– Quitting TV?
– Everything, actually … The New Year broadcast will be the final show. Know what it’s going to be about?
She didn’t know.
– Death! Death is the ultimate taboo. It defies everything. It won’t even let you scratch it.
– A talk show about death? You wouldn’t be the first to come up with something like that.
– My approach will be different. He didn’t expand.
– Now you’re making me curious, said Liss.
– It will not be without a certain irony, he smiled and looked proud. – And yet it will be deadly serious. That’s all I’m going to say. You’ve already got me to say too much as it is.
S
HE JUMPED ON
board a tram on Frogner Way. Sat in the rear carriage without paying. Sent a text message to Viljam. He was still at his seminar, but she got an answer:
Per På Hjørnet at one okay?
She was there at quarter to. Had an espresso. Went outside in the cold for a smoke, bought a newspaper and went back into the bar again. It was twenty past by the time he arrived, it irritated her.
– Don’t you get tired of sitting there swotting up on points of law? she contented herself with saying.
– Don’t even talk about it.
He ordered a latte. She had another espresso. Suddenly felt the urge for something that would pep her up more than coffee.
– It’s so dark in this town. The light just keeps disappearing.
– It must be almost as dark in Amsterdam in the winter, Viljam protested.
Liss didn’t want to talk about Amsterdam. – I was at Berger’s today.
– Berger, he exclaimed. – What were you doing there?
She didn’t answer. An elderly woman scurried past on the pavement outside. Walked along holding on to her tiny hat.
– There’s no wind at all out there.
Viljam sipped his coffee. – Did you go there because there’s no wind?
She looked at him. He had dark rings under his eyes.
– What you said about Mailin having found something out about Berger. That she was going to put pressure on him before the show.
– Did you ask him about that?
– I called on him because I wanted to form some impression of him. Maybe next time I’ll ask him straight out.
Viljam shook his head. – And what do you think that will achieve? That he’ll fall on his knees and confess to something or other? He seemed exasperated. – Leave that kind of thing to the police, Liss. If you keep on like that, you might be making it more difficult for them to find out what’s happened.
He brushed his long fringe back. – I’m not too happy either about the way they’re working, he said quietly. – They don’t seem to understand that with each passing day our chances are less. If something doesn’t happen soon …
Liss waited. The implication of what he almost said hung somewhere in the air between them. She took two big gulps, shivered and put the cup down.
– I feel sure you know what it was Mailin found out about Berger.
– You’re right, he answered.
He said no more; she grew impatient.
– I want you to tell me what it was.
She could see the muscles of his jaw working. Then he breathed out heavily.
– Mailin spoke to someone about him, he said. – Someone who was initiated into the world of grown-up secrets by Berger a long time ago. That was what she was going to reveal during the broadcast. Look directly into the camera and come out with it.
Liss opened her eyes wide. – Expose Berger live and on air as a fucking paedo?
Viljam began picking at his serviette. – She wanted to force him to cancel the broadcast, as a way of demonstrating that there are in fact certain limits. I asked if she knew what sort of reaction she would get. She claimed she did. I’m afraid she was wrong about that.
Liss thought about this for a few moments and then said: – According to Berger, she never showed up for their meeting.
The serviette was in pieces. Viljam dropped it on the floor. – Could be he’s telling the truth.
To Liss it seemed as if things had gone very quiet around them. As though people sitting at the other tables had stopped talking. He’s suffering, she thought.
You’re
suffering, Liss.
She laid a hand on his arm. – Let’s go for a walk. Have you got time?
They crossed the square in front of the Town Hall, continued along the quays. Nativity stars glowed in all the windows.
– You were supposed to be getting married in the summer, she said out of nowhere.
Viljam glanced at her. – How did you know that?
– Mailin sent me a text. Asked me to keep next Midsummer’s Day free.
– And there we were planning to keep it to ourselves for the time being, not say anything until Christmas Eve. He stared straight ahead. – She admires you, he said suddenly.
Liss looked startled. – Who?
