“Dad, this is the first weekend I’ve had off in God knows how long and I really don’t feel like discussing this right now.”
“But what we’re doing now may come back to bite us later … did you know that the mangrove forests we cleared to make room for our scampi farm store five times more carbon on a per-area basis than ordinary rain forests?”
“All the same, I mean it’s not that big an area,” Rikard says, sounding a little tired and fed up. I put my shoes under the coatrack and get up, look at Ingrid, and smile as we head toward the kitchen.
“Yes, but when you know that any area we work will be destroyed by pollution within five to ten years and that we’re forced, therefore, to keep moving around, then we’re actually talking about a very large area,” Kåre retorts just as I push the door open and look around it. They’re over by the countertop, butchering the half carcass of some animal—a roe deer or possibly a stag, I’m not sure. Kåre is bent over the bloody side of meat, cutting out a fillet and Rikard is vacuum packing a haunch or something, he has just finished pressing the air out of the bag and now he’s standing there glaring at Kåre. After a moment he catches sight of Ingrid and me.
“Christ, honestly,” he says with a hasty laugh and a shake of his head, as if trying to conceal or at least make light of his irritation, trying to appear more exasperated than angry with Kåre. “Dad’s suffering from elderly Conservative syndrome, he’s become so radical in his old age there’s almost no living with him.”
“Radical!” Kåre snorts. He eases the tip of the knife under the silvery membrane around the fillet. “Although there’s no doubt that I do agree with the Conservatives on most things,” he adds. He makes a little incision, loosening the silver skin from the meat, then carefully peels it off with a faintly glutinous ripping sound. He smiles at me as he drops it onto the small glistening heap of trimmings and bone on the counter. I smile back, watch him as he bends over the side of venison, inserts the knife between two ribs, and slides it into the fresh, red meat. It’s so strange, he and I are also less alike than Ingrid would have it, but no one could be in any doubt that we’re father and son, we have the very same eyes, the very same mouth, it’s weird to see an older version of oneself, so to speak. Mind you, this whole thing is so weird: to be here, with these people, under these circumstances, it’s utterly unreal. “Is there anything we can do to help?” I ask.
“No thanks, we’re nearly finished,” Rikard says. He has just written “venison, shoulder, October 31st, 2006” on the vacuum pack and he straightens up and smiles at me as he puts the cap back on the black marker. “I thought we would leave as soon as we’re done here, so if you want to change, you could maybe do that now.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” I say.
Then I hear Klara say “Hi.” I turn around, only now do I see her and Rikard’s kids sitting around the dining table in the far room. Each of the children is working on a small pumpkin, concentrating hard, tongues between their teeth as they cut out the mouths, eyes, and noses, and Klara has just finished scooping out the insides of a larger one, she smiles at me as she picks up the bowl of pumpkin flesh, then she gets up and comes over to us. “Can you keep an eye on them while I get rid of this, Kåre,” she says, glancing at him and jerking her head toward the cabinet under the sink.
“Get rid of it?”
“Now, now, dear, there’s no need to shout,” she says. “I’m right here.”
“We don’t throw out perfectly good food, dammit!” he says.
“Kåre, please. Not in front of the children.”
“It’ll do the children no harm to learn that you don’t throw out food.”
“No, but it doesn’t do them any good to hear you swear.”
“That’ll make a lovely soup for this evening. To have before the venison. Or pumpkin pie, for dessert.”
I look at him and smile. It’s on the tip of my tongue to say that I could make soup for us to have as a first course this evening, but I don’t get the chance.
“What?” Klara says, looking at Ingrid, who’s standing there, mouth working, trying not to laugh.
“Oh, it’s just that … it’s exactly like listening to David. It’s absolutely incredible. He charges around the house switching off lamps, turning down radiators, and … when we have prawns, I have to throw the shells out when he’s not looking, otherwise he’ll insist on freezing them to boil up for stock later.”
“Really?” Klara gasps. She kind of sags in the middle and lays a hand on Ingrid’s forearm. She gazes at her, wide-eyed and openmouthed for a couple of seconds, then she too starts to laugh.
