Punishment aka What Is Mine

SIXTY-FOUR

Johanne had been sitting at the Grand Café for a quarter of an hour. She was dreading meeting Unni Kongsbakken and tried not to bite her nails. One finger was already bleeding. At precisely three o’clock, the old lady came into the restaurant. She lifted a hand to hold off the headwaiter and looked around. Johanne half got up and waved.

Unni Kongsbakken came toward her, well built and broad. She was dressed in a colorful, woven jacket and a skirt that went down to her ankles. Johanne caught sight of a pair of solid, dark shoes as she approached the table.

“So you are Johanne Vik. How do you do?”

Her hand was heavy and dry. She sat down. At first glance it was hard to believe that this woman was over eighty. Her movements were strong and her hands were steady when she put them on the table. It was only when Johanne looked more closely that she could see that her eyes had that pale, matte film that old people get when they are so old that nothing surprises them anymore.

“I’m very grateful that you were willing to meet me,” said Unni Kongsbakken calmly.

“It was the least I could do,” said Johanne, and drank the rest of her water. “Shall we order something to eat?”

“Just a cup of coffee for me, thank you. I’m quite tired after the journey.”

“Two cups of coffee,” said Johanne to the waiter, hoping that he wouldn’t insist on them eating.

“Who are you?” asked Unni Kongsbakken. “Before I give you my side of the story, I want to know more about who you are. Astor and Geir were a bit…”

She smiled weakly.

“… vague, I think.”

“Well, my name is Johanne Vik,” Johanne started. “And I work at the university.”

The TV in Adam Stubo’s office was on. Sigmund Berli and one of the secretaries were standing just inside the door, watching. Adam himself was sitting with his feet on his desk and chewing on an unlit cigar. It was a long time until the end of the day. He had to have something to chew on. Something with no calories. He spat out some bits of dry tobacco and realized that he was starving.

“This is very American,” said Sigmund, and shook his head. “TV-transmitted manhunt. Grotesque. Is there nothing we can do to stop it?”

“Nothing that hasn’t already been done,” said Adam.

He had to get something to eat. Even though it was only an hour since he’d dug into two big rolls with salami and tomato, he could feel the hunger burning under his rib cage.

“This is going to end in disaster,” said the secretary, and pointed at the screen. “That’s a madman’s driving, and then the pack of journalists behind… Something’s got to go wrong!”

The helicopter pictures on TV2 showed the Mazda accelerating. On a curve, the back of the car slid out of control. The journalist went wild:

“Laffen Sørnes has spotted us,” he screamed with delight.

“Along with five police cars and a couple of bear hunters,” muttered Sigmund Berli. “The guy must be petrified.”

Again the Mazda skidded on a curve. The edge of the road was loose and stones and gravel sprayed the left side of the car. For a moment it looked as if the car would drive off the road. It took the driver a second or two to regain control and then pick up even more speed.

“He can certainly drive a car,” said Adam drily. “Any more on Karsten Åsli’s son?”

Sigmund Berli didn’t answer. He stared wide-eyed at the TV screen. His mouth gaped, but not a sound came out. It was as if he was trying to give warning, but knew there was no point in saying anything.

“Oh my God,” said the secretary. “What…”

It would later transpire that more than seven hundred thousand viewers had watched TV2’s live transmission of the car chase. Over seven hundred thousand people, most of them at work, as it was twelve minutes past three in the afternoon, watched as the dark blue Mazda 323, 1987 model, skidded sideways into a curve and collided with an Opel Vectra, also dark blue, coming in the opposite direction.

The Mazda was nearly ripped in two before it turned over. It bounced on the roof of the Opel, which continued to skid forward. The Mazda got stuck on the Opel in a crazy, metallic embrace. The guard rail spat sparks at the car doors before the Opel was thrown to the other side of the road, with the Mazda still on the roof. A large stone marking the edge of the road tore the hood of the Opel in two.

Seven hundred and forty-two thousand viewers held their breath.

