Burned (2 page)

He likes Seilduksgate.

With the rain spitting on his head, he walks west towards the setting sun above the Old Sail Loft, from which the street takes its name. He lets the drops fall on him and squints to make out the contours of an object in front. A gigantic yellow crane soars towards the sky. It has been there forever. The clouds behind him are still grey.

Henning approaches the junction where Markvei has priority from the right, and he thinks that everything might be different tomorrow. He doesn’t know if it’s an original thought or whether someone has planted it inside his head. Possibly nothing will change. Perhaps only voices and sounds will be different. Someone might shout. Someone might whisper.

Perhaps everything will be different. Or nothing. And within that tension is a world turned upside down. Do I still belong in it, he wonders? Is there room for me? Am I strong enough to unlock the words, the memories and the thoughts which I know are buried deep inside me?

He doesn’t know.

There is a lot he doesn’t know.

*

He lets himself into the flat after climbing three long flights of stairs where the dust floats above the ingrained dirt in the woodwork. An appropriate transition to his home. He lives in a dump. He prefers it that way. He doesn’t think he deserves a large hallway, closets the size of shopping centres, a kitchen whose cupboards and drawers look like a freshly watered ice rink, self-cleaning white goods, delicate floors inviting you to slow dance, walls covered with classics and reference books, nor does he deserve a designer clock, a Lilia block candleholder from Georg Jensen or a bedspread made from the foreskin of humming birds. All he needs is a single mattress, a fridge and somewhere to sit down when the darkness creeps in. Because it inevitably does.

Every time he closes the front door behind him, he gets the feeling that something is amiss. His breathing quickens, he feels hot all over, his palms grow sweaty. There is a stepladder to the right, just inside the hall. He takes the stepladder, climbs it and locates the Clas Ohlson bag on the old green hat rack. He takes out a box of batteries, reaches for the smoke alarm, eases out the battery and replaces it with a fresh one.

He tests it to make sure it works.

When his breathing has returned to normal, he climbs down. He has learned to like smoke alarms. He likes them so much that he has eight.

Chapter 2

He turns over with a disappointed grunt, when his alarm clock goes off. He was halfway through a dream which evaporates as his eyes glide open and the dawn seeps in. There was a woman in the dream. He doesn’t remember what she looked like, but he knows she was the Woman of his Dreams.

Henning swears, then he sits up and looks around. His eyes stop at the pill jars and the matchbox which greet him every morning. He sighs, swings his legs out of bed and thinks that today, today is the day he’ll do it.

He exhales, rubs his face and starts with the simplest task. The pills are chalky and fiendish. As usual, he swallows them dry because it’s harder that way. He forces them down his throat, gulps, and waits for them to disappear down his digestive tract and do the job which Dr Helge enthusiastically claims is for Henning’s own good.

He slams the jar unnecessarily hard against the bedside table, as if to wake himself up. He snatches the matchbox. Slowly, he slides it open and looks at its contents. Twenty wooden soldiers from hell. He takes out one, studies the sulphur, a red cap of concentrated evil.
Safety Matches
it says on the front.

A contradiction in terms.

He presses the thin matchstick against the side of the box and is about to strike it when his hands seize up. He concentrates, mobilising all his strength in his hands, in his fingers, but the aggravating splinter of wood simply refuses to shift, it fails to obey and remains unimpressed. He starts to sweat, his chest tightens, he tries to breathe, but it’s no good. He makes a second attempt, takes out another tiny sword of evil and attacks the matchbox with it, but soon realises that he doesn’t have the same fighting spirit this time, nowhere near the same willpower now, and he gives up trying to turn thought into action. He remembers that he needs to breathe and suppresses the urge to scream.

It’s very early in the morning. That explains it. Arne, who lives upstairs, might still be asleep despite his habit of reciting Halldis Moren Vesaas’s poetry day and night.

Henning sighs and carefully returns the matchbox to the exact same spot on the bedside table. Gently, he runs his hands over his face. He touches the patches where the skin is different, softer, but not as smooth. The scars on the outside are nothing compared to the ones on the inside, he thinks, and then he gets up.

