Fireraiser

by Torkil Damhaug

  He didn’t know what to do with the rejected hand. He sneaked it casually down into his groin, where everything was squashed painfully together. She put her hand on top of his.

  – Do you have a bed? she asked in a low voice. – A big bed.

  – Yes, he almost shouted, and was on his feet and out into the hall.

  She followed him up the stairs. He pushed open the door of his parents’ bedroom. Or actually, his father slept in his office down in the basement.

  – It’s cold in here, he said, and turned the radiator on full.

  – Have you got a candle?

  He ran down to the kitchen, sped back up again with a three-armed candlestick holder, prepared for the fact that she might have changed her mind. But she was still standing there by the foot of the bed. He fumbled with the matches, finally managed to light the wicks.

  – I want us to undress and lie naked on the bed together, she said.

  He nodded, too breathless to say anything.

  – But you mustn’t touch me, do you promise me that?

  He must have nodded again, because she turned away and unbuttoned her dress. The candlelight cast nervous shadows across her naked back, like strange creatures that wriggled and bucked and tried to swallow each other. Still with her back turned she let the dress fall down over her hips, unfastened her bra, pulled down her knickers. Then she turned to face him, stood there with her arms by her sides, one leg slightly in front of the other.

  – Now it’s your turn.

  He started to fiddle with his buttons, gave up and pulled the shirt off over his head. Somehow or other his belt buckle was already undone and the zip on his flies had opened itself. He stepped out of his trousers, into the cold room, lay stretched out on the bed, less than a metre away from her, the first girl who’d ever undressed for him, the first ever to see him like this, with his stunted balls dangling on the bedclothes.

  She reached out and picked up a belt from the heap of clothing, laid it along the centre of the bed.

  – You mustn’t cross this belt, she said, her voice low.

  He grunted something or other, the sound from his throat transformed into small shivers that traversed his body to end up between his legs, a reminder of the intolerable agonies he’d suffered the night he woke up because one of his testicles had twisted round its own axis and cut off the supply of blood that kept it alive. That same night it was surgically removed.

  – I want you to come close to me, she whispered. – But don’t touch me.

  He felt her breath against his shoulder. The body lying on the other side of the belt occasioned tiny movements in the springs of the mattress. She lay like that for a long time. Then her breath moved down across his chest.

  – You mustn’t touch me, he heard her whisper again.

  – No, he moaned, and then it occurred to him that she was going to examine him, see if what she had heard was true, that he was practically a cripple, walking around with the poorest man in the world dangling between his leg, just the one rock in his sack, an evolutionary cul-de-sac. But her breath approached ever closer. As he readied himself for it to disappear again, it closed itself around him. He saw an image of Archimedes’ gravestone, the cylinder that penetrated it. Suddenly the simple solution to the problem came to him; it was so obvious he had to shout it out loud.

  He stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, saw the reflection of his naked body in the window. A thought struck him, he slipped out into the hallway and picked up the mobile from the chest of drawers, took a picture of himself in the light from the living-room door.

  – What are you doing? Jasmeen sat on the sofa, dressed now, with a blanket wrapped around her.

  He turned around, took a few steps in her direction, lifted the mobile and clicked.

  – You mustn’t, she cried out and raised her hands. – You’ve got to delete it, understand?

  He promised to do that, went out to the kitchen again and put the kettle on, heard a text arrive. We’re at Martin’s. You coming?

  Tonje hadn’t forgotten. The old fear rose again, that the whole thing was a kind of student rag week stunt: you invite a nerd along and laugh yourselves sick when he takes it seriously and actually turns up. Inga was capable of that, or one of the other girls, but not Tonje. She wasn’t like that.

  When he returned to the living room with the kettle, Jasmeen was still sitting on the sofa. He sat down beside her.

  – Tea for you.

  – You’re nice, she murmured.

  At that moment he was certain she meant it. He poured the boiling water over the tea bag in her cup. Saw how the grey, felt-like material became more and more translucent, how the fibres of the tea leaves absorbed the liquid in the steaming cup.

  – I must go soon, she said. – But I’ll never regret this. No matter what happens. She glanced at the clock. – I don’t regret it, she repeated, and placed the dripping tea bag on the saucer. – What are you thinking?

  He had never liked to share his thoughts with anyone, at least not when anyone asked him to.

  – I’ve found the other solution, he told her anyway.

  – What other solution?

  He leant back on the sofa. – The maths problem. The cylinder and the gravestone. I could see there was a simpler way of solving it. Just now, up there, I found it.

  She gaped. – Were you lying there thinking about maths problems?

  He realised he should have been thinking about something else. – That too, he admitted.

  She shook her head.

  – But it’s so ludicrously simple, he said, and explained that the relationship between the cylinder’s surface and its volume had to be the same as that between the sphere’s surface and volume, so that it was just a matter of establishing a simple formula that could be resolved in a single calculation. What was incredible was that it had taken him three days to come up with such an obvious answer.

  – Do you think you’ll ever be able to believe in God, Karsten?

