I Can See in the Dark

Chapter 5

I can see bushes and trees, buildings, posts and fences, I can see them all vividly glowing and quivering, long after dark. I see the heat they emit, a sort of orange-coloured energy, as if they’re on fire. I once mentioned this to the school nurse when I was about ten. That I could see in the dark. She simply patted me on the cheek and then smiled sadly, the way you smile at an inquisitive child with a lively imagination. But once bitten twice shy: I never mentioned it again. Sometimes at night, when it’s impossible to sleep, when the lorry has been standing at my bedside for hours and filled the entire room with exhaust fumes, I get dressed and go out and stand on the drive. I watch the moving creatures in the landscape, everything that hides from the noise and light of day. A fox darting over the fields, a deer bounding across the road, everything pulsing with this amber light.

The living-room windows give on to the drive and the road, while the kitchen window looks out on the forest of tall trees. This gives me a sense of living in seclusion, but I have got neighbours. Just below me is Kristian Juel’s house; he minds his own business and doesn’t bother me much, for which I’m grateful. Next door, up the hill, is a family with young children. They do a lot of screaming and shouting and bouncing on a large trampoline, as well as chasing a small dog that barks the whole time. Sometimes, on light summer nights, I hear the laughter and barking, and think they sound like church bells carried on the air. At other times, they get on my nerves, and I feel like screaming.

But then there’s our ward sister Anna.

Elegant, warm and radiant.

There isn’t her equal anywhere.

Once, when I was a child, a classmate announced in a malicious, jeering way that I looked like a pike. It was probably because my jaw protrudes slightly and I have sharp, crooked teeth like a predatory fish. As the boy in question was somewhat overweight, I pointed out that he ought to shut up because he resembled a beached whale. That left him completely stranded, and I could tell he regretted his little sally. That’s all I remember about my childhood. Almost everything else has been erased and consigned to oblivion. But I always remember the pike episode. I remember the feeling of humiliation, how my cheeks burned and how I was almost blind with rage. I’m not much to look at, I’ve known that for a long time. My eyes are too close together and deep-set, with irises the colour of cod liver oil. Sometimes I skulk in the bushes bordering the path that leads into the park. I just stand there and peer out at the passing pedestrians. Old people with sticks, elderly, lonely men, little girls in short, flaring skirts, tittering and gossiping, dangerous as death caps.