*

The sleeping city. That’s where he wants to be. And he is here now. In the Grünerløkka district of Oslo, early in the morning, before the city explodes into action, before the pavement cafés fill up, before mum and dad have to go to work, the children are off to nursery, and cyclists run as many red lights as they can as they hurtle down Toftesgate. Only a few people are up and about, as are the ever-scavenging pigeons.

He passes the fountain on Olaf Ryes Square and listens to the sound of the water. He is good at listening. And he is good at identifying sounds. He imagines there is no sound but the trickling water and pretends it’s the day the world ends. If he concentrates, he can hear cautious strings, then a dark cello slowly intermingling before fading away and gradually giving way to kettledrums warning of the misery that is to come.

Today, however, he doesn’t have time to let the music of the morning overwhelm him. He is on his way to work. The very thought turns his legs to jelly. He doesn’t know if Henning Juul still exists, the Juul who used to get four job offers a year, who made the mute sing, who made the days start earlier – just for him – because he was stalking his prey and needed the light.

He knows who he was.

Does Halldis have a poem for someone like me, he wonders? Probably.

Halldis has a poem for everyone.

*

He stops when he sees the yellow brick colossus at the top of Urtegata. People think the huge Securitas logo on the wall means the security firm occupies the entire office block, but several private businesses and public bodies are located here. As is www.123nyheter.no where Henning works, an Internet-only newspaper which advertises itself with the slogan ‘1-2-3 News – as easy as 1-2-3!’

He doesn’t think it’s a particularly good slogan – not that he cares. They have been good to him, given him time to recover, time to get his head straight.

A three-metre-tall fence with black metal spears surrounds the building. The gate is an integral part of the fence and slowly slides open to let out a Loomis van. He passes a small, deserted guard booth and tries to open the entrance door. It refuses. He peers through the glass door. No one around. He presses a brushed steel button with a plate saying
RECEPTION
above it. A brusque female voice calls out ‘yes’.

‘Hello,’ he says, clearing his throat. ‘Would you let me in, please?’

‘Who are you meeting?’

‘I work here.’

A period of silence follows.

‘Did you forget your swipecard?’

He frowns. What swipecard?

‘No, I haven’t got one.’

‘Everyone has a swipecard.’

‘Not me.’

Another silence. He waits for a continuation which never comes.

‘Would you let me in, please?’

A shrill buzzing sound makes him jump. The door whirrs. Clumsily, he pulls it open, enters and checks the ceiling. His eyes quickly identify a smoke alarm. He waits until it flashes green.

The grey slate floor is new. Looking around, he realises that many things have changed. There are big plants in even bigger pots on the floor, the walls have been painted white and decorated with artwork he doesn’t understand. They have a canteen now, he sees, to the left behind a glass door. The reception is opposite it, also behind a glass door. He opens it and enters. There is a smoke alarm in the ceiling. Good.

Behind the counter, the woman with red hair in a ponytail looks fraught. She is frantically hammering away at the keyboard. The light from the monitor reflects in her grumpy face. Behind her are pigeonholes overflowing with papers, leaflets, parcels and packages. A TV screen, hooked up to a PC, is mounted on the wall. The newspaper’s front page clamours for his attention and he reads the headline:

WOMAN FOUND DEAD

Then he reads the strap-line:

Woman found dead in tent on Ekeberg Common. Police suspect murder.

He knows the news desk has yet to cover the story, because the title and the strap-line contain the same information. No reporters have been at the scene, either. The story is accompanied by an archive photo of police tape cordoning off a totally different location.

Neat.

Henning waits for the receptionist to notice him. She doesn’t. He moves closer and says hello. At last, she looks up. First, she stares at him as if he had struck her. Then the inevitable reaction. Her jaw drops, her eyes takes it in, his face, the burns, the scars. They aren’t large, not embarrassingly large, but large enough for people to stare just that little bit too long.

