Before I Burn: A Novel by Gaute Heivoll Page B

sat with bowed head staring at the keys.
    ‘That was lovely,’ she said in a hushed voice.
    ‘Would you like to hear more?’ he asked.
    She nodded.
    Then he played ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’, for he knew this was the one she really wanted to hear. She sat on the edge of the table and closed her eyes. The tears began to flow, she couldn’t hold them back, the ground gave way inside her, and he played simply and crisply, without a single false note. She was sitting like this when he sprang to his feet and slammed the lid with a crash and a doleful echo.
    ‘Now you can tell me,’ she whispered.
    ‘Yes,’ he said.
    ‘Tell me everything, Dag,’ she said, rising to her feet as well.
    Then the telephone rang.
    She stared at him in horror for a second. There was no time for more, because he was already in the hall picking up the telephone and speaking in a low voice. She went to the door and watched him making notes on a pad.
    Then he called Ingemann.
    Fire! Fire!
    She hastily prepared two packed lunches, slicing more bread and spreading it with Prim and some cheese, and then she poured the rest of the coffee into the thermos. At just that moment the alarm went off in the half-light. It was Dag who had been outside to sound it; he must have run because he came back in almost straightaway, sweating and panting. The sound was so ear-splitting that the elegant glasses in the cupboard jangled. Ingemann came down the stairs doing up the last of the buttons on his shirt. He was groggy with sleep, his eyes swimming, his hair pointing in all directions, but that made no difference. A house was ablaze, and he was the fire chief. There was no time to waste. Get the fire engine out, start the sirens, put on the blue lights. Drive for all you were worth. Arrive. Assess the situation. Dag had been ready for some time; he had buttoned his shirt up to the neck and was shuffling his feet in the hall.
    ‘Aren’t you going to put on any more clothes?’ Alma asked.
    ‘There’s a fire, Mamma. I don’t have the time.’
    ‘But you’re only wearing a shirt, Dag.’
    That was all she managed to say. He was already out of the door and bounding through the dawn towards the fire station. A few minutes later she heard the sirens merging with the protracted wailing of the alarm. She hurriedly slipped the packed lunches into a bag, which Ingemann grabbed on his way out of the door to the fire engine and Dag, who was waiting behind the wheel.
    VIII.
    ON 7 JUNE 1978, Faedrelandsvennen carries a lengthy interview with Olav and Johanna Vatneli. It is a good two days after the fire. It is the same interview that I remembered when I was standing by the grave, the one in which Olav referred to himself as soft and Johanna as calm.
    The two of them are sitting in Knut Karlsen’s basement flat. Olav on the edge of the bed, wearing a checked shirt and loose braces, staring into the air apathetically. Johanna on a chair alongside him with her hands limp in her lap and a faint smile around her mouth, as though none of this really concerns her. Behind them a bracket lamp with the plug dangling down.
    The previous day they had gone to town to buy clothes. Two summer dresses, a pair of trousers, shirts, underwear. Two pairs of shoes. In addition, they had both been measured for new dentures.
    Bereft of everything, Olav and Johanna sit in their neighbour’s flat wondering what will become of them.
    Johanna talks about the blaze again, the explosion in the kitchen, the sea of flames, the shadow outside the window and the events that followed. Earlier that day, they had received a visit from Alma and Ingemann. This is said in one sentence, never to be mentioned again, yet the sentence seems to lie there, flashing on the page.
    Later in the interview they talk about Kåre. I suppose it felt natural to talk about him, after all, they had lost everything else. There, in Knut Karlsen’s cellar, it is nineteen years since he died. He was the only child they had.