by Roy Jacobsen
“But I’ve already told you all this…”
Markus paused, gave a forlorn smile and rubbed some snow on Delila’s belly to stop her coat being singed by the flames, she growled quietly and licked his hands, and he said: “It’s not cold enough here, it never gets cold enough here, that’s why we don’t know what ice is, Robert, despite all this snow. But now I’ve been told by my friend Jaromil that Peter declined the offer, he would not desert his Führer and Fatherland for the ‘Red nightmare’, he would sooner perish. And he did, ironically enough not of cold or hunger, like most of the others, but at the hands of a bunch of Romanian fellow prisoners, as there was war in the camps too, and there was me, waiting for this news all these years, receiving mountains of letters from people who believe they know something, and then it is Jaromil who convinces me, not that it came as a shock, it is more than ten years since the last poor wretches came home, only 5,000 survived, and I had resigned myself to the fact that he wasn’t alive, but this, the fact that he wasn’t able to turn his back on Hitler, even beneath the very portico of death, even when his own commanding officer did, I just can’t comprehend that.”
“But you’ve never trusted this Jaromil before,” Robert said. “Why now?”
Markus sprinkled more snow over Delila’s wet belly, watched the steam rising from her coat and smiled a faraway smile:
“He’s given me the names of all of his five children, and his grandchildren too, as well as all their birthdays, maybe to exult, maybe he expects a present or he just wants me to send them a thought on May 5, February 12, October 10 …or else it might be a ritual, I don’t understand the Cossacks, you don’t know where you are with them, I only know it’s him, this fool Jaromil, and that he is telling the truth, whether he realises it or not.”
Robert had found some twigs and laid them on the fire, then he sat down and began to think about the diary, whether he would ever read it, and now he knew, he wasn’t going to read it, not until the time came when whatever was in it would no longer have any significance, he was going to keep it, have it and own it but not read it, she would not get any apology from him, or understanding, this was a fitting revenge for her well-intentioned deceptions, for who of us can understand our parents no matter how much we read, and who isn’t a fictional character when it comes down to it, war is not only the mother of all things, an explosion that sends its shrapnel in all directions, but also the whining stepfather of rootless pariahs, and who am I, other than a nomad in this country, driven here by love and not war, but afflicted all the same by these resurgent faces and improbable stories and incapable of forgetting them, for everyone has a memory which may not be reliable but which is almost indistinguishable from a dream that one day it must be possible to …No, perhaps not, these are uncertain times, they always have been.
“We’d better go back,” I hear myself saying. “You’ve got guests.”
“What?” Markus says distractedly, lifting his head and staring at the massive swaying forest of beech trees, which is snow-covered on the windward side and as black as a raven on the other.
“Léon and Father Rampart, and someone called Beber. Nella thinks you’ve been driven mad by the Russian cross.”
But then Markus says something I definitely don’t understand:
“One belief is as good as another. It’s got nothing to do with the cross, or Peter, but last week I had my request to be buried in the memorial cemetery at Daleiden rejected. They don’t bury soldiers any longer in German soil, especially not Belgians, they give them everlasting life, the dead can go wherever they like, and I’m not going back with you. This Beber only wants to hear about his father, and yet he doesn’t, and Father Rampart is asleep, or he is drinking my wine, good for him.”
“We’d better stay here then.”
“Yes. Now it’s beginning to snow again. It’s coming down thick.”
“Can you see anything?”
ROY JACOBSEN is one of the most celebrated and influential contemporary writers in Norway. Child Wonder was awarded the Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize and The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles was shortlisted for the International Dublin IMPAC Literary Award.
DON BARTLETT is the acclaimed translator of books by Gaute Heivoll, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Jo Nesbø, and Per Petterson.
DON SHAW is a teacher of Danish and the author of the standard Danish-Thai/Thai-Danish dictionaries.
The Lannan Translation Series
Funding the translation and publication of exceptional literary works
The Scattered Papers of Penelope by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, edited and translated from the Greek by Karen Van Dyck
The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah, translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan
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The Lovers of Algeria by Anouar Benmalek, translated from the French by Joanna Kilmartin
The Star of Algiers by Aziz Chouaki, translated from the French by Ros Schwartz and Lulu Norman
Before I Burn by Gaute Heivoll, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett
Borders by Roy Jacobsen, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw
Child Wonder by Roy Jacobsen, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett with Don Shaw
A House at the Edge of Tears by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker
Nettles by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker
She Says by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker
Almost Everything Very Fast by Christopher Kloeble, translated from the German by Aaron Kerner
A Wake for the Living by Radmila Lazic, translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic
Empty Chairs by Liu Xia, translated from the Chinese by Ming Di and Jennifer Stern
June Fourth Elegies by Liu Xiaobo, translated from the Chinese by Jeffrey Yang
No Shelter by Pura López-Colomé, translated from the Spanish by Forrest Gander
The Life of an Unknown Man by Andrei Makine, translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan
New European Poets, edited by Wayne Miller and Kevin Prufer
Look There by Agi Mishol, translated from the Hebrew by Lisa Katz
Karate Chop by Dorthe Nors, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken
Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett
I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund with Per Petterson
I Refuse by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born
To Siberia by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born
Tesla: A Portrait with Masks by Vladimir Pištalo, translated from the Serbian by John Jeffries and Bogdan Rakić
In Times of Fading Light by Eugen Ruge, translated from the German by Anthea Bell
Shyness and Dignity by Dag Solstad, translated from the Norwegian by Sverre Lyngstad
Meanwhile Take My Hand by Kirmen Uribe, translated from the Basque by Elizabeth Macklin
Without an Alphabet, Without a Face by Saadi Youssef, translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
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