Norwegian by Night (26 page)

‘Told you to what?'

‘Well … I suppose he told me to pick up a few sandwiches.'

‘Right.'

‘Yes. But then I ate them.'

Enver says nothing. He just stands and looks at the two of them.

The impulse to stand straighter, to stop leaning against the car, comes over Burim, but he suppresses it.

‘I didn't know they were for you. I figured one was for Kadri and the other for me. And then the police went inside and, when he came out, he walked right past me. So I ate them both.'

Enver still says nothing.

‘I called him first and told him that the woman cop was there,' Gjon adds.

‘Who else is coming?' Enver asks.

‘And then Kadri was the only one out.'

‘Who the fuck else is coming?'

Burim speaks for the first time, ‘No one.'

‘Give me the rifles.'

Burim and Gjon look at each other and hesitate, too long.

‘There are no rifles. You didn't bring those either. No food. No weapons. No soldiers. Why did you bother coming at all?'

‘Enver, it isn't like back in Kosovo. You don't find AKs under every pile of hay. In '97 we looted millions, billions, of rounds of ammo. Here, you need to take classes and get a licence to shoot ducks.'

‘There're rifles behind the counter at Intersport on the main street.'

‘But you need a permit to touch them. And if you buy one they can track us, because we need to register them.'

‘So instead of doing your job, you decided to protect yourselves from possible future paperwork. And the men?'

‘You've crossed a line, Enver,' says Gjon. ‘You killed the mother of your child. Some think you're cursed.'

‘But you're here,' Enver says to Burim.

He was here, but Burim had not wanted to come. He'd explained to Adrijana about the missing boy and the old man, and she'd listened very carefully. She didn't raise her voice or begin a new and complex lecture. She just listened, and when he was finished she said, ‘I don't know anything about this. If someone I knew had them, or was even looking, I'd have heard.'

‘But you'll ask your people about it,' Burim had said.

If Kadri was really threatening to expose their romance, he wanted it over. He wanted the threat lifted.

‘I can't believe you just said, “Your people.” Is that really where we are?'

‘We're in danger.'

‘I'll see what I can do,' Adrijana had said.

When Burim got the call from Kadri, he knew he had no choice but to go and pretend that everything was fine. Show that he didn't suspect he was suspected.

Burim reasoned that there was only one way through this. And that was for Enver to leave the country. Kadri was a punk and a drug trafficker, but, as far as Burim knew, he wasn't a murderer. Though maybe he was. Stories from the old country blew north like leaves on a wind. There was no telling one from another. No way to know where each one came from.

There was another way, of course. It was for Enver to be arrested — to be locked in a cage where he belonged and leave everyone alone. But they'd still keep calling in favours. Keep saying that Burim's family owed him. That Burim was a soldier and needed to step up and serve the country.

And there was a final way, though he was afraid to even think it. Enver could die.

Burim was afraid to even harbour these sorts of thoughts. He never had. It was just that one small favour, one peculiar but insignificant request, had morphed into larger ones. They grew and expanded, until last year he was holding half a kilo of heroin in a box that he'd placed in the middle of the kitchen table, and just stared at it. It was worth tens of thousands of kroner, this brown lump from Afghanistan — a country where a bunch of tribesmen grew poppies in open fields as helicopter gunships sniped at them by day, and the Taliban came by at night for their cut. And there it was on his kitchen table, by the salt and pepper shakers, embraced in a cute little pink-and-blue hug that Adrijana had just bought at some fancy kitchen store at Oslo City near the train station.

Then, a few days later, Kadri called and asked for it. So Burim brought it to the Åpent Bakeri in an orange JanSport backpack that Adrijana would eventually find missing and wonder how she could have been so dumb as to lose. He handed it to Kadri and then — as though a malignant tumour had been excised — the brick of brown terror was gone.

Later, there was not a trace of it except for the fifteen thousand kroner that Kadri eventually gave him. So Burim went to Paléet and bought some books for Adrijana, subscribed to eMusic.com for two years at their discount price, bought a new winter jacket for himself, and put the rest in their savings account.

He remembers walking out of the bank that afternoon near Majorstuen, arms laden with purchases, wondering what had just happened. He didn't quite understand, but some part of him knew that he'd just signed a deal with people who didn't keep their promises. And the idea had filled him with dread.

Gjon gets on one knee on dry dirt and opens a small green sack. He removes three large Bowie knives with wooden handles and brass hilts.

Enver is on the phone making a call. He does not tell them whom he is calling. When the call is over, Enver looks back at the man who was once his friend.

Gjon hands the knives to Burim and Enver. Both regard them with some confusion, each for different reasons.

Enver asks the question that Burim is also thinking. ‘What are we supposed to do with these?'

Gjon stands up, unlocks the trunk of the Mercedes, and puts the green bag back in place beside the spare tyre and the bucket of cleaning materials.

Burim then hears Gjon answer in a way he'd never heard before.

‘Whatever the hell you want, Enver. This is your mess! I want this done with. And then I want you and your bastard kid to fuck off and never come back.'

Burim takes a step back with his knife.

Enver is motionless. Then he nods. Just nods. Then he asks Gjon for a cigarette. Gjon's shoulders droop slightly, and he reaches into his pocket to take out the soft pack of Marlboro Reds that was almost empty, and taps the pack against the first joint of his left hand to shake one loose.

American soldiers, he saw, used to pack their cigarettes. They'd take one out and bang the filter against a table, or rock, or a friend's helmet so that the tobacco would compress and the white cigarette paper would form a hollow funnel at the end that used to burn fast and bright before the soldiers took their first drags.