They all waited for an explosion that never came.

The only sound from the TV speakers was the throbbing of a helicopter that circled just fifty yards above the accident. The cameraman zoomed in on the man who only a few seconds ago had been fleeing the police in a stolen car. Laffen Sørnes was hanging half out of a broken side window. His face was turned upward and it looked as if his back was broken. His arm, the one in the cast, had been ripped off at the shoulder and lay a few yards away from the interlocked car wrecks.

“Holy shit,” screamed the journalist.

Then the sound disappeared completely.

“It happened the night Astor was to present the arguments for the prosecution,” said Unni Kongsbakken, pouring a bit of milk into her half-empty coffee cup. “And you have to remember that…”

Her thick gray hair was put up in a loose bun that was held together with black enamelled Japanese chopsticks. A lock had fallen out at the side. With deft hands she put her hair up again.

“Astor was absolutely convinced that Aksel Seier was guilty,” she continued. “Absolutely convinced. There was, after all, plenty to imply that he was guilty. He had also contradicted himself and been unwilling to cooperate since his arrest. It’s easy to forget that…”

She paused and took a deep breath. Johanne could see that Unni Kongsbakken was tired now, even though they had only been talking for fifteen minutes. Her right eye was red around the edges, and for the first time, Johanne got the impression that Unni Kongsbakken hesitated.

“… after so many years,” she sighed. “Astor was… convinced. The way things transpired, the way I… No, I’m confusing things now.”

Her smile was shy, nearly perplexed.

“Listen,” said Johanne, leaning toward Unni Kongsbakken. “I really think this should wait. We can meet again later. Next week.”

“No,” said Unni Kongsbakken with surprising force. “I’m old. I’m not helpless. Let me continue. Astor was sitting in his study. He always spent a lot of time on the pleadings. Never wrote them out. Key words only, a sort of arrangement on cards. Lots of people thought he made his arguments spontaneously…”

She gave a dry laugh.

“Astor did nothing spontaneously. It was no fun having to disturb him when he was working. But I had been down in the cellar, in the laundry room. Right at the back, behind some pipes, I found Asbjørn’s clothes. A sweater I’d knitted myself-that was before I… I hadn’t established myself as a tapestry weaver yet. The sweater was bloody. It was covered in blood. I got angry. Angry! Of course I thought he had gone over the top with one of his protests again, killed an animal. Well, I stomped upstairs to his room. I don’t know what made me…”

It was as if she was looking for the words, as if she had rehearsed this for a long time, but still couldn’t find the words to say what she wanted to say.

“It was a feeling, that’s all. As I went up the stairs, I thought about the evening when little Hedvig disappeared. Or rather, I thought about the following day. At some point early in the morning, well… of course, we didn’t know about Hedvig then. It was only announced a day or two after the little girl had disappeared.”

She pressed her fingers to her temple, as if she had a headache.

“I had woken up about five in the morning. I often do. I’ve been like that all my life. But that morning in particular, which would later prove to be the day after Hedvig was killed, I thought I heard something. I was frightened, of course. Asbjørn was in his most manic period and did things that were well beyond what I had imagined a teenager could do. I heard footsteps. My first instinct was to get up and find out what had happened. But then I just couldn’t be bothered. I felt absolutely exhausted. Something held me back; I don’t know what. Later, at the breakfast table, Asbjørn was sullen and silent. He wasn’t normally like that. He normally talked incessantly. Even when he was writing, he talked. Chatted away and gesticulated. Always. He had opinions about everything. He had too many opinions, he…”

Again, a shy smile slipped over her face.

“But enough of that,” she interrupted herself. “Anyway, he was silent. Geir, on the other hand, was lively and chipper. I…”

She half-closed her eyes and held her breath. It was as if she was trying to recreate it all-to visualize the breakfast table that morning in a small town just outside Oslo, long ago, in 1956.

