Fireraiser

by Torkil Damhaug

  – Are you still thinking about that fire? he said to switch to something else.

  Synne put her fork into her mouth. – What do you expect?

  She had sauce on her chin. He pulled a wipe from the roll, laid it in front of her plate. It was over a week since the stables had burnt down, but he realised that it wouldn’t be a good idea to point that out.

  As he stood up she said: – There was another fire last night.

  He turned to her. – At the stables?

  – Of course not, she groaned. – That’s already burnt down.

  – I gathered that.

  – I don’t think you understand much, do you? Do you actually pay any attention at all to things that are happening in the world?

  For emphasis she made an exaggerated gesture in the direction of the kitchen window.

  He avoided giving her an answer that might hurt her. Anyway, she was right: most of the time he was lost in his own thoughts.

  – Update me on what’s going on out there, he contented himself with saying.

  She looked as if she was wondering whether he was worthy of it. – There was a fire at a remand home in Nannestad.

  – I gathered that. One dead, and one serious.

  She gave him an exasperated look. – That’s the third time there’s been a fire near here in just over a week.

  – Nannestad isn’t exactly near here.

  – Well it’s not far away.

  He thought about what she had just said. – Does it say anywhere that they think there’s a connection?

  She shook her head. – But it must be obvious.

  Not everyone is as smart as you, he should have said, but didn’t. His sister was smart, in a completely different way to him. She devoured all kinds of books, fantasy and crime and horror.

  He sat back down. – Have you been to the scene and found some clues?

  – Haha.

  – Tell me what you think.

  She brushed a lock of thick hair off her forehead; it was full of knots and didn’t look as though it had been washed for some time. When she wedged it behind her ear, it stuck out a bit and made her look like a cartoon elf.

  – First the stables burn down, then six days later the nursery up at Vollen, and then, only two days later, this home in Nannestad.

  – You mean like it’s more and more frequent?

  – It looks like it. And then there’s similarities between all the places.

  – In what way is a stables like a remand home?

  She rolled her eyes. – Don’t you get it? Places where something is kept and looked after. Same with the nursery.

  Karsten couldn’t hide his smile. – You mean that every place where someone or something is looked after could be set on fire by a madman?

  – Is that so strange?

  – You read too many weird books, he told her. –You should get out more. Out in the world out there. It’s not enough to sit in here and understand all kinds of weird stuff.

  He put his plate into the dishwasher. She looked up, obviously annoyed.

  – Says you. The biggest nerd in Lillestrøm.

  – In northern Europe, he corrected her. He had told her about the dubious award he’d been given at the coffee bar.

  – The police will give it high priority now that someone’s dead, he went on after thinking it over.

  Synne threw down her fork. – Now that someone’s dead? Twenty-nine horses died in those stables. But that doesn’t really count, because they’re not people.

  – Of course it counts, he said to placate her.

  – A horse’s life is worth just as much as a human life, at least. But people like you don’t understand.

  She jumped up and left the room, slamming the door behind her. Footsteps like drumsticks on the staircase, another door slamming. He thought perhaps he should go up to her but changed his mind. It bothered him that she had hardly any friends, that she spent so much of her time alone with her books and her computer games in her room. She’d had a couple of appointments with a psychiatrist at the clinic in Lillestrøm. Last time she’d come home exasperated and angry because the psychiatrist had gone on about how things were at home, as though that had anything to do with her attacks.

  His phone rang, startling him. Jasmeen had said she would ring. He’d been thinking it would be best if she didn’t. He looked at the display. For a few seconds he considered not taking the call, then he shut himself in the living room, as far from Synne’s ears as he could get without leaving the house.

  – Wanted to hear your voice, Jasmeen said, and it made him think how embarrassing it was to listen to a recording of his own voice, how strange it sounded, so much thinner and lighter than he expected.

  – Did your brother see you? he asked.

  – He sees all, hears all.

  – Did he talk?

  She hesitated. – They’re not home yet.

  – Hope it won’t get you into trouble.

  – Don’t think about that.

  There was a pause. He should have said they ought not to meet again.

  – When can we meet again? he asked.

  – I don’t know.

  Suddenly the problem from the maths test mixed itself in among his thoughts. Archimedes’ tombstone; he still hadn’t managed to find the simplest solution.

  – What are you doing? she asked.

  – Nothing special. Solving a few problems. Talking to my sister.

  Jasmeen wanted to hear more about Synne and he told her how obsessed she was by the fires. It was easier to talk about his sister’s world of horses and weird books. He mentioned her attacks too, even though Synne had forbidden him to say a single word about them to anyone in the entire world. He didn’t tell her how strange Synne was, or that she had no friends and could lie about anything at all. That he was getting more and more concerned about her.

  – You really love your sister, said Jasmeen.

  – In a way. What are you doing?

  – I pray. Think and pray.

  He needed to hear something like that. Be reminded that she belonged to another world, one in which every smell and sound was different, where people got down on their knees to pray many times every day.

  – I think about a story my father used to tell me when I was a child, she went on. – It’s from the place where his family comes from. Every Pakistani knows it. Do you want to hear it?

