Odd how the island landscape changes the moment one leaves the well-trodden paths. I have been aware of this since childhood: that the island is made up of not one but several landscapes, joined so tightly that it is hard to tell where the differences begin. This is why it is impossible to wander by the lake to try to find the paths you once used – inevitably, you get lost. Is this not what happens with the words, with the stories we tell each other? Minna had gone to meet Kaufmann again at the same place by the lake at around six o’clock the following morning. Even though only a few hours had passed since they met earlier, everything seemed different. The ground was dry and soft underneath their feet, the morning air flooded with early sunlight. Kaufmann took her along paths she had never known before or, at least, did not recognise, leading away from the reed beds on the island’s western shores, across the isthmus and into its interior. After walking for a good hour, they reached a meadow. Though it might not have been a meadow, Minna corrected herself later, perhaps just a grassy slope, but it might not have been so much a slope as some kind of clearing, or maybe a thinner part of the forest. I cannot tell how many times I have tried to follow Minna’s vague, contradictory descriptions but it has been just as impossible to find this place as to track the unusual animals Johannes told us about when we were little, stories to make us believe that they had been here before any people had come to live here: animals a little like stoats or white martens. On the other hand, it might have been that I never found the right route into the interior. Viewed from the familiar spaces of the landscape that everyone on the island knows, the terrain to the north of the lake rises and becomes stony and barren. If you walk up high enough, you finally reach a ridge from which you can see all the way to the strait and across to the airport with its two parallel runways for landing and take-off. Perhaps only Kaufmann knew the whereabouts of that secret place. It would not surprise me. Was it just the two of you? I asked at the time. And again, Minna hesitated. Yes, she said, yes, just the two of them, the old man and herself. At another time, she told me that Mr Carsten had come by, briefly, with his dogs. (Walked by, did he, as if it were the most natural thing in the world?) But Kaufmann had been worried that the dogs would be a nuisance and sent the farm manager on his way. Then he had explained that she had better lie down so that she was quite hidden in the grass, and she had hardly done so before the foxes emerged from the forest. Three of them: two males, one female. And, she went on without drawing breath: as if he had called them! Didn’t you get scared? I asked. And she: not just in that moment, no, at first I thought it was almost beautiful. It looked like the three of them doing the moves in a square dance, as the two male foxes tried to keep their distance from each other while both made up to the female. In the end, one of the males gave up and left. The female just feigned indifference and ambled off towards the forest, but the remaining male followed her as if pulled along on a string. And then something weird happened, Minna said. Both animals turned, as if to run away from each other, but neither of them moved an inch. I didn’t get it at first, but the thing was, they were stuck to each other, well, their bums were! So, for a while, they didn’t seem to mind, just stood there, staring in opposite directions. Then the female tried to lie down but she pulled the male with her, and at the same time they did that Kaufmann grabbed me round the waist, really hard, and whispered they’re mating, see, that’s how they go about mating! Then I realised that the poor foxes didn’t do what they wanted but simply acted out what he wanted. He had power over them, like that time when he only had to stamp his feet to make the butterflies come out of the ground. He is an evil person! Do you see, Andreas? she said, and grabbed hold of my hand so firmly that I thought my fingers would break. The aircraft with our mum and dad on board, he was the one who made it crash. What happened afterwards? I asked, mostly to escape from the pain. What happened afterwards? Minna said, and looked hard at me as if I was stupid not to get it. Afterwards, he wanted to do the same with me, of course, the same thing that he had made the foxes do. But there was a stone next to me on the ground and I took it and hit him with it to free myself and I ran away as fast as I could. Couldn’t you have called out to Mr Carsten? I asked. Now Minna bent over me, her face so close to mine that I could smell the hot scent of resin and wild sorrel in her hair. Don’t you get it, Andreas? We have to kill him! You have to kill him. How? I asked. And she: do what I did, find a stone and whack his head with it. Do you promise to do that, Andreas? Will you promise to kill him for my sake? And I said, I promise. I would not have been able to refuse her anything then. Besides, I needed to make her stop shaking me so roughly. And she finally let go of me.
