Fireraiser

by Torkil Damhaug

  – I don’t think he was having a go at Islam, Karsten said, not really sure why he felt the need to defend the teacher.

  – You get used to stuff like that, she answered as she shoved a pile of notes into her bag. She’d changed her appearance after the Christmas holidays, Karsten had noticed vaguely. Something to do with her hair. She’d had it cut and it was hanging loose; before that she’d always had a metre-long plait hanging down her back.

  – That stuff about genes, you only said that to impress the teacher.

  – Why should I want to impress him? Karsten protested.

  – Why does everyone else?

  He shrugged. – So you don’t think I believe that genes decide everything?

  She shook her head firmly. – If that’s the case, you’ve got nothing to live for.

  He was on the point of asking her what she had to live for, but resisted. Recently he’d watched a TV programme on the biology of faith, and he was convinced that this was the truth of it: religious experiences corresponded to hyperactivity in certain areas of the brain. This produced intense sensations of meaning and universal connection among people who had developed particular neural patterns in precisely those areas.

  She took a step closer.

  – Is that where they cut you?

  He touched his cheek. Suddenly had a desire to tell her what had really happened. Someone had to know that actually he was the most cowardly of them all at the party. It might as well be her.

  – You’re brave, she said, and then it was too late to explain.

  He looked out of the window. – I was just there. It was as close to the truth as he could come without directly confessing. – Lam’s going to be away for weeks.

  If he hadn’t done anything to stop Lam being hurt, he had at least accompanied a neighbour who drove him to the hospital in the middle of the night. Priest was allowed to go home after an examination, but Lam was admitted. Not because several teeth had been kicked out and his jaw probably broken, but because he had pains in his stomach and the doctors couldn’t find the cause.

  – What did they look like, the ones who attacked you?

  Karsten had been asked that several times, and he still couldn’t provide a good answer. Could remember only the one standing over him, a stocky guy with a round face, a thin strip of a beard and a flashy earring.

  – What about the car they were driving? Jasmeen wanted to know.

  – Black, I think. It was dark, I couldn’t see so well. I’m not blaming Pakistanis, he said to change the subject. – It’s wrong to start talking about clashes of culture just because of a few gangs.

  She looked at him. – It’s okay that people talk about it, she said, smiling so the dimples in her cheeks showed. – It makes us think. Isn’t that why we’re here?

  It was natural for them to leave the classroom together, go down the steps.

  – How is Shahzad? Karsten asked, though few things interested him less. Her brother had been two years ahead of them. He stole mobile phones and other electronic stuff from the shopping centre. Used to brag about it: only the best makes were worth the trouble. There were rumours he had connections with the Young Guns, and even though he wasn’t a very big guy, no one would want gang members turning up at their door no matter how much iron they’d been pumping. Shahzad had dropped out of secondary school in his third year. Probably made so much money that education was a waste of time.

  Jasmeen wrinkled her nose by way of an answer; maybe she was even less interested in talking about her brother than Karsten was.

  Down in the assembly hall, he had an excuse ready to say so long and head off for the library, but Jasmeen suddenly wanted to know what kind of music he liked. He wasn’t interested in music and had never heard any Pakistani music, if that was what she was thinking. The Pakistanis had their own music, had their own everything. That was just the way it was. She was one of them. He wasn’t one of them.

  On the way out, he held the main door open for her. As she passed, he smelled her sharp smell, a mixture of spices and soap, and he wondered whether it came from her clothes or the skin beneath them.

  There was rain in the air; it fell in a slippery film on the asphalt. The church clock struck three. She trotted out into the school yard in her black bootees. He was wearing climbing boots with thick soles. Somewhere above them a plane passed low through the clouds; from the sound, he guessed it wasn’t heading in towards Gardermoen but was on its way up. His bike was leant up against a snow bank with three or four others. He nodded over to indicate he was heading that way. She stopped and looked up at him. Her eyes closed and then opened again. She said: – I like you. Can you tell?

  He regretted having delayed and not disappearing from the classroom once the lesson was over. He felt the burning creeping down from his hairline again, knew he had to say something, but if he opened his mouth he was afraid he might swear, and that would made it even harder to stand there.

  – Like you too.

  It was he who said it, but the voice sounded different. As though it came from far away. And the roar from the plane meant he had to say it far too loud. Still no sign of a smile on her face, just that strangely intense stare, and in a crushing moment it struck him that he had misheard her, that she’d said something else, something about a class project, or maybe something about trigonometry, because to his short-term memory it sounded like that when he thought about it: I like trigonometry. Then she touched his hand, and relieved that he seemed to have understood her correctly after all, he gave her hand a quick squeeze. He glanced up towards the front of the school. Through the bare horse chestnut branches he saw a figure in the classroom window, someone standing looking down at them. It might have been the supply teacher.

