Dagny was heading up the path at the end of the cemetery closest to Ullevålsveien when she caught sight of the back view of a man. Or rather she noticed the long, thick, black plait that hung down his back, as well as the fact that he wasn’t wearing a jacket over his checked flannel shirt. He was standing in front of a headstone that Dagny had noticed before, when it had been covered by snow in winter, and she had thought it belonged to someone who had left no one behind, or at least no one who had cared for him or her.
Dagny had the type of appearance that’s easy to forget. A thin, small woman who so far had managed to creep quietly through life. It was already rush hour on Ullevålsveien — though it wasn’t even three o’clock — because the working week had shrunk so much in Norway over the past forty years, to a level that either irritated or impressed foreigners. So she was surprised when the man evidently heard her approaching. And, when he turned around, that he was an old man. His leathery face had furrows so sharp and deep that they seemed cut to the bone. His body looked slender, muscular and young beneath the flannel shirt, but his face and the yellowish whites around his pin-sized pupils and brown irises declared that he must be at least seventy. He was wearing a red bandana, like a Native American, and had a moustache around his thick lips.
“Good afternoon,” he said loudly to drown out the traffic.
“How nice to see someone at this grave,” Dagny replied with a smile. She wasn’t usually so talkative with strangers, but today she was in a good mood, almost a little excited, because she had been asked out for a drink by Gunnar, a new teacher who also taught English.
The man smiled back.
“It’s my son’s,” he said in a deep, rough voice.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” She saw that what was sticking out of the ground in front of the headstone wasn’t a flower, but a feather.
“In the Cherokee tribe they used to lay eagles’ feathers in the coffins of their dead,” the man said, as if he had read her thoughts. “This isn’t an eagle’s, but a buzzard’s.”
“Really? Where did you find it?”
“The buzzard feather? Oslo’s surrounded by wilderness on all sides, didn’t you know?” The man smiled.
“Well, it seems fairly civilised. But the feather is a nice thought, perhaps it will carry your son’s soul to heaven.”
The man shook his head. “Wilderness, no civilisation. My son was murdered by a policeman. Now, my son probably won’t get to heaven no matter how many feathers I give him, but he’s not in a hell as fiery as the one that policeman is going to.” There was no hatred in his voice, just sorrow, as if he felt for the policeman. “And who are you visiting?”
“My mother,” Dagny said, looking at the son’s gravestone. Valentin Gjertsen. There was something vaguely familiar about the name.
“Not a widow, then. Because a b-beautiful woman like you must have married young and have children?”
“Thanks, but neither of those.” She laughed, and a thought ran through her head: a child with her fair curls and Gunnar’s confident smile. That made her smile even wider. “That’s lovely,” she said, pointing at the beautiful, artistic metal object stuck in the ground in front of the headstone. “What does it symbolise?”
He pulled it up and held it out to her. It looked like a slithering snake and ended in a sharp point. “It symbolises death. Is there any m-madness in your family?”
“Er... not that I know of.”
He tugged at one sleeve of his shirt, revealing a wristwatch.
“Quarter past two,” Dagny said.
He smiled as if it were an unnecessary observation, pressed a button on the side of the watch, looked up and added: “Two and a half m-minutes.”
Was he going to time something?
Suddenly he had taken two long strides and was standing right in front of her. He smelled of bonfires.
And as if he could read her thoughts, he said: “I can smell you too. I smelled you when you were walking this way.” His lips were wet now, they curled like eels in a trap when he spoke. “You’re ov-ovulating.”
Dagny regretted stopping. But still she stood there, as if pinned to the spot by his stare.
“If you don’t struggle, it will soon be over,” he whispered.
It was as if she finally managed to pull free, and she spun around to run. But a quick hand had reached under her short jacket, grabbed hold of the belt of her trousers and tugged her back. She let out a short cry and glanced across the deserted cemetery before she was thrown against — and pushed into — the hedge that grew in front of the railings facing Ullevålsveien. Two powerful arms wrapped around her chest, holding her in a vise-like grip. She managed to take a deep breath to scream, but it was as if that was what he had been waiting for, because when she started to make a noise by letting the air out, the arms tightened the vise a bit more and emptied her lungs of air. She saw that he was still holding the curved metal snake in one hand. The other moved to her neck and squeezed. Her vision was already starting to blur, and even though one arm around her chest suddenly let go, she felt her body turn limp and heavy.
This isn’t happening, she thought as the other hand forced its way between her thighs from behind. She felt something sharp against her stomach just below her waistband and heard the tearing sound as the sharp object split her trousers from the belt in the front all the way to the belt loop at the back. This doesn’t happen, not in a cemetery in the middle of the day in the middle of Oslo. It doesn’t happen to me, anyway!
Then the hand around her neck let go, and inside Dagny’s head it sounded like when Mum blew air into the old inflatable mattress, as she desperately inhaled a mixture of Oslo’s spring air and the exhaust fumes of rush hour into her aching lungs. At the same time she felt something sharp pressed against her throat. She caught a glimpse of the curved knife at the bottom of her field of vision and heard his whispering, rough voice close to her ear: