Before I Burn: A Novel (20 page)

It was on his way back down that the accident happened. Maintaining a high speed on the descent, he failed to negotiate a bend and careened off the road into a tree. That was when he received a bang to the skull. This came up during the trial. In his opinion it could have been a contributory factor in the events of the next two days. He explained that something happened in his head, and it was beyond his control. A doctor’s certificate confirmed that he had received some cuts and scratches to his face, presumably from a car accident, but no signs of any organic brain damage were found. Well, anyway.

The bang to his head wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t call people, and half an hour later his car was hauled onto the road by a neighbour’s tractor. It turned out there was only minor damage. The front was a little squashed. The glass of one headlamp was broken, the other pointed straight up into the air. Otherwise the car was intact and in drivable condition. In fact, he had been lucky. The neighbour appeared concerned, laid a hand on his shoulder and looked him intently in the eye, but Dag assured him several times that he was fine. A bang on the head, a few scratches to his forehead, that was all. That was before he looked in the mirror and saw all the blood. He got into his car and asked the neighbour to keep his eyes peeled and report anything suspicious. Then he drove off with one headlamp pointing up towards the clear sky.

The afternoon passed, the evening came. The sun sank.

At Skinnsnes, Dag was sitting on a chair in the middle of the kitchen while Alma tended to the cuts on his face. She washed them first with lukewarm water, then cleaned them with cotton and Pyrisept, which made him jump.

‘Mamma, that hurts!’

‘It’s supposed to hurt,’ she said with a smile. ‘That tells you it’s working.’

Then she wiped away the last remnants of blood from his cheek and down his neck.

‘Now you’re done,’ she said.

He got up, gingerly touched his face and smiled the smile that made her heart melt.

From midnight onwards all vehicles driving through the region on route 461 were stopped by the police. A patrol car was stationed in Fjeldsgårdsletta. An officer stood waiting by the roadside, every time a car approached he stepped out, the headlamps picked him out and made the reflectors on his jacket flash. The car slowed down. Stopped. A torch was shone. A brief conversation. Registration number noted. Allowed to continue. Nothing suspicious observed. People were awake all night. It was Saturday evening and the World Cup match between Argentina and Hungary was being shown on TV, and there was always that to watch. People didn’t dare turn off lights. Some sat outside on doorsteps listening to the darkness, until it was so chilly they had to go in and put on more clothes. Or, eventually, they succumbed and went to bed. One o’clock and nothing had happened. No fire alarm. No sirens. The sky was dark and still. The mist gathered and hung over the fields like weightless, discarded items of clothing. The moon came out, rose slowly over the forest and made the mist glow as though filled with a tranquil inner luminosity.

Day broke. At four o’clock it was light. Birds were singing. The sun climbed clear of the forests to the east. It was the morning of 4 June 1978.

VI.

FROM GRANDMA’S DIARY:

4 JUNE

Gaute’s christening. Weather, nice and warm. Got up early. After church walked round Dynestøl. Saw where the house had stood. A strange atmosphere in the region. Met Knut on the way. He was convinced a pyromaniac was on the loose. A pyromaniac? Here?

The service started at eleven. Slowly the church began to fill. People entered the chilly vestibule, found themselves a seat in the pews, coughed a bit, flicked through the hymn book, looked up. The church was soon alive with a low buzz of whispers. The fires were the subject of the day, the four last ones. The one in Skogen, the two storehouses in Lauvslandsmoen and Olga’s house, the tractor and the four explosions that were heard over almost the whole of Finsland. And then there was the sea of flames that many had seen. A number of people had been woken up and had gone outside, and then they had seen it.

The organ started up, with Teresa at the keyboard.

My entire family was there: grandparents from both sides. My godparents, Mamma and Pappa. Everyone sat on the left close to the choir leader’s seat, where the wind would sweep through the two-hundred-year-old timbers. It wasn’t cold outside, yet the church was still cool as it always is, even if the sun is baking outside. I lay in Mamma’s lap while everyone sang. The hymn was
‘Måne og sol, skyer og vind’.
Moon and Sun, Clouds and Wind. She didn’t dare sing herself for fear I would wake. Mamma was thinking about the fires; recently she had slept badly, lying in the narrow bed that her father had made, wondering what sort of crazy world she had brought her child into. That was what she was thinking now as well, while everyone around her was singing. Then the Word of the Lord was read aloud and everyone rose. At this point I had woken up and was fidgety, and Mamma put the knuckle of her little finger in my mouth. Then I quietened down. I sucked her finger for the whole of the sermon.

