watching him. Intense staring from the darkness, and in a flash he thought of the gun he had left in the car.