“Women,” Kåre mutters with a glance at me. He chuckles and shakes his head, but he actually looks rather pleased as he turns away and carries on butchering the side of venison, it’s good to know he’s glad to hear that there’s a family resemblance, seeing that makes me glad too.
“I’ll happily make soup for this evening,” I say.
“Could you?” Kåre asks.
“Sure.”
“There, you see, Klara,” he says.
“Yes, yes, all right. Go ahead, gang up on me, why don’t you,” she says. She glances at Ingrid and laughs as she takes a roll of plastic wrap out of the top drawer, covers the bowl, and puts it in the fridge. Just then I hear the skitter of dog claws on the stone tiles in the hall.
“Did you remember to wash him, Marius?” Klara calls, spinning around as she pushes the fridge door shut, but Marius has no time to reply before the elkhound comes bounding through the kitchen door. Kåre has left a couple of meaty deer bones in the bowl under the counter and the dog makes a dash for it, looking neither to right nor left, and dives straight in, chomping and gnawing voraciously, growling low in his throat as he crushes the bones with his back teeth. Then Marius rushes in, still wearing his jacket, hat, and boots. He stomps across the kitchen at much the same speed as the dog, grabs the elkhound by the scruff of the neck with one hand and raps him on the nose with the other. He holds the dog like that, the tight grip on the dog’s scruff drawing his eyes back into two narrow slits.
“Marius!” Kåre cries, shocked.
“Don’t hit the dog!” Rikard snaps.
Marius doesn’t say a word, he doesn’t even turn around, he simply stands there holding the dog by the scruff of the neck and glowering at him. The dog still has the bone in his mouth, probably afraid that Marius is going to take it away from him because he gives a long, low growl, curls his mud-colored lips, and bares his teeth. Marius raises a hand, about to hit him again, but he doesn’t.
“He doesn’t listen,” he says, letting go of the dog.
“Hey, he smelled the venison, what do you expect?” Rikard says.
“That’s beside the point,” Marius says. He doesn’t look at any of us, his eyes flick from side to side as he turns and walks back out of the kitchen. I watch him go, what the hell was all that about, that outburst, was it a demonstration of some sort for my benefit? I’ve noticed how hard Marius tries to make it quite clear to me that he belongs here, he seems to see me as a threat and evidently wants to show me that this is his home in a way that it can never be mine. I’ve observed several instances of this and punishing the family dog in front of everybody is possibly yet another way of marking his territory, it’s something I would never dare to do, something only one of the family can do.
Silence.
“You’ll have to excuse him,” Klara says softly, with a sad little smile to Ingrid and me. I raise a hand, shake my head faintly, and give her a similar smile in return, to show that I understand how difficult all this must be for Marius and that she doesn’t need to say any more.
“It’s not easy, and … well, he’s always been a bit sensitive,” she murmurs. She glances back at the children in the dining room, then turns to me again. “A mite highly strung … he was just born that way,” she adds. I look at her as she pulls out one of the chairs at the kitchen table and sits down, is she trying to disavow any resp
onsibility for Marius being the way he is? By saying that Marius has been sensitive and highly strung since the day he was born, is she trying to tell herself and the rest of us that she did the best she could, but that Marius was genetically disposed to be a bag of nerves, so to speak. Or is this perhaps an attempt to bond with me by reminding me that Marius is not her real son, thereby also reminding me that I am her real son, maybe that’s what she’s trying to do, maybe this is actually an instinctive attempt to get closer to me by pushing Marius away, yes, that has to be it, I get it now, and she sees that I do, I know she does because her cheeks suddenly turn pink, she’s embarrassed, partly because she can tell that I feel uncomfortable and partly, I assume, because she feels bad about Marius. She loves Marius as much as she’s always done and naturally she doesn’t want to push him away just to get closer to me, she didn’t mean to say what she said, it just came out, I realize that. I glance down quickly and put my hand over my mouth as if about to cough, use this as a pretext, to make her think I don’t see that she’s blushing, she might not feel so embarrassed if she thinks I haven’t noticed.
