Blessed Are Those Who Thirst
Page 22
“There, there. Take it easy now. Everything’s all right.”
When he realized that Maren had control of the boy, Christian took the other children with him out to the day room. Kenneth had been sick. A small and unappetizing heap of chewed bread, milk, and blueberries was sitting on the plate he had held hesitantly in his hands as they walked to the other room, the same as all the others.
“Just leave it,” Christian told him. “You can have one of my slices!”
As soon as the other children had gone, Olav calmed down completely. Maren let go of him, and he sank down onto the floor like a beanbag.
“I only eat sugar on my bread,” he mumbled. “Mum says it’s okay.”
“Then I suggest one thing to you,” Maren said, sitting down beside him, with her back against the damaged refrigerator. “When you’re with your mom, you eat sugar the way you’re used to, but when you’re here, then you eat what we do. Isn’t that a good deal?”
“No.”
“Maybe that’s what you think, but unfortunately that’s the way it has to be, really. Here we have a number of rules, and we all have to follow them. Otherwise it would become quite unfair. Don’t you agree?”
The boy did not respond. He seemed totally lost. Gingerly she placed a hand on his bulky thigh. His reaction was instantaneous. He punched her arm.
“Don’t touch me, for fuck’s sake!”
She stood up quietly, and stood there looking down at him.
“Do you want something to eat before I clear it away?”
“Yes. Six slices of bread and butter with sugar.”
Smiling weakly, Maren shrugged her shoulders and started to wrap the food with plastic film.
“Do I have to go to bed hungry in this fucking dump, or what?”
Now he looked her directly in the eye, for the first time. His eyes were completely black, two deep holes in his pudgy face. It crossed her mind that he could have been handsome, were it not for his size.
“No, Olav, you don’t have to go to bed hungry. You’re choosing that yourself. You’re not having sugar on your bread, not now, not tomorrow. Never. You’re going to starve to death if you’re going to wait for us to give in before you eat. Got it?”
He could not understand how she could remain so calm. It bewildered him that she did not give in. What’s more, he could not understand that he had to go to bed hungry. For a moment it struck him that salami was actually tasty. Just as quickly, he cast the thought aside. He struggled to his feet, snorting with exertion.
“I’m so fucking fat I can’t even stand up,” he said to himself in a low voice as he approached the living room.
“You, Olav!”
Maren was standing with her back turned, examining the dent on the refrigerator. He stopped without turning to face her.
“It was really good of you to help Kenneth with his bread. He’s so small and vulnerable.”
For a second the twelve-year-old new boy stood, hesitating, before turning around slowly.
“How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-six.”
“Oh, right.”
Olav went to bed hungry.
* * *
Raymond was snoring. Really snoring, like a grown man. The room was large, and in the faint light that entered through the darkened window Olav could discern a huge Rednex poster above his roommate’s bed. In one corner there was a dismantled off-road bike, and Raymond’s desktop was a chaotic jumble of textbooks, food wrappers, comics, and tools. His own desktop was completely bare.
The bedclothes were clean and starchy. They smelled strange, but pleasant. Flowery, in some way. They were far nicer than the ones he had at home; they were adorned with Formula 1 racing cars and lots of bright colors. The pillowcase and quilt cover matched, and the bottom sheet was entirely blue, the same color as some of the cars. At home he never had any matching bedclothes.
The curtains stirred in the draft from the slightly open window. Raymond had decided that. He himself was used to a warm bedroom, and although he had new pajamas and a cozy quilt, he was shivering from the cold. He was hungry.
“Olav!”
It was the director. Or Agnes, as she liked to be called. She was whispering to him from the doorway.
“Are you sleeping?”
He turned over to face the wall, and did not reply.
Go away, go away, said a voice inside his head, but it was no use. Now she was sitting on the edge of his bed.
“Don’t touch me.”
“I won’t touch you, Olav. I just want to have a little chat. I heard you were angry at supper tonight.”
Not a word.
“You have to understand that we can’t have any of the children behaving like that. Imagine if all eight were to bounce sugar and jam off the walls all the time!”
She chuckled softly.
“That would never do!”
He still remained silent.
“I’ve brought you some food. Three slices. Cheese and sausage. And a glass of milk. I’m putting it down here beside the bed. If you want to eat it, then that’s fine, if not we can agree that you’ll throw it in the trash early tomorrow morning without any of us seeing it. Then no one will know whether you wanted it. Okay?”
Moving slightly, the boy turned around abruptly.
“Are you the one who decided I have to stay here?” he asked loudly and indignantly.
“Shhh,” she hushed him. “You’ll waken Raymond! No, you know perfectly well that I don’t decide these things. My task is to take good care of you. With the other grown-ups. It’s going to be fine. Although you’re most definitely going to miss your mother. But you’ll be able to visit her often, you mustn’t forget that.”
Now he was sitting halfway up in the bed. He resembled a fat demon in the faint light; the outlandish raven black hair, the wide mouth that even in the night darkness glowed bloodred. Involuntarily she dropped her gaze. The hands on the quilt belonged to a young child. They were sizable, but the skin was like a baby’s, and they were helplessly clutching two cars on the quilt cover.
“My God,” she thought. “This monster is only twelve years old. Twelve years!”
“Actually,” he said, staring directly at her. “Actually, you’re my prison guard. This is a fucking prison!”
At that moment the director of the Spring Sunshine Children’s Home, the only institution in Oslo for children and young people, saw something she had never, in the course of her twenty-three years of employment in child welfare services, seen before. Beneath the boy’s black, slender eyebrows she recognized an expression that so many despairing adults had; people whose children had been taken from them and who tarred her with the same brush as the rest of the official bureaucracy pursuing them. But Agnes Vestavik had never seen it in a child.
Hatred.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anne Holt, acclaimed author of the Hanne Wilhelmsen mysteries, has worked as a journalist and news anchor and spent two years working for the Oslo Police Department before founding her own law firm and serving as Norway’s minister of justice in 1996 and 1997. She lives in Oslo with her family.
For more on this author, visit: http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Anne-Holt/80850030
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COVER DESIGN BY ANNABELLE BRONSTEIN
COVER PHOTOGRAPH © THOMAS RUSS
ARNESTAD/ALAMY
ALSO BY ANNE HOLT
Blind Goddess
1222
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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English translation copyright © 2012 by Anne Bruce
Originally published in Norwegian as Salige er de som Tørster
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