His son had talked about painting the door, but he had never found time between all those meetings and trips back and forth to Tromsø. It needed a new coat now. Viggo had to keep at least something in order when everything else was falling apart around them. Grieving was heavy work.
Viggo could not get used to it, could not accept that Anders would never leap off the school bus again, that he would never again come walking up the path. That the school bus existed, the path existed, but Anders did not.
It was not only questions to the state apparatus, the police and the AUF that were churning round inside Viggo’s head. He also had some questions for his son.
Why did you lie down on the path?
Why didn’t you run?
What were you thinking, just before he fired?
Did it hurt?
He gave the hut one coat, the door two. He left the door open to dry.
‘Think how pleased Anders would have been to see it looking so nice,’ he said to Gerd when he came in.
They always went up to Anders’s room when evening came. They always put his light on when it got dark.
When it was time for bed they looked in to say good night, sleep well and turned off the lights.
Gerd kept the room in order. That is to say, she did not tidy or move things, she just made sure it did not get too dusty. Stian liked wearing his younger brother’s clothes when he was home on holiday. Some of Anders’s friends had also picked out items of clothing, as reminders of him.
When Anders went to Utøya there was a brand-new suit hanging in his wardrobe. Gerd and Anders had gone shopping in Tromsø because the eighteen-year-old had wanted a proper suit. His first dark, grown-up suit. He wanted to see what they had at Moods of Norway. There, he tried on the finest suit he could find. Gerd had never seen him stand so tall and look so handsome.
‘Get it,’ she said.
‘But it’s expensive, Mum.’
‘We’ll split the bill,’ said Gerd.
Then her eyes fell on a matching waistcoat. ‘Try that,’ she said.
It was a perfect fit. ‘We’ll take that too,’ she said. ‘I’m paying.’
They buried him in that suit. On the lapel they pinned three badges that had been lying on his desk. No to All Racism, one of them said. Red and Proud, said another. On the last, AUF shone white against red.
As he lay in his coffin in the white-painted chapel in Bardu, Gerd spread the blue woven cover over him. Sky blue, blue as the sky. Just as Anders had wanted it.
She could never weave with that colour again.
The Sentence
He had brought some of his clothes. But it wasn’t like at home, where he had a wardrobe in his room.
Garments from his earlier life were kept in the storeroom with the other inmates’ clothes. When he wanted to change, he had to ask.
Within a few months of starting his sentence he had had enough, and composed a letter of complaint to the Directorate of Correctional Service at Ila prison.
‘Since it is usually quite chilly in the cell, I generally wear a thick sweater or jacket,’ he wrote. ‘I regularly have problems when asking for one. For some reason they often bring me one of my Lacoste jerseys, despite my having pointed out on several occasions that I do not want one of these as they are valuable and must be preserved from too much wear and tear. I have therefore ended up on various occasions having to freeze for one or two days until I can talk one of the warders into going down to the store to get one of the three proper sweaters.’
Anders Behring Breivik was detained in the high-security section; daily routines were strict. It annoyed him intensely. At home he had kept various creams and perfume bottles, whereas here he was not even permitted a tiny tube of moisturiser. Every morning he was given a little plastic cup with some of his day cream in it. Unfortunately the cream dried up and became unfit for use in the course of the day. This was grounds for complaint.
He was often given only enough butter for two or, at a pinch, three slices of bread, even though they knew that he ate four. ‘This creates unnecessary annoyance because I either have to eat dry bread or be made to feel guilty for asking for more.’ He described the warders’ collection of the plastic cutlery and other items after meals as a form of low-intensity psychological terror. They came so quickly that he felt obliged to hurry his food and drink. And because he was not allowed a thermos flask in the cell, his coffee was cold when he got it, eighty per cent of the time.
In his complaint he alleged that he was considering reporting the prison to the police for breaches of the Norwegian constitution, human rights legislation and the Convention against Torture.
He was in solitary confinement, in a cell stripped of furniture, with white walls on which no decoration was allowed. The section was commonly known as the Basement. He complained about the lack of furnishing and the fact that he was ‘denied the inspiration and mental energy which art on the walls’ could provide. He also complained about the view: ‘A nine-metre prison wall blocks out everything except the tops of the trees.’ He complained that the windows were covered in a dark film that kept out some of the natural light. ‘As a result I have to take vitamin pills to prevent vitamin D deficiency, among other things.’
Lighting was a general problem. The switch was outside the cell. It was frustrating to wait ‘up to forty minutes’ for them to turn up with his toothbrush and switch off the lights. The on–off switch for the TV was also outside the room. He had to tell them what he wanted to watch, and on which channel. The picture was poor and there was an annoying echo on the sound because the set was inside a secure box made of perspex and steel. As for radio, he was not pleased that he could only get P1 and P3 programmes and not the culture channel, P2. This was detrimental to his intellectual wellbeing.
He had three cells at his disposal. The first was a living cell with a bed, a place to eat and a cupboard. The second was a work cell with a typewriter firmly stuck to a table. The third was a workout cell with a treadmill. He was not satisfied with the running machine. He was not a long-distance runner, he had told the prison, but a body builder. Naturally, free weights were out of the question on security grounds, but already on his very first week in prison he had devised ways of toning his body with the help of his own body weight. Then he lost his motivation. Through the autumn of 2012 he lost his spark. ‘A sense of resignation,’ his lawyer called it.
He was working on a manuscript about the trial, with the title The Breivik Diaries. He was writing it in English. Norwegian readers did not interest him; it was the international book market that he wanted to reach.
But his working conditions were not the best. He could not move freely between the cells. He often had to wait when he asked to be transferred to the work cell. For a time, he did not want to go there at all. ‘I feel that the price I have to pay for using this facility is too high, as I have to fight a daily battle to get access to the cell for a full working day.’
The worst part of being moved between cells was the strip searches. ‘A strip search involves being ordered to take off all my clothes, which are then thoroughly checked, item by item,’ he wrote. This was something he dreaded every day, he commented. It also annoyed him that he had to organise his papers again after every such search. He also had to remake his bed. The place was such a mess whenever they had been there.