Norwegian by Night

CHAPTER 22

‘You drive like an old woman,’ says Sigrid to Petter as he passes the Esso station in the middle of Kongsvinger. Her hand is on her forehead, and she stares at the road as though willing it to slide faster beneath the wheels of their Volvo.

They have already heard the radio announcement: shots have been fired on a small side-road near the petrol station.

‘I’m driving as fast as I can. I don’t usually do this.’

‘You had to pass a test.’

‘They don’t retest us.’

‘That’s going in my report.’

‘There’s no need to be rude.’

‘I’m anxious.’

‘At least you were right,’ Petter says.

It is an odd comment, and offers no comfort. The cruisers only arrived on location five minutes ago. There was one survivor with a bullet wound in his back who is now in a critical condition and being airlifted to Oslo. A passing motorist stopped, and once the terror passed she called the local police station. It took only moments for Sigrid to be notified.

Sigrid takes a blue-tinted bottle of Farris water from under her seat, and has a long drink as Petter weaves and bobs through small streets and small-town traffic. She imagines the summer house and its surrounding land — the dirt road that leads to the small path up to the house, and the long field stretched in front of it.

‘How are they coming?’ she asks Petter.

‘The troops?’

‘Are they coming by air?’

‘They’ve come by helicopter as close as they can get without being heard. They’re doing the rest by foot.’

‘Where are they now?’

Petter does not look at her. His eyes are scanning the road for errant balls chased by children, and for cars passing through T-intersections while their drivers stare like idiots at their text messages.

‘Close,’ he says.

There is a click — a distant but familiar click. It is the sound of a rifle being dry-fired. The Black has heard this sound before. Many times. Done repeatedly, it can cause damage to the firing pin, so he does not do it often. But over so many years, and with so many weapons around so many inexperienced young men playing with their guns like toys, he has heard this sound many times.

The sound has come from the woods. It is not the crisp snap of a twig. It is different from the long crunch of a leaf or the muffled bunt of a bone. It is distinct. Metallic. Sharp.

It is a sound of war.

He stops and holds the boy firmly in place. He is not scared. He is not paralysed by fright. He is trying to get a bearing on the sound. He would like to hear it again, to know where it came from.

He is only twenty metres from the two steps leading up to the bright red house that rises incongruously from the dusty tones of the late-summer earth.

When he stops, the boy also stops. He is sullen and pulls against his captor, but only as a form of protest — the way an animal might suddenly, and without immediate provocation, turn on its chain and gnaw on it with a low growl. The boy does not care why they have stopped. He wants to be free and to run.

There are sounds, usually but not exclusively spoken sounds, that announce the end of days — when knowledge is shared that all is lost and can never be recovered. The notification of a loved one’s death is such a sound.

The sound of a firing pin striking the back of a bullet that does not discharge is also such a sound.

It is the sound of hope lost. A story ended.

The sound of Sheldon’s rifle misfiring, to anyone else, is a thin, sharp click. To Sheldon, it is as loud as a coin thrown into an empty swimming pool in the dead of night. It travels for miles. It tells the world where he is. What he is doing and why.

His mark has stopped moving. He has clearly heard the gun misfire. The boy does not know this sound and is unmoved by it, but the man knows it. It is on his face. There is no confusion. He has turned and is looking into the woods.

Donny should be silent. He should be still. This is how the sniper survives when running is impossible. He should trust his position. Trust his camouflage and wait for the mark to pass. The goddamned rifle is obviously broken.

Moses. The flawed one.

Sheldon, however, does not do this.

As quietly as he can, he lifts the bolt and then slides it back until he feels the friction of the bullet. If he pulls too hard, the solid round will be ejected and fly off to his right and land in the leaves, making more sound. So he reaches his left hand over the breech and eases back the bolt handle until the tip of the bullet is angled out.

Putting the failed bullet to ground, he takes the one from behind his ear and rearms the rifle. Bolt forward, and then down. No safety. He takes aim again and — without the pause, without the memory, without the doubt — he fires again.

There it is again. The distinct click of a dry-fired rifle. Such a strange thing to hear. Is someone playing with him? The Black looks again into the woods. Deeper now. In the trees, where a sniper might hide. Along the base of the trees. He has done this before. But he sees nothing. No one out there.

He also hears no birds.

‘We are walking again,’ he says to the boy in English.

He pulls the boy forward to the house and walks briskly up the two stairs to the door. He does not knock. He turns the latch and steps into the dark entry, where he makes out the shape of a familiar face as his eyes adjust to the light.

‘We are not alone,’ he says to Enver.

He then steps in fully with the boy and closes the door behind him.

