The Sixteen Trees of the Somme

by Lars Mytting

“Letter to the Ephesians,” he mumbled and shuffled the pages back in place. “Been like that since the New Year’s sermon in 1956 when The Word fell to the ground in front of Reidun Ellingsen. She was sitting on the front pew half asleep. She has been devout ever since.”

  “That was probably for the best,” I said.

  “Absolutely. Listen, Edvard, the fact of the matter is, I’ve taken on some summer work. The Faculty of Theology produces people who require holidays these days, you see.”

  He shifted the bible to his other hand. “In my time I worked all year round. True, it was with godless peasants or empty pews, but I was there.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, and knew that I qualified for both lists.

  “And now I have to officiate at the funeral of Sverre Hirifjell.”

  I stared across the fields.

  “Listen, I realise you’re in your own world. But we have to sit down to plan your grandfather’s funeral. And as I said, you need to eat.”

  “Let’s do what has to be done,” I said.

  It sounded so easy when I put it like that. But it had not been easy earlier that day. I had been looking at the wall clock tick away for what must have been fifteen minutes. And at Bestefar, at the Russian bayonet in its sheath on the table, at the aerial photograph above the couch, the photograph of our farm, which was now mine.

  Then I did something I did not expect of myself. I fetched the Leica and with trembling hands I took a photograph of my dead grandfather.

  Where he lay.

  Just as he was.

  His lips forming an expression I had never seen while he lived. His dry eyes. Him, and yet not him. Like a statue of himself and his life.

  Later I rang the authorities and the Landstad funeral parlour and went back downstairs. I stood motionless, holding the Leica, thinking that in there, inside the camera, he was less dead.

  Only then did I notice that the Grundig amplifier was still on. The first act of Wagner’s “Parsifal” was on the record player.

  He had always looked at me strangely when I asked him to play it. I moved the needle to the first groove and the music began to soar, and I stood like that and he lay like that, until I realised that there were people around us.

  I went into the hall and heard them talking. It sounded like the police chief was vying to outdo the doctor in competency. They mentioned a stroke, and then an hour or two passed without me knowing whether or not they had left, until Rannveig Landstad and her son stood there. For three generations the Landstads had run the funeral parlour in Saksum, and because the son was one metre sixty tall and destined for the same fate, he was known as the Mini Digger. I had called him that once at a party, but today, in so far as his errand concerned me, the nickname seemed cheap.

  They just took him. Wearing the clothes he died in. Carried him off on a stretcher down the stone steps into the hearse. I felt they worked too quickly. This was Saksum, there was no risk of another parlour offering better work for a lower price.

  Then they came back inside and spoke of “support” and “the grave occasion”, and they were in no hurry to leave until I was close to my old self again.

  “How do we proceed?” I said.

  “Of course the coffin is already taken care of,” Landstad Junior said, as if keen to demonstrate his standing, but Rannveig glowered at him and he went quiet. “Come by when you are up to it,” she said. “We can take it from there.”

  I looked at the couch on which Bestefar should be lying. “Did he know that he was going to die soon?” I said.

  She knitted her brows.

  “Seeing as he had selected a coffin?” I said.

  Rannveig Landstad was about to say something. Exchanged glances with her son, and for a fraction of a second I thought I detected annoyance. Then she shook her head. “Come down whenever it suits you,” she said. “We have to take one thing at a time.”

  I let it go. They went outside and switched on the cross on the roof of the car. “Wait,” I shouted. I raced into the living room and fetched the Russian bayonet, opened the back door and climbed in with him. The light shone through the pale-yellow curtains and made his face appear healthier, and it was as though he was returning to me. I opened his buckle and eased the sheath with the Russian bayonet onto his belt.

  “You never got so old that you needed help getting dressed,” I said quietly and positioned the buckle in the dark depression in the leather thinking that now, now Bestefar could finally go down to the village without anyone turning their nose up at him for carrying a knife, and then I whispered “Good night, Bestefar”, so quietly that I did not hear it myself.

  *

  All of this boiled inside me and I must have been more in my own world than I realised, because the old priest took me by the shoulder and said loudly: “Now listen: there or there?” and pointed with his bible, first in the direction of the log house, then at the cottage.

  The log house it was. He made straight for the kitchen. “Everything appears to be as before,” he said, and gazed at the corner cupboard with the stuffed wood grouse, at the blue pantry door, at the woodburner. Pulled out a stool and sat down at the end of the dining table. Presumably he had experience of this, of avoiding sitting somewhere that might have been the seat of the deceased.

  “I haven’t had a chance to clear the table,” I said, and began to tidy up.

  “No, wait,” he said and placed his walking stick over my wrist. “That plate there. Was that for Sverre?”

  We do not set a place for the cat, I thought.

  “You made dinner for him yesterday. Which he didn’t get a chance to eat.”

  “I made dinner every day. For both of us.”

  “Listen, Edvard. I understand it was a stroke. That, what should we call it – that incident in town yesterday. With the swastika. Does the police chief know about it?”

  “The police chief in Saksum knows everything,” I said.

  “And? Was there a connection?”

