But this vague idea of approaching Karsten through her writing was not something she could reveal to her father. Not yet, and she realised she was already dreading the day when she would have to talk to him about it. If that day even came, because so far this was all just a few fragile strands of an idea that would perhaps never develop into anything more.
She went upstairs, stood a moment outside the room before opening the door. After that Easter eight years ago, she had avoided Karsten’s room. The thought of going in there frightened her. She had started to imagine that she would find him in there. That he would be sitting at his desk with his back turned, as he always used to, before it happened. That he would turn, but that she would no longer recognise him. Fantasies like this tormented her. Two or three years went by before she dared to enter the room, realising that she had to, otherwise her fantasies would take control of her life completely. It was something she had understood herself, but she let the psychiatrist think it was his idea, let him continue to work on her for weeks after she had made up her mind to do it.
There was a smell of stale dust and something unidentifiably plasticky. Synne crossed to the window and opened it. Beyond the runway she could glimpse a bend in the river. That was what they had ended up believing, that down there was where he had gone on that Maundy Thursday.
The furniture was all still there, but most of his belongings had been removed long ago. Mother had insisted on it, when she still lived in the house. Synne sat at the desk, opened the top drawer, where a few things that had survived the clear-out remained. Not even after she had dared to enter the room again had she been able to touch any of them. Now she took out a calculator and a maths workbook. His name was on the inside, written in capitals and underlined once. Indicating a provisional answer, she recalled from her maths lessons. Two underlinings for the final answer.
Deeper inside the drawer she found a textbook. She flipped through it, saw Karsten’s notations in the margins, crosses and doodles, a few observations. On one of the blank pages at the back her brother had drawn a hollow figure. Formulas were scribbled alongside it, and a calculation. On the figure, he had written his initials, his date of birth and a second date. Below it, RIP. She sat looking at the drawing, realised that it was supposed to be a gravestone. And the date of death noted there wasn’t far off the day when he’d disappeared. Had he sat there and planned his own death, drawn his own gravestone, and then worked out the stone’s volume and ratio? Maybe that was the way his thoughts worked. Calculations, analyses, formulae, and as an apropos, approaching death.
There was something else written there, lower down the page.
Schrödinger: ‘I’ll kill you.’ Heisenberg helping him. Only A. can stop them.
These were names she associated with German science, possibly something to do with the war. Suddenly she took out her own notebook and copied down everything that was written below the drawing. A place to begin. In the tension between the analytic, where life was a given that could be revealed, and the unpredictable, threatening experience of living it.
At the back of the drawer she found a brown envelope with a pile of photographs inside. At the top, one of her brother. Looked to have been taken in front of the house. Just a few leaves left on the cherry tree. She studied the face, a pale ellipse, the narrow lower jaw he had inherited from his father. The eyes were light and looked happy. Had you already made up your mind by then, Karsten? A second picture showed the two of them together. She was holding on to his jacket; he had his arm around her, the same smile in that narrow face. The same as in the other pictures. Was that a mask he wore, and behind it, deep down in the eyes, had the death wish already taken over?
There was a school photograph there too, from secondary school. Karsten was standing in the back row, but was shorter and slighter than the biggest boys. Dark grey college sweater, collar-length hair. Not smiling here, seemed to be looking down and away. She let her eyes wander across the other faces, remembering some of them. Tonje, of course, with whom Karsten had been secretly in love since primary school. But not more secretly than that he had revealed it to his little sister one morning as he was making breakfast for her. She couldn’t remember anyone from his class coming to the house. Only a Vietnamese boy he used to solve arithmetic problems with. She found him sitting on the front row, couldn’t recall his name. Karsten didn’t have many friends, maybe none; it ran in the family. Oh yes, there was one, several years older, a supply teacher who took over the class.
She found a programme at the bottom of the envelope. It was printed on stiff peach-coloured paper. The picture on the front was the one taken in the garden, with him standing beneath the cherry tree. Below that, in ornate black lettering: Programme for Karsten’s memorial service, 8 July 2003.
They had waited a long time before holding it. Almost three months had passed since that Maundy Thursday. By then, what remained of their hope was gone. But not hers, not even when she realised that her parents had given up. At first she had imagined that one day he would quite simply be sitting here in his room, and open the door and come out to them. Without anyone having to explain where he had been or why he had been away. Then later she had imagined him showing up somewhere far away, maybe even in another country, that he had somehow ended up on board a ship, fallen ill, lost his memory, until a nurse at a hospital in England or Egypt or a Mediterranean island had managed to get him to talk and found out who he was. She had seen The English Patient and it would happen pretty much like that. Her brother had experienced something both wonderful and terrible, connected with love; he had been injured, but not as badly as the English patient. He would recover his memory, and one day he’d come walking up the road, stop in front of their gate and look up at the house. And she would see him through the living-room window and run outside, and she would be the first to throw her arms around him.
