One of Us

by Åsne Seierstad

  The Prime Minister went round greeting everyone, giving them hugs. They met him with warmth. It was good to be here, he thought, and the absurdity of that thought struck him. They talked. They laughed. They told tall tales, they talked about their children, oh so many lovely stories about their children, and they cried.

  There was red wine. There was grilled asparagus. There was meat. There was a nice dessert. For many of them it was the first proper meal since Friday. Gunnar finally found his breath, somewhere deep down in his stomach.

  Tone relaxed, and thought, this is odd – I’m enjoying the food. Being together like this gave them a sense of peace. Even Håvard thawed out. He did not say much, but he had emerged from his bubble. He followed the conversation, smiled sometimes, made an occasional comment. Then all at once, he got to his feet.

  In his deep bass voice he started to sing.

  I’ve heard there was a secret chord

  That David played to please the Lord …

  Håvard’s voice trembled.

  It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah!

  Hallelujah …

  Their loss had not yet hit them with full force. Death still seemed distant.

  They knew it, but it was still not clear to them.

  Their days would soon be heavy.

  * * *

  The next day, Jens Stoltenberg was dismayed when the emergency response unit started briefing him on its operation.

  Stoltenberg knew Utøya and its environs like the back of his hand. He had rowed across, he had taken the MS Thorbjørn, he had swum and he had driven a motorboat in the strait. The Prime Minister took it for granted that the police had started out from the Thorbjørn’s jetty.

  ‘From the golf course? Why?’ he asked.

  They had no good answer.

  ‘That manoeuvre must have cost you a lot of time,’ he said.

  The Prime Minister grew even more concerned when he heard the account of the police boat getting water in its engine and stalling. The several changes of boat, the misunderstandings, the whole operation, he gradually came to realise, had been an odyssey of misadventure and terrible planning.

  * * *

  The coffin stood behind a pillar in the chapel of the hospital.

  Six days after the massacre, Anders Kristiansen was identified. On the Thursday his parents were told that he had been found, and where the shots had entered his body.

  They dreaded seeing him dead.

  The last time they had been with him was when they drove him to the airport at Bardufoss in the middle of July. It was the summer holiday, and both parents were off work and wanted to come with him. When they saw him in the chapel, the pain was too great. It was impossible to take in. Gerd started talking as if he were still alive.

  ‘Now, look how tall you are!’ she said. Her son was 1.92 metres in height and he filled the whole coffin. ‘You’ll hit your head on the lid!’ said his elder brother Stian through his tears.

  They wanted to take him straight back home. But they were not allowed to; there were further examinations to be done. His parents wanted to wait for him. Stian persuaded them they ought to go on ahead to Bardu, and Anders would follow when he was ready.

  ‘He saved up his money to travel and see the world, Mum. Let him make his last trip on his own. He’s a big boy now.’

  * * *

  Lara could not believe it. She had to see for herself. The soul is always near the body, she thought, so if she was to meet Bano she had to do it now, while the body was still there.

  They were in the chapel where the Kristiansens had been a little earlier.

  ‘You go first, Lara,’ her mother and father told her. They had come to a halt at the door.

  She approached the open coffin step by step. Bano was wearing a long white gown. Her mouth was blue, and looked as if it was smiling. Her hair was tucked behind her ears. She had a sticking plaster on her forehead. Her hands were bluish and sort of shrunken. They were neatly folded on her chest.

  The family had been told that one of the bullets had stopped just before it pierced her heart.

  Lara stood and looked at her. It was Bano, but it was not Bano.

  Suddenly she felt a force. Bano wants me to get through this! I have to, for Bano’s sake.

  Her big sister was right there, with her.

  * * *

  Thursday was also the day the Sæbø family had their time in the chapel.

  Simon lay as if he were asleep. His hair was newly washed and was all soft and fluffy, like when he was little. It was a long time since Tone had touched his hair and felt what it was really like; he always put gel on it as soon as he came out of the shower. Now it was done exactly the way he didn’t want it. Tone tried to smooth the hair back the way he liked it but she couldn’t. It just flopped back.

  ‘He definitely wouldn’t have wanted his hair like that,’ Tone said.

  ‘I washed his hair with the same care, the same love as if he were my own son,’ said the woman who had followed them into the room.

  Tone took hold of Simon’s face and gave him a kiss, but immediately pulled back.

  ‘He’s all wet! Why is he wet?’ she asked the woman.

  ‘It’s very cold in the refrigerated store, so it’s a bit of condensation, that’s all,’ she answered.

  It was so final. Seeing him like that. They said the Lord’s prayer.

  Candles had been lit in the chapel and they burned calmly, lending a sense of something sacred. Tone had been dreading this. She had thought someone would just pull out a drawer and show them their son with a tag tied to his toe, like in films.

  They stood there looking at his dear, white face, the skin turning a little blue in places.

  Gunnar had tears in his eyes. ‘Imagine: he killed Simon without even knowing who he was!’

