‘Is it very important, Tommy,’ I said. ‘It’s true, I’m in a hurry, honestly,’ and I was listening for the sound of my neighbour’s car, and I thought I heard footsteps across the flagstones and someone knocking at a door, maybe our door, well, Lydersen’s door, but that wouldn’t be possible from this distance.
‘I think it’s important,’ he said.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘What is it then, Tommy.’
He cleared his throat twice. Is he going to give a speech, I wondered, like you do at confirmations, he was that formal, he didn’t even swear, as he nearly always did, but I didn’t invite him to my confirmation. Lydersen had said no, point blank, he didn’t even want to talk about it, but later I realised I had given in too easily.
‘This is just between you and me,’ Tommy said.
‘But, Tommy, that’s no good. It’s not just the two of us any more. It’s not like it used to be.’
‘So I have gathered,’ he said, in a very formal tone. He hadn’t said ‘gathered’ once in the whole of his life, we always said: did you ‘get’ me or did you ‘get’ that, and it wasn’t easy for me to see what his feelings were, whether it was all right for him that it wasn’t us two any more, or whether he was still upset.
‘I just wanted you to know,’ he said, ‘that I’m going to burn our house down. Very soon.’
‘Which house,’ I said. We weren’t on the same wavelength at all. He just looked at me. The sun was shining. There was a smell of petrol. It was so quiet around us, the air wasn’t moving, no cars were on their way in or out of the petrol station, not a sound. Just outside the silence a man was standing on the church steps, in jeans, Wranglers probably, you couldn’t get anything else around here. A distant tractor drove into a field, and a cock crowed.
‘Oh, yes. Our house,’ I said, ‘the house that was our house, I mean, before’, and I listened again for the neighbour’s car, and now I was certain it had started. I was desperate. Tommy, Tommy, I thought, and was standing there shifting my feet as if I had to go to the toilet, why did you have to come now.
‘Burn it down. What are you saying.’
‘Yes, I’m going to burn our house down,’ he said, and then he said: ‘Because it’s standing there, just like it was.’
‘Is it,’ I said. I hadn’t been there once since I moved out, and I hadn’t given it a thought in a long time. But it was probably just as we had left it. I hadn’t heard anything else. ‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is. We’ve been there and looked inside. I pulled off all the boards over one window. It was easy. They were rotten through.’
‘Who’s we,’ I said. ‘Jim and you.’
‘Yes, Jim and me,’ he said. ‘What other we would that be.’ And then he said: ‘Inside the house it looks exactly as it did when we lived there. Only us, not when Dad was there.’
That was probably true, but it was a strange thought. I hadn’t heard about any new people moving in, a new family, but it felt odd that everything was as it had been then, in the living room, the other rooms, on the stairs, for nothing felt now as it felt then. Everything had changed. But inside the house everything had stood still. It made me uncomfortable thinking about it.
‘Does it,’ I said. I repeated myself. It was embarrassing. But I couldn’t concentrate, I had to go.
‘Yes it does,’ he said. ‘And I can’t help thinking about it. I can’t sleep at nights. I’m fed up. So now I’m going to burn the crap down. You can come with me if you like. That’s why I’m here.’
‘What. No, no, Tommy, I can’t do that, are you out of your mind. It’s a crime. We would be arsonists. We could be arrested and put in prison. You could, Tommy, please don’t even think about it.’
‘Who does the house really belong to,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it our house,’ he said. ‘Did you get any money for it. Did I get any money for it. No, we didn’t. So I can do what I like with the house. If you don’t want to be part of it, that’s fine by me. We could have done it together. That would be the right thing. But if you don’t want to, I’ll do it on my own.’
‘But, Tommy, why do you have to burn it down. You don’t need to burn it down, do you.’
‘Yes, I do. Now that nothing’s like it was before, the damn house shouldn’t be like it was, either. It’s not right. I didn’t get it until I looked through the window. Goddamnit, Siri, I can’t sleep at night,’ he said, and now he wasn’t formal at all.
‘But, Tommy, I’ve got to go to handball training.’
‘Handball training.’ He looked down at my bag. He hadn’t noticed it until now. ‘Do you have to go to handball training,’ he said.
‘Yes, I do.’ Past Tommy’s shoulder I could see the über-Christian neighbour’s car turning in to the crossroads, and I didn’t know if he had given up on me or was looking for me. He might well have been, because he slowed down and for a moment the car stopped altogether, and then I started to run with the bag in my hand, I waved to the neighbour, and he saw me and waved back. A huge vehicle passed me on its way into the petrol station, a removal van it was, and it stopped with a hiss of brakes, and I glanced back as I ran, but by then Tommy was lost behind the van.
TOMMY ⋅ JONSEN ⋅ AUGUST 2006
I WALKED INTO the Central Hospital through the door facing the car park, past the reception and the kiosk and past the café towards the staircase. One floor lower was the Bunker, where Jim was admitted in 1971, that was more than thirty years ago, and we were so young then, it’s easy to forget that everything looks different when you are young, it looks better, there is so much time, and then suddenly everything is worse, much worse, the whole world blown sky high from one day to the next. This time I was going up to the third floor, and before I always ran up the stairs, but now I took the lift. I drank too much.That was why.
On the third floor I passed the duty room, and then I walked three doors down the corridor and into the room where Jonsen was. I had known him all my life. The doctor was standing at his bedside, they were talking, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then Jonsen turned his head on the pillow and saw me come in. He smiled, and the doctor turned and saw me and took one step back, one to the side, he had seen me before, the day we arrived at the hospital in a helicopter, when Jonsen had collapsed in front of me in his living room, but I hadn’t been there since, I had been away, in Haugesund, it wasn’t good, but that’s the way it was. I said hello, and the doctor said hello.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘How’s it going.’
‘Not so good, my friend,’ Jonsen said.
‘I had to go to Haugesund,’ I said. ‘It was quite important. I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘That’s all right,’ he said. He was still smiling, but the skin under his eyes was blue, almost black. I had a book with me, by John Steinbeck, I thought maybe he hadn’t read. Jim gave it to me one time when we were boys, it said to me from him on the title page. I found it in a box at home when I was going through the basement. I put it on the bedside table. Jonsen stretched his hand over and he slowly turned the book round with his index finger and said:
‘I haven’t read this one.’ He looked surprised, he was sure he had read all of Steinbeck’s books, but he hadn’t.
‘The plot takes place in Norway,’ I said. ‘During the war.’
He looked up at me. ‘You’re having me on.’
‘I’m not having you on,’ I said.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said, and the doctor coughed quietly behind my back, or maybe he was laughing. There are all kinds of doctors.