Many things from that time remained unclear, but she could remember the service. It was held in a church, which must have been her mother’s doing; her father wouldn’t set foot inside a church unless he had to. They had sung a psalm, something about thinking yourself weary unto death. And afterwards everybody talked about Karsten as though he no longer existed.
She opened the card from the memorial service. The words of the psalm were printed there, and she found the line that had stuck in her mind: When I have thought myself weary unto death, say Oh Lord what thou hast thought.
There was a piece of paper inside. She unfolded it. Memorial address by the Reverend Olav Kiran.
Hadn’t she seen this before? She couldn’t remember. But as she sat there reading at Karsten’s desk, the images came back to her. The light in the church that summer’s day. The pews full, though it was the middle of the summer holidays. Suddenly she remembered how she had been looking for him, Karsten’s friend, Adrian Wilkins, but he wasn’t there. She found out later that he had gone back to England to resume his studies.
Why must the best be taken from us? Why must those who have so much left to do, who have so far left to travel, and who have so much to offer to others, be taken from us? Where can we turn in search of meaning when such a thing happens?
If the priest’s answer was to God, then it didn’t exactly agree with what Karsten had believed. With the support of his father, he had declined to be confirmed. And on the day he turned eighteen, he left the state church. But the priest hadn’t even mentioned God in his address. He had probably formed a picture of Karsten based on conversations with his parents and classmates. The priest’s own son was in his class, she remembered now. And maybe some of what she herself had said about her brother had found its way into what the Reverend Kiran said that day in church.
He was unique. He could solve problems in maths and physics that even the teachers struggled with. He was an outstanding chess player. He took care of his friends and looked out for his little sister.
And there it was. She remembered the priest being at their home. He sat on the sofa by the window in the l
iving room, next to her mother. Synne couldn’t place her father; maybe he wasn’t there. The priest had asked if she and Karsten spent a lot of time together, and she hadn’t known what to answer. She was thirteen; he was almost six years older. But he cared about her, she knew that much. In the evening, when she was doing her homework, or reading or playing a computer game, he might come into her room. Stand behind her for a while, observing what she was doing, and if she seemed to be stuck, give her a hint. Maybe pat her on the head. She could hardly recall a single quarrel. So yes, it was what she had said that had become, in the priest’s address, He looked out for his little sister.
After the service, she had stood outside with her parents, she remembered now. A stream of people she didn’t know shaking her hand and saying that strange, stiff thing, my condolences, as well as other, meaningless things, such as that she must get in touch if there was any way in which they could help.
She put the programme and the address back inside the envelope. If she was to get close to Karsten, it was the impression he had left inside her, the weight of his absence she would have to focus on. The greyness outside was denser now. She could no longer make out the river on the far side of the runway. She thought of what Erika had said about visiting your own pain, the only thing worth writing about. But she would never be able to write about the night Karsten disappeared.
His mobile phone lay in the drawer too. Back then, she didn’t have a camera on her own phone. She remembered what a fuss she’d made; everybody else had one. She had envied Karsten his state-of-the art phone and was always asking to borrow it to take pictures with. And he good-naturedly let her. He didn’t even keep his code a secret from her; he used her birthday.
She plugged in the charger. The display lit up. She tapped in the four numbers and unlocked the SIM card.
There weren’t many pictures there; her brother wasn’t exactly a keen photographer. She found several she had taken herself, including some of him. It was at Christmas, outside the cabin. He stood leaning on his ski poles and smiling that same smile. Afterwards she had taken one of them together. He had his arm around her, faces cheek to cheek, right up close to the lens. In another one he was standing by the kitchen table pouring muesli into a bowl. Then pictures from various locations. She stopped at the next-to-last picture. Karsten looked to be naked and was grinning at the camera, suddenly quite unlike all the other images. Must have taken it of himself. The last one was of a dark-haired girl. She was wearing what looked like Pakistani costume and had almond-shaped dark eyes and the kind of full lips any girl would envy.
Synne got the class photo out again, found her sitting at the end of the first row. Again she studied the picture on the phone. To the right of the girl’s head she saw the edge of a painting of a woodland scene, one that was still hanging on their wall down in the living room. The girl was holding out a hand and didn’t seem to want to be photographed. The picture was taken the Friday before Palm Sunday, at nine thirty in the evening, the same time as the picture of Karsten naked. She remembered that she and her parents had gone to the cabin that weekend, leaving Karsten at home to study for his exams. She would never have imagined that a girlfriend came round to see him. He was shy with girls. Synne thought it had something to do with an operation, a hernia or something, but they never talked about it at home.
She opened the messages, clicked down to the ones from that Maundy Thursday, found some from Tonje, a number of short messages; it looked as though they had an arrangement. There was another name she recognised there too, a name that was to her at that time the most exciting in the whole world. Karsten had sent several messages to Adrian Wilkins that Maundy Thursday. He appeared to be trying to get in touch with him.
