In Dust and Ashes

by Anne Holt

  It might be something important.

  Not that he could think of anything. In the worst-case scenario, it could be the guy who owned the house standing out there: he was the only person who had been here before. A reasonably jovial sort, but he had reservations about the somewhat idiosyncratic shower arrangement. Jonas had installed a plastic water tank on the ceiling. He could fill it from a little hot water tank with a hand pump and thus have exactly enough water for a quick shower. The house owner had pointed out that the tiny dining room was by no means a wet room. He had kicked away the tub Jonas was in the habit of using to collect the gray water, grunting something about having to put a stop to this.

  It might possibly be him.

  Refusing to open the door would just be asking for trouble. It would be best to get the inconvenience over and done with, and Jonas snatched up a T-shirt from the back of the kitchen chair and slipped it on.

  “Guttorm?” he said in bewilderment when he opened the door and saw his cousin standing there.

  “Hello, Jonas. Can I come in?”

  Jonas stood, momentarily silent and confused, before pulling himself together and opening the door wide.

  “My goodness, yes, of course. Come in.”

  The porch was so small there was no room for them both. Jonas retreated into the open-plan living room-cum-kitchen.

  “Coffee?” he asked. “I don’t have much else to offer, I’m afraid, but at least it’s freshly boiled.”

  “Boiled coffee,” Guttorm said, with a smile. “I don’t think I’ve tried that before.”

  “Sit down, won’t you?”

  Guttorm Abrahamsen was a big, stout man of more than six foot two, and he gazed skeptically at a chair beside the settee before he sat down warily.

  “How did you know I lived here?” Jonas asked as he poured an extra cup from the scorched, black pot.

  “Barbro in the wages department. But I got lost. I parked two hundred meters up the road and rang their doorbell.”

  “I couldn’t afford to rent that house up there,” Jonas said, setting a cup of coffee in front of him. “Far less own.”

  “No.” Guttorm scratched the back of his hand. “I don’t suppose you could. A woman pointed out a path leading straight down here. Through the woods. My car’s still parked up there, though, but I expect it’s safe enough.”

  Jonas sat down on the settee. He felt remarkably uncomfortable, without quite understanding why. His cousin was a great guy. They had seen a lot of each other in their childhood, when they had both spent summer holidays with their grandparents in Solør. Admittedly, three years separated them, with Jonas the elder of the two, but beggars can’t be choosers. The smallholding belonging to their grandparents was idyllically situated just beside a large mountain lake, but some distance from the nearest neighbor. Even farther from anyone closer to Jonas in age, and the two cousins had enjoyed a lot of fun together.

  When Jonas was released from prison, Guttorm was the only person who got in touch. He loaned him money and got him a job. Guttorm was a kind man, and it should be pleasant to have a visit from him.

  But it was not.

  His cousin was still scratching the back of his hand, and his coffee sat untouched. The silence began to feel awkward. Jonas felt increasingly worried, even though he could not think of anything that might actually affect him. He had not done anything wrong, and since he had obtained the job at Kirkeland Transport AS, he had not shirked a single day. Not even a day off through illness, and he complied with every single rule to be found in the transport business, both written as well as unwritten ones.

  “Was there anything in particular?” Jonas eventually asked. “If you’d told me you were coming, I’d have done some shopping. As a matter of fact, I think I might have a few oatcakes, I …”

  He was halfway up from the settee when Guttorm said: “No thanks. Sit down, please.”

  Jonas did as he was told.

  “It’s about …”

  Guttorm stopped scratching at last. Instead he took a firm grip of both armrests, as if preparing for a jump.

  “The boss,” he added, gazing down at the floor.

  “The boss?”

  “Yes. Georg Kirkeland.”

  “The owner, yes.”

  Guttorm nodded and looked down again. He still seemed to be clinging to the chair. Jonas could feel his pulse accelerate, and tried to dismiss nagging thoughts about where this conversation was headed.

  “What about him?”

  “He has … Georg has heard on the grapevine that you … that you have a criminal record.”

  Jonas said nothing. A loud whistling noise suddenly sounded in both ears. Inside his head, somehow, and he swallowed three consecutive times to get rid of it.

  It was no use.

  “I’ve been told to give you the sack, Jonas.”

  Guttorm did at least feel enough shame to bow his head.

  “I see,” Jonas said in an undertone. “After two years with an unblemished record driving for the guy, without as much as a speeding fine or late delivery, he’s suddenly decided I’m not good enough.”

  “Well …” Guttorm squirmed in his seat. “He didn’t know about your jail time before now. I had to … I kept that snippet close to my chest when you were taken on. I probably should have … you understand …”

  He slapped one hand on his face and rubbed hard. His face was red and blotchy when he finally made eye contact with Jonas. “I’m sorry, Jonas. Really sorry.”

  “It’s okay. You can go now.”

  “I’m really fucking sorry. You’ve lost everything, I know. First Dina, and then that business with Anna–”

  “You can go, I said. Just go.” Jonas’s voice grew gradually softer.

  “Your child, wife, house, car, job, friends. You’ve lost everything, Jonas. I really wish I could …”

  He straightened up and thrust a hand into the inside pocket of the anorak he was still wearing.