“A few months ago he lied to his girlfriend and told her he had MS,” Rikard says, placing another clearly labeled, sealed pack of meat on the countertop alongside the others. “And right after that,” he goes on, “when he went on a trip to the mountains with some pals, he lied to them and said he was going to collect firewood, then he went down to a river with a huge waterfall just downstream, took off his shoes and left them on the bank, put his cell phone inside one of them, and walked off.” He shakes his head and looks at me as if to say: Did you ever hear anything like it? “His pals thought he’d killed himself, right? Well, that’s what we all thought. He’d left his car in the parking lot and everything. And when they got in touch with his girlfriend and it came out that he had MS, well, that clinched it, everyone was sure that was why he’d done it. But then it turned out that he’d walked all the way down to his cottage in Namsskogan. Marius denies it, but I think he planned the whole thing. That he actually did want to disappear. To go away and make a fresh start, maybe. Who knows.”
“That’s … ,” I say, then I stop, I don’t know what to say, so I simply stand there, looking at Rikard and slowly shaking my head.
“But he was found out when I called his biological father in Grong to tell him that Marius had killed himself,” Rikard continues. “‘Well,’ he said, ‘he’s looking pretty good for a dead man, I’ll give him that.’ I asked him what he meant and it appeared that he’d just had a visit from Marius. And then we realized, of course, that he’d fooled us all and that he had to be staying at the cottage, right? It’s not that far from Grong. Close enough for him to get there in that four-wheeler he keeps up there … and if you’d seen that place … we went to the cottage to pick him up and … well, it was quite a shock, I tell you. Have you ever seen one of those survivalist programs?”
“No,” I say.
“Well, there are these TV shows in America about a bunch of pretty paranoid characters who’re preparing themselves for various doomsday scenarios. They dry and can enough food to last for months or even years, they build water reservoirs equipped with all sorts of purification systems, construct weapons with which to defend themselves against intruders and, yeah … all that sort of thing. And that was exactly what Marius was doing at the cottage, it was absolutely …”
“He didn’t have any weapons, though, did he?” Kåre asks.
“No, maybe not, but still …”
“Oh, come on, don’t … ,” Kåre says, resting the hand with the knife in it on the counter. He blinks slowly and shakes his head. “You make it sound as if Marius is a raving lunatic, but he’s not. He’s really a very bright, talented young man. He’s kind and considerate and …”
“No one’s arguing with that, Kåre,” Klara interrupts, sounding hurt. She looks hurt too. Marius is her son, she loves him and obviously she doesn’t like to be accused of bad-mouthing him. That’s why she’s hurt, I realize that.
“But he’s clearly struggling, Dad. He’s …”
“Shh,” Klara breaks in, putting a finger to her lips.
Someone’s coming, I hear footsteps in the hall, turn to look at the door and a split second later Marius comes back into the kitchen.
Silence.
“Oh, don’t stop on my account,” he says. He knows we were talking about him while he was out of the room, he twists his lips into a tortured grin, his cheeks are pink, and he studiously avoids meeting anyone’s eye. I feel so sorry for him, he’s suffering so much it’s incredible. He takes a wallet from a little basket full of keys, turns, and starts to walk away again.
“Marius, hey,” Klara says.
Marius stops.
“Yes?” he says, his voice a little brighter than usual, a voice that’s meant to sound nonchalant or something. He looks at Klara, tries to smile and look nonchalant too, but can’t quite manage it. His eyes dart this way and that and he both sounds and looks so distressed, poor guy, it’s awful to watch. When I read his letter, I got the impression that things were going better between him and the family, but it doesn’t look like that at the moment, he seems to find it hard to believe that there’s a place for him in the family now that I’m here, so he responds by trying to convince himself and the rest of us that he doesn’t need a family anyway, it’s a defense mechanism, I suppose, this must be his way of dealing with the threat, because he clearly sees me as a threat. I didn’t get that impression from his letter, but seeing me with his mother, his father, and his brother, seeing that we’re actually getting along very well and that we like one another, has evidently been harder and more hurtful that he had expected, he can barely stand to be in the same room as me. I’d been looking forward to talking to him, we’ve been living each other’s lives, after all, and we have so much to talk about, but he keeps avoiding me.