  * * *

  That night, the sixth night, Viljar’s mother Christin had a bad feeling. Was Viljar about to give up? The doctors were afraid he might not survive another night. Infections were spreading round his body, so they had to lower his temperature. He lay there utterly still. Pale, thin, with a hole for an eye, surrounded by bleeping, humming machines. He had still shown no sign of coming round.

  ‘We don’t know whether he will ever wake up again,’ the doctors said. But they asked them to carry on talking to him, touching him, reading to him, talking about things that interested him, that made him happy, that might make him want to wake up.

  One of Viljar’s friends, fellow AUF member Martin Ellingsen, had come down from Tromsø. He was distraught. He had lost Anders, Simon and possibly Viljar. Martin should have been on Utøya himself, but he had such bad marks in German that his mother had packed him off on a language course at the Goethe Institute in Berlin. He was obliged to cancel his registration for the summer camp.

  ‘Utøya’s there every summer – come next year,’ Anders Kristiansen told him. ‘Go to Berlin instead.’

  Now Martin was here, and he wanted to make Viljar understand that life is the coolest thing we have.

  ‘Hi Viljar,’ he started uncertainly, tailing off as he stood looking at his friend. Would Viljar ever wake up? Would he be able to talk? Would he be Viljar?’

  ‘I’ve bought a crate of beer back home in Tromsø and we’ll get stuck into that as soon as you’re out of here,’ said Martin. ‘And Tuva says we can try our luck with all her friends.’

  Martin gave a little sob. He kept his eyes fixed on Viljar’s face as he talked. He was sitting on the edge of the bed. He said whatever came into his head, sharing gossip and quoting everything from rap lyrics to poetry.

  ‘You can take the snowmobile out on Svalbard, Viljar! Or do you want to go to New York? Hero at night, hero all the day, all the way to morning, Viljar!’

  But Viljar did not move.

  Rays of light entered the room.

  It was a lovely morning and it was going to be a fine day.

  Viljar lay in his bed, pallid.

  Then Martin started s
inging. Christin and Sveinn Are had gone quiet. Hope was ebbing away.

  Martin sang, very quietly.

  If I could write in the heavens, yours is the name I would write!

  And if my life were a sailing ship, you would be my port.

  Martin’s voice cracked, but just as he was taking a breath to carry on a frail voice was heard from the bed.

  … if I could bring down the clouds

  and make a bed for you …

  and this mountain were a piano …

  then …

  Viljar opened his one eye. He looked at them and smiled.

  Part Two

  Narcissus on Stage

  The cell was in the basement of the Law Courts.

  He sat on the bench waiting, with armed men standing guard outside.

  They had picked him up from Ila prison early that morning, unlocked his cell door and brought him down to the prison garage. There they had asked him to get into a white van.

  To the uninitiated, it looked like an ordinary van, not unlike the one he had hired the previous year and blown up outside the Tower Block in the government quarter.

  In the van they fastened him to the seat with handcuffs and restraining belts. It was an armour-plated vehicle. He could not see out. With a number of police officers around him, he sat strapped for the half-hour that it took to reach Oslo. Upon arrival the driver steered the van straight down into the garage beneath the courthouse. From there they led him into the building and along several corridors, then locked him into the waiting cell in the basement, a security cell into which he was not allowed to take anything.

  That was where he was sitting now, dressed in a dark suit with a freshly ironed shirt and copper-coloured tie.

  His defence team had come down to greet him before they went back up to their room behind the main courtroom on the first floor. Now he was alone. He was waiting for someone to come and fetch him. He was waiting for the curtain to go up.

  The media ban had been lifted in the middle of December, so he knew in detail what the courtroom looked like, who the professional judges were, the lay judges, the prosecutors, the public advocates. He had prepared himself well and read everything that he could find on the case. He had taken a particular interest in the debate about whether he was sane and accountable for his actions.

  For a long time, he found it entertaining. In fact, at first he did not take it entirely seriously and did not really relate to what the forensic psychiatrists had concluded. He was going to use the trial as a stage on which to perform, come what may. His operation had reached its third phase.

  * * *

  The clock in room 250 showed half past eight. Its face was grey, its hands of pure aluminium. The room was brand-new. But everything in it was muted, minimal, toned down.

  The judges sat on a dais that was raised above floor level, though not by much. At their bench, made of knotless maple, were six high-backed black leather chairs. The two appointed judges would sit in the middle. Three lay judges and a reserve would be seated beside them. The appointed and lay judges would all vote on the final verdict.

  Behind the chairs were low shelves of light wood that would soon be filled with thick ring binders containing the case documents. The judges would be able to turn round in their seats to find what they needed.

  On the grey wall behind the judges hung the Norwegian coat of arms, a golden lion holding an axe on a red background. It was the sole element of colour in the room.

  In front of the judges, at floor level, was a smaller desk with four chairs behind it. Places for the forensic psychiatrists. Their seats faced the public, not the defendant. It would be their faces that many would try to read in the coming weeks.

  Most other issues were already clear. He had admitted to the actions, albeit not to any guilt, but that was a formality. If he were ruled to be of sound mind, he would get the most severe sentence the law could mete out to him, twenty-one years, with the possibility of extension if he presented a threat to society.

