Punishment aka What Is Mine

NINE

There was little sign that it was nearly midsummer. The water at Sognsvann was shrouded in a gray mist and the trees were still bare. Here and there, a few eager willows showed the beginnings of shoots, and on south-facing slopes, coltsfoot flowers stretched up on long stems. Otherwise, it could as easily have been the fourteenth of October as the fourteenth of May. A six-year-old in red overalls and yellow winter boots pulled off her hat.

“No, Kristiane. Don’t go in the water.”

“Just let her wade a bit. She’s got her boots on.”

“Jesus, Isak, it’s not shallow enough! Kristiane! No!”

The girl didn’t want to listen. She was humming a monotonous tune and standing with water over the top of her boots already. They filled up with a gurgling sound. The girl stared ahead with a blank expression, repeating the four notes to herself over and over.

“You’re soaking,” complained Johanne Vik as she hauled the girl ashore.

The child smiled happily at her feet and stopped singing.

Her mother took her by the arm and led her over to a bench a few yards away. She pulled some dry tights, a pair of thick socks, and heavy sneakers out of the backpack. Kristiane did not want to put them on. She sat stiffly and clenched her legs together, staring into space again, the same four notes vibrating at the back of her throat: dam-di-rum-ram. Dam-di-rum-ram.

“You’ll get ill,” said Johanne. “You’ll catch a cold.”

“Cold,” smiled Kristiane, and caught her mother’s eye fleetingly, suddenly alert.

“Yes, ill.”

Johanne tried to keep hold of the look, keep their eyes locked.

“Dam-di-rum-ram,” hummed Kristiane as she stiffened again.

“Here, let me.”

Isak took his daughter under the arms and threw her up into the air.

“Daddy,” shrieked Kristiane, catching her breath. “More!”

“More there will be,” shouted Isak, letting the child drag her soaking wet boots along the ground before throwing her up into the mist again. “Kristiane is a plane!”

“Plane! Fly plane! Flyman!”

Johanne had no idea where she got it from. The child put together words that neither she nor Isak used, nor anyone else for that matter. But there was also some kind of logic to them, a relevance that might be hard to grasp in the moment, but that implied a sense of linguistic understanding that contrasted sharply with the short, simple words that she otherwise used-and she only did it when she wanted to.

“Dam-di-rum-ram.”

The flight was over. The song had returned. But Kristiane sat quietly on her father’s knee and let him change her.

“Freezing bum,” said Isak, and tapped her lightly before pulling the dry tights on over her feet, her toes curling abnormally into the soles of her feet.

“Kristiane is freezing all over.”

“Kristianecold. Hungry.”

“There. Shall we go?”

He put the girl down in front of him. Then he stuffed the wet clothes into the backpack. He pulled a banana from one of the side pockets, peeled it, and gave it to Kristiane.

“Where were we?”

He ran his hand through his hair. The damp air made it stick together. He looked up. He had always seemed so young, even though he was really only one month younger than she was. Irresponsible and eternally young; his hair always slightly too long, his clothes just a little too loose, too baggy for his age. Johanne tried to swallow the familiar sense of defeat, the perpetual experience of being the one who was least good with Kristiane.

“Right, now tell me the rest of the story.”

He smiled encouragingly and made a small movement with his head. Kristiane was already ten yards in front of them, with her characteristic toddling walk that she should have grown out of long ago. Isak put his hand on Johanne’s shoulder for a moment before starting to walk too-slowly, as if uncertain that Johanne could follow at all.

“When Alvhild Sofienberg decided to look more closely at the case,” Johanne began, her eyes following the small figure that was once again heading for the water, “she met unexpected resistance. Aksel Seier didn’t want to talk to her.”

“Oh, why not? He’d applied for the pardon himself, so surely it must have been encouraging that someone from the Ministry was interested in following up his case?”

“You would think so. I don’t know. Kristiane!”

The girl turned around and laughed loudly. Slowly she turned away from the water and trundled over toward the edge of the wood; she must have seen something.

“Whatever, she didn’t give up. Alvhild Sofienberg, that is. She eventually managed to get in touch with the prison chaplain. A reliable man who had seen a lot. He was also convinced that Seier was… innocent. Obviously, that was fuel for Alvhild’s fire. She didn’t give in and went back to her superiors.”

“Hang on.”