“Can’t you stay for a chat?” Klara says.
“Not now. There’s something I have to do,” Marius says, swallowing.
“Oh, what?” she asks.
“Hm?” He heard what she said, he’s just playing for time while he invents some errand or other, I guess, hence that “Hm”: he’s trying to come up with an excuse because he can’t bear to be with us.
“Oh, sit down, Marius,” Klara says. There’s an imploring note in her voice, an imploring look in her eye too.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Marius says a little louder, still insisting that he’s too busy to sit down with us, even though he must know he’s not fooling anyone here.
“Yes, I did,” Klara says, nodding and smiling stiffly.
Silence.
Then I hear Rikard sigh, he stares at the floor, arms crossed, and shakes his head, says nothing. Marius glares at him for a second or two, looking as though he’s about to say something, but he doesn’t, he only stands there for a moment, then wheels around and walks out.
Silence again.
I put my hand over my mouth, give a little cough.
“Well, shall we go up and get changed?” I say, turning to Ingrid.
“Yes,” she says, smiling hesitantly.
“Great,” Rikard says. “We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.”
“Righto,” I say. I turn to Klara: “There’s a bottle of formula on the countertop. In case he wakes up and is hungry.”
She nods and smiles but doesn’t say anything, that little scene with Marius has upset her and she may be afraid her voice will fail her, I don’t know. I place a hand on Ingrid’s shoulder, push her gently ahead of me out of the kitchen and into the hall, and suddenly there’s Marius again, he marches straight past us and into the kitchen. I look around, still walking away, see Marius come to a halt right in front of Rikard.
“Well, at least there’s one good thing to come out of all this, Rikard,” he says. “You and I no longer need to pretend that we like each other!” Then he turns on his heel and exits the kitchen again, walks straight past us and out into the
vestibule, without so much as a glance at us. A moment later I hear the front door slam. He’s so troubled, that man, he’s a total wreck, I need to talk to him soon, I need to explain that I’m no threat to him. I put my hand on the banister, set my right foot on the bottom step, then I turn abruptly and head back along the hall: I might as well have a word with him now, there’s no point in putting it off.
“David,” I hear Ingrid say.
“I’ll be right back,” I say.
“But we’ll be leaving in a minute. Dav—”
I open the front door and go out onto the steps in time to see Marius emerging from the toolshed. He comes straight toward me carrying a screwdriver, a wrench, and a couple of bicycle tires.
“Marius,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“We need to talk.”
“Talk away,” he says. I look at him, such a smart-ass comment doesn’t fit with his troubled, anxious manner and he knows it too, I can tell, his shoulders kind of slump and he looks even more anxious than before, he can’t even meet my eye, stares at the ground as he covers the last few yards to the steps. He puts down the screwdriver, the wrench, and the tires, then reaches out a hand to a bike that’s propped against the side of the steps, draws it toward him, and turns it upside down.
“Marius, you’ve nothing to fear from me,” I say, then I stick my hands in my pockets and just stand there for a moment, waiting. It’s cold, I press my arms tight against my sides. “But if you want me to, I promise I’ll leave now and never bother any of you again.” The words come out in a rush and I start to worry as soon as I’ve said it, I don’t know if I’m capable of making the sacrifice I’ve just offered to make, I’ve known the family only a few days, but to leave now and never come back seems nigh on impossible.
He studies me.
“Why would you do that?” he asks.
“Your letter … and all the other letters … I don’t know, but they did something to me,” I say. “I’ll be eternally grateful for everything that’s happened to me recently. And when I think about the huge risk you took when you wrote to me, well … I owe you a lot and I would like to help you, that’s all. Because I can see that you’re having a hard time of it.” It’s strange to be talking like this, to be so open and honest, it feels so alien to me and yet absolutely right, these words come straight from the heart, they really do, even though I’m not sure whether I could find it in me to leave here.
Aftermath Page 43