Punishment aka What Is Mine

THIRTY-NINE

The building was obviously from the postwar period. The fifties perhaps. A square building with four apartments, no doubt with two bedrooms, a kitchen, living room, and bathroom. The area was relatively big; lack of space was not a problem for small towns in Norway after World War II. The building had recently been renovated. The walls were painted with thick yellow paint and the roof tiles looked new. Johanne parked on the road, right outside the gate. The fence was also newly painted; the green paint so shiny that she wondered if it was still wet.

It smelled of small town.

The sound of a car, a jumble of voices from a kindergarten behind a high fence, hammering from a construction site across the road, the carpenters slinging obscenities at one another, a sudden peal of female laughter from an open window. The sounds of a small town. The smell of someone baking bread. The feeling that she was being watched as she walked up to the porch by the front door, without knowing who was watching, what they were thinking or whether they were thinking anything other than “Here comes a stranger, someone who doesn’t belong here.”

Johanne had been born and raised in Oslo. She knew very little about small towns and admitted it freely. All the same, there was something about places like this that appealed to her. They were manageable. Transparent. The feeling of being part of something that is not too big and unpredictable. She had often thought recently that with modern technology, she didn’t need to live in Oslo anymore. She could move away, move to the country, to a small village with five shops and a garage, a dilapidated café and a bus station, cheap housing and a school for Kristiane with only fifteen pupils in each class. But of course she couldn’t, not with Isak and her parents in town, not with Kristiane, who needed people around her all the time. But it had crossed her mind. She could feel the eyes trained on her from the first floor of the yellow building, from the bay window in the villa across the road, eyes that watched from behind the blinds and curtains; she had been noticed and was being watched, and the thought made her feel bizarrely safe.

“Lillestrøm. Jesus. Here I am romanticizing about Lillestrøm.”

The housing cooperative’s maintenance fund had obviously run dry when they got to the doorbells. They were hanging from the wall, speckled with yellow paint. Johanne tried to press one of the bells. She had to hold the plate with one hand and press with the other. She heard a horrible ringing sound somewhere in the distance. No one reacted, so she pushed the next one. The lady on the first floor, who had been watching her from the kitchen window, unaware that she was visible from the driveway, stuck her head out.

“Hello?”

“Hi. My name’s Johanne Vik. I wanted to…”

“Wait a moment!”

The woman padded down the stairs. She smiled expectantly at Johanne as she opened the door a crack.

“What can I do for you?”

“My name is Johanne Vik. I work at Oslo University and I’m looking for someone who might know what happened to a lady who lived here before. Many years ago, to be honest.”

“Oh?”

The woman was well over sixty. Her hair was covered with a chiffon scarf. Johanne could see big blue and green hair rollers under the bluish green semitransparent material.

“I moved here in 1967,” she said, without showing any sign of letting Johanne in, “so maybe I can help. Who is it you’re looking for?”

“Agnes Mohaug,” said Johanne.

“She’s dead,” said the woman, smiling broadly, as if she was happy to be able to give this information. “She died the year I moved in. Just after, in fact. She lived there.”

The woman lifted her hand lazily. Johanne assumed she was pointing at the ground floor to the left.

“Did you know her?”

The woman laughed. The roots of her teeth flashed gray against unhealthy pink gums.

“I don’t think there was anyone who knew Agnes Mohaug. She’d lived in the house since it was built. In 1951, I think it was. But still there was no one who really… She had a son. Did you know that?”

“Yes. I’m looking…”

“A… a simpleton, if you know what I mean. Not that I knew him; he’s dead as well.”

She laughed again, hoarse and hearty, as if she found the extinction of the little Mohaug family immensely funny.

“He wasn’t quite right, so they say. Not right at all. But Agnes Mohaug herself… no one said a word against her. Kept to herself, always. Sad story, about the boy…”

The woman broke off.

“The boy who what?” asked Johanne, carefully.

“No…”

She thought about it. Then she quickly patted her rollers.

“It was such a long time ago. And I don’t remember Mrs. Mohaug that well. She died only a few months after I’d moved in. Her son had been dead for years. A long time, at least.”

“I see.”

“But…”

The woman lightened up. Again she smiled, so that her narrow face looked like it would split in two.

“Go and ask Hansvold in Number 44. Over there!”