Isak stopped. He nodded toward Kristiane, who had been joined by an enormous Bernese mountain dog. The child put her arms around the animal’s neck and whined. The dog growled lazily.

“You should get a dog,” he said quietly. “Kristiane is fantastic with dogs. I think it’s good for her to be with them.”

“Or you could,” retorted Johanne. “Why is it me who always has to carry the load? Always!”

He took a deep breath and slowly let it out through the gap between his front teeth, a low, extended whistling sound that made the dog prick its ears. Kristiane laughed loudly.

“Forget it,” he said, shaking his head. “Then what happened?”

“You’re not really interested.”

Isak Aanonsen brushed his face with a slim hand.

“I am. How can you say that? I’ve listened to the whole story so far and I am very interested in hearing the rest. What’s the matter with you?”

Kristiane had managed to get the dog to lie down. And now she was sitting astride its back, burying her hands in its fur. The astonished owner stood beside them, looking at Isak and Johanne with undisguised concern.

“It’s okay,” called Isak, and sprinted over to the dog and the child. “She’s got a way with animals.”

“You can say that again,” said the man.

Isak lifted his daughter off the animal and the dog stood up. The owner put on its leash and headed off northwards at a brisk pace, looking back over his shoulder every now and then, as if frightened that the scary child might follow.

“So go on,” said Isak.

“Dam-di-rum-ram,” sang Kristiane.

“Her boss refused her request,” said Johanne brusquely. “He said that she should leave the case alone and do her job. When she confronted him and said that she’d had all the documents sent over and had read them carefully, he became visibly agitated. And when she then said she was convinced that Seier was innocent, he was furious. But the really-the most frightening thing about the whole story is what happened next.”

Kristiane suddenly took her by the hand.

“Mamma,” she said happily. “My mommy and me.”

“One day when Alvhild Sofienberg came into the office, all the papers had disappeared.”

“Disappeared? Gone?”

“Yep. A pile of documents over a yard high. Vanished without a trace.”

“Go for a walk,” said Kristiane. “My mommy and me.”

“And Daddy,” said Johanne.

“And then what happened?”

Isak’s brows were knitted. The likeness between him and his daughter was even more obvious; the narrow face, the knitted eyebrows.

“Alvhild Sofienberg was quite… frightened. In any case, she didn’t dare to nag her boss anymore when she heard that the files had been collected ‘by the police.’”

She made quote marks with her fingers.

“And then completely confidentially, very hush-hush, she was told that Aksel Seier had been released.”

“What?”

“A long time before he should have been. Released. Just like that. Discreetly and without any fuss.”

They had reached the big parking lot by the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences. There were hardly any cars there. The ground was crisscrossed with deep tire ruts and puddles. Johanne’s old Opel Kadett stood parked under three large weeping birches, beside Isak’s Audi TT.

“Let me just get this straight,” said Isak, holding up his hand as if he was about to take an oath. “We’re talking about 1965. Not the nineteenth century. Not the war. But 1965, the year that you and I were born, when Norway had been built up again after the war and bureaucracy was well established and due process was a recognized concept. Right? And he was just released without further ado? I mean, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with releasing an obviously innocent man, but…”

“Exactly, there’s a huge but.”

“Daddycar,” said Kristiane and stroked the silver-gray sports car. “Billycar. Automobillycar.”

The adults laughed.

“You’re a right one, you are,” said Johanne, tying Kristiane’s hat more securely under her chin.

“Where the hell does she get it from?”

“Don’t swear,” warned Johanne. “She’ll pick it up. At least…”

She straightened her back. Kristiane sat down in a puddle and hummed.

“Alvhild’s source, the prison chaplain, told her that an old woman from Lillestrøm had contacted Romerike Police. She’d been nursing a painful secret for a long time. Her son, a mildly retarded man who still lived with her, had come home in the early hours on the night that little Hedvig disappeared. His clothes were covered in blood and he was very agitated. The woman immediately suspected him when Hedvig’s story became known shortly after. But she didn’t want to say anything. Perhaps not so difficult to…”

She looked over at her daughter.

“In any case… her son had died. The case was hushed up by the police and prosecuting authorities. The woman was more or less dismissed as hysterical. But whatever happened, our friend Aksel Seier was released only a few weeks later. Discreetly. Nothing was written in the papers. Alvhild never heard any more about it.”

