5
The Lillestrøm graduates had the reputation of being the biggest bunch of wimps in all Romerike when it came to the annual pre-graduation celebrations, and Priest had decided to do something about that. Some pretty mean stuff was being planned around the kitchen table. Something about baptising the Lørenskog soon-to-be school-leavers with fire extinguishers. They were the ones who’d put it about that the Lillestrøm lot were more interested in swotting than partying. Priest claimed to have a natural talent when it came to dreaming up armed operations and volunteered to lead the attack on the next officially designated party bar. Not out of any need for status; he had plenty enough cred after the night he’d spent in the cell for being drunk and disorderly following the first party of the season.
Now he wanted to hear what Lam, as a Buddhist, thought of the plans. Lam had drunk a few beers and sat laughing at every idea Priest came up with. But when asked directly, he suddenly grew very serious. They should drop this business with the fire extinguishers. Not only would they wreck the interior of the bar and get reported to the police and have to pay for the damage, but if anyone got powder in their eyes it would hurt. Priest rose to his feet and hailed Lam as the voice of common sense in a mad world. They drank a toast to him: chia, as the Vietnamese say.
Karsten was standing at the door munching on a slice of pizza. He raised his glass too but didn’t drink. He made no secret of the fact that he never touched alcohol. All the same, Priest had just filled it with vodka, maintaining that the occasion was the equivalent of a Holy Communion. He claimed that the father had given him authority to do so; if not the Heavenly Father, then at least his own father, who was the parish priest.
To get away, Karsten opened the door to the living room. At once there was music. Tonje was sitting on the sofa, and he recalled that she had been sitting in exactly the same place the last time he had been to a party at her house. On that occasion he had slumped down beside her and she had suddenly rested her head on his shoulder. There ought to be a dictionary that explained what something like that meant. If a girl gave you a hug, it meant she liked you. If she put her head on your shoulder, that also meant she liked you, and it could mean she wanted to get it on with you. But not necessarily. Not if you only had one testicle, for example. If you were found wanting when it came to passing on your genes and were an evolutionary cul-de-sac. Karsten had tried to find out what he could about this business of sperm count. In the average ejaculation, between two and three hundred million sperm streamed towards the waiting egg. Did that mean there were only half as many if you just had one testicle? Wouldn’t the other one work even harder to compensate? So far he hadn’t found an answer.
Tonje glanced up at him, shouted something through the music. It might have been Are you okay? and he nodded. Tonje wanted everyone to be okay. The seat next to her on the sofa was vacant this time too. And as Karsten registered this, the question cropped up again, the one he’d been asked up to twenty times a day for a period at secondary school. Who’s the poorest man in the world? Don’t know, he always used to say, prompting exactly the same answer every time: Karsten’s Willy, because he only has one stone in his sack.
The party had reached its chaotic phase. He withdrew from the living room again, wandered out into the corridor. It was nearly twelve thirty, the time at which he’d planned to get out of there.
Lam noticed him and came over. – Let’s walk back together.
He was one of the few in his class who Karsten felt was on the same wavelength. They often solved maths and physics problems together. Had quite similar ways of thinking about things, even though Lam was a Buddhist and Karsten an agnostic, the only position he felt himself able to defend rationally. But Lam was much too smart to go on about being right, and Karsten didn’t think religious questions were worth spending time on.
As he pulled on his jacket, Inga appeared behind him. She wrapped one arm around him and immediately the smoke from her cigarette began to irritate his eyes.
– And where do you think you’re going?
He half turned towards her. Her white blouse was unbuttoned and the lacy edge of her bra clearly visible.
– Got to get up early, he offered, but immediately regretted that he hadn’t thought of another answer.
– Aw, are we going home to beddy-byes? Is Mumsy going to pull up the bedclothes and go poochie-poo?
She reached up and kissed him on the cheek, stroked his hair and repeated that poochie-poo. He had no way of knowing if she was taking the piss or actually meant something by it. He worked out that it had to be something on the list of things to do, one of the challenges that would earn her the right to tie another knot in her graduation cap tassel. One he hadn’t heard about: Make it with a nerd. She’d done the same thing at the coffee bar a few weeks ago. She’d just been voted ‘School Leaving Babe of the Year’ by the other students, and him ‘Dullest School Leaver in Northern Europe’.
Lam went out into the hallway and stood waiting, a smile playing around his lips as Karsten tried to free himself. Last time Inga had made quite a fuss when he’d made it clear he didn’t want her hanging on to him like that, shouting out that he was a snob, that just because he was a bit smarter at maths than the rest, he thought it made him better than them. That kind of thing.
Then Priest arrived. – Need any help, mate? From the corner of his mouth he added: – Can fix you up with a box of Viagra. Premium quality. All the way from Latvia.
Inga pushed him away. – Karsten is a stud. Think he needs stuff like that?
– Who doesn’t need stuff like that when they’re with you?
– I’ll bet he can keep it up longer than you.
– I don’t doubt it, Priest said with a wink. – I shoot off quicker than a hare.
Inga blew smoke into his face, turned back to Karsten and put an arm around his neck, pulled his head down and kissed him. He felt her other hand caress his buttocks.