I spent days drifting along the shores of the lake, keeping my eyes open for suitable places where I could carry out my sister’s command, at the same time terribly worried because I suspected that Kaufmann had found out about my plans already. If he could make planes drop out of the sky and wild animals behave like trained monkeys, surely he could read the mind of a lonely child? I somehow came to identify the always glowing lamp on the stable wall with the awesome intelligence that I imagined Kaufmann to have. Without understanding why it suddenly seemed so crucially important to me that I should find out what the old man knew, I was certain that I, too, should meet him face to face at least once. But a boundary had always been recognised, a borderline between the farm up there on the hill and the rest of the populated parts of the island. Where exactly it went was hard to determine, unless you stood at the crossroads where the Mains Farm Road became a private drive. Then a sign told you exactly what was what: Private Road – and next, No Unauthorised Access. But there were innumerable places on the island where you could never be sure about which was the right or the wrong side; grey zones. Besides, it was not the old man that I feared most but his farm manager, Mr Carsten. Nowadays, I have much better insight into what it was about Mr Carsten that frightened me so much. At the time, people hated him but also tended to regard him as a jester, and told jokes about him that made even his fits of rage seem comical. Besides keeping horses for trotting races, Mr Carsten ran a small-scale dog kennel; the dogs would bark and howl from early morning until late at night. He exercised them once or twice a day, going about on a cycle of the kind that was known locally as a Danish bike but which was actually an older type of delivery tricycle. An elderly retriever bitch with reddish fur sat on the front platform. She had one paralysed leg, just like Mr Carsten, and the whole outfit was quite a sight as it zoomed along King’s Road: Mr Carsten pedalling with only one foot, while the bitch sat with her useless leg stretched over the edge like a diva, and the rest of the pack, a dozen or more dogs of different races and sizes, either rushed ahead or followed, panting and barking, or wandered off, distracted by scent trails, sniffing in the grass on the verges. I picked my moment one afternoon, when I had seen Mr Carsten speed down the Mains Farm Road on his tricycle, and turned into the forbidden part of the road to the farm. The yard, with the ancient oak in the middle, was as I had seen it from the NATO villa, but looked if anything even bleaker and more abandoned without the noisy dogs. Mr Carsten had laid out the horse paddock on the far side of the farm manager’s home, but there were no horses in it now. There was actually no trace of any animal apart from the distracted cackling in the hen house. With movements as anxiously restrained as the time Minna and I had inspected the NATO villa, I went up the steps leading to the Kaufmann villa or, to be precise, to the veranda that, beginning at the main entrance, ran the full length of the south side of the house, and putting my feet down as quietly as I could so that no one should hear the wooden boards squeak, I looked through the third window counting from the entrance, saw into the hall, filled with pale sunlight, and beyond it a kitchen or breakfast room where Kaufmann and his wife were seated at a table. This is how I came to see, for the first time, not only the master of the farm but also the mistress and his widow-to-be, Mrs Kaufmann. Before, I had only caught sight of her at a distance on some of the few occasions when she had bee
n walking along the road on errands to the shop or the pharmacy. Then, she had always worn a coat and skirt, and a headscarf. Now, in a white blouse and with her blond hair down, she looked almost shockingly young, if you kept in mind how old she was. Her relaxed posture boosted the impression of youthfulness. She rested both elbows on the table, thoughtfully supporting her chin on the back of one of her hands. Kaufmann, too, looked calm and at ease. He was apparently speaking as he ate, and put his fork down once or twice to emphasise a point and then picked it up again with a formal, almost pedantic gesture. I could not see Helga. She might have been sitting at the far end of the table, behind the back wall of the hall, or she might not have come to the table at all that day. I cannot tell how long I hid on that veranda, incapable of grasping how two people who were so hated by just about everyone on the island could spend their time on something as trivial as eating. And then he suddenly appeared next to me, only a few metres away; I had not heard the front door open and could not even recall if I had seen him get up and leave the table. His expression as he observed me was curious but baffled and at first he did not move, except for his lips, which twitched a little as he mumbled something to himself; then, after a few uncertain steps forward, he asked, who are you? He spoke Norwegian very distinctly, his vowel sounds high-pitched and sharp, and sounded a little old-fashioned, as Minna had said, and his eyes were very light and blue. In that moment, I felt convinced that he could see right through me, past my terrified face and straight into my mind, where vague plans to murder him had been instilled by my sister. And then his stiff features softened and his eyes took on an almost pitying look. You must be Johannes’s boy, he said. So, he recognised me. Wouldn’t you like to come inside for a while? Even if I had wanted to, I was not determined enough to resist him. Instead, I followed him into the bright hall and then into a room that was not the one where those two had been sitting but a large drawing room. Afterwards, the only thing I remembered about it was how marvellously spacious it was compared with the poky nooks and crannies in the Yellow Villa. At one end, a long line of tall windows faced the yard and at the other, sofas and armchairs had been placed well apart around a large stone-built fireplace. A large painting, hung above the fireplace, showed a group of naked men and women sitting or half lying on smooth seaside rocks. Below them, on the beach, a St John’s Eve bonfire sent a mighty pillar of smoke straight up into the ominously darkened sky, while the reflections of the flames that licked the damp stones made the naked bodies glow with a matte, reddish sheen. Look, have some of this! I had not noticed him go out but now he was back, holding something wrapped in a red-and-white checked napkin. It was a piece of apple cake. Its moist filling stuck between his fingers as he showed it to me. At first, I didn’t accept the piece of cake, but he insisted and at the same time managed somehow to pilot me through the door and back out into the yard. I walked away obediently, holding the cake as I had been told, but there was a roaring noise inside me, as if the huge St John’s bonfire was in my head, and I heard Minna say, her voice seemingly part of the sound of the fire, he’s trying to poison you, that’s why. When I had reached the Mains Farm Road proper and felt sure no one could see me, I threw the linen napkin with the cake inside as far as I could, and watched the cloth as it flapped in a beam of sunlight before vanishing into the already yellowing ears of wheat. It pleased me that no one would see the cloth until the autumn ploughing, or perhaps in the spring, and by then, Kaufmann would be dead.
