Aftermath Read online

Dad could not abide this side of Rikard. Mom may occasionally have felt it was a bit much, but she was, nonetheless, far more forbearing. Unlike Dad she could see the funny side of it. Which is not to say that she thought this new Rikard was ridiculous, because I don’t think she did. But she realized that there was an element of role-playing to his snobbery, a touch of the tongue-in-cheek; that he knew exactly what he was doing and that he deliberately overdid it—sometimes to tease and provoke anyone who left themselves open to being teased and provoked and sometimes simply because he liked feeling every bit as successful and superior as the role he was playing would have it. The fact that Mom possessed many of the same tendencies—take, for example, the way she used to goad Aunt Rebekka and Uncle Frederik when they were children—probably also made it easier for her to accept the new Rikard than it was for Dad. On this particular point he was more American than British, you might say. He didn’t have the same appreciation of irony and subtle wit as Mom. So when, for example, some people came to the door collecting for the annual television charity appeal, Rikard slipped 500 kroner into the collection box with the words “There you go, some crumbs from the rich man’s table,” Dad’s eyes looked as if they were about to pop out of his head, he was so angry. There were many such incidents. Dad did not find Rikard’s snobbery any easier to swallow merely because Rikard knew he was being snobbish, and every time Rikard and I came home for a visit, they seemed to me to have grown further apart. Dad and I enjoyed each other’s company, we laughed a lot together, but the moment Rikard walked in, the mood would change. Dad became truculent, edgy, ready to pounce on everything Rikard said or did, while Rikard for his part responded to all critical remarks and questions with sarcasm and sneers.

  Still, though, I could never compete with Rikard. Not when you got right down to it. Or at least, that’s what I convinced myself of as I sat there in my studio apartment, thinking back on the subtle and no doubt carefully planned way in which Dad had prepared for Rikard to take over the business. Rikard was his flesh and blood, and despite all assurances to the contrary, this meant much more to Dad than the fact that on a personal level he got on better with me than with Rikard. I remember how, when I was thinking about all this, I was reminded of a film I had seen once. I don’t know what it was called, only that it was set during the Second World War and that in it there was an awful scene on the railway tracks outside a concentration camp, in which a young Jewish woman with two children is taken aside by a German SS officer. The SS officer tells her that one of her children will be allowed to live, that it is up to her to choose which, and that if she doesn’t agree to this, they will both be sent straight to the gas chamber. I burned with shame for daring to compare the situation between Dad, Rikard, and me to that of this poor Jewish family. Even though the comparison had been completely involuntary and even though I did my best not to think like that, I still felt ashamed. Nevertheless: I was absolutely certain that in such a situation Dad would have chosen Rikard. And so would Mom.

  And no sooner had the idea that one’s biological origins really did matter begun to take root in me than it became difficult, of course, to act as though I didn’t need to know who my real parents were. Where did they live, what did they do, and what were they like? Did I resemble them in appearance and manner? Did I have siblings? Did I have grandparents still living? For weeks my head buzzed with questions, night and day. I couldn’t concentrate and I began to worry that it would affect my studies. So I went back home to Bangsund, to Mom and Dad and told them straight: I totally respected their wish to let bygones be bygones, but I needed to know where I came from.

  And so I was told. No sooner said than done, in fact. To the great surprise of both Dad and me, it turned out that Mom already had the answers to most of my questions. She and Dad had agreed not to go digging into my background, but Mom couldn’t resist it and not long after they discovered that I was not their natural son, she had managed to get hold of a list of the other women who had given birth at Namsos Hospital on the same night as she. Then it was simply a matter of elimination. Three of the six mothers had had girls, so they could be ruled out straightaway. That left Mom, Berit, and a woman from Malm by the name of Ragnhild Eilertsen. Since Berit lived closest, Mom approached her first and once they had met, there was no need to contact Mrs. Eilertsen.