– Stay a bit longer, she murmured, and the exaggerated horniness in her voice made him even more certain that this was all about getting another knot in her cap tassel. The fact that she stank of vodka and cigarettes and that her lipstick was smeared on one corner of her mouth didn’t help matters.
He was rescued by a ringing on the doorbell. Three long rings. Karsten pulled himself free and was about to open up. Priest stopped him.
– Don’t let anyone in unless Tonje says it’s okay. Too many psychos out there.
He turned and shouted for the hostess. Again the doorbell rang, a long, harsh note that didn’t stop.
Tonje appeared in the hallway. – Find out who it is, she said to Priest.
He opened the door. A guy wearing a black jacket with the collar turned up was standing on the top step.
– Lam, he said.
He was a Pakistani, Karsten saw. A Pakistani or something like that.
Priest turned and asked: – Wasn’t Lam standing here just a moment ago? He interrupted himself. – What do you want with Lam?
– Talk to him.
Four other figures now appeared at the foot of the steps. Priest’s gaze moved from the Pakistani and over his shoulder to Tonje. – Don’t let them in, she whispered fiercely.
– Who are you? Priest said.
The person shook his head. – You don’t want to know, right?
Priest began to close the door, and with lightning speed the guy blocked it with his foot and pushed it wide open. The next moment, all four of them were inside the house. The first one pushed Priest up against the mirror in the hallway.
– I don’t like your girlie face.
He hit him on the nose with his bunched fist. There was a sound like dry twigs snapping. Priest collapsed with a strangled cry. Inga and Tonje had disappeared into the living room, pushing the door shut and screaming. It occurred to Karsten that he ought to stand in front of that door, guard it with his body. He gestured with his arm. The guy who had just knocked Priest down turned towards him.
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�� Don’t move, he hissed, his voice black, his eyes even blacker.
Karsten shook his head. He intended to convey that no one had the right to tell him what he should or shouldn’t do, but dimly realised that his meaning had been misunderstood.
One of the others who had just arrived pulled the fire extinguisher down off the wall and broke the glass in the living-room door with it. For a moment the girls’ panicky screaming stopped, only to start up again after a few seconds. The door was kicked open, shards of broken glass flying everywhere along with a cloud of foam from the extinguisher. The one who had punched Priest shouted: – We’re looking for Lam. You’re the ones who’re making trouble.
Karsten was still standing there, frozen, but his brain carried on working, as usual looking for things that could be sorted together. Lam lived in Lia, the Lia gang’s turf. The Vietnamese had been at war with a Pakistani gang for a long time. But Lam wasn’t a member; he was a smart guy, he was aiming to study architecture, he wanted to build houses.
– Lam isn’t one of the Lia gang, he shouted to the four intruders, who were already in the living room. As the music was cut off, he heard a groan from Priest, who lay writhing on the floor below the mirror, the sound instantly drowned by the shattering of more glass, screaming girls, footsteps running on stairs, something heavy that might have been a TV set crashing on to the floor. Karsten felt a prickling that spread along his arms and made them numb and incapable of movement. It was as if the rampaging was taking place somewhere else, far away from the house where he was standing bent against the wall.
He glanced down at Priest. – You in pain?
Priest stared at him. Blood was pumping from his broken nose, but he was breathing and able to move his head. Suddenly Karsten realised what he had to do. He tore himself out of his frozen trance, stepped over his classmate, out on to the steps, pulled out his mobile and called the emergency services. Almost a minute passed before there was an answer. His voice sounded distant as he explained, gave the address, how many attackers there were.
In the same instant, two of the interlopers came running out. They were dragging Lam between them. He was in his stockinged feet and bleeding from the mouth. In the pool of porch light Karsten noticed the look in his eyes. It was rigid, his pupils the size of dinner plates, as though locked in the maximum dilation.
He followed them down the steps.
– Hey.
One of the intruders turned.
– Hey wha’? he said in broken Norwegian.
– Don’t, was all Karsten managed before somebody pushed him over. He lay there in the slush, his head by the hedge.
– Just stay where you are and we’ll let you live, got it?
The guy planted a foot on his chest. He had a roundish face with a beard like a pencil line along the edge of his jaw. His broad eyebrows joined together above the bridge of his nose, and in one ear he wore a ring with a dark stone.
– Got it?
He’s not going to make me answer, thought Karsten. – Can you read? he muttered instead.
– What are you on about?
– Have you learnt to read? Karsten repeated, more clearly this time, but still the guy didn’t understand what he was saying.
He’s a nothing, he thought to himself. He’ll end up doing time in Ullersmo, or on disability benefit. Something like that.
Over by the car Lam was shouting. Karsten heard the punches, hard and dry against bone, muted on softer areas. The screams turned to groans and then stopped. Only the sounds of punching hung in the air. He could feel the snow beneath him melting, penetrating his pullover and shirt, running down inside the waistband of his trousers. He lay alone beneath the dark sky. A twig from the hedge prodded into his cheek. The person watching him was no longer there, but Karsten didn’t get up. Could hear the punching going on and on. Until it was drowned beneath the sound of an engine starting, revving up a few times and then disappearing. Even then he didn’t get up.
