Yours Until Death

by Gunnar Staalesen

  He nodded against my chest. I heard a long sniff.

  ‘Do you know where the others are?’

  He shook his head. ‘Th-they left a long t-time ago,’ he said. Voice still blurry with tears.

  I found a clean handkerchief and wiped his cheeks. Then I said cheerfully, ‘Let’s go home, okay?’ I put my arm around his shoulders, pushed the sack aside, and we walked out.

  They stood in a semicircle in front of the door. Roar froze. I quickly shoved him behind me and back into the doorway.

  I made a fast count. Five. Two less than last time. Joker. The tall skinny one. Tasse. Pimple Face. And a blond I couldn’t remember seeing.

  Five of them. One of me.

  This time Joker didn’t let me start a conversation. His voice was tense. ‘Get him, you guys!’

  He himself just stood there with his arms folded. Sneering. He wasn’t about to dirty his hands, not without being a hundred per cent sure of winning. That cut it down to four. I couldn’t take Tasse seriously.

  I had to concentrate on the other three. Two were already moving. I parried the tall one’s blow with my left arm and shoved the blond with my right shoulder. Kicked the tall one’s leg. Not hard enough. Pimple Face managed to land a hard blow to my chest, and I staggered back. Crashed against the wall of the hut.

  I should have taken Tasse seriously. He doubled up and charged, his head down. Butted me in the stomach and knocked the wind out of me. Suddenly the forest wasn’t black. It was white, blindingly white. Then it was dark again. Tasse was still within reach. So I planted my knee in his face while I tried to sweep away those dancing red-gold specks from the heaving, hard-edged darkness.

  I heard Roar whistle and got it on both sides. A fist connected with my mouth. Upper lip went numb. A boot hit the inside of my thigh. High enough to do some damage, too low to cripple me.

  I clenched my teeth. Tried to separate the shadows from the darkness. Saw the outlines of a face on my left and planted my left elbow, and then my right fist. Bingo! I heard somebody lurch backwards and a long string of curses.

  Then somebody tried for a clinch, but I wasn’t in the mood to be hugged, so I kneed him in the groin. When he bent over, I laced my hands together and rabbit-punched him. He fell to the ground and stayed there. Then somebody else hit me in the back of the head.

  The stars exploded. I was just about to pass out, but I took a deep breath, turned and struck out blindly. Connected with a broad chest. Heard a yelp. A fist rammed my chin. I swung again. Lower. This time I hit him in the stomach. My fist sank into the flab. I shoved him aside with my left arm. Then I swung around again, my back to the wall.

  Tasse was in the distance, holding a handkerchief to his nose. Tears streamed from his eyes but he didn’t make a sound. The tall one propped up a tree with one arm. One hand covered an eye while the other glared at me. The blond was on the ground. I could see he was breathing, but he showed no signs of getting up. Pimple Face danced a peculiar solo through the trees to the left. He mumbled, and held one shoulder as if he needed it to hang on to. Finally he sank to the ground. Sat there and stared upwards, searching for invisible stars.

  Joker stared at me. His eyes seemed colourless. But the sneer was still there and he had a switchblade in his right hand. Still, he didn’t really look as if he wanted to dance.

  I looked for Roar. He was still in the doorway. Worry and joy in his face. ‘Come on, Roar. Let’s go,’ I said. But I didn’t hug him this time. I wanted both hands free.

  Then I turned to Joker. ‘Remember me? Veum’s the name. Let me tell you something. If I ever hear that you’ve bothered this family again …’ I turned Roar into this family with a wave of my hand. ‘If I hear one word, I’ll be back. And next time I won’t fool around with your flabby little handmaidens. I’ll come for you. And I’ll fold you up like a pocket-knife. And I’ll pound you up against every tree in this forest so long and so hard you won’t be able to call your mummy afterwards. Got it?’

  He bared his teeth, jerked his knife at me, but kept his distance.

  ‘And if you think a little switchblade scares me, think again. They called me Sword Swallower when I was at sea. So you’re welcome to all the knives in your mummy’s kitchen drawer. Be my guest. I’ll take you regardless, and you’ll be sorry you ever got out of bed that day.’