‘It looks like I need a swipecard,’ he says with as much politeness as he can muster. She is still staring at him, but forces herself to snap out of the bubble she has sought refuge inside. She starts rummaging through some papers.

‘Eh, yes. Eh – what’s your name?’

‘Henning Juul.’

She freezes and then she looks up again, slowly this time. An eternity passes before she says:

‘Oh, that’s you.’

He nods, embarrassed. She opens a drawer, riffles though more papers until she finds a plastic cover and a swipecard.

‘You’ll have to have a temporary pass. It takes time to make a new one and it needs to be registered with the booth outside before you can open the gate yourself, and, well, you know. The code is 1221. Should be easy to remember.’

She hands him the swipecard.

‘And I’ll need to take your picture.’

He looks at her.

‘My picture?’

‘Yes. For the swipecard. And for your by-line in the paper. Let’s kill two birds with one stone, right? Ha-ha.’

She attempts a smile, but her lips tremble slightly.

‘I’ve done a photography course,’ she says as if to pre-empt any protest. ‘You just stand there and I’ll do the rest.’

A camera appears from behind the counter. It is mounted on a tripod. She cranks it up. Henning doesn’t know where to look, so he gazes into the distance.

‘That’s good. Try to smile.’

Smile. He can’t remember the last time he did that. She clicks three times in quick succession.

‘Great. I’m Sølvi,’ she says and offers him her hand over the counter. He takes it. Soft, lovely skin. He can’t remember the last time he felt soft, lovely skin against his. She squeezes his hand, exerting just the right amount of pressure. He looks at her and lets go.

As he turns to leave, he wonders if she noticed the smile which almost formed on his lips.

Chapter 3

Henning has to swipe his shiny new card no less than three times, going from the reception area to the second floor. Though the office is where it always was, there is nothing to remind him of the place he had almost settled into, nearly two years ago. Everything is new, even the carpet. There are grey and white surfaces, a kitchenette, and he would bet good money that there are clean glasses and mugs in the cupboards. There are flat screens everywhere, on the desks and on the walls.

He checks out the room. Four smoke alarms. Two foam extinguishers, possibly more. Good. Or good enough.

It is a large, L-shaped room. Work stations by the windows, tables and chairs behind coloured glass partitions. There are tiny individual cubicles for when you want to conduct an interview without an audience or any background noise. There are lavatories, disabled ones as well, even though he can’t actually see anyone even mildly infirm. He imagines there are rules about such things. They have always had a coffee maker, but now they have the state-of-the-art version, which takes twenty-nine seconds to make a fancy cup of black coffee. Not four, like the old one.

Henning loves coffee. You’re not a proper reporter unless you love coffee.

He recognises the buzz immediately. Foreign TV stations, all reporting the same news over and over. Everything is
breaking news
. Stock exchange figures scroll along the bottom of the screen. A collage of TV screens show what NRK and TV2 are reporting on their strangely antiquated, but still viable text TV pages. The news channel runs its features on a loop. It, too, has a ticker which condenses a story into one sentence. He hears the familiar crackle of a police radio, as if R2D2 from the Star Wars movies intermittently makes contact from a galaxy far, far away. NRK News 24 can just about be heard from a radio somewhere.

Bleary-eyed reporters tap on keyboards, telephones ring, stories are debated, angles suggested. In a corner by the news desk, where every story is weighed, measured, rejected, applauded, polished or heavily edited, lies a mountain of newspapers – new and old – which the newly arrived reporters seize upon while they sip their first coffee of the day.

It is the usual controlled chaos. And yet, everything seems alien. The ease he felt after years of working in the streets, of being
in the field
, of showing up at a crime scene, knowing he was in his element, has completely disappeared. It all belongs to another lifetime, another era.

He feels like a cub reporter again. Or as if he is taking part in a play where he has been cast as The Victim, the poor soul everyone has to take care of, help back on his feet. And even though he hasn’t spoken a single word to anyone, except Sølvi, his intuition tells him no one thinks it’s going to work. Henning Juul will never be the same again.