“I realized that something must have happened,” said Unni Kongsbakken slowly. “Geir was the quiet one. He normally said nothing in the mornings. Just sat there, helplessly… He was always in Asbjørn’s shadow. Always. And his father’s. Even though Asbjørn was an unusually rebellious teenager and didn’t even want to carry his father’s name, it was as if Astor… admired him, you could say. He saw something of himself in the boy, I think. His own strength. Stubbornness. Self-assertion. It was always like that. Geir was somehow… superfluous. Always. But that morning he was chatty and bright and I knew that something was wrong. Of course, I didn’t think of Hedvig. As I said, we knew nothing about the little girl’s fate until later. But there was something about the boys’ behavior that made me so frightened that I didn’t dare to ask. And then when I later, weeks later, the evening before Astor was going to argue that Aksel Seier was guilty of killing Hedvig Gåsøy… when I went upstairs with Asbjørn’s bloody sweater in my arms, angry as sin, suddenly…”

She folded her hands again. Locks of hair fell down heavy and gray on one shoulder. Tears flowed from the red eye. Johanne was not sure whether the old lady was crying or whether her eye was infected.

“It struck me, like a kind of vision,” said Unni Kongsbakken, tensely. “I went into Asbjørn’s room. He was sitting writing, as usual. I threw the sweater at him. He shrugged his shoulders and carried on writing without saying anything. ‘Hedvig,’ I said. ‘Is this Hedvig’s blood?’ Again he shrugged and kept on writing at a furious pace. I thought I was going to die there and then. Everything went black and I literally had to lean against the wall to stop myself from falling. The boy had given me endless sleepless nights. He always made me anxious. But I had never, never…”

Her hand hit the white tablecloth; Johanne jumped. The glass and cutlery chimed and the waiter came running over.

“… never thought that he had it in him to do anything like that,” Unni Kongsbakken concluded.

“No thank you,” Johanne said to the waiter, who withdrew with some hesitation. “What… what did he say then?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No.”

“But… did he admit…”

“He had nothing to admit.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t quite…”

“I just stood there, leaning against the wall. Asbjørn wrote and wrote. To this day I don’t know how long we stayed there on our own. It could well have been half an hour. It was like… like losing everything. It’s possible I asked him again, but he didn’t answer. Just wrote and wrote, as if I wasn’t there. As if…”

Now she was really crying. Her tears fell from both eyes and she fished around in her sleeve for a tissue.

“Then Geir came in. I didn’t hear him. Suddenly he was just there, beside me, staring at the sweater that had fallen on the floor. He started to cry. ‘I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to.’ Those were precisely the words he used. He was eighteen years old and he was crying like a baby. Asbjørn jumped up and threw himself at his brother. ‘Shut up!’ he screamed, again and again.”

“Geir? Geir said that he didn’t mean to, that he…?”

“Yes,” said Unni Kongsbakken, and straightened her back. She pressed her tissue gently to her eyes before tucking it back up her sleeve. “He wasn’t able to say much more. Asbjørn literally knocked him out.”

“But, does that mean… I’m not sure what…”

“Asbjørn was the kindest person you could imagine,” said Unni Kongsbakken, calmer now and breathing freely; she was no longer crying. “Asbjørn was an affectionate boy. Everything he wrote later, all that awful, offensive… blasphemy. The attacks. It was only words. He just wrote, Asbjørn. In reality he was a very kind man. And he was very fond of his brother.”

Johanne tried to swallow, but something was blocking her throat, just below the larynx. It was difficult. She had to say something, anything. She had no idea what.

“It was Geir who killed little Hedvig,” said Unni Kongsbakken. “I am almost certain of it.”

It took the emergency services over forty-five minutes to get the man out of the wreckage of the blue Opel. His leg had been ripped off at the thigh. His left eyeball had been crushed; a bloody clump had fallen out of the eye socket and dangled helplessly on his cheek. The steering wheel lay a hundred yards away at the foot of a pine tree; the wheel shaft had plunged deep into the man’s stomach.

“He’s alive,” panted one of the rescue men. “Holy shit! The man’s alive!”