  Berit had learned of the mix-up years before through a close friend who worked at the maternity ward in Namsos, so she was more relieved than shocked when Mom told her why she was there. With the exception of this friend, she had never spoken to a living soul about what had happened and there was so much she wanted to get off her chest, so much she had always wondered about. Not a day had gone by when she hadn’t asked herself who her own son was growing up with, how he was, and what sort of person he was, but for your sake, David, she had refused to give in to the urge to trace him, so to finally have her questions answered was a huge relief. Berit and Mom talked for hours. They wanted to know everything about their respective sons and the families in which they had grown up and they arranged to meet again the following week, partly to exchange photos of each other’s children and partly to decide how to proceed, now that they had found each other. But only a couple of days before they were due to meet, Berit died, suddenly and most unexpectedly. Mom thought long and hard about getting in touch with you and telling you the whole story, but for the same reason that Berit had refrained from looking for me, she decided not to. Instead she contented herself with becoming a stalker, as she put it. To begin with scarcely a day went by without her driving past the house where you and your girlfriend lived, hoping to catch a glimpse of you. She went to events that, from the way Berit had described you, she thought you might attend, and if she was lucky enough to run into you in town, she would follow you. She sidled up next to you when you were browsing in Karoliussen or Torgersen bookshops or flicking through records and CDs in Øyvind Johansen or LP-Hjørnet and on more than one occasion she sat at the table next to yours when you were in a café with friends. But she never made contact. “I just wanted to make sure he was all right,” she said.

  Grong, June 29th, 2006. Patties are proper grub

  I CROUCH DOWN AND THE DOG LIFTS ITS HEAD off its paws. I reach out my hand, let it lick it, then put my hand behind its ear and scratch gently.

  “What’s his name?” I ask.

  “It’s a bitch. Her name’s Conny,” Torstein says from the kitchen.

  “Hello, Conny,” I say. I run my hand from the back of her ear to the top of her head, stroke her crown, drawing the hair back and turning her eyes into narrow slits. Then Torstein appears in the doorway, regards me with those ice-blue and rather watery eyes, he seems even thinner than the last time I saw him, the chalk-white skin of his face looks like it’s pasted to his cheekbones and his throat is so stripped of flesh that his carotid artery stands out in a way that gives me much the same feeling as I get when I see operations on television. Have to try not to look at that artery, it makes my stomach turn.

  “We were really only meant to be looking after her while my brother was in the Philippines,” he says. “But what do you know, now we’re dog owners.”

  “So Rune decided to stay down there?” I ask.

  “Rune died two days ago.”

  I feel my jaw drop at this, although I didn’t really know Rune. I met him only that one time when Torstein invited the whole family over to meet me and on that occasion he had had to leave early to attend a church service or something, he was very religious, I remember, and that’s pretty much all I remember, but still, even though I didn’t know him, this news comes as a bit of a shock, not because he was my biological uncle, but because he was so young, he can’t have been more than forty-seven or forty-eight.

  “Oh, my God,” I say, offering him my hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  Then Gunn Torhild emerges from the kitchen.

  “Gunn Torhild, I’m so sorry to hear about Rune,” I say.

  “Thanks
,” she says in her husky smoker’s voice.

  “He got run over by a bus,” Torstein says. “The traffic’s absolutely crazy down there.”

  “So we’re in mourning, you could say,” Gunn Torhild says.

  “Yes, I understand,” I say, nodding. “But for heaven’s sake, why didn’t you say when I called?” I ask.

  “Say?” Gunn Torhild asks.

  “That it wasn’t a good time. I beg your pardon. I’ll go again,” I say.

  “Oh no, don’t,” Gunn Torhild says.

  “No, it’s okay,” I say. “I’m staying at the cottage at the moment so it’s not far to drive. I can come back some other time.”

  “Not at all,” Torstein says. “You’re family, aren’t you? And besides, we need to think and talk about other things now and again.”

  “We’re glad you’re here,” Gunn Torhild says, smiling at me, then she mutters something about the dinner burning, turns, and goes back into the kitchen.

