Hell Fire

5 December 2004

The snow was wet and heavy and stuck stubbornly to the shovel, so after Eddie had been shoveling for half an hour, he had to straighten up and stretch his aching back. His hair was slick with sweat, but there was still some way to go down to the road. And then he’d have to clear the snow around the garbage cans. Otherwise they wouldn’t be emptied, his mother said. There were rules for things like that. He rested for a while, breathing heavily as he stared at the snow. He knew his mom was hovering at the window to make sure he was doing the work. So he put his back into it again and tried to find a rhythm. He chanted “heave-ho” in his mind as he threw the snow to the sides. The edges were high now. As he worked, he tried to decide what he wanted for supper because his mom normally asked, and it was best to have an answer. It eventually stopped snowing and the sky that had been as gray as lead started to clear. The horizon was blushed pink by the setting sun, and it looked like the valley was covered in a white veil, like something out of a fairy tale. He was wearing his new top under his jacket, I Love New York. His mother had asked why he wanted that one. Because New York is a good city, he’d replied. But you’ve never been there. No, but we could go there. And then we could go for a walk together in Central Park. His mother had turned her back and said, I couldn’t cope with the jet lag. And he knew then that they would never go to New York, and he would just have to be satisfied with the sweatshirt.

Finally he was finished and he leaned the shovel up against the wall. It was dusk, beautiful and blue, but soon the dark would settle over the small house. Inside, his mother would turn on all the lights, which always put him in a good mood. It made him feel safe and secure. On a sudden impulse, he waded through the snowdrifts and over to the wall. He stood by the window where his mother could see him. The snow was wet, so he could form it into whatever he liked. He made a hard, compact snowball, which he put down on the ground. Then he made another one and placed it beside the first. And just as he had thought, his mother opened the window.

“What on earth are you doing?”

He glanced up at her and carried on making snowball number three. They were as big as oranges.

“I’m making a snow lantern,” he told her enthusiastically.

“Gosh, you haven’t done that since you were little.”

“No. It’s for you, so you have something to look at.”

He hadn’t lost the knack. The first circle was perfect, and he worked the snowballs for so long that they were as hard as possible and would last a long time. As he worked, he hummed the song “New York, New York,” which he had heard so many times on the radio. He hadn’t traveled much, except one vacation to the Mediterranean and the odd day trip over to Sweden, where his mother bought meat and red wine and he would select heavy boxes of Cherry Coke and carry them out to the car. He was on row number three but had still not started to slope the walls in. Now that he was making a lantern, it was going to be a big one. He worked without stopping, and every now and then his mother appeared by the open window.

“Goodness, you’re good at this; that’s the best one I’ve seen.”

Eddie brushed the hair from his brow. He liked it when his mother praised him. He couldn’t get enough of it. The snow had never been so good! Strange that he hadn’t thought of it before — the snow had been on the ground for a long time and it would soon be Christmas. Roast ribs and candles and presents. Having worked long and hard, he took a few steps back to admire the lantern. The top was still open, of course, because he had to put in the candles. It was already getting dark, but he worked in the light from the window. Then he waded back to the door, opened it, and shouted into the house: “A candle! Matchsticks!”

He could hear his mother opening the drawer. Seconds later she appeared with the things he had asked for.

“Actually,” he added, “I need more than one. It’s a big lantern.”

She disappeared inside and returned with two more candles. He stuck the three candles in at the bottom of the lantern. He checked that they were steady, being careful not to touch the walls when he put his arm in, because they might topple. Then he lit the candles one by one, made the last snowballs, and held his breath as he closed the lantern. If the snow drizzled down, it might extinguish the candles.

They stood side by side at the window and admired Eddie’s incredible handiwork. It was a big beautiful snow lantern, and the light from the candles flickered and shimmered on the surrounding snow. They said nothing as they stood there; it was hard to pull themselves away. Throughout the evening, Eddie checked that the candles were still burning.

Mass made spaghetti and meatballs, and while they ate, they chatted about this and that. Eddie was good and put the plates in the dishwasher — it was the only thing he could do. Afterward he took Shiba for her evening walk. On his mother’s advice, he wore a hi-viz vest and put a flashing blue light on Shiba’s collar. They saw the odd car as they walked, and each time he pulled back to the edge of the road and waited until the car passed. He thought about his mother’s promise that he could have the rest of the cinnamon rolls. He loved the white doughy inside, spread with cinnamon. Later on in the evening, he would watch Tracker Tore. It was just as overwhelming every time someone found their lost relatives. Mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, often in different countries, sometimes even on the other side of the world. Some only found a grave that they could visit, but that in itself was something. This led his thoughts once more to his father, who was buried in Copenhagen. He had never been there.

After Shiba had lifted her leg a few times, he turned around and walked back to the house. The dog immediately padded into the kitchen and lay down in the corner.