  I’d never sounded tougher. But I was tough. There were four proofs of it standing and sitting and lying around. Joker must have thought they were convincing because he still showed no signs of wanting to dance.

  I left him there in the woods with his knife in his hand and that sneer on his face. Maybe he was one of those who cut their way out of their mother and spit in the midwife’s face. Some people are like that. Some get that way. Joker was like that, and that was enough for me. I didn’t need to know any more. Silently I took Roar home to his mother.

  10

  I didn’t realise how weak I was until we were in the lift. I had to brace myself against the wall, and I was sweating from head to foot. It seemed as if we’d never arrive. It was as if the lift had escaped from its shaft and was on its way to outer space, as if Roar and I were the last two humans who’d been launched towards the future, the last survivors of a dead civilisation. Then the lift stopped and we got out.

  She’d seen us from the window and was waiting by the lift door. She stared at my face and then she knelt and hugged Roar. He put his arms around her neck and began crying again. Her eyes were wet, too, her face soft and blurry.

  After a while I coughed, and she looked at me. ‘You’re bleeding,’ she said. She stood up with Roar in her arms. ‘Come on, let’s go in,’ she said. She carried Roar along the balcony and into the flat. I followed. Unsteadily.

  I peeked warily in the mirror in the entrance hall. The way a person looks into a room he hasn’t been invited into. Saw a man whom I’d once known. He was pale with dishevelled hair and dirty streaks on his face. It bled when he tried to smile so he stopped.

  She was still busy with Roar, but she came and stood beside me and looked in the mirror at my bruises. ‘What happened?’ she said.

  ‘I was a little outnumbered,’ I said, ‘but I’d say most of them are in worse shape than I am.’ I smiled.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she said. ‘It tears your lip. Come out here.’

  She took my arm and led me to the bathroom. It was like walking into the sun. I was dazzled by the chalk-white light.

  It was a small room, shiny and white, and the light in the ceiling was unusually strong. You couldn’t hide the smallest blemish in here. Her skin must be very beautiful if she had the courage to stand this light.

  She filled the white porcelain basin and tilted my face upward. Then she washed it with a blue cloth as carefully as you would bathe a newborn baby. I could feel the pain easing and the weakness running off me like water.

  ‘Does it help?’ she said.

  I squinted at her through swollen eyelids and nodded. Her eyes were even bluer in this strong light. It was as if she attracted it to her. Her face seemed to fill the whole room. I could see the tiny fine veins in her nostrils, the blonde almost transparent down on her upper lip, the narrow newly etched lines in her forehead and around her eyes. And her eyes were blue, so blue you almost expected birds to fly out of them.

  Roar stood in the doorway and watched. He’d recovered now. His voice was eager. ‘You should have seen Varg going for them, Mum! He beat them up so they could hardly walk afterwards. And that Joker, he looked like – he looked like he’d wet himself. Varg really fixed them.’

  I squinted at him. His eyes shone. ‘Right, Varg?’ he said.

  ‘Well …,’ I said.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll make you something to eat.’

  That evening she invited me into the living room.

  It was a pleasant room. Nothing unusual, just one of those rooms you immediately feel at home in. The furniture was old and good, the chairs comfortable, and you could eat off the table wi
thout having to lower your head between your knees. There were some bright watercolours of alpine landscapes on the walls, as well as a lot of samplers and embroideries she’d done herself. The books in the bookcase had worn spines: mysteries, books on child care and embroidery, a novel by Faulkner, a best-seller about an old woman somewhere out in the sticks, volume three of a famous statesman’s memoirs and a football handbook. Something there for every taste, as we say whenever there isn’t.

  There were four or five photograph albums on one of the bookshelves and a framed picture next to them. It was a family photograph and I recognised Wenche Andresen with slightly longer hair and Roar with a baby’s round face and stare. The third person must have been Roar’s father. A pale young man (that could have been because of the sunlight). Blond hair and dark-framed glasses. A nice smile. He and Wenche Andresen were sitting on a wall somewhere and she had Roar on her lap. It was summer. They looked very very happy.

  The bookcase’s upper shelves were full of little knick-knacks: pottery figures, painted shells, cheap souvenirs and expensive porcelain animals. There wasn’t a place left to squeeze in a matchstick.

