shifted his gaze past the rifle, into the blue sky above them where a black cross was outlined against the sky, a Russian fighter plane. It was too high up for them to hear. Then he closed his eyes.
'Engelstimme!' someone close at hand shouted.
Edvard opened his eyes and saw Dale blink twice behind the sights.
It was Gudbrand. He held his head beside Dale's and yelled in his ear.
'Engelstimme!'
Dale lowered the rifle. Then he grinned at Edvard and nodded. 'Engelstimme? he repeated.
Edvard closed his eyes again and breathed out. 'Are there any letters?' Gudbrand asked.
Edvard struggled to his feet and handed Gudbrand the pile. Dale still had the grin on his lips, but also the same vacant eyes. Edvard grabbed hold of Dale's gun barrel and stood his face.
'Is there anyone at home, Dale?'
He had meant to say it in his normal voice, but all that came out was a rough, husky whisper.
'He can't hear,' Gudbrand said, flicking through the letters.
'I wasn't aware he was so ill,' Edvard said, waving a hand in front of Dale's face.
'He shouldn't be here. Here's a letter from his family. Show it to him, and then you'll see what I mean.'
Edvard took the letter and held it up in front of Dale's face, but it evoked no reaction beyond a fleeting smile. Then he resumed his gaping into eternity, or whatever it was his gaze had been attracted by out there.
'You're right,' he said. 'He's had it.'
Gudbrand passed a letter to Edvard. 'How are things at home?' he asked.
'Oh, you know…' Edvard said, staring at the letter.
Gudbrand didn't know, because he and Edvard hadn't spoken much since last winter. It was odd, but even here, under these conditions, two people could easily manage to avoid each other if they wanted to enough. Not that Gudbrand disliked Edvard; on the contrary, he respected the Mjondal man whom he considered a clever person, a brave soldier and supportive to the new, young men in the section. In the autumn they had promoted Edvard to Scharfuhrer, which corresponded to the rank of sergeant in the Norwegian army, but his responsibilities had remained the same. Edvard joked that he had been promoted because all the others were dead, so they had a lot of sergeants' caps left over.
Gudbrand had often thought that in different circumstances the two of them might have been good friends. However, events the previous winter-Sindre's desertion and the mysterious reappearance of Daniel's corpse-had remained an issue between them.
The dull thud of a distant explosion broke the silence, followed by the chatter of machine guns.
'Opposition's stiffening,' Gudbrand said, more as a question than a statement.
'Yes,' Edvard said. 'It's this damned mild weather. Our supplies lorries are getting stuck in the mud.’
‘Will we have to retreat?'
Edvard hunched his shoulders. 'A few kilometres perhaps. But we'll be back.'
Gudbrand shielded his eyes with his hand and looked towards the south. He had no desire to come back. He wanted to return home and see if there was still a life for him there.
'Have you seen the Norwegian road sign at the crossing outside the field hospital, the one with the sun cross?' he asked. 'With one arm pointing down the road to the east, showing: Leningrad five kilometres?'
Edvard nodded.
'Do you remember what's on the arm pointing west?’
‘Oslo,' Edvard said. '2,611 kilometres.’
‘It's a long way.’
‘Yes, it is a long way.'
Dale had allowed Edvard to keep the rifle and sat on the ground with his hands buried in the snow in front of him. His head hung like a snapped dandelion between his narrow shoulders. They heard another explosion, closer this time.
'Thank you very much for -'
'Not at all,' Gudbrand said quickly.
I saw Olaf Lindvig in the hospital,' Edvard said. He didn't know why he had said that. Maybe because Gudbrand was the only person in the section, apart from Dale, who had been there as long as he had.
'Was he…?'
'Just a minor wound, I believe. I saw his white uniform.'
'He's a good man, I hear.'
'Yes, we have many good men.'
They stood facing each other in silence.
Edvard coughed and thrust a hand in his pocket.
'I got a couple of Russian cigarettes from the Northern Sector. If you've got a light…'
Gudbrand nodded, unbuttoned his camouflage jacket, found his matches and struck one against the sandpaper. When he looked up, the first thing he saw was Edvard's enlarged cyclops eye. It was staring over his shoulder. Then he heard the whine.
'Down!' Edvard shrieked.
The next moment they were lying on the ice and the sky burst above them with a tearing sound. Gudbrand caught a glimpse of the rudder of a Russian fighter plane flying so low over the trenches that snow whirled up from the ground beneath. Then they were gone and it was quiet again.
'Well, I'm…' Gudbrand whispered.
'Jesus Christ,' Edvard groaned, turning on to his side and smiling at Gudbrand.
'I could see the pilot. He pulled back the glass and leaned out of the cockpit. The Ivans have gone mad.' He was panting with laughter. 'This is turning into a right old day, this is.'
Gudbrand stared at the broken match he still held in his hand. Then he began to laugh too.
'Ha, ha,' Dale went, looking at the other two from where he sat in the snow at the side of the trench. 'Hee, hee.'
Gudbrand caught Edvard's eye and they both began to roar with laughter. They laughed so much they were gasping for breath and at first they didn't hear the peculiar sound, coming ever closer.
Clink… clink…
It sounded like someone patiently hitting the ice with a hoe. Clink…
Then came a sound of metal against metal and Gudbrand and Edvard turned to see Dale slowly keel over in the snow.
'What the hell -' Gudbrand started to say. 'Grenade!' screamed Edvard.
Gudbrand reacted instinctively to Edvard's scream and curled into a ball, but as he lay there he caught sight of the pin which was spinning round and round a metre away from him. A lump of metal was attached to one end. He felt his body freezing into the ice as he realised what was about to happen.
'Move away!' Edvard screamed behind him.
It was true, the Russian pilots really were throwing hand-grenades from aeroplanes. Gudbrand was on his back and tried to move away, but his arms and legs slipped on the wet ice.
'Gudbrand!'
The peculiar sound had been the hand-grenade bouncing across the ice into the bottom of the trench. It must have hit Dale right on the helmet!
'Gudbrand!'
The grenade spun round and round, bounced and danced again, and Gudbrand couldn't take his eyes off it. Four seconds from defusing to detonation, wasn't that what they had learned at Sennheim? The Russians' grenades might be different. Perhaps it was six? Or eight? Round and round the grenade whirled, like one of the big red spinning-tops his father had made him in Brooklyn. Gudbrand would spin it, and Sonny and his little brother stood watching and counting how long it kept going. 'Twenty-one, twenty-two…' Mummy called from the window on the second floor to say dinner was ready. He was to go in; Daddy would be coming home any minute. 'Just a minute,' he shouted up to her, 'the top's spinning!' But she didn't hear; she had already closed the window. Edvard wasn't shrieking any more, and all of a sudden it was quiet.