“Those clay layers you were talking about,” Eddie said. “In our blood vessels. That can come loose and go to your heart. Do you think I’ve got a lot of them? I mean, I am fat.”

Mass shook her head. “No, let’s just hope that everything’s OK. It’s a good thing you don’t smoke. And you don’t drink either, so you’re actually very healthy.”

Eddie leaned his elbows on the table. “And what about you?” he asked. “Have you got any of those layers? Can you see them on x-rays?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Maybe. Why do you ask?”

He gave it some thought. “Well, because if you did, we could do something about it. There are medicines that thin the blood so that it flows better. You know, you need to keep the system moving!”

His mother looked at him and smiled. “Why give it so much thought? Are you scared of dying?” She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, taking his big hand in hers and patting it gently; it was white and soft, the nails bitten to the quick.

“I want to die long before you,” Eddie said, “because I don’t want to be left on my own.”

Mass looked pensive. “Eddie,” she said, “I’m fifty-six. And you’re twenty-one. You can work out for yourself what that means.”

His heavy head sank and he looked despondent. Mass, who was christened Thomasine, a name she couldn’t stand and had never used, wanted to comfort him.

“Don’t think about it. It won’t happen for a long time yet. We’re both fit and healthy, and we’ll live for many more years. So we should just enjoy every single day of the time we have left.”

“What stops first? Your heart or your breathing?” Eddie asked.

“Depends,” Mass said. “But I don’t really know about things like that. Come on, let’s go into the living room; Tracker Tore is about to start.”

The light from the screen flickered across Eddie’s face. The blue and white shadows illuminated his heavy features and brought his face to life. He chewed the cinnamon rolls slowly, sipping from his can of Cherry Coke every so often. He loved the sweet, sickly, prickly cold feeling on his tongue.

His mother sat beside him with her feet on a footstool and a blanket over her knees. She glanced over at her son from time to time and wondered what would become of him. Eddie was special; he didn’t fit in with society. He had once gotten a job sorting mail but gave up after only fourteen days. He had struggled to get there on time in the morning and found it hard being around strangers. There was no doubt that he had talents. He had once built a church with sugar lumps and confectioners’ sugar, which took him several weeks. It even had a spire. He was brilliant at doing crosswords and his memory was impressive. It was often he who had to remind her of things. When they sat together in the evenings, watching quiz shows on TV, he knew more than she did even though she was thirty years older. Presumably he had gathered a lot of knowledge from the Internet, which she couldn’t make head or tail of, whereas he could sit in front of the computer for hours at a time. If she made the mistake of promising him something, he would never forget about it and would not stop nagging until she had done what she promised. Like when he started to beg for a puppy eight years ago. She had said, let’s see, but not right now. Well, when then? he asked. In the summer maybe, I don’t know, she said wearily. But is it more than a year? He pestered her like a horsefly. Eddie, she said, let’s not talk about it anymore. But when can we talk about it, then? he persisted. Can we talk about it this evening? Or tomorrow perhaps? They had the same conversation at regular intervals. She had to give in eventually. And so Shiba arrived in the house, a soft champagne-colored puppy who chewed everything she could find: wires, several pairs of shoes, the book spines on the bottom shelf. An old thirteen-volume encyclopedia, bound in red leather, had been stripped of its spines. But Eddie soon grew bored with the dog, and she knew for a fact that he taunted Shiba when she wasn’t looking. But he still did some duties. He had to take her out for a walk three times a day. They were short walks because both he and Shiba were overweight and slow.

She looked sideways at him now. There was something else that Eddie had begged for. He had wanted them to go to Copenhagen to look for his father’s grave, and she had given her usual reply: we’ll see. To be honest, she didn’t even know where he was buried.

Eddie reached out for the last cinnamon roll; it was fresh and soft. He was glued to the screen, where Tore had boarded a plane for Lahore with a dark-skinned teenager named Susann. They were going to look for the girl’s mother.

Every time Eddie saw someone, either on the road or at the store — or simply on television — his imagination ran wild. He could see that they had their own smell and taste, and he could feel their resonance, like an instrument. Or he would match them to an animal or a fruit or vegetable. He had always loved to play this game. He made a snap decision and never changed his mind. Their neighbor Ansgar, for example, was a sneaky hyena. Knut Nærum, whom he saw on television every Friday, was a chirpy little meerkat. And the old lady in the house next door, Irene, who had Parkinson’s, reminded him of jelly-like lutefisk because of the way she wobbled. His mom sounded like an alto saxophone, and he himself was a beautiful, sonorous bassoon. Almost no one could master the bassoon. But Mass, who was also a woodwind, always managed to get him to make a sound.

But now, Tracker Tore.Tore was a turnip. Or a half-baked baguette.

“Do you think they’ll find Susann’s mother?” he asked, bright with anticipation.

“Of course,” Mass replied, “otherwise they wouldn’t have made the program. But what’s the point, really? She’s got such lovely parents in Norway. I’m sure she’s much better off here than she would have been in Pakistan.”