She waved in the direction of a green twin building that was a few hundred yards away, separated from Number 45 by a big lawn and hip-high metal fence.

“Hansvold has lived here longest. He must be over eighty, but he’s clear as a bell. If you hold on a moment, I’d be happy to take you over and introduce you…”

She leaned forward to whisper, without opening the door any wider.

“… after all, I know you now. Just one moment.”

“Don’t worry, that’s really not necessary,” said Johanne quickly. “I’ll manage myself. But thank you very much for your help. Thank you.”

Johanne started to stride toward the gate, so that the woman with the chiffon scarf would not have time to change. A child screamed loudly in the kindergarten. The carpenter on the scaffolding over the road swore loudly and threatened to sue a man in a suit who was waving his arms and pointing at a cement mixer that had fallen over. A car rolled over a speed bump as Johanne came out onto the road; she jumped and stepped in a puddle.

The small town was already starting to lose some of its charm.

“But I’m still not entirely clear why you want to know all this.”

Harald Hansvold knocked his pipe against a large crystal ashtray. A fine shower of burned tobacco sprinkled over the sparkly surface. The old, well-dressed man obviously had problems with his eyesight. A matte gray film blurred the edges of one of his pupils and he had given up using glasses. Johanne suspected that he only saw shadows around him. He had let her, a complete stranger, get some sparkling apple juice and cookies from the kitchen. Otherwise he seemed healthy; his hands were steady when he refilled his pipe with fresh tobacco. His voice was calm and he had no problem remembering Agnes Mohaug, the neighbor with the less than fortunate son, as he chose to put it.

“He was easily led astray. That was the main problem, as I remember. Of course, it wasn’t easy for him to make friends. Real friends, I mean. You have to remember that times were very different then… people’s tolerance of others was different…”

He gave a tight smile.

“… not like it is now.”

Johanne didn’t know whether the man was trying to be ironic. She had a pain in her chest and took a large gulp of the apple juice. It was far too sweet, and in a fluster she let most of it run out her mouth again and back into the glass.

“Anders was not a bad boy,” Hansvold continued, not noticing. “My wife used to invite him in every now and then. It worried me sometimes. I was away a lot, travelling. I’m a retired train driver.”

The fact that Harald Hansvold was so consistently polite was perhaps not so strange, given his age. But there was something unexpectedly refined about the old man and his apartment, with books from floor to ceiling and three modern lithographs on the walls. Somehow it didn’t jive with a lifelong career in the state railways. Afraid that her prejudices would be too obvious, Johanne nodded eagerly to show interest, as if being a train driver was something she had always wanted to know more about.

“When he was very young, it wasn’t a problem of course. But when he reached puberty… he grew to be a big man. Good-looking chap. But, you know…”

He made a telling movement with his finger at his temple.

“And then there was that Asbjørn Revheim.”

“Asbjørn Revheim?”

“Yes. No doubt you’ve heard of him?”

Johanne nodded, confused.

“Of course,” she mumbled.

“He grew up around here. Didn’t you know that? You should read the biography that was published last year. Incredible man. Very interesting book. You know, Asbjørn was always a rebel, even as a young boy. Dressed strangely. Behaved in a bizarre fashion. He really wasn’t like the others.”

“No,” said Johanne, uncertainly. “He never was.”

Harald Hansvold chuckled and shook his head.

“One Sunday, it must have been in 1957 or ’58… It was ’57! Just after King Haakon died, only a few days after. The country was in mourning and…”

He sucked on his pipe, which didn’t seem to want to light up properly.

“The boy organized an execution outside the kindergarten. That is, the kindergarten wasn’t there then. It was a scout hut at the time.”

“An… execution?”

“Yes, he caught a wild cat and dressed it up in royal clothes. Ermine and a crown. The cape was an old rabbit skin with spots painted on. He’d made the crown himself as well. The poor cat meowed and tried to get away and had to pay for it with its life on some homemade gallows.”

“But that… that’s… animal torture!”

“It certainly was!”

But he still couldn’t repress a smile.

“It got very lively, I can tell you! The police came and the ladies down the road here screamed and made a fuss. Asbjørn made a big number of the whole thing too and claimed that it was a political demonstration against the royal family. He wanted to burn the dead cat and had already built a fire when the authorities got involved and stopped the whole thing. You can imagine, when our beloved King Haakon had just died…”

Suddenly the smile disappeared. The gray eye became even duller, as if the old man was looking into himself, back in time.