  “Well, if nothing else, we’ve got a dog now,” Torstein says with a little laugh, trying to put a brave face on things now, trying to joke around, to show that he’s still functioning, I suppose, that he’s able to talk about other things, even though he’s grieving for his brother. “She’s a damn good hunting dog, you know,” he says, kneeling down and scratching the dog behind the ear. He tilts his head to one side and tries to look into Conny’s eyes, making little crooning sounds. His neck becomes very long and exposed when he does this and I notice how his carotid artery bulges even more. It’s so horrible to look at, I can’t do it, have to turn my head away.

  “You can sit down now,” Gunn Torhild says, switching off the range hood midsentence so that the last words seem almost to be shouted out.

  “I just need to go to the bathroom,” Torstein says.

  I stroll into the kitchen, the air is thick with cooking fumes, and Gunn Torhild is leaning across the countertop, fiddling with the catch on the window.

  “Oh, to be able to afford a new range hood,” she says, waving the fumes away. “This one sounds like a small plane taking off, but it sucks up hardly anything.”

  I smile at her as I turn on the tap and wash my hands.

  “Simen, you go and wash your hands as well,” Gunn Torhild says.

  “What?” Simen says from the living room.

  “Wash your hands before dinner,” Gunn Torhild says.

  I dry my hands, then turn around. Simen is already sitting at the dining table—it’s the weirdest sensation every time I see him, like seeing myself at the same age, he’s every bit as long and lanky as I was and he has my face. He looks at Gunn Torhild, snorts, and gives a typical teenage sneer.

  “Would you like me to put on my suit as well?” he mumbles.

  I watch him as he gets to his feet. It’s obviously not standard procedure to wash your hands before meals in this house, that must be why he’s reacting like this. Gunn Torhild probably only asked him to wash his hands because she wants the family to show itself in a better light than it did last time I was here. I watch Simen walking toward me, it’s like looking at an earlier version of myself, almost like going back in time, I can’t get over how much he resembles me. I almost reach out a hand and offer him my condolences, but I think better of it, he’s so sullen faced, doesn’t look like he wants to shake hands with me or anyone else.

  “Sad to hear about your uncle, Simen” is all I say, careful to say “your uncle” and not “Uncle Rune,” I don’t know if he still feels as threatened by me as he used to, but it’s best to be on the safe side. If he thought I regarded myself as a fully paid-up member of the family, he might well feel threatened and then I would just end up scaring him off, the way I did last time.

  “I didn’t know Rune any better than you did” is all he says, walking over to the sink and starting to wash his hands.

  I watch him for a moment before going back through to the living room and sitting down, I’ve been given a plate with a crack in it, I see, a thin, dark line cutting across the white china.

  “It’s only beef patties, I’m afraid,” Gunn Torhild says. She lifts a pile of hunting and car magazines off one end of the dining table. “Would you mind handing me those papers,” she says, motioning toward a couple of bills that are lying on the table in front of me, two final reminders it looks like, one from the electricity company and one for cable TV, I pretend not to notice what they are, she might find it embarrassing to have her poor finances laid bare like this, so I’m careful to look straight at Gunn Torhild as I hand her the papers.

  “Patties are great,” I say and am immediately struck by how strange it feels to say the word patties, I don’t think I’ve ever used the word before, I’ve always called them rissoles.

  “Oh, I know,” she says, crossing to the big wooden seventies unit with the colored glass door on the middle cupboard, lays the pile of magazines down on it. “But if I’d had a bit more time I could have rustled up some proper grub, a game stew or something,” she says. She heads back to the kitchen and I follow her with my eyes, grub is another word I’ve never used, a word that has never been part of my vocabulary, somehow.

  “Patties are proper grub,” I say, using both patties and grub in the same sentence, possibly in an effort to ingratiate myself with her and the rest of the family, I don’t know. It feels odd, though, to talk like this, almost like stepping outside of myself.

  Then Simen and Torstein return.