  He sat up, took a swig of coffee. What he believed in was a game where the pieces were measurable entities of various sorts. That organic life arose in a particle soup. It was an act of chance. Within that soup, molecules formed which were able to make copies of themselves. He got bogged down in an explanation he couldn’t find a way out of.

  – You fool yourself into believing a much too simple story, she interrupted. – None of what you say could have happened if there wasn’t a God behind it all.

  – Maybe you’re right, he said. – And maybe you’re wrong. We can’t know anything about it.

  She turned the warm cup around in her hands. – Could you be a Muslim?

  He’d just taken a sip; had to cough and just about managed to swallow it down. Even though she couldn’t possibly be asking in all seriousness, he had no wish to laugh at her. Not after what had happened.

  – Could just as easily be a Muslim as a Christian at any rate, he said diplomatically. – You thinking of having me baptised?

  She put the cup down, and he wrapped both his arms around her. Clearly nothing he did counted as touching her body, because there wasn’t a single place his fingers weren’t allowed to wander, as long as they stayed outside her clothes.

  – You don’t get baptised a Muslim, she said softly. – You join a fellowship. She pressed herself in close to him. – I could never share my life with a non-believer.

  He didn’t answer. The caffeine was already racing around inside his brain, and what had happened upstairs in his mother’s bed might happen again. He was holding a five of diamonds, or a three of clubs, but for some inconceivable reason it was still possible to win after all.

  21

  Karsten gave breakfast a miss, drank a half-litre of orange juice, pulled on his tracksuit and trainers. It was still raining out; that suited him fine. No wind, just thin, cold threads dropping in straight lines from the sky.

  Dan-Levi was busy in his garden, trying to free a wheelbarrow that seemed to be stuck to
the ground. Again Karsten felt the urge to tell his chess-playing pal what had happened. He didn’t know what had happened. Only that the world had turned upside down and been shaken up so much that everything had come loose and landed somewhere else. He’d spent most of last night going over things. One was what she had said as she was leaving. It was just after ten. She’d stopped at the bottom of the stairs, climbed back up again, stood on tiptoes and kissed him. And then she’d said those three words. Astonished, he had repeated them. Actually, it had sounded more like a question. But then afterwards, once she’d disappeared out the gate, the words had continued to whirl round in his head. Words didn’t necessarily mean all that much; what mattered was that they’d been naked together. In other words, they had a relationship. But one they couldn’t have. She was from another world. He must avoid her. He must see her again.

  As he was passing the end of the landing strip, his mobile began vibrating. He stopped, pulled it out of his pocket. But the message was from Tonje. Pity you didn’t come yesterday. The strange thing was not that she had sent it, he reasoned. The strange thing was that he wasn’t surprised. He answered: Are you home?

  It took ten minutes for him to run there. As he was crossing Storgata, a black BMW passed. A man was out walking his dog; it was black too. And the clouds towering up in the west over the river Nitelva were, of course, also black, or at least almost black. He carried on enumerating black objects, and by the time he rang on Tonje’s doorbell, he had reached seventeen.

  Her mother opened the door.

  – Hello, Karsten, she exclaimed, as though it was the most natural thing in the world to find him standing there. – Do come inside.

  – She was slender and blond. Tonje looked like her, but her colouring was darker. Evolution tossed features around like that. Combining and recombining over and over again.

  He stayed outside. – There was just something I wanted to ask Tonje.

  She appeared in the hallway. The mother withdrew with a little smile that might have meant anything.

  – Was just down the road when I got your message, he assured her. – Thought I might as well pop in.

  – You didn’t come yesterday.

  – Something cropped up.

  She seemed to accept the explanation. He climbed up a step, bent forward and gave her a quick kiss that landed on the side of her mouth.

  She looked at him in surprise. – What’s going on?

  – Is something going on?

  – You seem different.

  She stepped back inside, over the threshold.

  – We can always meet some other time, she said, and straight away it reminded him of the first line of a song they were made to learn in primary school.

  – What about tonight? he suggested, and almost began singing.

  – Maybe.

  – Have any plans?

  – Don’t think so.

  He breathed as calmly as he could. – Are you going out with Thomas?

  She shrugged her shoulders. – That was ages ago.

  A few days? he should have asked but couldn’t. He suddenly felt dizzy, took a step backwards and nearly tripped over the top step.

  – Call you later, he said quickly.

  She crossed the threshold again, ran her finger between her lips and pressed it against the tip of his nose.

  – Don’t forget, she urged him. – Wow, you seem really out of it.

  He hopped down the steps and jogged over to the gate, turned right, speeded up and ran as fast as he could. He would run far. Further than his usual route. Run himself to exhaustion and slow his thoughts down that way. At the narrow railway underpass he saw a BMW, black and newly polished, and it occurred to him that he had seen it somewhere else not long ago. Through the tinted windows he could make out four or five passengers. He continued under the main road, towards the marina, turned up in the direction of the industrial estate. A greyish-brown shaggy dog snapped at him as he passed; it wasn’t on a leash, but the owner gave it a telling-off and brought it back to heel. An F-16 took off from the airport, filling the town with a monstrous roar.