That quickly, Sheldon is alone again. Everyone he cares about is in the red house in front of him. It is as impenetrable as an ancient fortress. He is as flaccid and useless as an old Jew covered in shit and lying on the hard Christian earth of a land that has never known him, never known his dreams, never heard his songs.

There is nothing left in these hands, this body. No purpose. No function he can perform.

I have deluded myself in my final act.

He remembers the cold water of the Yellow Sea — the golden sands of the Gobi on its surface — seeping into the rowboat as he paddled with the strength of a Hellenic warrior. He remembers his determination then to serve a cause greater than himself. The success he once felt, and the quiet honour of receiving a medal from his country. Now, on this summer day, he has delivered his loved ones into the hands of killers. His granddaughter and her gentle husband. His neighbour. Her son.

What a fool I was to have believed I could do anything. That I could have proved I was greater than my own destiny. It is this that has killed my son. I have pretended to be a man of action. But I am a dreamer.

There is a joke. A righteous Jewish man dies and sees God. He approaches Him and says, ‘May I ask you a question?’ God sees the puzzlement on the man’s face and takes pity on him. ‘Yes.’ So the man asks, ‘Is it true that the Jews are your Chosen People?’ God considers the question and answers the man. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It is true.’ The man considers this and nods. He then opens his arms and says, ‘Would you mind choosing someone else for a change?’

I am a foolish old man and have caused nothing but harm. I am so sorry. I can never express how sorry I am.

‘Are you talking to me?’ asks Bill.

‘Why would I be talking to you?’

‘I just figured.’

‘I don’t want to talk to you. I have nothing to say to you. The forgiveness I owe is not to you.’

‘OK.’

‘I’m not comfortable with the notion of God being Irish.’

‘You aren’t the first person to say this.’

‘I don’t want to die alone.’

‘You won’t, Sheldon.’

Sheldon crawls on his hands and knees along the path from the sauna to the house. At the corner of the building, he stands up. It feels good to be on his feet. Caked and crushed, he shuffles to the front door where Paul and his captor disappeared. With his right hand, he takes out the knife and grips it tight. He is not scared now. He knows that behind this door is his own death. Inside is his remaining family. Inside is the glowing woman who had a baby growing in her belly just the other day, promising a new generation to his family. On that day, he sat like a king on his throne in a northern kingdom and prattled on about days gone by.

It is called dementia, Sheldon, Mabel had said to him.

And so it is, my queen. So it is.

Standing at the entrance, Sheldon smiles his last smile, and stands as straight and tall as he can muster.

With a deep breath, Sheldon Horowitz turns the latch on the door and pushes it open.

‘Here, here, turn here,’ says Sigrid, her head burning but no longer throbbing.

Petter turns the wheel hard onto the same road that only hours ago the hunters had taken in their pick-up and negotiated with the old man over fishing line and a needle.

‘Turn off the lights,’ she says in a whisper, as though her voice might be heard over the sound of the diesel engine. ‘Pull up behind that Mercedes.’

She radios in her location. She knows that everyone at the police station is waiting for news. But there is no news. So there is nothing left to say.

‘You want me to block the road?’

‘I want you to drive up the dirt path as far as the car will go.’

‘It’s not four-wheel-drive.’

‘No. Why would it be?’

‘I don’t think we should get there first,’ says Petter.

‘I think someone needs to be there now,’ Sigrid says. ‘Drive the car up that path until there’s no more path or no more car,’ Sigrid says. ‘That’s an order.’

Petter turns hard onto the path that Lars uses for the motorcycle. He puts the car in low gear and thunders up the path. The car shakes and bounces. He drives it like a rally car. They are making ground, and they are both thinking the same thought. It is Sigrid, though, who says it first.

‘If the f*cking airbags go off in this Volvo, I am invading Sweden, so help me God!’

‘There. Up there. It opens into the field we saw on the map.’

‘I don’t see any action. Do you see any action? Where are those men?’

‘There’s radio silence. I can’t get between those trees.’

‘That’s it, then. We’re on foot.’

It is dark inside the house. Sheldon holds the broken rifle tucked under his left arm in the way that a British earl cradles a shotgun after a good duck hunt. His right hand holds his knife. In the foyer there are boots, scarves, hats, and jackets. There are fishing poles and a box of candles. More than that, he cannot tell. It doesn’t matter, anyway. It is no longer his physical surroundings that count. He is no longer Donny, the boy soldier from the green hills of western Massachusetts who would grow up to be a New Yorker, a husband, and a failed father. He is no longer the man he was at war. The man who struggled to find a place. Now, here, dressed like a fool among the mad, he becomes the man he needs to be.

Facing the darkness, a rifle under his arm, he announces loudly and clearly so that no one in the house can possibly have any doubt about what is being said: ‘I am General Henrik Horowitz Ibsen. And you are surrounded!’