It was a discussion of verses 26 to 31 from the First Letter to the Corinthians. Then there was more singing, and then it was time for the christening.

Pappa carried me to the font, the one made with hammered brass of unknown origin, but presumably it must have been in the old church, the one that slowly began to sink in the soft clay at the end of the eighteenth century, before it was demolished and the foundation wall moved a smidgen to the south. Mamma untied the knot under my chin and removed my bonnet with care, then Pappa lowered me and held me hovering over the water, in the exact same way that I held
my
son in the exact same place almost thirty years later. The priest judiciously splashed water over my head, made the sign of the cross and prayed for me and my life, with his hand resting lightly on my forehead.

I was serenity itself.

Once the christening was over, the whole congregation went to inspect Olga Dynestøl’s fire-ravaged house. Perhaps it was an automatic reaction. I was with them. Lying in the travel bag on the back seat of the car, asleep.

From that day onwards, people began to make pilgrimages to the sites of the blazes. News spread by word of mouth, and the ruins became a kind of attraction. People drove from far and wide to see them. On this Sunday, people drove straight from the church and the christening. It appeared to be part of the experience: first the church service, then the charred remains. It was a strange sight, everyone dressed in their Sunday best assembled around the black chimney and the gutted tractor. They stood there for a short while, talking in hushed tones, gently shaking their heads, then, one by one, they turned and walked back to their cars. They had seen it with their own eyes and could confirm that it hadn’t been a dream.

Afterwards the whole christening party returned home to Kleveland. The sun stood high above the house. People ate and drank, and half-way through the meal Pappa tapped a fork against his glass and stood up. He held a short speech. I have asked everyone who was there and is still alive what he said, but no one remembers with any degree of accuracy. Only that it was a wonderful speech.

It was a short but wonderful speech. The only one.

Then they all went home, as the shadows lengthened and the sun passed slowly over the ridges in the west. Evening came; the lilacs were heavy with blossom, the dusk was heavy with their fragrance. Slightly before half past ten the sun sank with a glow behind the pine trees in Skrefjellet, and the trees became dark and distinct as if they were branded into the very sky.

My parents sat in front of the TV all evening. Occasionally Pappa got up and went out onto the steps, listened for a while, then returned without saying a word. They were watching
Sportsrevyen
even though neither of them was particularly interested in sport. If either of them had been it would have been Pappa, but for him ski jumping was what counted and this evening everything was about World Cup football in Argentina. Instead they chatted in low voices about the christening. About the priest’s sermon. About all the guests, about visiting the burned-out remains of Dynestøl, and about me, how quiet I had been, and how well everything had gone.

They sat watching the flickering screen with the sound down low. Pappa got up again, went over to the window and stood staring for a long time.

‘Can you see anything?’ Mamma asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’

Then he went out to the front steps and walked around the house. Darkness had long since fallen and the dew had settled on the grass. When he came back in he slapped his arms around his body a few times to warm up.

A televised concert by the Alberni string quartet had started at ten o’clock. By midnight transmission was finished, and Mamma switched on the radio and listened to the news. No new fires.

I had already been asleep for several hours when Mamma went to bed. She was hoping it would be an uneventful night, since the previous night had been quiet, and since Omland had prayed for them all a few hours before. I slept soundly and soundlessly in the deep cradle. Pappa sat up for a few more hours. He kept going to the steps to listen. Just after twelve he joined us in the bedroom.

‘There’ll be no fires tonight,’ he whispered to Mamma. ‘It’s over now. I can feel it in my bones. It’s over.’

Then he turned out the light, and fell asleep almost at once, while Mamma lay awake listening to the baby’s regular breathing, which seemed to issue from the darkness.

At half past twelve they were both woken by a voice.

Someone was whispering outside the window. It was John. Pappa dressed and was out of the door in seconds. The two of them spoke for some minutes in the yard, then Pappa came back and said he had to go. It had happened again. Two houses had been torched in Vatneli, but it wasn’t yet known if they were occupied or whether there were other fires. The pyromaniac was on the rampage again. Or pyromaniacs. The situation was now so fraught that all the men in Finsland had to lend a hand. People were needed to keep watch and patrol the roads.

Before he left, Mamma got up and switched on all the lights in the house. She checked that all the doors were locked, then ensconced herself in the kitchen, with a clear view into the bedroom, and watched the car’s red tail lamps as Pappa set off.