“The worst thing was,” he said quietly, his voice completely changed. “The worst thing was that he’d gotten Anders to dress up as the executioner, with a bare torso and a big black hood on his head. Agnes Mohaug was deeply affected by the incident. So that’s how things were.”

It was so quiet in the apartment. No clocks, no distant radio that no one was listening to. Harald Hansvold’s apartment was not an old man’s apartment. The furniture was neutral, the curtains were white, and there were no potted plants on the windowsill.

“Have you read Revheim?” Hansvold asked in a friendly tone.

“Yes. Most of it, I think. He’s the sort of writer you get a kick out of when you’re in secondary school. I certainly did. He was so… direct. Rebellious, as you said yourself. So strong… in standing alone. Alone in what he believed in. So it really appeals to that age group.”

“There were other things, too,” he said. “That he wrote, I mean. That interest children at that age. Secondary school.”

“Yes. Anders Mohaug, was he…”

“As I said,” Hansvold sighed heavily. “Anders Mohaug was easily led. The other children around here avoided him like the plague, but Asbjørn Revheim was friendlier. Or…”

Again he got that far-off look in his eyes, as if he was rewinding his memory and didn’t quite know where to stop.

“In fact he wasn’t a friend. He exploited Anders. There’s no doubt about that. And he could be pretty nasty, as we saw time and again. Also in what he wrote. Anders Mohaug, a heavy, slow chap, in every way. It wasn’t friendship.”

“How can you say that?” said Johanne.

“I can and I will.”

For the first time there was a sharpness in his voice.

“Did you ever hear,” Johanne asked quickly, “about a police case in 1965?”

“A what? A police case?”

“Yes. Was Anders ever in trouble with the police?”

“Phuh… He was pulled into the station every time Asbjørn decided to do something and take the poor boy along with him. But it was never anything serious.”

“And you’re sure about that?”

“Tell me…”

She could swear that he looked like an eagle now. The matte gray film over his left eye made it look bigger than the right; it was impossible to look at anything else.

“Could you be a bit more precise?”

“I have reason to believe that Anders’s mother contacted the police in 1965, after her son died. She believed that he was guilty of committing a crime many years before. Something serious. Something that another man was sentenced for.”

“Agnes Mohaug? Mrs. Mohaug report her own son to the police? Impossible.”

He shook his head firmly.

“But her son was dead.”

“Doesn’t matter. That woman lived for Anders. He was the only thing she had. And she deserves every praise because she looked after him and helped him right to the bitter end. To report him for anything… even after…”

He gave up on the pipe and put it down on the edge of the ashtray.

“I just can’t see it.”

“And you never heard… any rumors?”

Hansvold chuckled and folded his hands on his stomach.

“I’ve heard many more rumors than I would care to share. This is a small town. But if you mean rumors about Anders then… no. Nothing like you’re suggesting.”

“Which is?”

“That the boy did something far more serious than letting himself be fooled into killing a cat.”

“Then I won’t disturb you any longer.”

“You’re not disturbing me at all. It’s nice to have visitors.”

As he followed her to the door, she noticed a large photograph of a woman in her fifties on the wall in the hall. From the woman’s glasses, she guessed the picture was taken in the seventies.

“My wife,” said Hansvold and nodded at the portrait. “Randi. Fabulous woman. She had her own way with Anders. Mrs. Mohaug always trusted Randi. When Anders was here, they could sit for hours doing jigsaw puzzles or playing canasta. Randi always let him win, as you would a child.”

“I suppose he was,” said Johanne, “in a way.”

“Yes. In a way he was just a little boy.”

He turned to face her again and stroked the ridge of his nose.

“But he was a man as well. A big, grown man. Don’t forget that.”

“I won’t,” said Johanne. “Thank you for your help.”

On the way back to Oslo she checked the voice mail on her cell phone. There were two messages from Adam, thanking her for last night and wondering where she was. Johanne slowed down and slipped in behind a truck, keeping a good distance. She played back the messages again. Could she detect something akin to irritation, or perhaps concern, in the last message? Johanne tried to decide whether she liked it or whether it annoyed her.