Minna spent most of her time with the lads, as the island folk used to call the older boys. A gang used to meet up on the sports ground or the supermarket parking lot, turning up on the motorbikes and home-built scooters they used to get around the island. In the evenings, the gang set out with Minna riding pillion and would drive past the Yellow Villa to annoy Johannes. Her hair, now with new bright violet and flame-red streaks, was flying in the wind. I would watch from my window, my eyes following her. She never glanced my way, or looked at anyone or anything. Not even up towards the farm, where the outside light shone as ever, throughout the bleak, blanched summer nights, as if it could not have enough of its solitary staring into the distance. Minna smoked cigarettes that she rolled herself from Tiedemann’s tobacco and Rizla papers and treated Johannes worse and worse. She called him an old wanker and stole booze off him, which probably explains why the lads tolerated her.
Most of them were quite a lot older than her and surely must have found her trying with her incessant shrieking. She was their mascot, they bounced her between them, took turns to feel her up or tease her, lit her fags and urged her to drink straight from the bottle. Often, they would simply take no notice of her, but it only made her play the fool even more. I could see how badly their indifference hurt her: the emptiness behind her eyes, the persistent, silly-excited blush on her cheeks. And I suffered, too, as I kept watch over her. Even then, I could not stop myself from following her. I took care to stay a few hundred metres away so that she would not spot me unless she was looking out for me. In any case, I believe that she knew exactly where I was all the time. They say that the connection between siblings can develop into something a little like a sixth sense. Each one is always intuitively aware of where the other one is and what he or she is doing, even when neither can express this certainty in words or even recognises that it exists. This was definitely how it was with us two. During this period, Minna went out with a boy called Morten, who was, more or less, her steady boyfriend. He worked in the supermarket and that was where they met after closing time, in places where no one would see what they got up to; mostly, they went to the parking lot or a loading platform at the back of the shop. The platform jutted out close to the steep rock face that reached straight down into the fjord. There would always be a pair of large green waste bins furthest out and, between the bins, stacks of flattened and bundled cardboard boxes. I thought it would be a smart move to sneak up on them by following the lower route, a narrow, cobbled path past the jetty where the boats were moored. When I had got to the end of the path below the bridge, I could see them up at the top of the rock. To be more precise: at first, Morten was the only one I saw, standing with his pants down, partly inside a cleft in the rock. I knew it was Morten because his black padded bomber jacket was instantly recognisable: it said (S)CREW on the back in big red capitals. Below the hem of the jacket, the cheeks of his butt glowed in the dusk and even though they were bumping up and down, I still did not understand what he was doing. I thought he was pissing and had just started the climb to the top, with some insulting remark at the ready, when I caught sight of the legs that clung to his hips like shafts. I saw Minna’s face. Her head had slipped a little off the piece of cardboard that they had been careful enough to spread out on the floor of the cleft, and then she caught sight of me and smiled her rubber-band smile, a kind of stretched-out grimace. I am not sure if it was directed at me or if she was just grinning in general. Not that I hung around for long enough to find out. I simply turned round and fled. Just a few days later, Morten’s motorbike unexpectedly swung into the drive to the Yellow Villa and Minna jumped off to demand that Johannes should allow Morten to stay overnight with her. Johannes stood in the doorway to the cellar, looking jovial and smiling as usual, but no one could doubt that this time he was not going to give in. He cared hardly at all for whatever Minna was up to when she was out of the house (to this day, I really cannot understand how he could be so unconcerned), but if she thought she could drag her misery across the thresh-old of his house, she had another think coming. Minna tried every trick in the book: she burst into tears, appealed to his good will, to his broadmindedness, and showered him with abuse. Eventually Morten lost patience, started his bike and drove off. With a shrill scream, Minna leapt at Johannes, hit and kicked him, and when he tried to quieten her down, she grabbed the garden rake that was leaning against the wall of the garage, struck his head and neck with it and then went for the Dauphine that was parked in front of the garage entrance, going first for the windscr
