Not many months later I moved into her considerably larger lodgings in Wessels Street. When she finished her course six months later she went to Bergen ahead of me, where she had got a part-time job at the Social Welfare Department, while I carried on commuting backwards and forwards for the rest of the time I was in Stavanger. In the May of my final year we got married, and two years later Thomas was born. Neither of us had even heard of Lasse Wiik then.
Stavanger had been the scene of some of my happiest years, and I could never return to the place without being reminded that happiness is fleeting, and about as easy to hold onto as a moonbeam.
The Salvation Nursing Home was just outside Bjergsted. In a modern glass and concrete building, looking out over Byfjord, I asked the way to reception and was sent three floors up and right. ‘The door’s locked, it’s the Senile Dementia Department, but just ring the bell, and they’ll let you in,’ the lady in reception called out to me helpfully as I was on my way up the stairs.
I followed her advice, and a little dark-haired nurse with a bright round face and great blue eyes showed me in to Kathrine Haugane, asking: ‘Are you family?’
‘No, I’m an acquaintance – of her son.’
‘You mean Birger?’
‘Yes. Do you know him?’
‘No, but my brother was in the same class at primary school,’ she said with a sudden hint of melancholy as though to emphasise how long ago that was.
‘They were obviously older than you.’
Her face brightened up again. ‘Yes, they were actually. Here we are.’
Kathrine Haugane already had a visitor. On the edge of the bed, with some knitting in her hands and an open magazine beside her, sat a woman in her forties, already grey-haired and with a face upon which life had left its imprint all too early.
‘You’ve got a visitor,’ said my companion with a cheerful smile.
The woman in the bed gave scarcely a flicker of her eyelids. The other woman stood up surprised. ‘Oh?’
I gave a friendly smile. ‘It’s…’ I hesitated for a moment. ‘Veum from Bergen. Varg Veum. I’m an acquaintance of Birger’s.’
‘Oh.’ She put out her hand. ‘I’m his sister: Laura Nielsen. Pleased to meet you.’
‘Me too.’
She was a little dowdily dressed, in a red shirt blouse, a brown skirt and a plain white knitted cardigan almost like a raffle prize from the last church bazaar. She wore no make-up and no jewellery. Her eyes were pale blue, almost colourless, and were red-rimmed, as if she was suffering from some sort of eye trouble. There was nothing about her to remind one of her brother, but from what I remembered of the notes in my inside pocket, there was nothing to suggest that they had the same father, quite the reverse in fact.
‘You are… Was it Birger who asked you to come and – visit us?’
‘Well, I… only if I had time. And I just happened to be on this side of town.’
‘He hasn’t been here for two years!’ she said, salivating so much that she had to swallow.
‘Hasn’t he?’
‘Not that I don’t see his point, mind you! She’s hardly going to have much to say.’ She nodded at her mother, and I followed her eyes.
Kathrine Haugane lay on her back, the eiderdown tucked right up under her chin so her neck could hardly be seen. Her face was thin and wrinkled, the most prominent feature being her nose, sharp and pointed. Her chalk-white hair was parted in the middle, and her skin was grey and sallow, as if it had lain there gathering dust for far too long and no one had bothered to brush it off. Had it not been for the barely visible movement of her lips, you might have thought she was dead.
‘Has she been like this long?’
‘It’ll be eight years this summer. Completely gone.’
‘So, isn’t she ever awake?’
‘Yes, she is, but when she speaks, its just confused babbling. Not a sensible word to be had from her.’ She sat down and took up her knitting again. Then she nodded towards the other chair in the room as a sign that I could sit down now that I’d called.
I glanced at the other bed. It was empty.
She followed my gaze. ‘Martha Lovise Bredesen. She died two days ago. They’re expecting a new patient tomorrow.’ She cast off a few stitches and muttered, almost to herself: ‘Oh well, at least they won’t be troubled any more…’
Strong white daylight filled the room. On the wall above Kathrine Haugane’s bed hung a number of private family photographs. One of them showed a woman sitting with two small children in front of a dry-stone wall in such strong sunshine that it must have been the height of summer.
I nodded at the pictures. ‘Is that you two?’
She looked up at it almost shyly. ‘Yes, it is… It was one summer, must have been in about 1950, we were at Nærbø.’
‘Birger’s the eldest,’ I remarked.
‘Yes, he is – never been any doubt about that.’
‘So was your name Bjelland as well, then, before you married?’
‘No, er – I’ve always been called Haugane, I have.’
I looked through the window towards the islands on the other side of the fjord. ‘But… do you have a different father, then?’
She pursed her lips and nodded.
‘And Birger’s father, was his name Bjelland?’
‘No, it wasn’t…’ She looked down at her mother, lying there with eyes closed and quivering eyelids as though she was dreaming – or just pretending to be asleep.
Laura Nielsen lowered her voice. ‘Birger was born in December 1945. Nobody ever found out who his father was, though there were rumours of course, and the general gossip was that he, that his father was, well, German, d’you see?’ A bitter look came over her face as she remembered it. ‘Mother was working as a waitress in a café at the time, where she obviously met decent people as well as other sorts… So it could just as well have been one of the better-off people in town, couldn’t it?’
I nodded at her reassuringly. ‘Yes, of course it could.’
‘So when Birger was almost grown up and moved heaven and earth to find out who his father was, it could just as well have been – it could just as well have been the chap he singled out. And anyway, he was already dead, so who could deny it?’
‘No, I…’
‘Both Birger and I copped it at school because of this, I can tell you. But mostly Birger. “Nazi bastard! Nazi bastard!” they would shout, running after him. Now and then he’d come home with a bloody nose after a fight. And it never stopped. It’s not surprising he got out of this town as soon as he could. Stavanger’s a small town, let me tell you!’
‘Bergen’s no metropolis either.’
‘No, I suppose not – but there was no one who knew him there, was there?
I raised my hand, nodding at her mother. Kathrine Haugane had suddenly opened her eyes. She was staring at the ceiling with a stern look. ‘Birger! Don’t do it! Roger! Oh no…’ Then her eyelids closed again, as if operated by some hidden mechanism.
I glanced at Laura Nielsen.
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘That’s one of her standard lines. One of the scenes she plays again and again. It was clearly some awful thing Birger got up to, which she goes over time after time!’
‘Any idea what it was?’
‘Not the faintest!’
‘But what was it she said… Roger?’
‘Roger… It was one of Birger’s pals at the time. There were probably up to something together, tearaways both of them.’
‘Roger… what?’
‘Er… Hansen, I think. He died many years ago.’