  8

  He parked by the high school, walked along the footpath, came to what was left of the woods he had once wandered about in. Through the trees he could see the house down in Erleveien. There was light in almost every window now, including his old room. He had found out who they were. The man of the house, the person who had left the wheelbarrow out all winter by the tool shed, was a journalist working on the local paper. He didn’t find much on the wife, only something about a congregation in Bethany, the Baptist church. The thought that this meant they were Pentecostals excited him, and he began humming quietly to himself: Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee.

  Almost a week since the stables burned down. If he thought about the horses now, it was still without a trace of anger. As if the fire had consumed all the rage, purified his thoughts once and for all. Maybe it would be like this every time something burned. He’d been very low that winter. Couldn’t face getting up in the mornings, stayed in bed until late in the day, the curtains drawn. Again it was Elsa who had come to him and helped him. She took him to the room where she worked with the cards. She read his life and knew what he needed. She was the one who told him he was born under the sign of fire. Fire purifies, she said, and now he seemed to be on the verge of finding out what that meant.

  He returned to the car, drove further up the hill. It took him two minutes to locate the kindergarten. A new wing had been added, the playground apparatus had been changed, but apart from that everything was just like it used to be. He drove past slowly, found somewhere to park a couple of hundred metres further up, sauntered back down, hands in the pockets of his jacket, as though he were out for an evening stroll, as though he were savouring the cool April evening, as close to spring as you could get before it actually arrived.

  He let himself through the gate, carried on by the wall with the dark windows. Welcome to the carnival, it said in big cut-out lettering on one of them. Coloured paper streamers hanging from the frames, some masks. The door was locked.

  He headed over towards the copse. A conical Sami tent, a lavvo, had been put up between the trees. They’d made a fire inside it; the smell of burnt logs and ash still hung in the air. The earth around it had been trampled flat, as though an Indian tribe lived there
. Once he’d run around between these trees himself. He couldn’t remember playing. Growing up was about something else. Keeping watch, keeping a distance. Waiting until your turn came.

  In a shed he found two large rubbish bins, one of them with something stinking inside, nappies maybe, and scraps of food. The other was half full of magazines, packaging, boxes folded flat. He tipped it over and pulled it towards the wall of the kindergarten. In his pocket were the ignition devices he had developed and improved. The half-cigarette with the tip torn off, fastened with a rubber band to three cardboard matches. Woven in between the match heads a twisted thread made of thin cotton. He took out the bottle of lighter fluid, carefully dipped the thread into it, making sure nothing got on to the cigarette. He poured nearly half a bottle into the paper rubbish. Then he rolled the fuse inside some wrapping paper, carried a pile of newspapers over to the doorway at the rear of the building and laid another ignition device there.

  He reset the timer on his wristwatch and lit the fuse. Ran back over to the rubbish bin and set fire to the cigarette. It would take just over a minute and a half for it to catch fire, he’d worked it out, more than enough time for him to reach the car. If it caught fire. He thought of Elsa. She was the one who had said there was no such thing as chance, that this was just the name we gave to the invisible powers that guided us.

  He drove past the fire station and pulled up at the far end of the parking lot on the other side of the road, pulled on the buttons for both windows but only the driver’s-side window slid down. He leant across and thumped the other one; the window lift mechanism still didn’t work. He swore. He’d bought the Chevy less than six months earlier. A guy he used to work with had brought it back from the States. It would be a drag trying to locate a window lift motor for a ten-year-old model, going through the lists of dealers in second-hand parts for American cars, making sure it was the right part that was sent.

  He climbed out and slammed the door shut, squatted down in the dark corner by the wall, glanced at his watch, tried to quell his irritation. Ten minutes had passed. Nothing was definite yet. He closed his eyes. Imagined the tiny flame as it sucked its way down towards the end of the cotton thread. Imagined the papers and cardboard boxes soaked in lighter fluid flaring up. The rubbish bin suddenly turning into a huge greedy bonfire attacking the wall. He imagined the fire burning an opening in the building. The oxygen supply was good there; the flames lived on that oxygen the same way a vampire lived on blood, sucked and sucked and grew strong and heedless.

  The time was ten past nine. At this hour there was no one at the kindergarten. Twelve hours earlier, the place had been full of children. He could see them in his mind’s eye. Little hands holding scissors and paper, tottering round in teddy bear slippers and tights or swishing down the slide in the playroom. Red noses and runny eyes, shrieks and laughter. He tried to imagine what these small faces would look like if they were there now, trapped inside the building as the flame tore away a wall and advanced upon them in a whirling column. Softly gliding over to the sides of the room and starting to dance around them. He could see the children’s faces as they realised that every exit was blocked. He could be there then, with them. Comforting, holding them, a couple of them in his lap, a little girl with a pigtail and huge brown eyes behind her glasses. Then he would get up, walk slowly through the burning doorway, close and lock the door behind him. Lock the screams inside that raging whisper and disappear into the darkness between the spruce trees behind the lavvo.

  He was roused from his fantasy by a car that came tearing up to the fire station. Fifteen minutes from zero on his stopwatch. A man leapt out, rushed over to the entrance, disappeared inside. Lights appeared in a couple of the windows. He saw shadows inside, hurrying about. A minute later the garage door rolled up and an enormous fire engine growled into life. Cruised slowly down to the road, headed off. Only now did the siren start.