Russian soldiers did the opposite. They rolled the cigarettes between their two fingers and thumbs so that the tiny leaves separated and crinkled. Whatever the weather, the Russians soldiers cupped the matches between their two hands from the bottom, and shielded them so the winds wouldn't blow out their precious flames.

He hands one to Enver, who puts it in his lips.

‘Light it for me,' he says.

Enver is holding the Bowie knife in his right hand.

Gjon slides his own blade into his belt and takes the Swedish matches from the pocket of his blue jeans.

He strikes a match along the side of the pack and immediately cups it like the Russians. He holds the flame gently in his hands, as though he were cupping a small bird before release.

‘Hold it higher for me,' says Enver.

Gjon steps in closer and raises his two hands closer to Enver's face. Close enough so that, even in the shadowed daylight, the flame glints off Enver's tired eyes.

As Enver leans forward to place the tip of the cigarette into Gjon's cupped hands, Burim sees the tip of the Bowie knife angled up to Gjon's torso.

Then, as the cigarette is lit, he sees the two men look hard at each other.

There have been so many conversations about what they call
home
. The smells of the land. The taste of the food. The values of the men, and the memories of the women. They talk about those who are lost and what it is we owe the dead. What the Serbs did to us. If every recollection, every so-called fact, is not real, then at least the emotions are, and they come from memories that have been torn from life.

He had looked into history to find out what was true and what was myth. He had followed Adrijana to the library, and spent hours on the Internet looking up the names of villages he's heard them talk about. Bela Crkva. Meja. Velika Krusa. Djakovica. There had been Serbian massacres in every one of them. But Burim has never been to these places. Never experienced it. His debt to Enver, in particular, and the cause of Kosovar independence — and dignity — is abstracted and distant.

Here, in this tree-covered lane, two thousand kilometres from the whispered stories and the even louder silences, Burim watches these two men stare into each other's eyes — and he sees, for the first time, how close death really is. What it is that terrifies Adrijana. What she smells on his clothes when he comes home at night. And what he brings into their bed with them. What stalks them is History.

Enver lights his cigarette and then lifts his head. Gjon opens his palms and drops the burning match. It taps the ground and then burns for a moment before being snuffed out.

Gjon does not look down at the knife. He does not step back, either. He just says to Enver, ‘What now?'

Enver takes a long pull on his cigarette, and feels the hunger fade. Then he nods to Gjon. ‘Last night they sensed me, but they saw nothing. Today they rested, and we all waited for the old man and the boy. Tonight we take the house.'

Last night, Rhea stared into the woods for a good, long time. Then she started walking to the wood line. She couldn't see Enver watching her through the binoculars, staring at her, eyeing her black leather trousers, black boots, vintage leather jacket with steel zippers, bright-blue eyes, and very long black hair.

Watching her hips as she approached.

Far enough away to feel safe, but close enough to look carefully, she crouched down on the ground and started picking up small stones. And some not so small. Then she pitched them into the woods. She wasn't aiming exactly in his direction. Instead, she was making a sweep.

But nothing happened. No flock of birds few off. No deer rushed out. No dog with a limp hobbled out, looking for love. Just silence.

Rhea turned back to Lars, shrugged, and walked back to where he stood. She slapped him a few times on the chest. ‘Thanks for putting up with me.'

And then, very unexpectedly for Lars, she began to cry. It only lasted a moment before she wiped her tears, smiled, laughed a bit, and slapped him on the chest again.

‘What a day!' she said.

In silence, he fixed her a simple meal of pasta with tomato sauce from a jar. After dinner, he took off her clothes and put her in a pair of striped pyjamas. He shook out the duvet and pulled it up over her as she snuggled into a foetal position. He tucked in the edges to protect her against the cool night air, and stroked her hair. He read her a short story from an ancient issue of
The New Yorker
. Then he opened the window just a little so the room would be fresh, turned out the light, and retired to the living room to clean up and make sketches for a new video game he had in mind — one where you wander the famous sound stages of Hollywood with a giant gun offing zombie versions of actors and other celebrities.

This morning, Rhea had slept topless in bed with the covers pulled down as the rising sun warmed the cabin. Lars got up naked to make coffee on the iron stove. There were no neighbours for kilometres, so he went outside and ground the beans on the steps while looking out into the forest.

It was easy for Lars to imagine why Rhea got spooked. The path to the house is more than five hundred metres long through a thicket that Rhea once likened to the ride of Ichabod Crane fleeing the headless Hessian. But Lars grew up here. He knows these trees, the animals, the sounds they make, and their rhythms by day and night. They change with the seasons, and the seasons come, one after the other, with all their unique pleasures and challenges. Things are not spooky by themselves, Lars decides. They need us.

They spend the day quietly. Lars insists.

You had a miscarriage. And the next day our neighbour was murdered in our apartment. And your father is missing.

He's my grandfather.

He might as well be your father.

I suppose.

There's nothing we can do now but wait and rest. You need your strength. Your focus. We can play Scrabble in English. You can make up words and convince me they're real.

Why don't they release a missing-person report on him? Why don't they put his face all over the news?

Sigrid said it's because his name is the same as yours, and your name is on the door, and its possible that if the killers know he is missing they'll start to look for him, too. Maybe they'll wonder if he saw something. And they say a boy might be with him. If the killers are looking for the boy, and they know that Sheldon is missing, they'll know the police don't have him.