Barely an hour later, the driver of the blue Opel was on the operating table. Things didn’t look hopeful, but there was still life in him.

Laffen Sørnes, on the other hand, was still staring blankly at the sky with his body twisted halfway out the side window of a stolen Mazda 323. An inexperienced policeman was bending over a stream, crying openly. Three helicopters still hovered above the accident. Only one of them belonged to the police.

TV2 was about to break the record for afternoon viewers.

People passed outside the big windows of the Grand Café. Some were in a hurry. Others ambled down the street, aimlessly; they had all the time in the world and Johanne’s gaze followed them. She was trying to gather her thoughts. Unni Kongsbakken had apologized, got up, and left the table, without saying where she was going. She left behind her bag, a big, brown leather bag with metal details. Presumably she had just gone to the bathroom.

Johanne felt exhausted.

She tried to picture Geir Kongsbakken. His face kept slipping away; even though it was no more than a day since she met him, she couldn’t recall what he looked like, other than that he looked boring. Compact and heavy, like both his parents. She remembered the smell of furniture wax and brown wood. She remembered his neutral suit. The lawyer’s face was just an unclear blur in her mind.

Unni Kongsbakken came back. She sat down again without a word.

“What do you mean by ‘I am almost certain’?” asked Johanne.

“Pardon?”

“You said… you said you were almost certain that… that Geir killed Hedvig. Why just almost certain?”

“I can’t know for certain,” said Unni Kongsbakken drily. “Not in a legal sense, at least. He has never admitted to anything.”

“But…”

“Let me continue.”

She lifted her cup. It was empty. Johanne waved to the waiter for a refill. The waiter was getting annoyed; Unni Kongsbakken had to ask twice for more milk before he brought some.

“Geir was unconscious,” she said in the end. “And Asbjørn was like a clam. It only took a minute or two before Geir came to. And then he was as silent as his brother. I went to get Astor. As I said, he was sitting in his study and it was quite late.”

Again she got that faraway look in her eyes, as if she was trying to turn back time.

“Astor was furious. First because I had disturbed him, of course, and then because of what I had to say. It was ludicrous, he shouted. Garbage. Bullshit, he shouted at me. He commanded the boys down to the sofa and bombarded them with questions. Neither of them said a word. They… they simply didn’t answer anything. For me, that was as good an answer as any. Even though Asbjørn was a rebel, he always had a kind of respect for his father. I had never seen him like that before. The boy looked his father defiantly in the eye and did not answer. Geir stared down into his lap. He was silent, too, even when Astor slapped him hard. In the end, Astor gave up. He sent them to bed. It was well past midnight. He was shaking when he got into bed beside me. I told him what I thought. That Geir had killed Hedvig and that he’d called Asbjørn to help him get rid of… the body. We only had one phone in the house and it was right outside Asbjørn’s room. Geir could have called him in the night without us hearing it. That’s what I said. Astor said nothing; he just cried silently. I had never seen my husband cry. Finally he said that I was wrong. That it wasn’t possible. Aksel Seier had killed Hedvig, and that was that. He turned his back to me and said no more. I didn’t give in. I went through everything again. The bloody sweater. The boys’ peculiar behavior. The evening that Hedvig disappeared, Geir had been at a Young Socialists’ meeting in Oslo. Asbjørn was at home. In the early hours I heard… sorry, I’ve already told you that. I’m repeating myself. But Astor wouldn’t listen. When the day finally dawned, he got up. He took a shower, got dressed, and went to work. From what I read in the papers, he gave an impassioned speech. Then he came home and we ate dinner in silence. All four of us.”

Unni Kongsbakken slapped her hand lightly on the table, as if punctuating her speech with a period.

“I don’t quite know what to say to all this,” said Johanne.

“Strictly speaking, you don’t need to say anything.”