  9

  Karsten ran. It wasn’t one of his evenings for working out. Usually he ran three evenings a week, same route every time, but now he had broken with his routine, dropped his chess session too, set off without a word to anyone, and no one at home asked him where he was going either.

  He ran along Fetveien, past the end of the runway, then took Storgata, into the school, past the spot where he had stood with Jasmeen a few hours earlier. There was a thick layer of slush on the pavements and his trainers were already soaking wet. Bits of what had been said came and went in his head. I like you. Can you tell? It was the most unexpected thing that had ever happened to him. As he ran along, he turned it into a story: Together they walked across the schoolyard. A plane flew low overhead. He was on his way towards his bicycle, she to the bus stop. They walked side by side. And then she said it. Like you too, he answered, and didn’t even know if it was true.

  He passed the outdoor swimming pool, closed for the winter, carried on along towards the river. Increased his speed a touch, needed to feel tired. Was the likelihood of these fleeting memories being just part of a dream any greater than the likelihood of them actually having happened? He stopped, rested his hands on his knees, a faint nausea. Suddenly he pulled out his mobile, navigated to the address book, found her name. Her number couldn’t have got there by itself. And he wasn’t dreaming now. He could hear the roar of traffic from Fetveien. The siren from a fire engine. He sent her a text. It all happened so fast he didn’t have time to ask himself what he was doing. He carried on running through the slush, heading up towards Nittebergtangen. Felt a vibration in his pocket, halted, pulled out the phone again. Thinking about you too. Haven’t thought about anything else since I saw you.

  He set off running again, as hard as he could, over the footbridge, stopped again. Leaned over the railings in the middle of the river, another of those thoughts he had no idea what to do with: throw yourself in, feel your body crashing through what’s left of the melting ice, sink down through the muddy water.

  On his way back, he heard more sirens. Up on the hillside he saw blue lights, and for a moment it occurred to him that maybe it was his house they were heading for. Before this thought had time to establish itself, he saw a first response vehicle disappearing up past Erleveien. He jogged along after it. The road on the right was closed off. There was a farm there, and the kindergarten he’d gone to himself. People had made their way into the field and were standing in a crowd up on the slope. A shower of sparks was hurled up against the dark sky. He ran over in that direction. Saw someone he knew.

  – The nursery school? he said, and got an affirmative nod. He noticed Dan-Levi walking round with a camera.

  – Who would do such a thing? he shouted.

  – What do you mean?

  – Who would set fire to a nursery school?

  Dan-Levi turned towards him. – Who said it was started deliberately?

  – Well it would have to be, wouldn’t it?

  He wasn’t certain of it, wasn’t certain of anything as he stared at the flames that came licking out through the roof, the loops of water glinting in the darkness, the blue lights spinning and spinning.

  – Sorry I never made chess class tonight, he said, remembering that he’d arranged to play Dan-Levi that evening.

  Dan-Levi shook his head, seemed suddenly very sombre. – Doesn’t look as though I’m there either.

  He disappeared through the crowd of spectators, but reappeared a few moments later and began packing up his photographic gear. – Another thing, Karsten. I’m doing a piece about the problem of gangs in Lillestrøm. You were at that party that was attacked.

  Karsten bit his lip. – Don’t really want to talk about it much.

  Dan-Levi removed his green woollen hat. He was a Pentecostal, and his hair was at least as long as Jesus had in old pictures. He wore it gathered in a kind of tail.

  – Think it helps to keep things to yourself? he asked.

  – The police’ll sort it out, said Karsten.

  Dan-Levi thought about it. – Well let’s hope so. But
they weren’t there when you needed them.

  Karsten regained his self-possession. – I’m sure you’ll find others who can tell you more about what happened. I was out of it.

  – Quite literally, I gather.

  Karsten attempted a grin. – Literally.

  Dan-Levi’s small round glasses were misting over. He removed them and wiped the lenses with a cloth. – I’ve talked to quite a few of the others. Including the girl whose party it was.

  – Tonje? What did she say?

  – That you were the only one who did anything to try to stop the gatecrashers. She said you ran out after them when they dragged your pal off, and they slashed you with a knife when you tried to help him.

  Karsten rubbed his skin where the twig had scratched him. – Please don’t mention me when you write about it.

  Dan-Levi looked at him for a long time. – You afraid they’ll come after you?

  The thought had never occurred to Karsten. – Christ, no. Just don’t want to be in the papers. I didn’t do anything special. Got to get home, he interrupted himself, turning and running off.

  In the bathroom, he stepped into the shower, tugged off his boxer shorts, turned on the hot water and peed into the drain. Everything could be interpreted in the light of passing on the genes. Animals that fought and defeated their rivals had a good chance, but at the cost of diminished strength. The ones that lay down and played dead probably had just as good a chance of succeeding. For an instant he felt he was done with what had happened in the schoolyard with Jasmeen; it wasn’t something he needed to think about any more. It lasted just a few seconds, and then it was on him again.