Eddie didn’t agree at all. “But she’s not the same color as us. Of course she wants to see where she comes from; that kind of thing is important.”

“But things will just get more complicated with two sets of parents,” Mass continued. “I mean, who should she listen to? Maybe they won’t even want to see her; after all, there must be a reason she was adopted.”

“Maybe they didn’t want to give her away,” Eddie said. “Maybe she was taken from them.”

“In that case, her mother isn’t a good mother,” Mass retorted. “If she let them take away her child. And there’s no reason to get in touch with a bad mother.”

The plane landed in Lahore, and Tore and Susann and a television crew found a taxi to take them through the hot streets. The sheer volume of traffic and noise and people and heat took their breath away. It seemed inconceivable to Eddie and Mass that they would be able to find Susann’s mother at all in the chaos. But Tracker Tore knew what he was doing; he’d done his research. Susann’s parents in Norway had given him the address of the children’s home where she had been left sixteen years ago. When she was but a baby with no name.

They were met at the children’s home by a friendly woman with a scarf over her head. She showed them into an office, where she opened a large book and started to read in good English.

“ ‘Seventeenth of August, 1989,’ ” she read. “ ‘A woman came in with a baby wrapped in a blanket. The baby had more or less just been born, and she didn’t even have a name, so we christened her Adelina. The woman had had four children and given them all up for adoption. We know nothing about the father.’ ”

“But why?” they asked. “Why did she give them away?”

The principal of the children’s home closed the big book and put her hands down on it, as though she wanted the secret to be kept there. Now that it was out in the open, she hoped that it would lead to some good, but she doubted it. Adelina, who had been given the name Susann in Norway, was a thin and beautiful girl in expensive clothes. She had been fortunate; she had everything a child could wish for. The principal looked into her nearly black eyes, wide open with anticipation, and felt a weight on her heart.

“Your mother was as poor as a church mouse,” she said. “She had nothing. It simply wasn’t possible for her to keep any of her children.”

“But where does she live?” they inquired.

“In a village, some way from the city. You’ll have to find a boat. I’ll write down all the information you need, name and everything. Find a helmsman who can speak English; you’ll need an interpreter.”

“God,” Mass exclaimed from her chair. “How’s it all going to end?”

Eddie sat leaning forward on the sofa. He was so excited that he was sitting with his mouth open because now they were so close, so close. Back out on the street, Adelina-Susann bought a beautiful, colorful shawl that she wanted to give to her mother. It took some time to find a man who was willing to take them up the Ravi in a big flat-bottomed boat. He pushed his way upriver, while Tore and Susann explained in English why they were there. He didn’t seem to be particularly interested; he was more concerned about the money he was going to get for the trip. They passed several small villages as they traveled, where lots of children sat on the bank and watched them pass. Some of them shouted and waved, jumping up and down in sheer delight.

“Imagine living like that,” Eddie said, chewing his cinnamon roll. “They’re cut off from the rest of the world. No TV, no phone, no computer. How’s it possible?”

“It’s perfectly possible to live a good life without all those things,” Mass pointed out. “But they don’t have enough food or medicine, and that’s far worse.”

They followed the boat’s progress. Mass poured some more coffee and Eddie clutched the now empty Cherry Coke can in his hand. Finally the boat moored at a small jetty, and some children immediately came running to meet them. Susann had the shawl on her lap, wrapped in brown paper. They clambered out of the boat and walked up a gentle slope full of lush green plants and beautiful trees. They were asked to wait. The helmsman disappeared over the top of the slope, leaving Tore and Susann sitting on the grass, with the half-naked children standing in a ring around them. Susann clutched the shawl in one hand, Tore held the other. After what felt like an eternity, the helmsman eventually came back. He had with him a very thin woman, barefoot and dressed in rags. Her face was dried out and wrinkled, and her eyes downcast. Susann got to her feet immediately and stared at her mother. She tentatively held out her hand and the woman took it. This beautiful young girl in expensive clothes was the baby she had once given away, the last of the four children she had not been able to support. Susann gave her the present. But her mother made no move to open it; she was simply bewildered and desperate. She did try to smile, and Susann saw to her dismay that she had no teeth. All she could see was pale, bare gums in the middle of her wrinkly face. Poverty and destitution had made her old before her time.

“Oh, that’s terrible!” Mass cried. “Imagine finding your mother in that state. I’m sure the poor girl won’t be able to sleep for years now. And it’s just opening an old wound for the mother. Then pouring salt on it. Mark my words, Eddie.”

Eddie hung his head. He had hoped for a joyful reunion — touching scenes on the riverbank, with the children clapping their hands in delight. He was deeply upset by what he had seen. But he still believed it had to happen. Everyone had the right to know their origins. He got up and went over to the window and looked out. The snow lantern was still flickering silently in the dark. It would probably blow out in the course of the night. He just hoped it wouldn’t be ruined by a new snowfall.