  “Noddy doesn’t know what he’s doing. There’s no pinning the blame on him. People have harassed Bestefar with swastikas before.”

  “Hm,” the priest said. “Sit down and eat, Edvard. Take his plate. Do not let a work of creation go to waste. Particularly not Sverre Hirifjell’s last meal.”

  *

  I reheated Bestefar’s Wiener schnitzel and made coffee. The priest pulled out a handkerchief with thin, violet stripes, blew his nose and said:

  “There has to be music when people come in. But the organist needs to be restrained a little. He’s come straight from the conservatoire. Has no idea that a funeral must have flair.”

  Thallaug planted his cane on the floor and pottered into the living room, towards the music shelf. Put on his glasses and searched through the most worn-looking records. “Bach’s trio sonatas,” he said, bent over, “while people are finding their seats. Then something with a little sizzle.”

  He pulled out an L.P. and ran his index finger along the titles. “Perhaps Buxtehude? We can hardly expect a great crowd, so we might as well choose something that fully captures Sverre’s spirit.”

  He probably hasn’t considered that I have to be there, I thought. I have to endure the music too.

  “What about ‘Maurerische Trauermusik’?” I said. “That’s a good one.”

  “Mozart?” he said from the living room.

  “Yes. Can we use that even though he wasn’t a Freemason?”

  “Absolutely. We’re making progress.”

  *

  “Sverre knew his music,” the priest said while I chewed on the crusty schnitzels. “Hmm, all those unsuccessful organ concerts in Saksum church over the years. Hardly a soul to be seen. We could have put Peter Hurford in the programme and no-one would have known who he was. But your grandfather was a fixture. Always found the place with the best acoustics. Fourth row of pews, close to the nave. Was never seen in church otherwise. In fact he was just as artistic as his brother. Oh yes, a fine piece of music sometimes
brings people closer to God than any priest can manage. We are many who speak of heaven. But few who understand eternity.”

  I fetched the coffee pot. “When did you come to the village? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  He did not answer at first. His eyes were travelling. Searching the log walls, looking out of the window.

  “I arrived in 1927,” he said. “For fifty-five years I have served the congregation in Saksum. I married Sverre and Alma. I baptised, confirmed and – unfortunately – buried your father. I buried your mother beside him. I baptised and confirmed you. But I assume you and your grandfather have let what happened to your parents rest in peace.”

  I looked down at the table. He seemed to be taking stock of me.

  “He had wanted to go otter boarding in the evening,” I said. “I should have tried to wake him.”

  “Edvard. Do not punish yourself with thoughts of what you could have done differently. If you look at life as a whole, most of our conduct is second-rate. We are blind to the goodness people are prepared to offer us. We only half listen when someone tells us something they have dreaded saying. Death does not send us a letter giving three weeks’ notice. It arrives when you are eating raspberry sweets. When you have to go out and mow the lawn. Now it has been here too, helping itself. But you can find comfort in the knowledge that it will be a long time before you see it again. That is why, after the funeral, I would like to have a chat with you about your parents.”

  “About Mamma and Pappa?”

  “Yes. Whenever it’s convenient.”

  “I think I’m too poorly dressed for a serious conversation,” I said. “But we might as well do it now. Then I can take the whole load at once.”

  “No, we should wait.”

  “I won’t cry,” I said. “What did you want to tell me?”

  “Well, how much do you actually know about them?”

  He had eyes that were impossible to lie to. I shrugged.

  “It’s mostly a question of how much you want to know,” the priest said. “Percentage-wise, if we were to use that term, you have seen more death in your family than your average hundred-year-old. When your parents passed away, I couldn’t understand how God could be so cruel. It was straight out of the Old Testament. An act of vengeance. Followed by those strange days when you were missing. Sverre stopped the tractor in the middle of the field and went straight to France. Took the first flight available, which cost a small fortune. I prayed for you six times a day. Only God knew where you were, and I wonder still if He is the only one who knows the truth. Then you were found. And I saw God’s light by the produce counter at the general store. It shone on a young boy and his grandfather. I am telling you this to console you, Edvard. The truth is that you were Sverre Hirifjell’s deliverer.”

  He said it was consolation, but I began to dislike the direction it was taking. It was as if he were speaking to the leader of the parish council about someone else. The combination of loose tongues and kindness which has always given Christians an excuse to dig about in other people’s affairs.

  The priest began to talk about the post-war period. About how my father could not stand being here on the farm, because he blamed his father both for his Christian name and for the resentment he inherited. “Walter got beaten up at school,” the priest said, “because his father had been on the wrong side. He travelled to Oslo and got a job when he was fifteen. During the entire post-war period, Sverre and Alma muddled about here, kept to themselves. Never went into town. They were stared at and slandered in Saksum, even by churchgoers.”

  I realised all of a sudden why the old kitchen garden at Hirifjell had been so big. Why everything was organised to be self-sustaining, with a henhouse and pigsty, a rabbit hutch and stalls for cows, sheep and goats. It was because Alma hated going to the shop. The reason Bestefar always bought expensive things, preferably German, so that he could avoid going into town for repairs. For many years they didn’t even subscribe to the newspaper, Thallaug told me.