6
He stood naked in front of the mirror. Flexed the muscles of his arms, and in his chest felt the pain that had settled there after his workout earlier that evening. He had just been online and read several articles about arsonists. Setting fire to something was a cry for help, it said somewhere. In another article he read that people who did it were relieving tension they couldn’t get rid of by normal means. And even though they might join in the work of extinguishing the fire, it gave them a sexual thrill to watch the flames spread and get out of control. People who experienced this were sick and needed treatment.
Nothing of what he read applied to him. He was in primary school the first time he deliberately started a fire. The man named Tord who called himself his father was burning a pile of dead leaves on a piece of ground close to the house. Busy with his rake, putting it out, starting it up again in other parts. Striding about the field in his black tracksuit, master of the flames, hunched over watchfully, into action the instant the flames threatened to go against his will.
He’d found his own rake and wandered around after his father. Allowed small tongues of flame to spread and swallow up clumps of dead straw, and struck down on them when he felt they’d gone far enough. Tord glanced across at him a couple of times, said nothing, but no one could doubt that they were a team.
At one end of the field a wide footpath ran diagonally across. The flames could get that far, but no further; they went out by themselves once they reached it. The tongues of flame licked their way across the grey-black gravel and died away as though poisoned. He tore up a handful of dry straw, pushed it into the fire; it began to smoke and hiss because there were green and juicy blades of grass in there too, and spittle oozed out of it. Tord stood there with his back to him, bent over; didn’t notice him as he took a couple of steps out on to the path and tossed the hissing torch over to the other side, mostly to see how long it took to go out. He timed it. After half a minute, it started to smoke and whisper. There was still time for him to run across and beat the defenceless sparks to death, but then Tord would have realised what he’d done. Instead he went up to the house and hid behind the garage. Lay there until he heard shouting from down in the field, pulled his trousers up again and ran down the driveway. Tord was standing on the other side of the footpath, swishing and swiping at the flames that burned in a circle round him. This was just a few metres away from the neighbour’s hedge, and behind that brushwood and raspberry bushes, and beyond them the neighbour’s yellow house.
He ran down. The neighbour had arrived, and a couple of older boys. Shoulder to shoulder they advanced in the direction of the hedge, hitting and beating at the flames, which fought back now. The fire was wearing a huge grin, and it hissed around him, the voice whispering as it drew breath, and it made the men furious. He could see it in Tord’s face. He was afraid now, there was something stronger than him, he fought with his mouth half open, his eyes staring. The fire didn’t give up until it was less than a metre from the hedge. It didn’t give up, because it could flare up again at any time, anywhere, and no one, not even the man who called himself his father, could ever feel completely safe. But now it did surrender, with another grin, stopped whispering and gave the men a temporary victory.
He ran his finger across the patchy scars on his underarm. That this memory should surface again on this of all evenings was a sign. It was going to happen again. He got dressed, went into the kitchen, emptied the dregs of his coffee. It was tepid, bitter; he poured another, forced it down.
Back in his room, he got out the packet of cigarettes, the rubber bands and the strips of cotton. At a hotel where he’d spent the night once he’d found a whole package of paper matches and taken them. Now at last he had a use for them. He busied himself with his ignition device, improved it, placing two fuses next to each other, dousing them with lock oil, took the device into the bathroom and tested it in the bathtub. If Elsa had been home, maybe he would have told her about the fire that time. Told how he had been sent up to his room afterwards wit
h instructions to think about what he’d done. But when Tord came up, it wasn’t the fire he stood there raging about. He could still remember every single word that was said. The words mingled with the smell of paint thinner, because the floor of the hallway had just been painted. Afterwards he was to stay in his room and carry on thinking about what he’d done.
And that was what he did. Crept into the wardrobe, and in behind the loose plank in the wall where he had a room no one else knew about. He sat in there thinking over what Tord had said. The woman who called herself his mother came up looking for him. It was late by then, and shortly afterwards, he heard her outside the house calling for him. But he remained sitting in the room inside the wardrobe, not just thinking, but bringing the thoughts to life, flicking the lighter he’d taken from Tord’s drawer, staring at the flame until he knew what was going to happen. He scratched it on to the wooden beam, burnt scorch marks around it, like a frame, and it was decided once and for all. The sentence over the house they lived in.
Later on, he went further in finding out what flames could do. They destroyed things, and people were things too. Usually he used his place for these studies, the room behind the wardrobe that no one else knew about. There he would flip open the lid of the lighter and ignite it. Even in that tiny flame he could hear the voice whispering if he listened long enough. Not that he could hear the words, but he could feel what it was the flame wanted. He moved it closer to the skin of his underarm, felt how it jabbed at him, pulled it away, brought it closer again, allowed it to scorch away the light hairs. If it was close enough, it penetrated the skin. He held it there so long it began to smell. In this way he was able to study what the flame wanted to do to the body, how it wanted to transform it into something that was nothing but pain, damage it so badly it could not be repaired.
Fireraiser Page 4