  A TV stood in one corner of the room, talking to itself. A cartoon character went grimacing back and forth. Luckily it wasn’t funny enough to make me laugh because I’d stopped bleeding.

  I sat in a comfortable chair while Roar perched on the arm and leaned against my shoulder, and the fuzzy blue pictures flickered away at the other end of the room.

  Then it was over and a lady appeared and asked whether that hadn’t been a funny film? If we wanted to see it again, all we had to do was tune in at five past nine the next morning. That should be fun, she said with a sweet-sour smile. Then came the English lessons. They’d only aired that series five times before so it was still hot stuff.

  ‘Would you like to see it?’ Roar said.

  ‘No thanks. You can turn it off,’ I said.

  Like all children, he hated doing it. Then he came back and sat on the chair arm. Thinking.

  I looked at him. Finally I said, ‘What’s on your mind?’

  He blushed. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  After a while he said, ‘I was thinking you’re a lot stronger than my dad. He could never have done what …’

  Wenche Andresen had come in and he stopped. She’d brought a tray of cocoa and sandwiches: cocoa in yellow cups and sandwiches on a pewter plate. Lamb sausage and egg sandwiches, tomato and cucumber sandwiches, ham and beetroot sandwiches, sardines in tomato sauce, strawberry jam sandwiches. It looked like an invitation to breakfast. Or else as if she were expecting a crowd.

  While we ate, Roar told us how the whole thing had started. They’d been waiting for him outside the building. Three of them with Joker directing operations in the distance. They’d tied his arms behind his back, gagged him with a handkerchief and carried him off. He’d tried to kick loose but they’d hit him in the mouth and said they’d break his legs if he didn’t stop kicking. So he stopped kicking.

  Up at the hut they’d tied him to a tree and circled him, kicking and hitting him. He rolled up his pants. ‘See?’ His legs were covered with bruises. His mother gasped. I chewed. Then they’d told him what they’d do with his mother.

  Wenche Andresen turned pale. ‘What did they say?’

  He turned pale, too, and looked away.

  She reddened. ‘Those filthy pigs! Oh – I’ll …’

  She stood up with her hands on her throat. I saw her fighting for breath. ‘What have you got to say, Veum?’ she said finally.

  I chewed. I chewed and I chewed and I chewed. I could have chewed for a hundred years but that piece of bread was not going to go down. I stood up, went out and spat it into the toilet. Then I came back to the living room.

  She’d sat down again. ‘I’ll … Oh!’ Her fist smacked the arm of the chair.

  ‘What’s the name of the youth club leader?’ I said.

  ‘Våge. Gunnar Våge. What about him?’

  ‘I’ll talk to him.’

  ‘That won’t help. He’s a nothing. He’s on their side. It’s their background, he says. You’ve got to think of the kind of homes they come from, he says. Great! What kind of homes do they come from? Did we come from such good homes?’

  Suddenly I saw another living room. Far off in an alley. A mother who sat by the radio and knitted. A father with a drawn face and conductor’s uniform who came home to a large warm kitchen. I saw a living room with big green potted plants where we used to sit in the evenings and listen to the radio.

  There was a gong and a voice which said: ‘Good evening. My name’s Cox.’ And then there was a melody which sang itself so deep inside us that we could hum every note twenty years later. There was a verse we made up to that tune. We’d remember it to our dying day: ‘Cox is my name/ and Peacock’s a pain/ and Pip has fled/ and Margot’s dead/ Cox is in love with gorgeous Helene/ and next year they’ll wed …’

  ‘Did we, Veum?’ She looked at me with tear-filled eyes.

  ‘Did we what?’

  ‘Come from good homes?’

  ‘Some of us, maybe. Not all of us. There’s so much that counts. So much is involved.’

  ‘And we bring children into this world, this hell. A world of cheats and liars and – terrorists. What else is there besides misery? Will it ever work out, or will it always be impossible to be just to be – a little bit happy?’

  And she looked at me as if I’d seen the Philosopher’s Stone. But I hadn’t and I didn’t know where it was. My name was Veum and my father had named me Varg. Outlaw. He could just as well have named me Cox. It would have made the same difference.

