Punishment aka What Is Mine

TWENTY

This time she came on foot. Even though lots of people had started the season early and Harwich Port was already full of tourists and new and old summer guests, he recognized her immediately. She came ambling down Atlantic Avenue, as if she was out on some plausible errand. She stopped by the parking lot, where the view of the beach was not blocked by houses and walled gardens, and turned to the south, toward the ocean. But she didn’t go up to the fence. She was wearing sunglasses, but he could swear that she was actually looking at his house. At him.

Aksel Seier shut the garden gate. His fear was about to spill over into anger. If she wanted something from him, then she at least could have the guts to contact him directly. He pulled at his sweater. It was warm now, past midday. Down on the beach, he could hear the noises of a group of teenagers swimming in Nantucket Sound. The water was still freezing. Two days ago, the mercury had stood at sixty degrees when he measured the temperature in the water before going fishing. The woman in the windbreaker walked slowly past on the other side of the road.

What do you want, dammit!

Aksel was gripping the hammer so tightly that he didn’t dare do anything other than drop it to the ground. The slate slabs that he was standing on rang out. The blood pounded in his ears. Fear was so alien to him now, a thing of the past. It was years since he had finally overcome the nameless fear that he first experienced when he was held in custody in January 1957.

It was a few weeks after his arrest. Aksel’s mother had taken her own life. He was not allowed to go to the funeral. The old policeman rattled his keys and stared him in the eye. Everyone knew that Seier was guilty, he growled. The keys hit against the wall, again and again. Aksel didn’t stand a chance of being found innocent. He might as well admit it, if only to ease the pain of poor little Hedvig’s parents. Hadn’t they suffered enough? The policeman’s eyes were full of disdain. He rubbed them roughly with the sleeve of his jacket and Aksel realized that everything was lost. Fear kept him awake for four whole days. In the end he started to hallucinate and was given medicine so he would sleep.

Aksel became a creature of the night who only rested for a few hours in the afternoon and then counted the stars through the bars while others slept. Fear accompanied him to the hostel, to the eight bare square yards where he lived after his sudden release. It followed him over the ocean and plagued him frequently. Right up until March 1993. Aksel Seier woke up late one day, amazed that he had slept through the night without interruption. For the first time in thirty-six years, the policeman with the key ring and the running eyes had left him in peace.

What the hell do you want?

The woman stopped. She seemed to hesitate. Even though his heart was pounding, making it hard to breathe normally, he noticed that she was beautiful. In a boring way, as if she could not be bothered to do anything about it. She was probably around thirty-something and dressed in pretty neutral clothes. Jeans and a red V-neck sweater. Sneakers. Aksel noticed that he was studying her, storing a picture of her for later use. Her eyes were brown, he noticed as she came toward him with some trepidation, taking off her sunglasses and putting on her normal ones. Her hair was dark, shoulder length, with waves that might become curls in damp weather. Her hands were slim, with long fingers that she pulled aimlessly through her hair. Aksel bit his tongue.

“Aksel Seier?”

Fear was about to strangle him. The woman pronounced his name in a way that he hadn’t heard since 1966. He wasn’t named Aksel Seier any longer. His name was Axel Sayer, drawn out and round. Not hard and precise: Aksel Seier.

“Who’s asking?” he managed to say.

She held out her hand. He didn’t take it.

“My name is Johanne Vik. I work at Oslo University and I’ve come because I would like to talk to you about being wrongly accused of the rape and murder of a child a long time ago. If you want to, that is. If you can bear to talk about it now, so many years later.”

Her hand was still held out toward him. There was a kind of defiance in the gesture, an insistence that made him open his mouth and press air down into his lungs before grasping it.

“Axel Sayer,” he said in a hoarse voice. “That’s what I’m called now.”

The cotton candy lady padded toward them from the beach. She walked around the fence and gasped loudly and demonstratively before exclaiming:

“Female visitor, Aksel! I’ll say!”

“Come in,” said Aksel, turning his back on the pink sweater.

Johanne didn’t know what she had expected. Even though she had had a clear picture of what Aksel Seier looked like, she had never thought about what his surroundings would be like, what his life in the States was like. She stood in the doorway. The living room opened onto the kitchen and was full of things. The only furniture was a small coffee table with a worn sofa and a roughly made kitchen table with a single wooden chair. But it was still hard to see where she should put her feet. There was a big dog in one corner. She stiffened in fear. It was only when she looked again that she saw that the fur was carved hair by hair from wood and that the yellow eyes were glass. In the opposite corner there was a galleon figurehead hanging from the low ceiling. It was a big-bosomed woman with a distant look in her eyes and deep red, nearly purple lips. Her golden yellow hair flowed down over her arched body. The figure was far too big for the room. It looked like it might fall from the wall at any moment, in which case the woman would crush an army of what looked like tin soldiers that were spread out in a tremendous battle covering about two square yards of the floor. Johanne stepped gingerly toward the army and squatted down. The soldiers were made of glass. Tiny blue jackets, individualized soldiers with bayonets and cannon, hats and marks of rank, fighting against the Confederate soldiers in gray.