He drove round all the sharp bends in Vollan, downhill onto the flat and past Aasta’s house. In Lauvslandsmoen the windows in the old school building by the road were lit. Passing Lake Bordvannet, he saw the lights from the houses in the water as long, shimmering pillars. Lights were on in Solås, lights were on in Knut Frigstad’s place, and in Brandsvoll the lights were on in the large assembly room in the chapel. He saw the six glass domes shining beneath the ceiling. He saw the lectern, the one that gave the impression of being heavy and solid but that could be moved with ease, and he glimpsed the picture of the man with the hoe. There was quite a gathering of people in the car park. They stood in darkened huddles by their cars, and he couldn’t identify any of them. The community centre was also lit up, several police cars were parked outside, and inside the old boardroom he saw long shadows. He gripped the steering wheel of the blue Datsun tighter and continued down through the bends in Fossan, onto Fjeldsgårdsletta, where the mist hung in great clumps a few metres above the ground. There, he was stopped by the police. He rolled down the window and an officer shone a torch into his face, then swept the beam over the rear seat; he had to state his name, where he had come from and where he was going, whereupon his name and registration number were noted and he was allowed to pass.

Rounding the bend before Lake Livannet, he immediately saw the gleam of the two fires. Even though the mist was denser here he could clearly make out the billowing flames across the sky. This was the scene he described to me so many years later, the unreality of it, yet the strange reality. As he passed Kaddeberg’s and climbed he drew clear of the mist, and that was when he saw the black smoke rolling upwards and drifting across the sky like ink. Finally he arrived. He strangled the engine, got out of the car, left the door open and slowly approached the blaze. Quite a number of people had collected, but everything was strangely quiet; there was only the loud crackling of the flames and the roar of the pumps. Every so often there would be tiny sighs as something gave way and collapsed into the centre of the fire. He watched as Olav and Johanna’s house was gradually swallowed up by the flames, and perhaps he thought of cheerful, blond-haired Kåre, with whom he had been confirmed in the autumn more than twenty years ago. He also saw the glow from the Knutsens’ house, which was alight a couple of hundred metres along the Maessel road. Two houses burning at the same time, only a couple of hundred metres apart. It was scarcely credible. But it was true. The police were there, and several journalists. A photographer advanced into the garden, knelt down in the high grass and snapped a shot. This was the one that on Tuesday featured on the front page of
Sørlandet
, in which the house is surrounded by a halo. Minutes later another patrol car arrived. A bit bigger than the others, it stopped beside the outhouse that had been rescued from the flames. The back door opened and Pappa saw the black shadow that stormed out. It was an Alsatian. At first the dog ran around the legs of all those present. Smelt shoes, sniffed trouser legs, then trotted on to the next person. The dog stopped at Pappa, raised its head and sniffed his hands. It stared up at him. The fire shone in the animal’s small eyes. It was as if they saw everything and knew everything, yet were still enclosed in their own knowing darkness. Then it went from person to person. Scurrying here and there, between shoes and boots and trousers, until the police officer whistled, and then it took off down the Maessel road.

After a while the order was given for everyone who could to go away and look for more fires. For all they knew, at this very moment other houses in Finsland could be alight, fires that had gone unreported, and which had to be located promptly at all costs and stopped if at all possible. No one had any kind of overview. No one knew anything. Everyone had to be on the lookout, in their own allotted area, and it had to happen right now. At roughly the same time as Pappa got into his car, a motorbike started up in the semi-gloom. Two young lads clambered on, and then they roared away. Pappa drove slowly down the hill to Kilen while scanning the darkness above Lake Livannet. He passed Konrad’s green house, where he would be in the cellar extracting honey from his beehives, then passed the post office and Kaddeberg’s, where all the windows were lit; even above the shelves there was a warm, yellow light. Outside the neighbouring house he could discern two or three static seated figures keeping watch. Ditto outside the Shell petrol station, and the priest’s house and the old sand foundry, and by the slaughterhouse, where there was no longer any slaughtering. Halland’s house was illuminated from cellar to loft, and outside the old telephone exchange he could make out two dark figures on the doorsteps. There were people everywhere, yet everything seemed so still and abandoned. Mist hung above Lake Livannet, lent a strange orange reflection by the two blazes in Vatneli, and the sea of fire and this light were the last things my father saw before there was a crash somewhere ahead of him on the road.