The Consorts of Death

13

The row of windows in Haukedalen Children’s Centre glowed with warmth as I got out of my car, locked up and walked to the entrance. It had started to snow again, slightly heavier snowflakes now, and a treacherous promise of a late winter and renewed life on the ski runs around the town. A few degrees higher, though, and it would tip over into rain.

Hans Haavik met me in the vestibule. He seemed concerned. ‘Not a lot to tell you, Varg. I’m afraid we may have to recommend hospitalisation.’

I nodded. ‘Is Cecilie still here?’

He pointed towards the refectory. ‘They’re sitting in there.’

Some youths passed us in the company of a male care-worker. They scowled at me with suspicion before disappearing into the lounge. I followed Hans into the refectory.

The light inside was garish and sharp. Cecilie and Jan were sitting at the same table as the night before. On the table in front of them there were bowls and pans with the evening meal: boiled potatoes, a mixture of greens, half a head of cauliflower, rissoles and gravy. And a jug of water to wash it all down.

Cecilie was eating. Jan was sitting passively on his chair, his hands on his lap, not a movement.

I went over to them. ‘Hiya, Johnny. How’s it going?’

His eyes glinted, his head quivered warily and, without turning, he looked in my direction. His eyelids trembled, as though in some discreet way he was semaphoring a distress call to the outside world: Help! I’m being kept prisoner! I want to get out…

I glanced at his untouched plate. ‘You have to eat, you know! It’s snowing and when you’ve eaten we can go outside and — have a snowball fight or something like that.’

He moved his lips soundlessly, like a fish on land. I swallowed hard. At once I felt sympathy for this tiny mite who had had such an aberrant start to his life.

I sat at the place set for me. ‘Well, I’m definitely as hungry as a wolf!’ I began to load my plate. Cecilie and Hans watched, like two public officials checking the composition of my diet. ‘I’m going to wolf this down. My first name, Varg, means wolf, you know. So perhaps I ought to say I’m going to varg it down, eh?’

I had his attention now. He looked at me from a closer distance than before.

‘And you… You’re going to jan it down, you are. I’m sure of that. As hungry as a varg and as hungry as a jan — that’s about the same. Don’t you think?’

He nodded.

Cecilie flashed a sudden smile and Hans sent me a nod of acknowledgement.

‘So I think I’ll swap your food around. Watch… back in the pan with this and a hot rissole in its place. There we are. Hot sauce. And then we shovel a potato onto there. Nothing better for small famished vargs and jans than a bit of gravy and potatoes, eh? And what a big boy you are. You definitely don’t have any problems using a knife and a fork, do you. When you’re even bigger you’ll be driving a car, and if you drive a car you’ve got be able to lick the easy things, like eating with your knife and fork…’

With careful movements, he grabbed first the knife, then the fork. Slowly he pushed a bit of potato through the gravy onto the fork and, like a gourmet chef ready to sample, lifted the fork to his mouth, opened up and took the first tiny mouthful.

In silence, he continued to eat. He cut up the rissole into small pieces, and when the first one had been eaten, I put another on his plate. ‘Jan-hungry boys always eat two rissoles,’ I said. ‘Minimum.’

I was almost fainting with hunger myself, so I used the opportunity, while he was eating, to stuff down two or three rissoles. Hans, happy now, took a seat at the neighbouring table and poured himself a cup of coffee from a flask.

Cecilie eyed me across the table with a warm smile. ‘Now we’re almost like a little family, Varg.’

‘Yes, aren’t we.’

She was right. If anyone had peeped through the window they would have seen a peaceful little mini-family, Mum, Dad and small boy — and there was Uncle Hans dropping by — sitting round the meal table at the back-end of the day. None of us said anything, but I was afraid that was how it was at most family meal tables. Conversation had not been that lively when it was Beate, Thomas and I, either. The food was delicious, we ate, and there was more than enough for one sitting.

In the end, he was obviously full. He sat back heavily in his chair and a glow of satisfaction flitted across his face.

‘Pudding?’ Hans asked.

‘What is there?’

‘Prune compote with milk and sugar.’

‘Sounds fantastic, if you ask me. What do you say, Johnny?’

He nodded with a smile on his thin, pressed lips.

‘You heard what Johnny said,’ I said. ‘We would like prune compote!’

It arrived on the table, and everyone ate. Even Hans on the neighbouring table sneaked an extra dish. Unbidden, he topped up Cecilie’s coffee and mine. The family idyll was so perfect that the catastrophe, from all statistical calculations, had to be imminent.

We three adults sat making small talk while Jan finished the whole dish of prune compote as well. Afterwards I asked: ‘And what would you like to do now, Johnny?’

This time he turned his head. He looked me straight in the eye, offended that I had forgotten. ‘You said… a snow ball fight.’

‘So I did! Is that what you fancy?’

He nodded.

‘Can Hans and Cecilie join in, too?’

He shifted his gaze from one to the other and at length he nodded. They smiled gently, happy not to be excluded from the game.

We went outside. It had stopped snowing, but luckily there were enough snowflakes left for us to be able to make a few snowballs, even though they were pretty flimsy and they disintegrated when we tried to throw them.

Nevertheless, we stuck with it for as long as Jan wanted, and he took part in the fight with a passion. When he got his first hit, a snowball that turned to powder on my nose, he laughed out loud, and when we aimed at him but missed, on purpose, he grinned with pleasure.

In the end, the fight flagged of its own accord. As we went back inside, I put my arm round his shoulder and said: ‘That was fun, wasn’t it.’