The mist was clearing; some low clouds drifted slowly over the treetops to the east. But now it had started to rain in ernest. A soaking-wet English setter circled around Kristiane, barking and running to fetch the stones she threw with delighted screams.

“But why is this Alvhild Sofienberg telling you?”

“Hmm?”

“Why is she telling you about this now? Thirty… thirty-five years later?”

“Because something strange happened last year. The case has been bothering her for years. And now that she’s retired, she decided to study the case in detail again. She contacted the regional state archives and the National Archives to get ahold of the documents. And they no longer exist.”

“What?”

“They’ve vanished. They are not in the National Archives. Not in the regional state archives. Oslo Police Force can’t find them, nor can Romerike Police. More than a yard of case documents has simply disappeared.”

Kristiane had got up from her puddle. She puttered toward them, wet and filthy from head to toe.

“I’m glad you are not getting into my car,” said Isak, and squatted down in front of her. “But I’ll see you on the seventeenth of May, okay?”

“Aren’t you going to give Daddy a hug before we go?” asked Johanne.

Kristiane reluctantly allowed herself to be hugged; her eyes were miles away.

“Do you think you’ll manage, Isak?”

His eyes were firmly fixed on Kristiane.

“Of course I will. I’m a wizard, don’t you know. If Aksel Seier is still alive, I’ll find out where he lives in less than a week. Guaranteed.”

“There are no guarantees in life,” retorted Johanne. “But thank you for trying. If anyone was going to manage it, it would be you.”

“Sure thing,” said Isak and slipped into his TT. “See you on Wednesday.”

She stared after him until the car disappeared over the brow of the hill down toward Kringsjå.

Isak would never be anything other than a big boy. She had just not realized it soon enough. Before, before Kristiane, she had envied him his quickness, his enthusiasm, his optimism; the childish belief that everything could be fixed. He had built an entire future on boundless self-confidence; Isak started a dot-com company before most people even knew what they were and had had the sense to sell it in time. Now he enjoyed playing around with a computer for a few hours every day, he sailed in regattas half the year, and helped the Salvation Army to look for missing persons in his spare time.

Johanne had fallen in love with the way he embraced the world with laughter, the shrug of his shoulders when things got a bit complicated that made him so different and attractive to her.

And then along came Kristiane. The first years were swallowed up by three heart operations, sleepless nights, and anxiety. When they finally woke up from their first night of uninterrupted sleep, it was too late. They limped on together for another year in some semblance of marriage. A two-week family stay at the National Center for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in a futile attempt to find a diagnosis for Kristiane had resulted in them separating, if not exactly as friends, at least with a relatively intact mutual respect.

They never found a diagnosis. Kristiane wandered around in her own little world and the doctors shook their heads. Autistic, perhaps, they said, then frowned at the child’s obvious ability to develop emotional attachments and her great need for physical contact. Does it matter? Isak asked. The child is fine and the child is ours and I don’t give a shit what’s wrong with her. He didn’t understand how much it mattered to find a diagnosis. To make arrangements for her. To make it possible for Kristiane to achieve her full potential.

He was so damn irresponsible.

The problem was that he never had accepted that he was the father of a mentally handicapped child.

Isak glanced back in the mirror. Johanne looked older now. Tired. She took everything so seriously. He desperately wanted to suggest that Kristiane could live with him all the time, not just every other week like now. He could see it every time: when he handed Kristiane back after a week, Johanne was in a good mood and rested. When he picked up his daughter the following Sunday, Johanne was gray, drawn, and impatient. And it wasn’t good for Kristiane. Nor was the perpetual round of specialists and self-appointed experts. Surely it wasn’t that important to find out what was wrong with the child. The main thing was that her heart functioned properly, she ate well, and was happy. His daughter was happy. Isak was sure of that.

Johanne had been grown up too long. Before, before Kristiane, it had been attractive. Sexy. Johanne’s ambition. The way she always took everything so seriously. Her plans. Her efficiency. He had fallen head over heels for her mature determination, her admirable progress in her studies, her work at the university.

Then along came Kristiane.

He loved that child. She was his child. There was nothing wrong with Kristiane. She wasn’t like other children, but she was herself. That was all she needed to be. All the specialists’ opinions on what was actually wrong with the child were irrelevant. But not for Johanne. She always had to get to the bottom of everything.

She was so damn responsible.

The problem was that she had never accepted that she was the mother of a mentally handicapped child.