een, then the rest of the windows, and the front and rear lamps, and when he tried in desperation to stop her from destroying everything, she chased him off with the rake that by now glittered with splintered glass. I saw it all from the window in my room, suddenly feeling that everyone on the island must be aware that Minna was going berserk. I locked the door and stayed in my room for the next night and day. Something like a week later, she came to see me and was full of tearful compassion. You’re not like the others, Andreas, she said in a smarmy voice that might have been all right for one of the lads or anyone else but not for me. Tell me, are you still following me around to protect me? Are you my guard? She lay down next to me and locked her fingers into mine the way she used to, raised my hand to her lips and blew on the tips of my fingers. Aren’t you too weak? she said, and bit my knuckles until it hurt, so I forced myself to pull my hand from her grip. Too weak for what, against whom? I asked, expecting once more to hear her name the person she wanted me to kill. I might have made my hands into fists, in terror or in anticipation, because she whispered, shu-ssh, and pulled the blanket over us both. She stayed there, lying next to me, still and staring at the ceiling, as she often did for hours on end. It used to make me feel safe and I might even fall asleep with my head in her armpit. Only this time nothing was the way it used to be. Minna? I said. She sat up, with her back leaning against the wall, and began rolling a cigarette with restless hands. Do you know what? I had a letter from Mum the other day, she said. Mum wrote that we can come to live with them now. In America. This made me angry and I turned away from her. Why wouldn’t she stop saying this kind of thing, when she knew that I didn’t believe any of it? Shusssh! she said, and patted my back as if I were a small child and, when I was facing her again, she pressed her lips against mine and blew cigarette smoke straight into my mouth. Choking, I sat up straight and started coughing. Minna laughed and slapped my back, but the next second she inhaled deeply and immediately blew more smoke into my mouth, and because I was still coughing, I could not stop myself from drawing the pungent smoke deep into my lungs. I felt dizzy, and next her warm, wet tongue slipped in between my lips. Baby bro, she mumbled contentedly, and nibbled at one of my earlobes. You’re a big boy now. I felt her hand sneaking in under my pyjamas to caress my penis. It was small and limp, and, such a tiny prick, she said. There was no escape to be had by lying on my front, her hand found its way in under, pulling and relaxing alternately until my face was hot and flushed. I let her carry on since this was clearly a punishment that I had to endure because I had been spying on her and Morten. Then, a little later, I realised that she had begun to think of something else. She was twisting and tugging at my still limp cock, as if fiddling with the limbs of a doll, but gave up in the end, slumped back onto the bed and gazed at me, her eyes clear and wide open. Do you want to come along with me and Morten next time? she asked. Morten says it is all right with him. We’re going for a drive on his bike. If you like, we could meet up behind the shop at eight tomorrow night. There was something about the too affable look on her face that should have warned me of a trap. I did not creep along the beach path round the back this time, but walked all the way along King’s Road, head held high, as if I had a proper errand like everybody else. Minna and Morten were waiting for me on the loading platform, and the motorbike was parked there, just as we had agreed. They were smiling, Morten was smoking a cigarette, and Minna waved as she called my name. A lot of flattened cardboard boxes had been piled up on the tarmac in front of them. I couldn’t think what they were for or why there was such an odd smell everywhere but, whatever, they had been waiting for me and I had no time to stop and think. Smiling idiotically, I started running towards them. Morten had got the bike engine running already and was settled behind the handlebars, and Minna was about to climb up behind him. Hurry up, Andreas! she shouted. In that instant, Morten threw his glowing fag on the cardboard, and the petrol it had been soaked in caught fire and flared up all around me. The last I saw of them was their crouched bodies as Morten drove his bike through the fire. Then, as they turned into King’s Road, the word on the back of his jacket, (S)CREW, went out of sight and the flames rose around me like a huge wall. The heat was so intense it scorched my face and hands. Smoke, humiliation and fear made my eyes fill with tears. The flames died down when the cardboard had been reduced to ashes, but something else was still on fire, something thick and oily, with a smell that was sharp and stale at the same time. I do not remember any more after that, except that a person who was not Johannes walked me back to the Yellow Villa. That night, I was awake, alone in my bed and waiting for Minna to come in and lie down beside me, take my hand and rub my knuckles against her cheek to show that she was sorry and regretted what she had done. But Minna did not come. Later, my head was swimming again and I ran to the toilet to vomit it all up: the black, stinging smoke and the taste of her mouth against mine and the smell of her moist skin, and the more I vomited, the more clearly I understood that throwing up would never rid me of the things I wanted to get out of my system. Like the aviation fuel dumped on the island, the poison that had filtered into everyone’s wells, the herbicides, the forest killer substances that make up Agent Orange. You can never free yourself of what has become part of your body.
The Tempest Page 8