  He wasn’t sure that he did.

  – It’s about a very beautiful and brave woman from Punjab named Heer. She falls in love with a boy named Ranjha.

  Karsten slid down in the sofa, tried as best he could to follow the story. Ranjha and Heer loved each other more than anything in the world. But a jealous uncle reported them, and Heer had to marry someone else and was taken to a village far, far away. Ranjha wandered lonely and unhappy around the streets of his village. But then he met a holy man who taught him to renounce everything.

  – Do you understand?

  Karsten didn’t. He looked at his watch, it was quarter past eight; soon his parents would be home.

  – Ranjha finds the place where Heer is living an unhappy life with her new husband. She gets her parents’ permission to divorce and marry Ranjha, but just before the wedding the jealous uncle poisons her food.

  Jasmeen paused, then said quickly: – Someone’s coming, I have to hang up. Call you later.

  Karsten lay with his face buried in his maths book. He didn’t want to wake up, but sleep had begun to withdraw into the pages of the book, and the images dissolved. A last one hung on for a while. He’s walking through a zoo. There are no animals there any more. Someone calls his name. This can’t be a dream, he reasons, because my legs are cold. A car with its engine running stands at the entrance. He opens the door. Jasmeen is in the front seat. She’s naked. Adrian is behind the wheel. We’re waiting for you, Karsten.

  It was his father’s return home that woke him. Karsten could hear that it was him. His mother always slammed the door sh
ut, Synne usually left it open, whereas his father opened and closed it with a click, not too hard and not too gentle. But something was different this time. His footsteps continued straight down the hallway without him pausing to remove his shoes.

  – Karsten, I’m waiting.

  His father hardly ever shouted to him. Sometimes he would enter the room, stand there a while looking at what Karsten was working on. Not a cloud in sight, he might announce by way of affirming what he already knew, that there was nothing to worry about. He rarely raised his voice. Karsten could remember the two or three times when he’d seen him angry. The last time must have been about five or six years ago, when two boys from their neighbourhood had captured Synne and taken her clothes off, then doused her with a garden hose.

  Now he was standing by the hall table with the telephone receiver in his hand.

  – Hello? Karsten said.

  His father straightened up and put down the phone. Looked more afraid than angry.

  Karsten tentatively started down the stairs. – What is it?

  – Come.

  His father disappeared out into the yard, waited by the open garage door. The light inside was switched on. Karsten crossed over to the car. Two broad white scratches from the rear bumper to the front, running together towards the middle and then parting from each other in an uneven pattern that no function in a co-ordinate system could have described. His father indicated for him to go around to the other side of the car. A similar pattern, even more irregular.

  – Was the garage door open?

  – Closed, but not locked. His father’s voice was shaky. In the cold wind, a few hairs in his thin fringe lifted.

  Karsten walked around the car again, mostly to avoid the sight of his father, who was standing there, arms dangling forlornly at his sides.

  – Bloody hooligans, he said loudly as he emerged.

  – Do you have any idea at all who might have done something like this? his father muttered.

  Karsten did. He shook his head.

  He ran as fast as he could down towards the roundabout, followed the pavement and crossed the boggy ground on the other side of the runway. His body took over, the hunger for air, the acid accumulating in his muscles. But something happened to his thoughts too: they split apart, didn’t snag so easily, moved along more smoothly.

  Not until he turned into Strandgata did Karsten realise where he was headed for. If he’d known it before, he would have run in another direction, but now he came to a halt at the gate. At the sight of the three broken fence posts an image of his father outside the garage flashed up, his hands hanging still at his sides, the wind in his thinning hair. For some reason or other it was this image that decided him. He stepped across the yard and rang the bell on the nearer of the two doorways in the red semi. Was about to run on when the door slid open. The woman standing there was wearing what looked like a dark red dressing gown.

  – Is Adrian here? Karsten gasped; it sounded like a groan.

  – Not just at the moment.

  He greeted the information with a little nod. The woman was pretty, he noticed as he turned and was about to leave.

  – Maybe you’d like to come in and wait for him? He’ll be back shortly.

  Karsten thought he probably wouldn’t. But then saw in his mind’s eye that scratched car and couldn’t say anything.

  – Are you Karsten?

  He gave a start. – How do you know that?

  She opened the door for him. – Adrian was telling me about you.

  And then he was in the hallway. She had dark blue eyes and dark hair. She kept her eyes on him the whole time. It felt like being out on a wide-open heath, with nowhere to shelter. He bent forward and fiddled with his shoelaces.

  – My name’s Elsa.

  She held out a hand. He straightened up, gave it a quick shake.

  – Karsten, he managed to say, – but you already know that.

  She smiled, and it made her look even prettier. – I’ll put the kettle on. Tea or coffee?

  – Yes please.

  He bent forward, fiddled with his shoelaces again. His father was going to the police station to report the vandalism. Not impossible that he would ask him to accompany him. If Karsten could spin this out long enough, he might at least be able to avoid that.

  – So tea and coffee then?