– Mailin says you’ve always been braver than her. Not scared of anything. Climbing steep hillsides. Always the first one in. Diving from the top of big rocks.
Liss scoffed.
– You broke away and went to Amsterdam, he continued. – Mailin feels such a strong sense of being tied up in everything here at home.
What’s to become of you, Liss?
– What about you? she asked, to change the subject. – Are you brave?
– When necessary.
They were standing by the torch of peace, at the end of the quays. A few boats bobbed up and down in their berths. The wind had got up. Thin flakes of snow wafted around, unable to land.
– When are you going out to the cabin?
– This afternoon.
He dug out a bunch of keys, opened it and slipped a car key out.
– Think you’ll find out anything else about Mailin there?
She shook her head. – You and Tage have already been there. And the police.
She turned to the flame burning in its leaf-shaped container, reached out her hand. Found out how close she could hold it without getting burned.
L
ISS PARKED
M
AILIN’S
car at Bysetermosan. Continued on foot up the forest track, into the silence. Not silence, but all the sounds of the forest: the winter birds, the wind in the treetops, her own footsteps.
She reached the place where she had to turn off the track. The snow had melted and frozen again. She could walk on it without using snowshoes. First a fairly steep upward incline. Almost four years since she’d been there, but she remembered every tree and every rocky outcrop. Wherever she went, this landscape always went with her.
She climbed over a rise and could just make out the roof of the cabin ahead through the trees. Stood a moment looking out across Morr Water and the ridge on the far side. Not until it had begun to turn dark did she carry on down.
There was a strong smell of brown creosote. She remembered that back in the autumn, Mailin had mentioned that she and Viljam were going out there to do some painting. She’d asked if Liss would come home and help them. Liss ran her hand over the rough planks of the outer wall. The sensation conjured up images of Mailin. It felt as though she were there, and for a moment Liss wondered whether she would be able to go in.
She lit the paraffin lamp in the kitchen, took it into the living room. Noticed the burnt-out logs at the back of the fireplace. Mailin must have been in a hurry. Neither of them ever left the cabin without tidying it up. The place should be clean, the ash removed and fresh logs brought in, so that all the next one to visit had to do was put a match to them. Now Liss had to sweep out the fireplace and then go out to the wood shed for more logs. Viljam and Tage had taken a quick look in there, as had someone from the police. Had they perhaps made a fire? It wasn’t like Mailin to ignore the strict rules they had made themselves.
Later she turned on the radio, tuned in to some piano music. Even that was too much and she switched off again, needed to empty the room of sound. She stood by the window and looked down towards Morr Water through the dim evening. Many years since she had stood there like this, Mailin by her side; that had been a winter day too, the sun about to disappear behind the hills, the trees full of twinkling needles.
We’ll never give up this place, Liss. It’s ours, yours and mine.
Liss wept. Didn’t understand what was happening, had to touch her cheeks to feel. Mailin, if this is my fault … she murmured.
It is not your fault. You couldn’t do anything about what happened.
I must turn myself in. I killed him.
She pulled on the head lamp, picked up the two buckets and walked down through the trees. Followed the little stream down to the rock. It was as steep as a cliff. Deep below it. In the summer they could dive in from it. Had to dive far enough out to clear the shelf. Below the rock there was a channel in the ice. If it was glazed over, the ice was thinner than cut glass. The current from the stream kept the water open, no matter how cold it got. Old trees decomposing in the depths of the water released gases that also hindered the formation of ice. She threw one of the zinc buckets in, kept a tight hold on the rope, it fell almost three metres before it hit down below. She hauled it up, eased it over the outcrop, then did the same thing with the second bucket.
Further away on the left, there was a little bay. Our beach, they called it, because it was covered in rough sand. It was just big enough for both of them to lie there and sunbathe. Naked, if they were alone out there. Above it, between the trees, an old boathouse that contained a rowing boat and a canoe.
She returned via the beach. Put one foot on the ice, tested her weight on it; it would hold if she walked straight ahead. If she headed right, towards the rock and the stream, it would break, she would go through, sink down into the icy water.