Suddenly Synne remembered something that had happened that evening. She was at Tamara’s, was going to sleep over. Tamara was allowed to be home on her own, even though she was only thirteen. She had three girlfriends visiting and planned to ring some boys. They’d got hold of some alcopops. Synne had lied to her parents that Tamara’s mother was at home. Later on that evening Karsten had turned up. Looking back on it now, it was obvious that something had been going on, something she hadn’t understood. There was so much she hadn’t understood. Karsten said he was worried about her. He was falling into a pit, and even then it was her he was looking out for.
She looked further down the list. In the days after Maundy Thursday there were a number of messages sent from her parents’ phones. She couldn’t bear to open them, knowing what they must say. But the final message on Maundy Thursday was from another number, received at ten forty-two. Call me, it’s urgent. No indication who it was from. She took out her own phone, ran a directory enquiry. Thought that few people would hang on to the same number for eight years.
But the name of the person who had sent that last message appeared on her screen.
3
Dan-Levi opened his iPhone playlist. ‘Almost Cut My Hair’ filled his ears as he started to clear the table. It was Friday. He realised how much he had been looking forward to an evening with no arrangements or programme. It happened just the other day. He scraped the taco remains into the rubbish. They threw away too much food. There was an economic argument to it, but mostly it was wrong. Rebekah was four and they were agreed that she shouldn’t be made to eat everything up. Ruben was good at not taking any more than he knew he could manage. Rakel and Ruth, on the other hand, were hopeless. Ruth was only five, but Rakel was nine and got away with it too easily. Something happened to her eyes when Dan-Levi tried to be strict with her, as though the whole world around her were falling to pieces. Once he had allowed himself to get far too angry. It frightened him, but Sara laughed it off. In her own time she’d been the apple of her father’s eye too.
Now she entered the kitchen carrying two half-full glasses of milk and emptied them into the sink. He always put anything left over back into the fridge. It never got drunk, but it was easier to throw them out a few days later, after they’d been standing there so long that drinking them would be a health risk.
– Satisfactory?
Sara ran a finger over the worktop, peered into the sink. Found the remains of an apple core.
– Not satisfactory.
He grabbed it from her and tossed it into the overfilled rubbish bin.
– Now?
– C minus, she offered after taking another look.
– Well that’s a pass, more than a pass. So that means a reward.
He leaned against the worktop and closed his eyes. Heard her exaggerated sigh of exasperation. And then her lips were there, a light touch and then gone.
– That will not do, he protested. – Satisfactory is satisfactory.
He put his arms around her and lifted her up, sucked hold of one lip.
– You idiot, she murmured, pulling herself free as Ruth appeared in the doorway.
– Rakel, Mummy and Daddy are kissing, their daughter called into the living room.
– So what, came the response.
– Kiss more, Ruth demanded, holding on to her mother.
– All right then, said Dan-Levi, and placed his lips on Sara’s nose with a blowing sound that made her jump. As she turned and tried to escape, he held her from behind and whispered in her ear: – I’ll be back. When the children are asleep. Don’t think you’ll get away with this.
She turned towards him. – In that case, you’d better shave first, you caveman.
It was his turn to put the children in bed. That meant washing and then pyjamas, teeth to be brushed, around forty altogether in the two mouths. Ruben had made it clear long ago that he didn’t want to be included in the bedtime cleaning ritual.
Every evening Dan-Levi made sure he had some time alone with Rakel before she went to sleep. She needed it, he and Sara were agreed on that, and once Ruth and Rebekah were wrapped up inside their duvets, and Ruben was busy in the bathroom, he quietly opened the door to her room.
– Rakel?
As he turne
d to go out again, he heard her answer.
– Are you here? he said in astonishment, and peered under the bed.
The wardrobe door opened and she peeked out.
He had to laugh. – What are you doing in there?
– Thinking.
He didn’t ask why she had to sit inside a wardrobe to think. Rakel did that kind of thing. Her teacher said she had a rich inner world, but had no idea how true that was. It was Dan-Levi who most often had access to this world, of princes and princesses, wizards, trolls and demons. But what he noticed above all was something he recognised as the presence of the Lord, because Rakel had certain gifts that no one could completely understand. They had discovered this two years ago, one night when she came in to them and told them of a dream. She had seen her grandfather standing in the middle of the floor clad in a long white gown. According to Rakel, he laughed the whole time and spoke in a language she had never heard before. That same morning, Dan-Levi’s mother called. His father had died in the night. Without any signs at all of being unwell, he had gone to bed that night, fallen asleep and never woken again.
They agreed not to talk about Rakel’s gift, not until He had revealed it to others.
– I have a special place in there, she confided in him now.
– In the wardrobe? There isn’t a door into another world in there, is there?
He had read the Narnia books to her and Ruben. Ruben had reluctantly allowed himself to be drawn into a universe that strained the laws of common sense, but Rakel had thrown herself into it, lapping it up.
She shook her head. – Just a secret room. Someone’s written something on the wall there. Something nasty.
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