  “I know you have always believed that the village held a grudge against Sverre,” the priest said. “But that hasn’t always been the case. Everything changed when he adopted you. For the first time in twenty-five years he began to show his face in the town centre. A stubborn old man taking on a three-year-old. No matter what Sverre Hirifjell might have done during the war years, people’s perception of him changed when they saw the two of you together. People realised that Sverre Hirifjell had never done anything directly bad. He never informed on anyone in the resistance. He had served on the Eastern Front, and his choices of car and tractor were German, but nothing more than that. There was only the occasional incident afterwards. A bit of foul language when bringing the sheep down from pasture, trivial matters, like that fracas when Jan Børgum painted the swastika on his car door.”

  He followed my movements. Studied me as I cut the potatoes, as I reached for the salt shaker. I had a mouthful of peas on my fork, but my hand stopped halfway and our eyes met.

  I did not agree with his reference to “the occasional incident”. It had shaped my life more than the German Mauser hidden away in the loft. For as long as I could remember I had been standing up for my grandfather. It got serious at lower secondary school. The history lesson when Halvorsen said what he said about Bestefar. Rather, he did not say it about him, but the whole class knew that every word applied to my grandfather.

  “The Front Fighters,” Halvorsen said, “they may not have known better. But they betrayed the true government and served the Germans.”

  Halvorsen commuted from the neighbouring village and was my form master from Year Seven. From day one he was so bloody obdurate. Even if there was an opportunity to slip in a “maybe”, he never did. In history, all he ever talked about was war, and the war in particular. Stood there in his grey overall coat, with his disgusting eczema, and when he could have said Front Fighter instead of traitor, he would throw in fifth columnist or collaborator to boot, and then gloating he would add that quisling was a word adopted by other countries after the war.

  He went on like that, his coat pockets white from the chalk on his hands, the bloody chalk he used to write The Truth: Terboven, N.S., the liberation, the purge of traitors, words which were dotted with spittle when he harped on at his worst.

  According to local gossip, Halvorsen’s father had been tortured. Even so. As a teacher he could have delicately slipped in something about people being young, that it had not been easy to choose. That there were plenty of people who, when the country became safe in 1945, were suddenly brave enough to run around with clippers, shaming girls who had made mistakes too by shaving their heads.

  But Norwegian History was as it was. Saksum lower secondary school 7A could not jump from 1940 to 1945 just because I was in the classroom.

  I remember the day it came to a head. I was sitting in the row by the window, the spring sun shining, bare asphalt, the ice about to break on Laugen. Halvorsen rattling on. Gave me a sidelong glance, as if to see whether I was about to crack.

  “The Norwegian Legion. Can anyone explain what that was?”

  I was aware that several people had raised their hands. The clever girls by the door. A few at the very back. But Halvorsen said:

  “Edvard. Are you with us?”

  Us.

  “The Norwegian Legion, Edvard. What do you know about that? It was in the passage.”

  “What do I know about the Norwegian Legion?” I said.

  “Yes, that’s what we are asking.”

  “We?” I said.

  “What do you mean by that?” he said.

  “You’re asking as though everyone in the class is on your side,” I said.

  “Regardless, Edvard. What do you know about the Norwegian Legion?”

  “I know more about it than you do.”

  “You had better give me an answer, Edvard. What’s your opinion on the subject?”

  “That you should have been there yourself, you bloody know-all.”


  Then I dashed out of my chair, trying to keep myself from crying, but I was sobbing by the time I reached the door, and as I ran down the tiled corridor I no longer gave a damn that everyone could hear me.

  *

  But this was not something to whinge to the priest about now. Instead I said something else entirely, without managing to ask myself whether it was appropriate, it slipped around all barriers like a mutt that wants to get past the fence and is just waiting for the opportunity.

  “Did you meet with my mother often?” I said.

  He was not taken aback by the question. Did not crack his fingers or scratch his jaw, said simply, “A few times. When I heard that Walter had met a French girl and moved back to the farm, I came here to introduce myself. Nicole, yes. She didn’t say much. Was shy, as I remember. Spent a long time in the cowshed even though she knew the priest was on the farm. But when finally she arrived, well, I won’t forget her face. She was always looking around her, as though everything was fleeting. A deer on alert. You’re like her. The mouth. The same eyebrows. You have her hair, too.”

  “I don’t even know how they met,” I said.

  “She came here – as a kind of tourist.”

  “To Oslo?”

  “No, I believe they met here. I know that Sverre held Nicole dear. Alma was more guarded, you know. Nicole was – no, we should concentrate on the funeral.”

  “She was what?” I said. “Tell me.”

  He cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. “No, it was nothing really. The first time I met her she could only speak a few words of Norwegian.”

  “And what about later?”

  “Hm?”

  “You said the first time. What about the next time?”

  The priest began to pick at a chip in the coffee cup. I saw his face change. He straightened up and stared fixedly at the table as if he were looking at a bible, one he would consult before a sermon even though he knew exactly what was written inside.

  He said nothing more.

  I wanted to hear about Mamma. But it was a painful and shameful thing to do. To ask someone else what your mother was really like.

  “The funeral,” the priest said. “Have you heard about the coffin?”