  “Here,” he said, handing Jonas a thick envelope. “Here’s fifty thousand kroner in cash. I’d have liked to give you more, but this is what I’ve … had in reserve, you might say. Money the wife doesn’t know about. I know it won’t last long, but at least you’ll have something until you get things sorted out with unemployment benefit and suchlike, and–”

  “Would you please go?”

  Jonas was still speaking quietly. His voice was gentle, as if speaking to a small child. He sat bolt upright on the settee, with his legs slightly apart and his hands on his lap.

  Guttorm put the envelope down on the table and got to his feet, zipping up his jacket before turning up the collar.

  “I’m really sorry. If there’s anything more I can do for you, you’ve got my number.”

  Jonas did not say a word. He would not say anything for some time to come.

  He was thinking of Dina. Of the daughter who would have been seventeen if he hadn’t become so annoyed by the clutter of junk mail in their mailbox. As Guttorm crossed the room, the rough floorboard, with deep cracks that had made the draft from the damp basement extra troublesome this winter, creaked loudly.

  As the door slammed behind his cousin, the words of an old song drifted into Jonas’s head.

  Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

  Now he was certainly free, and it felt just the same as being dead.

  Henrik Holme sat crouched over Iselin Havørn’s last words.

  The handwriting was regular, without a single deletion or correction. The ink had run in a couple of places, he noticed, but apart from that, all the writing was straight as a die, neat and tidy.

  “I’ve read it three times now,” he said to Hanne with a note of dismay, “ and I still don’t understand what you mean.”

  “Read it aloud,” Hanne told him.

  Puffing out his cheeks, Henrik slowly let the air escape. Hesitating slightly, he began to read.

  Dear Maria

  Before I leave now for the land of dar
kness and deathly shadows, never to return, I must explain. It should never have turned out like this. I had hoped for good things in life, but evil came instead. I expected light, and everything grew dark. My days are futile, and I want no more.

  The fight against Islam and the destruction of everything that is Norwegian and European goes on. At any rate I have done my share, but the witch-hunt of recent weeks has cost me too much. My friends, even the ones I know are in total agreement with me, have turned their backs. I can scarcely leave the apartment without being engulfed by journalists, not to mention the fucking left-wing activists and the multicultural mafia that assailed me with spitting and verbal abuse the last time I ventured out to the REMA 1000 supermarket to do some shopping. What is said and written about me is so unjust, so wrong and so offensive that it’s unendurable. I have devoted my life to saving our fatherland. Now it’s no longer within my power to continue. They have stolen my life and my natural right to express my opinions, and I can’t bear it any longer.

  Iselin

  He looked up as he put the copy printout aside.

  “Well?” Hanne said. “Can’t you see it?”

  “See what?”

  With a sigh, Hanne trundled her wheelchair across to his side of the table.

  “How would you characterize the opening paragraph?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Good God, Henrik. You went to school for years. You must have done some textual analysis?”

  He tapped his forehead and snatched up the sheet of paper.

  “Beautiful,” he said once he had mulled it over. “Almost biblical.”

  Hanne grinned and rolled back to her usual place.

  “You’re spot on with that,” she said. “It’s actually taken from the Bible. To be more specific, the Book of Job. If my memory doesn’t fail me, the first paragraph is a loose collection of quotations from there.”

  Her hand blindly rooted around under the seat of her wheelchair. She produced a laptop and opened it.

  “In my office, there’s a bundle of Internet printouts,” she said, pushing her glasses further up her nose. “In the middle of the desk. Would you mind fetching them, please?”

  When he returned with the papers, she raised one fist triumphantly in the air.

  “Yep. The opening paragraph of Iselin’s letter is a little bit of cut and paste from the Book of Job right enough. And of course you know what this part of the Bible is about?”

  “Well … Job is a dreadfully afflicted man, is he not?”

  “You can say that again. It all begins with God sending for his sons.”

  “I though God had only one son.”

  “In all probability this means angels. Of which one is Satan, or the Adversary, as some translations have it. Satan has been absent for some time, and when God asks where he has been, he is given the answer that Satan has ventured into the human world.”

  Henrik stared at her in fascination. “How do you know that?”

  “By reading,” was her terse response. “What do you think I’ve been up to in all these years of self-imposed isolation?”

  “On the Internet,” he muttered.

  She ignored him and pressed on: “The Book of Job is a fantastic story. It’s said to be the very oldest part of the Bible, even though it doesn’t appear first, and it’s impossible to understand it completely. Lots of people have tried, of course, but there are countless different interpretations.”

  “What happened between God and Satan?”

  “They quarreled, about Job, the richest and most powerful man in the land of Uz. God boasted of what a God-fearing man he was. Satan said, not at all, anybody would be God-fearing if they had received such great gifts from God. They entered into some kind of wager, no less.”

  “A … wager? Between God and Satan?”

  “Yes. Satan was given permission to remove everything Job owned, because God was confident he would retain full trust in Him all the same.”