  “I don’t give a shit whether it’s eco-friendly or not,” Torstein is saying. “You knew damn well I didn’t want an economy shower, so you can just go back to the hardware store and get that shower head changed first thing tomorrow.” His eyes stay on Simen as he sits down next to me. “Damned economy showers, takes you fifteen fucking minutes to get wet, so little water comes out of them,” he says, lifting his backside off the seat and pulling in his chair. Simen doesn’t say anything, nor does he look at his father, he gazes into space and gives a long yawn, trying to show his father just how uninterested he is, I suppose—“See how much I care,” that’s the message he wants to send to Torstein by sitting there yawning like that. But this little demonstration is lost on Torstein, he flicks his red hair aside and reaches for one of the bottles on the table.

  “What the hell,” he suddenly exclaims. “You bought light beer?”

  “Yes,” Gunn Torhild says as she comes in carrying a large bowl of steaming corncobs.

  “Christ, woman, you should have been in the fucking Gestapo!” he says.

  Gunn Torhild laughs hoarsely as she places the corn on the table. Torstein laughs too, a wheezy cackle of the sort made by cartoon villains, as he puts down his bottle of light beer and rolls up the sleeves of his green flannel shirt. I eye his tattoo, the blue lines of a naked lady on his pale, freckled forearm.

  “Tormenting a man with light beer!” he mutters, looking at me. “There, you see what I have to put up with?”

  I give a little chuckle.

  “Oh, I don’t know, I think you should be pretty happy with the wife you’ve got,” Gunn Torhild says.

  “Where some things are concerned I’m very happy,” Torstein says. “But we don’t discuss sex at the dinner table, not when we’ve got company, at any rate.”

  And they both laugh again, Gunn Torhild emitting a rasping smoker’s chuckle and Torstein his hoarse cartoon cackle, looking at me as he does so, and I manage a little laugh as well, although this is a bit near the bone for me, it’s a little embarrassing, I feel my cheeks growing hot, but I laugh anyway.

  “Damn fool,” Gunn Torhild says, shaking her head as she goes back into the kitchen.

  Torstein stops laughing, sits there eyeing Simen and grinning, because Simen’s not laughing, his face is as sullen as ever.

  “And you’ve won the lottery again, I see,” Torstein says, still eyeing Simen and grinning as he plants his hands on the table and gets up. “No, goddammit, if I’m gonna have a beer, it’s gonna be the real thing,” he says and he follows Gunn
Torhild out to the kitchen.

  “If I’m gonna have a beer,” Simen mutters with a faint sneer. I look at him, this is his way of letting me know that Torstein is still drinking as much as he’s always done, I can tell.

  “So how are you doing, Simen?”

  He glares at me.

  “Oh, I’m fucking fantastic!”

  At first I don’t really know what to say to this so I just nod and smile feebly.

  Then Torstein reappears, humming to himself and carrying two cans of beer.

  “There you go,” he says, setting one of the cans in front of me, then he flicks his red hair aside and sits down.

  “Thanks,” I say, “but I’m driving.”

  “Aw, one beer won’t do you any harm, will it?”

  “I’d better not, thanks.”

  He raises his eyebrows, gives me a look that says he’s never heard the like: no one in their right mind says no to a beer, do they, even if they are going to be driving, that’s what he’s trying to say, or something of the sort.

  “Please yourself,” he says, opening his own can with a little pop.

  “You see,” Gunn Torhild says, coming in with a bowl of something white and steaming, “that’s why I bought light beer. Because I knew we had a decent guy coming to dinner.”

  “Oh, well, all the more for me then,” Torstein says, laughing a little too loudly, a little too heartily, a laugh designed to make us think he’s just joking, that he would never dream of drinking all this beer himself.

  “Help yourselves,” Gunn Torhild says, placing the bowl on the table.

  “What the hell’s that?” Torstein asks.

  “Couscous,” Gunn Torhild says, briskly and a mite too confidently. She obviously hasn’t been sure how to serve this and she must have known Torstein would turn up his nose at it, but she took the chance anyway, probably thought it was something I would like.

  “Huh?”

  “Couscous.”

  Torstein turns to me.

  “Have you heard of it?”