Her mother had called three times. She wouldn’t give up, so Johanne dialled the number immediately and stayed in the inside lane of the highway.

“Hi Mom.”

“Hello. How nice that you’ve called. Your father’s been asking for you, he…”

“Give him my love and tell him all he needs to do is call.”

“Call? You’re never at home, dear! We were starting to get quite worried, as we hadn’t hear from you, days after you’d gotten back from your travels and all that. Did you manage to visit Marion? How is she now, with the new…”

“I didn’t visit anyone, Mom. I was working.”

“Yes, but as you were over there, you might as well…”

“I actually have a lot to do right now. When I’d done what I had to do, I came home.”

“Of course. Good, dear.”

“You left a message on my voice mail. Several, in fact. Was there anything in particular?”

“Just wanted to know how you are and to invite you and Kristiane to supper on Friday. It would be good for you not to have to think…”

“Friday… Let me see…”

The truck was having problems getting up the long, gentle slopes to Karihaugen. Johanne moved out to the left and accelerated to pass it. She lost her earpiece.

“Wait,” she shouted into the air. “Don’t hang up, Mom!”

As she tried to catch the wire, she lost control of the wheel. The car swerved into the next lane and a Volvo had to slam on its brakes to avoid a collision. Johanne gripped the wheel with both hands, staring straight ahead.

“Don’t hang up,” she barked again.

Without taking her eyes off the road, she managed to fish up the earpiece.

“What happened?” screeched her mother at the other end. “Are you driving while talking on the phone again?”

“No, I’m talking on the phone while I’m driving. Nothing happened.”

“You’ll kill yourself that way one day. Surely it can’t be necessary to do everything at once!”

“We’ll come by on Friday, Mom. And…”

Her heart was thumping hard and painfully in her chest. She realized that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

“Do you think Kristiane could stay over until Saturday, mid-afternoonish?”

“Of course! Can’t you both stay the night?”

“I’ve got plans, Mom, but it would be…”

“Plans? On Friday night?”

“Can Kristiane stay over, yes or no?”

“Of course she can, dear. She’s always welcome. You too. You know that.”

“Yes. See you about six then.”

She quickly ended the call before her mother managed to say anything else. Johanne had no plans for Friday night. She had no idea why she’d asked. She and Isak had agreed that if they needed someone to babysit for Kristiane, they would always ask each other first.

She called her voice mail again. Adam’s messages had been deleted. She must have hit the button through force of habit. Lina had phoned while she was talking to her mother.

“Hi, it’s Lina. Just wanted to remind you about the book group on Wednesday. Your turn, you know. And God help you if you can’t make it. Just make something simple. We’ll bring the wine. We’ll be there about eight. See you, hon. Look forward to it.”

“Shit!”

Johanne was good at multitasking. She managed to cope every day because she could do lots of things at once. She could plan a birthday party for Kristiane while she did the laundry, at the same time as talking on the phone. She listened to radio programs while she read the paper and managed to digest the content of both. On the way to day care, she planned what they would have for supper and what Kristiane would wear the next day. She brushed her teeth and made oatmeal and read out loud for Kristiane-all at the same time. On the rare occasions when she was going out with other people, she dropped her daughter off at Isak’s or with her parents while she put on her makeup in the car mirror. That’s the way women were. Especially her.

But not at work.

Johanne had chosen to do research because she liked to study things in depth. But it was more than that. She could never have been a lawyer or a bureaucrat. Doing research allowed her to be thorough. To do one thing at a time. To cast a wide net, take time to find connections. Research allowed her to doubt, whereas her daily life demanded fast decisions and make-do solutions, compromises and smart shortcuts. In her work she had the opportunity to go over things again if she wasn’t satisfied.

But now everything was a mess.

When she had hesitantly agreed to research the possible miscarriage of justice against Aksel Seier, it was because it was relevant to her project. But at some point or another-she couldn’t pinpoint when-the case had started to develop a life of its own. It was no longer anything to do with her life at the institute, with her research. Aksel Seier was a mystery that she shared with an old lady whom she was drawn to but at the same time wanted to forget.

And then she had let herself get involved with Adam’s work.

I can cope with having lots of small balls in the air, she thought to herself as she turned off Tåsenlokket. But not big ones. Not at work. Not two demanding projects at the same time.

And not five ladies for dinner on Wednesday. She just couldn’t cope.