  “So it was Satan, rather than God, who tested Job?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” Hanne shrugged and closed the laptop. “You could say they were both in on it. But enough of Bible stories. The point in this connection is that Job was a God-fearing man. He begged for an answer as to why he had been so sorely punished, and even pleaded to be allowed to die, but he never doubted God’s existence. Never questioned God’s omnipotence. Not even when Satan brought down a plague of boils on the poor man because it had not helped in the least to rob him of everything he possessed.”

  Her eyes were sparkling with eagerness, and her tone of voice softer than usual, the way she always dropped it a notch or two when she was really passionate about something. This was how Henrik liked her best: when she was teaching without becoming too domineering, when she drew him into a discussion instead of suddenly shutting him out as she still did all too often.

  “Since I’ve tracked down the primary source for the first paragraph, what would you say about the letter now?” she asked.

  Henrik reflected for a few seconds as his eyes absorbed the suicide letter once again.

  “Resignation,” he concluded. “It’s quite a resigned piece of writing, I’d say. Fairly … elegant, in a way, too.”

  He glanced up at Hanne. Her face was almost expressionless, but he thought he could detect a trace of skepticism in the way the corners of her mouth curved down ever so slightly.

  “Maybe a bit melodramatic for someone of our times?” he ventured one more time, but she did not seem any more satisfied. “Or … what do you think?”

  Hanne put her hand round her neck and angled her head to one side.

  “Resignation and melodrama might not be too daft an interpretation. After all, great chunks of the Bible are pretty melodramatic when read by modern eyes, so I wouldn’t place too much weight on that particular point. But resignation? Well, maybe so. Perhaps you’re right. At least the wording seems to come from someone facing death with … equanimity? A sort of …”

  She released her neck and took a gulp of coffee.

  “This text sounds as if it comes from someone who has really suffered. Who has struggled with life for a long time. Like Job, for that matter. What about the other part?”

  “The second paragraph?”

  “Yes.”

  Henrik raced through the letter one more time. “Self-justification,” he said firmly. “Anger and self-justification.”

  “Spot on! You can see it too!”

  She leaned over the stack of papers Henrik had brought from her office.

  “These are printouts of some of the worst articles Tyrfing posted on various websites,” she said, lightly slapping the top sheet of paper. “The day she was outed, I dashed into the Internet and secured them. Smart thinking, because they were nearly all deleted in the course of the first twenty-four hours following her exposure. And these …”

  Once again she smacked the bundle of papers.

  “These articles provide evidence of the same cocksure, self-justifying and hateful writer who could have written the second part of this letter. Apart from one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Henrik asked when she paused, before using his fingers to beat out a little drumroll on the table.

  “Are those tics, or are you expressing eager anticipation of my answer?”

  “Tics. Sorry.”

  “Iselin Havørn could never have written a suicide letter.”

  “But she clearly has done,” Henrik said glumly.

  “I greatly doubt that. In a suicide letter, you don’t talk about ‘fucking left-wingers’ and spitting at the REMA 1000 supermarket. Have you ever read a genuine suicide letter?”

  “Er … no.”

  “You will eventually. They are terribly sad. During my time in the police I read maybe fifteen to twenty of them. There was no reason to suppose any of them were forgeries. Some were hopeless, many downright confused. Some were well written, bordering on being absurdly rational. What they had in common was th
at they were …”

  Now she leaned all the way across the table, maintaining lengthy eye contact before she finished her sentence.

  “… brimming over with pain.”

  Her voice had dropped so low that he could not avoid leaning closer.

  “Unbearable pain,” she added. “And pleading for forgiveness and understanding. I’ve never read a suicide letter in which the writer has not reassured their loved ones that it’s not their fault that everything has gone wrong. That it’s best for everyone that he or she disappears. It can be absolutely heartbreaking, Henrik. Believe me.”

  All of a sudden she turned her back. Henrik automatically drew away. Hanne picked up the copy suicide letter and flung it across the table.

  “Not a word to her wife. Not a single sign of affection.”

  “It opens with ‘Dear Maria’.”

  “Dear? I open letters to the tax authorities with ‘dear’! Common courtesy, it’s known as. Even though teenagers as a whole seem to have forgotten what that is these days. By the way, you look so much nicer now that you’ve shaved. Excellent.”

  Henrik touched the sides of his nose four times as she went on: “Where is the pain in this letter, Henrik? Where is the overwhelming feeling that everything is insupportable, and there’s no way out apart from death?”

  “Maybe a bit … at the beginning?”

  “Exactly. I just can’t see that this letter here has been written by one and the same person. It looks as if the first paragraph was written by someone who really is up against things, maybe even a religious person. Someone who has been brooding and reading and struggling to find some kind of meaning in a dreadful existence. Paragraph two?”

  She sighed noisily. “In many ways it looks as if it was written by Iselin, even though as I said she never–”

  “Could have taken her own life,” Henrik added in a voice that suggested he was very far from being persuaded.

  “Don’t you agree? Surely you agree with me, Henrik?”

  He moistened his lips and clasped his hands. Parted them again and pushed them under his thighs.

  “Let’s say that I see your point,” he said. “The letter seems quite odd. And Iselin Havørn was maybe not the world’s best suicide candidate. But then, can you tell me …”