‘Mm,’ he said with a nod.

‘What would you like to do now?’

He peered up with a start. ‘Wanna go home.’

The door closed behind us, and both Hans and Cecilie held their breath.

I said: ‘I was wondering if Hans had some hot chocolate for us today, Johnny…’

Hans nodded in confirmation.

‘Then we can talk about that while we’re drinking. Agreed?’

He sent me a sceptical look. Then a reluctant nod.

We went back into the refectory and Hans flitted into the kitchen. Cecilie and I sat down with Jan at the same table as before.

I patted him gently on the hand and said: ‘Do you know why you’re here with us, Johnny?’

He shook his head from side to side.

‘You arrived here yesterday, you know…’ As he didn’t react, I added: ‘We came here in my car. You remember that anyway, don’t you?’

He nodded.

‘But do you remember what happened… before that?’

He looked at me with big, shiny eyes.

‘You don’t?’

Again he shook his head, but with more hesitation this time.

‘You don’t remember… that you were alone with… your father? Your dad?’

Again came a few powerful semaphore signals from his eyelids. But he said nothing, just blinked several times.

‘You don’t remember… the accident?’

He shaped his lips. ‘A…’

‘Yes?’

He shook his head firmly. ‘Nope,’ he said.

Hans returned from the kitchen with hot chocolate for us all. Cecilie pushed one cup over to Jan, who grabbed it instantly and put it to his mouth.

‘Careful!’ she said. ‘It’s hot.’

He took a big swig, didn’t react, but a shiver ran through him, and he put down the cup straightaway.

‘But you remember your mum coming home?’ I continued. ‘That’s what you told me yesterday.’

His face seemed to close again. ‘Nope,’ he repeated, looking down.

Cecilie sent me an admonitory glance.

‘Well, so… let’s not talk about that any more,’ I said lightly. ‘Is the chocolate good? For famished boys?’

He squinted up. There was a wary appraisement in his eyes that had not been there before. Then it was gone, and he nodded in silence, raised the cup to his mouth and took another swig, more cautious this time and still without saying anything.

‘Well…’ I motioned to Hans and we went into the vestibule, leaving Cecilie with Jan.

‘I heard Langeland, the solicitor, had rung you.’

‘Yes, he… we were at university together. Moderate rebels, both of us,’ he said with a tiny grin.

‘He told you everything?’

‘Yes, I was given the whole story. But I had no idea that Vibecke and Svein were his foster parents. Her name was Storset when I knew them.’

‘Yes, you must have been fellow students, too?’

‘Yes. She and Jens were, I suppose, almost… an item for a while.’

‘They were a couple?’

‘Yes, but not for long. And later we lost contact, all of us.’

‘Not her and Langeland though. He’s their family solicitor, as I’m sure he said.’

‘Indeed, so I understand.’

‘But you didn’t have any contact, I gather?’

‘Not with Vibecke and Svein. Jens and I met up on the odd evening over a beer or two, but nothing more than that. As time went on we developed… in different

directions. He became a law-abiding citizen, I…’

‘Became an outlaw?’

He grinned. ‘No, no. But you know how it is, Varg. You, me and the law are not always on the same wavelength, are we.’

‘No, you may be right there. Did he say any more about… Vibecke?’

‘No, he didn’t. He was most concerned with Jan. And his state of mind.’

‘Good. What do you think? He’s thawed a bit now, hasn’t he.’

‘You’ve done a great job, Varg. But I still think we should consider hospitalisation.’

‘Let’s give him one more night, eh?’

‘OK. I’ll go with that.’

We went back to Cecilie and Jan. ‘Must be bedtime soon, right?’ I said. ‘Are there any exciting books up there?’

Cecilie nodded. ‘The one we started yesterday was nice, anyway. About Winnie the Pooh.’

‘I’ll come up with you.’

On the stairs I said to her: ‘Shall I take this shift?’

‘Would you like to?’

‘One of us definitely ought to be here, and since you did last night then…’

She nodded. ‘It would be nice to go home and change clothes anyway.’

She still helped Jan put on his pyjamas, wash and clean his teeth, though. When finally he was in bed, she sat on the chair beside him and asked: ‘Should Varg read perhaps?’

He looked at me.

‘I’m wolf-keen to read,’ I said.

He lowered his head stiffly, and Cecilie and I exchanged places.

‘Here,’ she said, and I began to read. ‘“The Piglet lived in a very grand house in the middle of a beech tree, and the beech tree was in the middle of the forest, and the Piglet lived in the middle of the house. Next to his house was a piece of broken board which had ‘TRESPASSERS W’ on it. When Christopher Robin asked the Piglet what it meant, he said it was his grandfather’s name, and had been in the family for a long time.”’

Cecilie sat on the other chair and stayed there until Jan’s eyes had begun to flicker. When he seemed to be falling asleep, we motioned to each other and crept into the corridor.

We were standing at the top of the stairs. In the distance other noises came from the house: the television set on the ground floor, the hissing in the pipes and excited falsetto voices from one of the other rooms.

She said: ‘In a way, this has been a nice day.’

I nodded and smiled.

She came over to me, put her arms around my neck and gave me a hug. I could feel her warm, light body against mine as the door behind us banged open. Like lovers with a bad conscience we jumped apart and turned around.

Jan had opened the door and now he was coming towards us with his head down, not looking ahead. ‘Don’t!’ he shouted before hitting me in the stomach like a battering ram. For a second or two I stood swaying. Then I lost my balance and fell backwards down the steep stairs.