  At that moment a large black car came speeding by, turned in towards the factory and screeched to a halt a few metres in front of him. It was the BMW again, and the thought that this manoeuvre might have something to do with him just had time to occur to him before two of the doors were slung open wide. He spun round, saw a guy in a dark jacket walking towards him across the yard. Pakistanis, it flashed through him, they’re going to get me. He whipped round the corner of the building, the fenced-in parking lot was deserted, it was Saturday, Easter holidays. He wrenched at the gate, it was locked. By the time he turned round, they had encircled him. The guy in the black jacket on the left, another one, big guy, wearing a suit. A third, just in his shirtsleeves, came straight for him, took aim, lifted something: a bat, Karsten just had time to register. The blow struck him in the side, he staggered back towards the fencing, fell.

  Got to get away, he moaned. Somewhere far off a dog barked. Two of the men stood over him. One of them said something in a foreign accent. Karsten heard the words, but had trouble making sense of them. Something about him having a debt, that he owed them something or other. Then the other one bent over him and waved a knife in his face. The blade was broad, highly polished, slightly curved.

  – Listen real good now while you still can.

  They’re going to do it shot through him.

  The guy bent even closer. There was a smell of raw meat from his mouth, as though he’d just eaten an animal alive, or dead.

  – We’re not going to kill you straight away. We’ve got another way of doing it to guys who rape. Know what we cut off?

  He fumbled inside the waistband of Karsten’s trousers, ripped off the button. Karsten screamed and bent double, a warm wetness squirting down the inside of his trouser leg. He could hear the guy laughing and saying something to the others in a foreign language.

  – I haven’t raped anyone, Karsten yelled. – She came to me.

  The explanation clearly made no impression.

  – We know all about you.

  Several hands grabbed him, turned him over.

  – The same thing could happen to your sister. The same thing you did. Have you thought about that?

  He was held down while his trousers were pulled off. Laughter. Knife blade against his stomach, cutting into him. Karsten’s bowels emptied in a flood; he registered the stink instantly. One of the guys pulled his hands away. – What the fuck, are you shitting on me?

  Another sound into the mix now: the barking of a dog, which came slinking round the corner. The same one he’d jogged past earlier. The men backed off a few metres, speaking to each other low and sharp in their foreign language.

  Karsten was on his feet and clambering up the fence. One of the men chased after him. The dog leapt at him, barking wildly. The man let go and tried to kick it away. Karsten reached the top of the fence, rolled over and dropped down on to the other side. The guy in the suit, the biggest of them, climbed after him. Karsten got to his feet, pulling his trousers up as he ran over the open ground. Passing a warehouse, he cast a glance behind him. The guy in the suit was still following. Another one was climbing over the fence. He saw no sign of the dog. He leapt up on to a ramp, pulled at a sliding door. It didn’t move. He jumped down again, sped round the corner. There was a container there, he jumped up on to it, pulled open the lid. There were a few cardboard boxes at the bottom. He wriggled in under the lid and it closed behind him with a crash that sent thunderbolts through his ears. What have you done? he babbled to himself, and knew that nothing would ever be right again. What have you done? he said again as he crept under a flattened cardboard box and moulded himself into an unmoving form.

  Voices outside, one dark and one light; he couldn’t hear what they were saying. They went away, came back again. The side door was opened. The waiting was unendurable. He counted the seconds, pulling each one up from an unfathomable depth
, dragging them over the side, rolling them away. He’d got as far as ten and was on the point of giving up and handing himself over when the door slammed shut again and the light voice shouted something.

  He pulled out his mobile. It was ten past twelve. He’d been lying there for half an hour. He waited ten more minutes, fifteen. Then he sat up, peered up at the door. Waited a few more minutes before creeping out and jumping down to the ground. He heard a sound from the warehouse and ran for all he was worth, not turning round. He clambered over the fence at the end of the yard, ran through a bog, sank to his knees, hauled himself up again. He found a track on the far side that led to the footpath running along the riverbank. He looked up, looked down, up again. Then he collapsed, blacked out for a moment, and heard the voice of the guy with the knife. The same thing could happen to your sister. The same thing you did. Nothing must happen to Synne, he groaned as he staggered along the footpath, heading towards the bridge.

  Adrian answered the call immediately. Karsten didn’t know what to say. He was leaning against one of the arches of the bridge, surrounded by empty beer cans and plastic bags of rubbish. He mustn’t stay there. If they came at him from one direction, he could outrun them, he knew he could. But if they worked out where he was, split up and approached from both sides, he had nowhere to run, nowhere else to go but into that muddy, swift-flowing river with its spinning chips of thin ice.

  – Trouble? Adrian asked.

  – They followed me in the car, Karsten managed to say. – Tried to kill me.

  – Are you hurt?

  He pulled up his jacket and vest. Blood seeped from a thin cut that ran across his stomach.

  – They cut me. I’m bleeding slightly.

  – The Pakis?

  – Yes.

  – Where are you now?

  Karsten told him. – Must get to the police, he stammered.

  – Think about it, Adrian interrupted. – There are two places they’re going to be looking for you. One is by the police station. The other is at your house.