Above us are two birch branches lashed together with some sort of rope. If only I can get to my feet, I can tumble him into the open strip of water. But my body refuses. I try. I can hear myself screaming and carrying on. It’s like hearing something from far away. As if I’m standing somewhere in the woods, listening to a madman screaming and carrying on near the cross. I’m standing over there behind a tree. I must have been the one who went into the forest. I got up inside the other body and left. Now I’m an Indian in the woods. No, that’s crazy! I killed him. He’s lying right here. I’m glad I remembered to hide the ax. If I hadn’t done that, they probably would have found it. Because someday someone will come here. And they would have seen that it’s a white man’s ax. But I hid it under a spruce tree. It will probably stay there for a long time before anyone finds it. But you never know, so I can’t feel completely safe. Never again completely safe. If I don’t get up soon, I’ll die. The cabin where Knut lives. It’s there in the woods, not far away, with smoke coming from the chimney. If only I can get there, no one can stop me. Then I will finally have arrived in America—someone who has killed a man in order to get there.
With a hollow shriek in a voice I don’t recognize, I get up on my knees. Out there is the treacherous ice that I tried to walk across. I can see the hole where I fell in. Beyond the ice lies the lake, black and glittering. I’m going to haul up all the big fish that live down there. Every single one. Fragile as glass, I get to my feet and stand up straight. Lean one hand on the cross. Look out at the lake. The other hand is wet with blood. My own, I think. A ripping sensation inside me when I breathe. My mouth is swollen with cuts and blood left when my lips froze to the crusted snow. They’ve been left behind somewhere in the woods, those lips that I used to talk with back home. What kind of place is this, anyway? A cross on a desolate spit of land. Maybe they had to chase the heathens away when they first came here. And that’s why they put up the cross, to frighten them. I press my forehead to the cross and think about God and Jesus. And about the pastor who confirmed me. I pray to all three, asking forgiveness for what I’ve done. Then I go over to the dead man, lean down, and with a strength I didn’t know I had, I drag him the last short distance down to the open strip of water. There I drop him, so that he’s lying at the very edge. All it will take is a small push and he’ll slide out. But is the current strong enough to carry him out into the water and under the edge of the ice? There’s only one way to find out. I set my foot on him, about to send him off, but it seems inhuman to do it like that. To just send him off, out into the dark, cold water. But I’ve already killed him, so why can’t I get rid of his body? He’s nothing more than a piece of meat. But he’s lying there with that broad, dark face of his turned toward me. His eyes half open. That big, beaked nose. Open mouth. Black hair, a little longer than mine, is sticking out from under the scarf.
Only now do I wonder who he is. He must have family, just as I do. People who will miss him. And he must have a name, which they will say when they talk about the fact that he has disappeared. The name that his mother must have used to call him when he was a boy, just as my mother called for me. But now they can shout all they like. I set my foot against his hip and push, but his body is heavy and I am so weak. At first he doesn’t budge. Then I manage to move the middle of his body a few inches. I try again, but I have no more strength left and can’t even stay on my feet. I sit down beside him. He’s lying at the very edge. One arm is hanging down toward the water. It wouldn’t take much to send him into the current, but even that is too much for me. As I sit there like that, he slips out all on his own. One arm sketches an arc toward the black river, then his body hits the water with a loud splash. Slowly he drifts toward the edge of the ice. I fought him like a lion, and won. He’s the one lying there with his face in the cold, dark water while I sit here, alive, and watch. His head rams into the ice. His body blocks the current like a log. The water ripples around him. I hear a faint gurgling sound. The current is stronger than I thought. Now the body turns until it’s stretched out full length along the edge of the ice. The sound of the water gets louder. He rolls over. For a moment the moon shines on his face, which is covered with a few strands of wet hair. Then he disappears beneath the ice. All is quiet once again. The desolate lake, and shining down on it the moon.
Vidar Sundstøl is the acclaimed Norwegian author of seven novels, including the Minnesota Trilogy, written after he and his wife lived for two years on the North Shore of Lake Superior. The Land of Dreams (Minnesota, 2013), the first novel in the trilogy, was awarded the Riverton Prize for best Norwegian crime novel of 2008 and was nominated for the Glass Key for best Scandinavian crime novel of the year. The Land of Dreams was ranked by Dagbladet as one of the top twenty-five Norwegian crime novels, and the Minnesota Trilogy has been translated into seven languages.
Tiina Nunnally is an award-winning translator of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish literature. Her many translations include Sigrid Undset’s first book, Marta Oulie: A Novel of Betrayal (Minnesota, 2014). Her translation of Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter III: The Cross won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize. She was appointed Knight of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for her efforts on behalf of Norwegian literature in the United States.
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