Thomas Enger
Burned
My life, I promise you with all my heart to belong to you until death extinguishes my burning passion for you and for joy.
Prologue
September 2007
He thinks it’s dark all around him, but he can’t be sure. He can’t seem to open his eyes. Is the ground cold? Or wet?
He thinks it might be raining. Something touches his face. Early snow? The first snow?
Jonas loves the snow.
Jonas.
Shrivelled carrots in snowmen’s faces, clumps of grass and earth. No, not now. Frosty the Snowman, it can’t be you. Can it?
He tries to lift his right arm, but it won’t move. Hands. Does he still have them? His thumb twitches.
Or, at least, he thinks it does.
His skin is crisp and delicate like snowflakes. Flames everywhere. So hot. His face slides down like batter on a sizzling frying pan.
Jonas loves pancakes.
Jonas.
The ground is shaking. Voices. Silence. Wonderful silence. Protect me, please. You, who are watching me.
It’ll be all right. Don’t be scared. I’ll take care of you.
The laughter fades. He is out of breath. Hold my hand, hold it tight.
But where are you?
There. There you are. We were here. You and I.
Jonas loves that there is a ‘you and I’.
Jonas.
Horizons. Blizzard rain on an infinite blue surface. A plop breaks the surface, line and bait sink.
Cold wood beneath his feet. His eyes are still stuck together.
It’ll be all right. Don’t be scared. I’ll take care of you.
He feels the balcony under his feet. He has a firm foothold.
Or so he thinks.
Empty hands. Where are you? Rewind, please — please rewind.
A wall of darkness. Everything is reduced to darkness. Siren sounds approach.
He manages to open one eye. It’s not snow. It’s not rain. There is only darkness.
He has never seen darkness before. Never really seen it, never seen what the darkness can conceal.
But he sees it now.
Jonas was scared of the dark.
He loves Jonas.
Jonas.
Chapter 1
June 2009
Her blonde curls are soaked in blood.
The ground has opened up and tried to swallow her. Only her head and torso are visible. Her rigid body is propped up by the damp earth; she looks like a single, long-stemmed red rose. Blood has trickled down her back in thin, elongated lines, like tears on a melancholic cheek. Her naked back resembles an abstract painting.
He takes hesitant steps inside the tent, glancing from side to side. Turn around, he tells himself. This has nothing to do with you. Just turn around, go back outside, go home, and forget what you’ve seen. But he can’t. How can he?
‘H-hallo?’
Only the swishing branches of the trees reply. He takes a few more steps. The air is suffocating and clammy. The smell reminds him of something. But what?
The tent wasn’t there yesterday. To someone like him, who walks his dog every day on Ekeberg Common, the sight of the large white tent was irresistible. The strange location. He just had to look inside.
If only he could have stopped himself.
Her hand isn’t attached. It’s lying, severed, next to her arm as though it has come undone at her wrist. Her head slumps towards one shoulder. He looks at them again, the blonde curls. Random patches of matted red hair make it look like a wig.
He edges up to the young woman, but stops abruptly, hyperventilating to the point where his breathing stops. His stomach muscles knot and prepare to expel the coffee and banana he had for breakfast, but he suppresses the reflex. He backs away, carefully, blinking, before he takes another look at her.
One eye is dangling from its socket. Her nose is squashed flat and seems to have disappeared into her skull. Her jaw is dented and covered with purple bruises and cuts. Thick black blood has gushed from a hole in her forehead, down into her eyes and across the bridge of what remains of her nose. One tooth hangs from a thread of coagulated blood inside her lower lip. Several teeth are scattered in the grass in front of the woman who once had a face.
Not any more.
The last thing Thorbjorn Skagestad remembers, before staggering out of the tent, is the nail varnish on her fingers. Blood red.
Just like the heavy stones lying around her.
*
Henning Juul doesn’t know why he sits here. In this particular spot. The crude seating, let into the hillside, is hard. Rough and raw. Painful. And yet he always sits here. In the exact same spot. Deadly nightshade grows between the seating which slopes up towards D?lenenga Club House. Bumblebees buzz eagerly around the poisonous berries. The planks are damp. He can feel it in his backside. He should probably change his trousers when he gets home, but he knows he won’t bother.
Henning used to come here to smoke. He no longer smokes. Nothing to do with good health or common sense. His mother has smoker’s lung, but that’s not what stops him. He wishes desperately he could smoke. Slim white friends, always happy to see you, though they never stay for long, sadly. But he can’t, he just can’t.
There are people around, but nobody sits next to him. A soccer mum down by the artificial turf looks up at him. She quickly averts her eyes. He is used to people looking at him while pretending they aren’t. He knows they wonder who he is, what has happened to him and why he sits there. But no one ever asks. No one dares.
He doesn’t blame them.
*
He gets up to leave when the sun starts to go down. He is dragging one leg. The doctors have told him he should try to walk as naturally as possible, but he can’t manage it. It hurts too much. Or perhaps it doesn’t hurt enough.
He knows what pain is.
He shuffles to Birkelunden Park, past the recently restored pavilion with its new roof. A gull cries out. There are plenty of gulls in Birkelunden Park. He hates gulls. But he likes the park.
Still limping, he passes horizontal lovers, naked midriffs, foaming cans of beer and wafts of smoke from disposable barbecues burning themselves out. An old man frowns in concentration before throwing a metal ball towards a cluster of other metal balls on the gravel where, for once, children have left the bronze statue of a horse alone. The man misses. He only ever misses.
You and I, Henning thinks, we’ve a lot in common.
The first drop of rain falls as he turns into Seilduksgate. A few steps later, he leaves behind the bustle of Grunerlokka. He doesn’t like noise. He doesn’t like Chelsea Football Club or traffic wardens either, but there is not a lot he can do about it. There are plenty of traffic wardens in Seilduksgate. He doesn’t know if any of them supports Chelsea. But Seilduksgate is his street.
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?