  He could hear that she was still smiling. – Coffee, he said, even though he would have preferred tea with four spoonfuls of sugar.

  She showed him into the front room. He tried to protest that he’d been out jogging, that his clothes were dirty and wet, but she told him to sit down on the sofa anyway. It was a reddish colour, not unlike the colour of her dressing gown. – Just excuse me while I go and get dressed.

  He muttered some response or other.

  – I work nights, she explained, and then disappeared up the stairs.

  He sank down into the soft plush. Her name was Elsa. At this very moment she was walking into a room above him to get dressed. Maybe she’d left the door ajar.

  When she came back down, she was wearing jeans and a knitted bottle-green sweater. She put cups and a cafetière on the table, poured coffee, slipped down into the chair directly opposite him.

  He reached out for the blue cup. – How long have you and Adrian—

  He interrupted himself with an abrupt gesture that splashed coffee on to the tabletop.

  – Excuse me, I’m sorry.

  She assured him it was okay, fetched a tissue and draped it over the little puddle. The white paper turned brown, and Karsten could see how the fibres inside it swelled up.

  She sat down again, sipped from a large glass mug containing some greenish brew that didn’t look like either tea or coffee.

  – You’re a maths genius, I gather.

  She didn’t sound as if she was being ironic.

  – Always been interested in that kind of thing, he said. – Pretty much of a nerd, actually.

  – Adrian says you’re good in all subjects.

  For some reason or other Adrian had been talking to this woman about him. Elsa, he thought. She said her name was Elsa.

  – Are you going to study maths?

  He shrugged his shoulders. – I’ve applied to several places. People at home want me to study medicine. It sounded stupid. As though it was his parents who were going to decide his career choice. – But I don’t fancy it.

  – Why not? Elsa wanted to know, looking intently at him.

  – Dunno. It struck him that she wanted a proper answer. – Not really all that good with people.

  She wagged her head slightly. It was like something he’d seen Adrian do. – Well that’s what you’ll learn when you study.

  They had discussed this at home. It was his mother who kept going on about medicine. His father was more relaxed, reckoned he still had plenty of time. Can you see Karsten sitting at the bedside of a woman who’s about to give birth? he asked, with a little chuckle to indicate that he found the thought amusing. Why not? his mother had persisted. And anyway, he could be a researcher. His father had to admit that wasn’t such a bad idea. He was a nuclear physicist himself and had done his doctoral thesis on dark matter. The thought of his father recalled to Karsten the sight of the vandalised car in the garage, and it was a sight he associated with Shahzad Chadar.

  He took a swig of coffee that was much too big and much too hot.

  – Probably be research, he managed to get out once he’d finished coughing. – That’s the kind of thing I’m best suited to.

  Elsa looked at him as though trying to determine whether or not this was correct.

  – What do you do? he dared to enquire. – You said you were on night duty.

  She put down the cup containing the mystery brew. – Work at a nursing home. It’s just a part-time job. Apart from that, I help people who need advice and guidance.

  – I thought as much, Karsten blurted out.

  – Is that what I look like?

  He felt th
e prickling at the roots of his hair. – You seem like, so open.

  – That’s a nice thing to say.

  – Are you a psychologist? he ventured.

  She smiled with her whole face, but mostly with her eyes.

  – I use various methods. Mostly the Tarot.

  He must have looked pretty funny, because she burst out laughing, and there was nothing else to laugh at but him.

  – Do you know what that is? she asked.

  He shook his head.

  – The Tarot is an ancient way of finding out what’s happened in the past in people’s lives, and what’s going to happen. People who are uncertain about things can be helped to see more clearly and make sensible decisions. We use a special pack of cards.

  – You’re a fortune-teller? he exclaimed.

  – You could put it like that.

  She leaned back in the chair and the pullover tightened across her breasts.

  – There are certain areas of life in which common sense alone can’t help us.

  Karsten drank the rest of the coffee. Superstition and magic were things that primitive people did, out of ignorance. And yet he sat there nodding his head at what she said.

  – I can see you’re sceptical, and that’s quite natural.

  He even nodded at this. – I am sceptical.

  He lifted the mug, which was now empty, and pretended to drink. Put it down again, looked at his watch, thought he’d better say something more.

  – If I told you something about my life, could you predict what’s going to happen next?

  She looked at him for a long time. – I could give you some idea, at least.

  – With a pack of cards?

  – Not just any old cards. Tarot cards have distinctive properties. They inspire thoughts, fantasies and premonitions.

  With relief Karsten heard the front door opening. A few seconds later Adrian was standing there.

  – Blimey.

  Karsten got up from the sofa. – I was out jogging, he explained, – and I just thought … There was something I wanted to ask you.

  – Sure.

  Adrian disappeared into the kitchen, returned with a cup, sank down into the chair next to Elsa’s. Karsten noticed a vague resemblance between them, and it was only now that he realised Elsa wasn’t Adrian’s partner. She must be ten or twenty years older, he thought, the same age as his own mother, over forty, maybe more. Adrian was twenty-four; the girls in class had managed to get that out of him.