Death by water
, she thought. If Mailin had gone this way … She hadn’t. The car was found in Oslo. Could someone have driven it there?
She got the wood stove going, boiled water. Went out on to the steps and lit a cigarette. Mailin didn’t allow smoking indoors. The stink lingers for years, she said, and Liss would never break the rule.
After a bowl of minestrone soup, she had a thorough look through the living room, the kitchen and the two bedrooms. She examined the cupboards, used her head lamp to look under the beds. Lifted up the mattress on the upper bunk bed, where Mailin used to sleep. Apart from the ashes in the fire, everything appeared to be as it should be.
She put on two more logs, curled her legs up under her in the corner of the sofa. Let her gaze wander. The antlers on the wall, next to the barometer. They were absolutely huge and must have belonged to a giant of an elk. She was the one who had found them. Down by Feren Lake. In summer they used to take the canoe out and carry it between the waters. Searched for beavers’ dams. Spent the nights out under the open sky. Woke at dawn and crept over to the place where the grouse fought each other in mating duels. All this she could remember; she was twelve and Mailin sixteen. But from the time when she was younger, there were just stray memories and diffuse recollections. When Mailin spoke of things that had happened when they were children, she was always surprised at how little Liss remembered of it.
Don’t you remember how you nearly drowned in Morr Water?
Liss didn’t.
You were in your first year at school and thought you knew how to swim. I had to jump in with my clothes on and rescue you.
Her gaze stopped at the photo albums on the shelf. They were Father’s. At home, there was nothing that had belonged to him, but because it had been his cabin before he gave it to the two of them, he had left the albums here. She took one of them down. Hadn’t flipped through any of them since she was eleven or twelve. There was a certain thrill about it, almost forbidden. Father’s past. There had always been something about that side of the family. Something that was never talked about. Liss could just about remember her grandfather, huge and white bearded. Mailin said he always wore a suit and could imitate all sorts of bird calls. Cuckoos and crows and tits, of course, because you heard them there all the time. But, strangely enough, vultures too, and condors and flamingos. Not easy to say where he’d picked these up from, because he never travelled anywhere and hardly ever watched television.
Her father looked seriously out at her in one of the photos. Tall and pale and long haired, he was standing outside his parents’ house on the edge of the forest. It was pulled down years ago. Now there was an institution for difficult children there. In another photo her father was skiing somewhere in the mountains, wearing an anorak with the hood up. Liss turned to the picture she liked best. She was sitting on his shoulders, holding on to his long brown hair as though she were riding a horse. She felt a prickling in her stomach as she looked at the photo, and suddenly she remembered: he stumbles, and she shrieks as she falls towards the ground, but he recovers just in time. And then he does it again. She sobs for him to stop, put her down, but he realises she wants him to do it again, and then again.
The brown photo album was older. From Father’s childhood. He was helping out on one of the neighbouring farms; Mailin had pointed it out to her once. Father helped to round up the cows in the evening. Or to hang the hay out for drying. His body was thin and angular, like hers.
She
was standing in the doorway. His mother.
You look exactly like her, Liss. Can you see that?
Her father’s voice saying this. She could recall the timbre of it. Maybe they had been sitting here in the cabin, on this sofa. They’re flipping through this album together when he says this about how alike they are, as though it were a secret that she mustn’t tell anyone … The photo of Grandmother was black and white, but Liss was certain that even their colouring was the same. That tall, skinny woman in the blouse and the long skirt, pale and with a strange look in her eyes, half there, half dreaming. The hair pinned up in an old-fashioned way. In one of the other pictures she was standing out on the steps, smiling and looking even more like certain pictures Liss had seen of herself. Everything she knew about her came from Ragnhild. Grandmother had had her own studio where she spent the days painting, although nothing ever came of it apparently. She had left the family when Father was ten years old, but Liss didn’t know where she’d gone. Maybe Father had never known either. According to Ragnhild, she was ill in some way and ended her days in the mental hospital at Gaustad.