Read Online Before I Burn: A Novel by Gaute Heivoll - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Gaute Heivoll
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had. Alfred and Else and their children were there, Anders and Agnes Fjeldsgård, Syvert Maessel, Olga Dynestøl, and many, many others. Everyone was there, Teresa was perched in front of the organ, high up, and glanced in the console mirror as she approached the end of ‘Deilig er jorden’. My father was there, too. He sat in a front pew beside his mother and father and Mamma, and she had a growing child in her stomach, and that child was me. There was something quite special about sitting stiffly, dressed up and solemn, among all those you knew so well, it was as though everyone was showing themselves from a new and unfamiliar side, it was wonderful and a little strange, and Alma could feel the Yuletide peace settling over her and she was almost calm.
The New Year came. The year was 1978.
January arrived with short, bitterly cold days. Dag was outside in the workshop with Ingemann. Helping to keep it tidy, clearing away any junk that had accumulated during autumn. He swept the floor, burned old rubbish and splashed diesel on it to make it light. Then there was nothing else to do. He took to lying in again. He dug up all his old comics. Donald Duck, Silver Arrow and The Phantom. In the evenings he went somewhere in the car. The car Ingemann had bought for a song and done up in time for Dag’s eighteenth birthday, the summer almost three years ago. He could be out for hours on end. Alma had no idea where he was. She used to wake up in the darkness, not knowing whether he had come home. What was the time? One? Three? Six? She lay listening, cold and tense. But he always came home eventually. Nothing ever happened.
February came. With a metre of snow. Power cuts came and went. In March, mild weather swept in from the southwest, trees dripped, roofs ran and roads were as slippery as soap. Then it veered back to the south-east and they were in deepest winter again. For three days snow came down like a carpet, and when at last it stopped, there were mild, sunny days when the world seemed to stand still. Slowly, spring came. April arrived with long, bright days. The river flowed quietly. The ice vanished, the water glittered. At night there was a smell of raw, damp earth. His hair was almost as long as when he went into the army.
One evening when he was about to drive off, Alma asked where he was intending to go.
‘Out,’ he said pithily.
‘Where?’ she asked.
‘That anything to do with you?’ he snapped, then slammed the door and drove away. She didn’t react, but afterwards she couldn’t shake his words out of her head. They sank inside her, lay still and ached. She lay awake in bed that night as Ingemann slept soundly beside her. That anything to do with you? That anything to do with you? She could hear his voice. It was Dag, yet she wasn’t sure. Good, kind Dag. She thought she heard him laugh. She dozed off, woke up with a start. She had dreamed that she was standing by a cradle, that he was a baby, but he wasn’t there. The cradle was empty, but it was still rocking. She got up, crept barefoot to his door. Knocked, and opened it wide. He was lying awake on top of the duvet, fully dressed, a Donald Duck comic open on his stomach. At first he appeared frightened, as though for a few seconds he thought something terrible had happened. Then he was calm. Then he smiled.
‘Mamma,’ he whispered. ‘Is that you?’
IV.
6 MAY, 1978. The flames by the roadside grew, caught hold of the grass, moved into the heather, the juniper bushes, then spread quickly into the forest. Spring had indeed been dry, unusually dry. All it needed was a spark. A cigarette tossed from a window, a moment’s thoughtlessness.
The alarm went off.
It wailed across the region until people realised what it was. It had hardly been heard before. People stopped and exchanged looks.
That was the fire alarm, wasn’t it?
Then the fire engine came down from the station with sirens blaring. Down round the tight bend, past the house, over the
The New Year came. The year was 1978.
January arrived with short, bitterly cold days. Dag was outside in the workshop with Ingemann. Helping to keep it tidy, clearing away any junk that had accumulated during autumn. He swept the floor, burned old rubbish and splashed diesel on it to make it light. Then there was nothing else to do. He took to lying in again. He dug up all his old comics. Donald Duck, Silver Arrow and The Phantom. In the evenings he went somewhere in the car. The car Ingemann had bought for a song and done up in time for Dag’s eighteenth birthday, the summer almost three years ago. He could be out for hours on end. Alma had no idea where he was. She used to wake up in the darkness, not knowing whether he had come home. What was the time? One? Three? Six? She lay listening, cold and tense. But he always came home eventually. Nothing ever happened.
February came. With a metre of snow. Power cuts came and went. In March, mild weather swept in from the southwest, trees dripped, roofs ran and roads were as slippery as soap. Then it veered back to the south-east and they were in deepest winter again. For three days snow came down like a carpet, and when at last it stopped, there were mild, sunny days when the world seemed to stand still. Slowly, spring came. April arrived with long, bright days. The river flowed quietly. The ice vanished, the water glittered. At night there was a smell of raw, damp earth. His hair was almost as long as when he went into the army.
One evening when he was about to drive off, Alma asked where he was intending to go.
‘Out,’ he said pithily.
‘Where?’ she asked.
‘That anything to do with you?’ he snapped, then slammed the door and drove away. She didn’t react, but afterwards she couldn’t shake his words out of her head. They sank inside her, lay still and ached. She lay awake in bed that night as Ingemann slept soundly beside her. That anything to do with you? That anything to do with you? She could hear his voice. It was Dag, yet she wasn’t sure. Good, kind Dag. She thought she heard him laugh. She dozed off, woke up with a start. She had dreamed that she was standing by a cradle, that he was a baby, but he wasn’t there. The cradle was empty, but it was still rocking. She got up, crept barefoot to his door. Knocked, and opened it wide. He was lying awake on top of the duvet, fully dressed, a Donald Duck comic open on his stomach. At first he appeared frightened, as though for a few seconds he thought something terrible had happened. Then he was calm. Then he smiled.
‘Mamma,’ he whispered. ‘Is that you?’
IV.
6 MAY, 1978. The flames by the roadside grew, caught hold of the grass, moved into the heather, the juniper bushes, then spread quickly into the forest. Spring had indeed been dry, unusually dry. All it needed was a spark. A cigarette tossed from a window, a moment’s thoughtlessness.
The alarm went off.
It wailed across the region until people realised what it was. It had hardly been heard before. People stopped and exchanged looks.
That was the fire alarm, wasn’t it?
Then the fire engine came down from the station with sirens blaring. Down round the tight bend, past the house, over the
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