“But Anders Mohaug, it was him who…”

“Anders had also changed. I hadn’t noticed it earlier; the boy was always a bit strange. But then, after that evening, I noticed that he was also quieter. More stooped. More anxious, somehow. It wasn’t hard to imagine why Asbjørn had presumably taken Anders with him. He was a very big boy, you see. Strong. I tried to talk to Mrs. Mohaug when the opportunity arose. She was like a frightened animal. Didn’t want to talk.”

Unni Kongsbakken’s eyes filled again. Her tears followed a line along the base of her nose. She licked her upper lip lightly.

“She obviously thought that Anders had done it on his own,” she said quietly. “I should have been more insistent. I should have… Mrs. Mohaug was never herself again after that winter.”

“When Anders died,” Johanne ventured, but was interrupted again.

“Astor and I never talked about the Hedvig case after that fateful night. It was as if that entire terrible night was shut away in a drawer, locked away, and hidden forever; I… As time passed, it was as if nothing had ever happened. Geir became a lawyer like his father. He tried to be like Astor in every way, without ever succeeding. Asbjørn started to write his books. In other words, there were plenty of other things to worry about.”

She gave a deep sigh; her voice trembled before she pulled herself together.

“One day, it must have been sometime in summer, in 1965, Astor came home from the office… Yes, he was working for the Ministry at the time.”

“Yes, I knew that.”

“His good friend, the general director, Einar Danielsberg, had been to see him. Asked him about the Hedvig case and Aksel Seier. Some new information had come to light that might indicate that…”

She put her face in her hands. Her wedding ring, thin and worn, was embedded in her right ring finger. It had nearly disappeared under a fold in her skin.

“Astor just said that everything had been taken care of,” she said in a still voice. “That there was no need to be frightened.”

“To be frightened?”

“That was all he said. I don’t know what happened.”

Suddenly she revealed her face again.

“Astor was an honorable man. The fairest man I have ever met. But he still let an innocent man go to prison. That said something. It taught me that…”

She took a deep breath, nearly gasped.

“We will do anything for what is ours. That’s the way we are made, we humans. We protect what is ours.”

Then she got up, an old, old lady, heavy and slow. Her hair had fallen from the Japanese chopsticks. Her eyes were swollen.

“As I’m sure you understand, I could never prove anything.”

It was as if her bag had grown too heavy in the course of the afternoon. She tried to put it on her shoulder, but it just slid down. In the end she clasped the bag with both arms and tried to straighten her back.

“That has comforted me for a long time. I couldn’t be certain about anything. The boys would never talk. The sweater was burned. Astor made sure of that. When Asbjørn died, I read his books for the first time. In The Fall of Man, the Fourteenth of November, I finally found the certainty I needed.”

I can understand that you’ve protected your husband, thought Johanne, and tried to find words that would not offend. But now you’re betraying your own son. You’re surrendering your own son. After all these years… your own son. Why?

“Geir has had over forty years of freedom,” said Unni Kongsbakken in a dull voice. “He has had forty years that did not belong to him. I think he has… I assume that he hasn’t done anything else.”

Her smile was full of shame, as if she couldn’t believe what she was saying.

“I couldn’t say anything earlier. Astor would… Astor would never have survived it. It was bad enough with Asbjørn. With those awful books, all the clamor, the suicide.”

She sighed weakly.

“Thank you for taking the time to listen to me. You’ll have to decide for yourself what you want to do with what you now know. I have done my bit. Too late, of course, but all the same… you will have to decide what happens to Geir. Presumably you can’t do much. He will of course deny everything. And as nothing can be proven… But it could perhaps help this… Aksel Seier. To know what happened, I mean. Goodbye.”

Johanne watched her bent back as she made her way to the large doors of the Grand Café, and it struck her that the colors in her jacket seemed to have faded. It was as much as the old woman could do to lift her feet. Through the windows, she saw someone help her into a taxi. A hairbrush fell out of her bag as the door closed; Johanne sat and followed the car with her eyes as it drove Unni Kongsbakken away.

The brush was full of dead hair. Johanne was surprised by how clear they were, even at that distance. They were gray and reminded her of Aksel Seier.