By the time he reached the forest chapel at Nordmarka, it had clouded over. An elderly couple were sitting on a bench by the wall with a flask and a packed lunch. Both were wearing worn anoraks, the man in a peaked blue skiing cap. Axel said hello, unleashing in response a cascade of observations about the weather, the silence in the forest, how to keep your health. He said no thanks to an offer of coffee and a chocolate biscuit, but stood around chatting for a while. The old couple gave him a feeling of having as much time as he could want. The man put down the thermos and laid his hand over his wife’s. She had clear grey eyes and laughed with a chuckling sound, like a little stream. Him and Bie sitting like that thirty years from now, he tried to think, but couldn’t quite manage it.
He jumped back on to his bike and peered northwards. The clouds were massing. He’d intended to go all the way to Kikut, but he wasn’t dressed for rain. Another cyclist came riding up the hill. He was wearing sunglasses and nodded in greeting as he sped by. He was at least ten years younger than Axel, in shiny cycling shorts and a skin-tight top, and for an instant Axel was tempted to get after him and make a race of it, but he dismissed the thought.
On a whim, near Blankvann, he wheeled the bike off the track, locked it and began jogging along a narrow path. Not so fast that he couldn’t savour the forest around him. Listen to Skamndros, he’s singing,Marlen used to exclaim every time they passed a brook in the forest. He was the one who had told her about the Greek river god, and Marlen remembered everything that was said to her. He stopped by a small tarn. One summer, many years ago, he’d brought Bie up here. It was before Marlen was born. They’d bathed. Later, he had lain her down in the heather. She’d complained about the twigs sticking into her, but he’d made her forget about that. Afterwards she called him Pan, and said how dangerous it was to go out into the forest with him. It was less than a year before Marlen’s birth, because Bie always claimed that she had been conceived that time in the heather.
He pulled off his cycling vest and plunged into the tarn. Convinced himself that the water was warm for the time of year. He dived under and swam as far as he could. He and Brede had always competed to see who could stay underwater the longest. He’d held out once for almost three minutes. It was on the beach at Oksval. Brede stayed down longer. Four minutes. That was when Axel got scared. He started shouting, waving his arms. Someone ran to fetch the grown-ups. They found Brede over by the jetty, managed to drag him ashore, pumped the water out of him, blew life back into him. Afterwards he could remember nothing; everything just vanished, he said. Several times that summer the brightness in Brede’s eyes would suddenly be gone, and for a few seconds at a time he couldn’t answer, couldn’t hear. Afterwards he would shake his head in confusion, a look of fear on his face. Someone should have realised what was the matter with him, but no one asked. That was the same summer as the thing with Balder, when Brede was sent away.
Axel dried himself off with his cycling jacket, threw his clothes on and carried on running to get his body warmth back. He came across a little trail that led off the path and in behind a thicket. Boot prints in the wet ground heading into the trees. Disappearing by a mossy hillock. He climbed up, hopped down on the other side. Almost fell into a pile of branches. He caught a glimpse of black plastic underneath. A boulder had been placed in front of what looked like an opening. He rolled it to one side, pulled away the plastic and peered inside. Light seeped down through the spruce branches that formed the roof of a small shelter, perhaps two metres in length. On a cardboard box that had once held bananas were a paraffin lamp and two candles waxed on to flat stones. Beside the box he glimpsed a bag and some empty bottles. He couldn’t resist and crept further in. The bag contained bread, stale but not mouldy. The bottles smelt of cheap alcohol. In one corner were a rolled-up sleeping bag and two woollen blankets. A book had been tucked beneath them. As he was wriggling out backwards, he pulled it out and looked at it in the grey light of day. It was no more than a pamphlet: Dhammapada was the title. A Buddhist text, according to the back cover. The pages were yellowed and stained. Here and there a sentence had been underlined, at one point in red: He who in his youth has not lived in harmony with himself, and who has not gathered life’s real treasures, in later years is like the long-legged old herons that stand sadly by a marshy swamp without fish.
A movement across his neck, like a breath of wind. He turned, feeling unease at having invaded someone else’s life, whoever it might be that was living here. He put the book back where he’d found it, climbed back up the hillock and ran on as hard as he could along the track, felt the warmth creeping back into his body.
Not until he had unlocked his bike and was wheeling it back down to the path did he notice that the rear tyre was flat. He checked the valve. It seemed in order. He got out the pump. When he squeezed the tyre a couple of minutes later, it was still flat.
Approaching Ullevålseter, he saw a woman coming towards him, striding energetically along with walking poles in each hand. There was something familiar about the little figure and the determined face, and Axel greeted her as she passed.
She stopped.
– Is that you? she said.
He tried to remember where he’d seen her before.
– So you’re out keeping fit? She looked at the bicycle. – And you’ve had a puncture.
He recognised the voice. Must have spoken to her on the phone.
– Looks like it, he agreed.
– Sorry I can’t help you, she said.
– No, why would you be carrying a puncture repair kit around with you?
She laughed.
– Ask at Ullevålseter, maybe they have something there.
He was about to move on.
– Actually, I was going to ring you, she said. – Funny meeting you of all people. A referral you sent in the other day. An elderly man with problems after a back operation.
The physiotherapist. She was the physiotherapist at the clinic in Majorstua. Any moment now and he’d recall her name. Bie used to go to her.
– I doubt if I can help him much when he’s in such pain. But we can talk about it later.
He didn’t protest. Rain had begun drizzling from the low cloud, and soon it would be dark. It wasn’t every woman who would head off into the forest in the dark, he thought. Bie didn’t like walking in the forest alone even in daylight.
– Safe journey home, she chirruped, furrowing her brow sympathetically as she pointed with her stick at the punctured tyre.
10
Friday 28 September
THE EVENING HAD turned cold, but Axel remained sitting on the terrace with the living-room door ajar behind him. He’d made a fire and put on a pullover. It was now past eleven and he had just gone in to Marlen, who had woken up and called for him. She’d been dreaming that the dead twin had been following her. Before going to bed, she’d come out to see him on the terrace. They’d sat for a while looking at the night sky together, and Axel had told her about the Ethiopian queen Cassiopeia. When she refused to go to bed until he told her one more story, he’d shown her the Twins, Castor and Pollux. He’d told her how strong and brave they were. No one could best Castor when it came to riding and taming horses, nor Pollux in a bare-fist fight. But most of all they were famed for being true to each other. They loved each other more than any other brothers loved, and nothing could part them. Nothing except death. Because the sad thing was that Pollux was the son of the god Zeus and immortal, while Castor was the son of an earthly king. But weren’t they twins? Marlen protested. They couldn’t have different fathers, could they? In the world of fairy tales such things are possible, Axel smiled. When Castor was killed in a fight, he had to go to the underworld. Pollux begged Zeus to make him mortal too, so that he too could go down to the kingdom of the dead and be with his beloved brother. But not even Zeus could arrange that. If you’re immortal, you’re immortal. Then he had an idea, and he fixed things so that the brothers could be together after all. Every other day Pollux could go to the realm of the dead and meet his twin brother, and the other days they could be together up in the sky.