  Or would he be held not accountable for his actions and be forced to undergo treatment instead?

  Was he mad, or was he a political terrorist?

  At an angle to the judges’ bench, at floor level, was the prosecution bench and behind it places for the coordinating public advocates. The defendant was to sit facing the prosecution, between his defence team. Behind them was a bulletproof glass wall, and behind that were some seats for the public. Right behind the back row was the only window in the room, covered with bomb-proof foil. Pale grey blinds with a slight sparkle to them covered the frosted glass. They would remain closed for the duration of the case.

  In the centre of the floor, between all the parties, stood a small desk with three sides and a chair. The table section could be raised or lowered. Those giving information or evidence could choose whether to sit or stand.

  It was compact, everything felt close. The victims appearing as witnesses would be sitting only a few metres from the perpetrator, in the same seat where he himself would be cross-examined.

  The room was divided in half lengthways. A low glass door, kept closed, separated the participants in the trial from the public, who were to sit in long rows running the length of the room. The Law Courts had tried to fit in as many seats as possible and the rows were so tightly packed that one could only edge along them. The sole access to most of the seats was via the central aisle. It would be impossible to leave the room unnoticed except during a break. The first row behind the partition was reserved for the courtroom artists and the commentators from the major media outlets. Less important media groups were in the second row. Then came next of kin, the bereaved, survivors and other people affected, their escorts and the public advocates. The support group for the victims’ families and survivors had been allocated permanent seats, as had the leadership of the AUF. Other seat allocations would rotate throughout the trial. The two back rows were again for accredited press. Here there were electrical sockets and headset plugs for those requiring interpreters. From the interpreting booth, which had an unrestricted view of all the parties, there would be simultaneous translation into English, Kurdish or Georgian, depending on the media’s needs and the nationalities of the victims and their relatives.

  The room had never been used before. It did not have a single scratch.

  * * *

  In August the previous year, twenty days after the terrorist attacks, the man in the waiting cell had met the first pair of psychiatrists. There was one woman and one man: cool, buttoned-up Synne Sørheim and heavy, ruddy-cheeked Torgeir Husby.

  Both of them had clearly indicated that they were uncomfortable about meeting him. They said they were not in a position, either emotionally or intellectually, to carry out the one-to-one interviews with him which would be the norm. They worried about potential hostage situations, they said, especially in the case of the female expert.

  For the first eleven sessions he was in shackles and his left arm was fastened to an abdominal belt. He was placed in a corner with three conference tables between him and the two psychiatrists. There were two prison guards in the room throughout. Interviews twelve and thirteen were conducted in the visiting room. On those occasions he was locked into a cubicle behind a glass wall while the experts, one for each session, sat on the other side of the glass. The guards were then on the outside.

  For the first meeting he put on his striped Lacoste jersey in muted, earthy colours, the one he had been wearing on the morning of his operation, when he took the getaway car to Hammersborg torg to park it and then walked through the government quarter under an umbrella in the drizzle.

  The psychiatrists shook his hand. Then he was taken to his seat behind the three tables. In his right hand he had a piece of paper, which he put on the table in front of him. The first thing he said was that every forensic psychiatrist in the world probably envied them the task of assessing him.

  This produced no particular response, so he went on. He had a list of seven question
s, which they had to answer before he would cooperate.

  ‘Why?’ asked the psychiatrists.

  ‘Well, I don’t want to contribute to my own character assassination, do I?’

  The experts were not prepared to answer any questions. These observations were to be done on their terms. The accused insisted he must know their view of the world before he could take part in the sessions. ‘If either of you is on the ideological left, you’re going to be biased,’ he asserted.

  Arguments were tossed back and forth. Breivik said they would no doubt try to gag him. ‘The machinery of power is Marxist-orientated. After the war they sent Quisling’s justice minister to the madhouse.’ Breivik repeated that he had to find out what they stood for before he gave them any answers.

  Finally the forensic psychiatrists conceded. They asked him to state his questions. He read from the piece of paper.

  ‘The first is: What do you think about Knut Hamsun and the resignation of justice minister Sverre Risnæs after the Second World War? The second is: Do you think all national Darwinists are psychopaths?’

  The psychiatrists asked him to explain the term ‘national Darwinist’.

  ‘A Darwinist who’s a pragmatist. With a logical approach to political decisions. There are two approaches to a political problem: men are pragmatic, whereas women use their emotions to solve the problem. Darwinism views human beings from an animal perspective, sees things as if through the eyes of an animal and acts accordingly,’ he said. ‘One example is when America bombed Japan. They employed a pragmatic approach. Better to kill three hundred thousand but save millions. We consider that to be suicidal humanism.’

  ‘Who are “we”?’

  ‘We, the Knights Templar.’

  The experts asked him to go on with his list of questions.

  ‘Question number three is whether you think the American military command lacks empathy. Question number four: Explain the essential distinctions between pragmatism and sociopathy.’

  ‘How do you interpret the word sociopathy?’ asked the psychiatrists.