  I looked around the room. At the dead TV, at the bookshelves, at all the knick-knacks, at the picture of the happy family, at the watercolours and embroideries on the walls, at the table with its sandwiches and cocoa, at Roar who sat and listened. And at his mother who cried and cried.

  I stood up and went to the window. Looked out. Tried to find a little comfort out there. It was dark. It had begun to rain. The lights below winked at me like tear-blinded eyes and I could hear the uneven constant whisper of the traffic on the main road. And there was whispering over the Lyderhorn as if it too had its own wretched secrets to hide, its own dark knowledge of life and happiness. Of everything. It wasn’t so strange that the sagas said the witches rested on that very mountaintop on Midsummer’s Eve on their way to the Sabbath on Mount Brocken in Germany.

  11

  Roar had gone to bed. She found a bottle of red wine. One of those inexpensive wines with fashionable labels which change from year to year. This year’s would have come from Israel.

  ‘A glass before you go?’ she said.

  ‘I could do with one,’ I said. ‘Even though I’m driving. Maybe it’ll persuade me I’m a better chauffeur.’

  She found some glasses and poured. They were small and round. Stemless. They looked like little soap bubbles filled with blood. She raised hers in a silent toast and we drank.

  It tasted of autumn. Of September with rowan berries and rose hips crushed on the pavement, of old newspapers lying in gutters and fluttering in the first winds of the season, of people walking fast so they’d get home faster. Her lips were moist.

  ‘We were so happy, Veum,’ she said suddenly. ‘Jonas and I. The first years. That’s what I remember – those first years. That’s when people discover each other. Right? When you walk around in a haze of love and don’t see anything else but … the other. Oh, God, I was crazy about him!’

  She reached for a bowl of peanuts with her long clean white fingers. The TV was on again but neither of us looked at it. The sound had been turned down and a lantern-jawed man talked silently to the living room.

  ‘It must have been 1967. He was in his last year at Business School and I worked in an office. He had a one-room flat in Møhlenpris – up in the attic. We used to lie on the sofa in the evenings and look out of those two windows. Up at the stars. Or on summer evenings wh
en the clouds raced by, and the windows were open and the smell of flowers and the sound of birds in Nygård Park filled the room. There was only the one room. A sofa, a table, two chairs and a little table with a hot-plate in the corner. The toilet was on the other side of the hall. Before we went we used to listen to see if anyone was coming. And then we’d sneak out. Barefooted.

  ‘When I think about how shabby it was – so small and cramped – but those years we lived there were the happiest. And then Roar came along and there wasn’t enough room. We moved into a flat higher up on Nygårdshøyden. Two rooms and a kitchen. We got married. After I got pregnant, I mean. Not because we had to, but because we wanted to. It was just sort of the two of us. There was simply no room for anybody else. The world’s happiest couple. And then …’

  She shrugged sadly. She was holding her glass as if it were warm and her fingers were icy.

  ‘Of course, we were younger. You’re always younger – then. Seems to me that it’s the same for most people, that it changes gradually but not a lot. Jonas finished school and got a job with an ad agency. A small one. Only five of them and there was a lot of work. He’d come home around six with his shoulders hunched up to his ears. A lot of stress.

  ‘But it was still good. Roar was little. I had to think about him. Right? A little child? I stopped working and stayed home. We agreed. We wanted it that way as long as he was little. And then …’

  She looked at me searchingly. ‘And then, it sort of just died.’

  ‘It’s like that with dinosaurs and marriages,’ I said. ‘They become extinct.’

  She looked puzzled. ‘What does?’

  ‘Marriages,’ I said. ‘A lot of them die for no good reason.’

  ‘I can’t tell you exactly when it happened,’ she said. ‘I can’t take out an old calendar and find a month, an exact date, point to it and say: that’s the day it ended. It was more like getting sick. Or maybe – like getting well again.’

  She refilled her glass. ‘You’re sick for a long time, right? I was sick once when I was a little girl. Stayed in bed for months. I was bored. Spoiled and looked after. The centre of everything. It was almost painful to be well again, know what I mean? Everything turned so ordinary all of a sudden.