“They’re so… so incredibly beautiful!”

She picked up a general to look at him more closely; he sat securely on his horse, some distance from the raging battle. Even his eyes were clear, light blue with an indication of black pupils in the middle. His horse was foaming at the mouth and she could almost feel heat coming off the sweating animal.

“Where… did you make this? I’ve never seen anything like it in my life!”

Aksel Seier didn’t answer. Johanne heard the rattle of pans. He was hidden by the countertops.

“Coffee?” he asked in a strained voice.

“No, thank you. Yes, actually… if you’re making some. But don’t make it just for me.”

“A beer.”

It didn’t sound like a question.

“Yes, please,” she said with some hesitation. “I’d love a beer.”

Aksel Seier straightened up and kicked the cabinet door shut with his foot. He looked relieved. The fridge groaned reluctantly when he took out two cans. The annoying hum dissolved into a moan. Rays of sunlight forced their way through the dirty windows. Dust danced in the patches of light outlined on the floor. A cat appeared from nowhere over by the kitchen. It purred and rubbed against Johanne’s legs. Then it disappeared again through a cat door. Beside the galleon figure, behind the soldiers, was a fish barrel with rusty hoops. A plastic doll in a Sami costume was standing on the top. The colors, which had once been strong and clear, red and blue and yellow and green, had faded to tame pastels. The doll looked blankly at the opposite wall, which was covered by an impressive piece of embroidery, a wall hanging really. The motif started lifelike in one corner, a medieval knight ready for a jousting tournament, in his coat of armor with lance raised. This then became abstract and flowed into an orgy of colors up toward the right.

“I must… did you make all these fantastic things?”

Aksel Seier stared at her. He slowly raised the beer can to his mouth. He drank, then dried his mouth on his sleeve.

“What did you say?”

“Is it you who…”

“When you came. You said something about me being…”

“I have reason to believe you were wrongly convicted.”

She looked at him and tried to say something more. He took a step back, as if the sunlight from the kitchen window bothered him. He gave a slight nod and the shadow from his mop of hair, heavy and gray, hid his eyes. She looked at him and regretted having said anything.

She had nothing more to offer him. No redress. No restored honor. No compensation for lost years, both in and out of prison. Johanne had come over the ocean, more or less on impulse, with nothing in her luggage other than an old woman’s absolute conviction and a lot of unanswered questions. If it was true that Aksel Seier had been wrongly convicted of the awful crime, the most horrible attack-how did he feel right now? How must it feel finally, after all these years, to hear someone say: I think you are innocent! Johanne had no right to do this. She should not have come.

“I mean… Some people have studied your case more carefully… One person… She is… Can we sit down?”

He stood, frozen. One arm hung loosely by his side, swinging almost imperceptibly to the beat of his heart, backward and forward, forward and back. He held the beer can in his left hand. He was still hiding behind his greasy hair; his eyes were small slits of something she could not recognize.

“I think it would be better if we sat down, Mr. Seier.”

A snuffle came from his throat. An involuntary noise, as if he really wanted to swallow but had something stuck in his throat. He sniffled again, almost a sob; his whole body was shaking and he put down the beer can.

“Mr. Seier,” he repeated, in a hoarse voice. “No one has called me that for many years. Who are you?”

“Do you know what?”

She carefully retreated from the battle tableau on the floor.

“I’d like to ask you out, to a restaurant. We could get something to eat and then talk about why I’m here. I think I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

It’s a lie, she thought. I have practically nothing to tell you. I have come with a thousand questions that I need to have answered. It’s important for me and for an old woman who is keeping herself alive so she can hear the answers. I’m fooling you. I’m pulling the wool over your eyes. I’m using you.

“Where can you get a decent meal around here?” she asked instead, in a light tone.

“Come,” he said and walked toward the door.

When she moved to follow him, she stepped on the general. The breaking noise was deadened by the rough floor. Horrified, she lifted her foot. The glass figure was smashed to smithereens, tiny shards of blue and gold stuck to the sole of her shoe.

Aksel Seier stared down. Then he lifted his face toward her.

“Do you really believe that? Do you really believe in my… innocence?”

He turned away at once, not waiting for a reply.