Sheldon leads the boy around the front of the house, and looks for signs of life. There are no cars in the driveway, and few on the street itself. The house feels empty.
Together, they head around to the back again, and Sheldon shows Paul how to cup his hands while pressing his face to the glass. Paul doesn’t actually do it, but Sheldon feels it is a valuable lesson, all the same.
No lights are on. The television is off. Everything is tidy and clean. Unmoved.
Sheldon walks a few more metres along the house to the back door, which lets out to the backyard and down to the pier. He presses his face against the window one more time, still sees nothing of interest, and decides to call it.
‘So this brings us back to Lesson One,’ he says to Paul.
Putting the satchel down on the wood porch that lets into the kitchen, Sheldon takes out a hammer and, without comment, smashes the glass window-panel next to the door handle.
He pauses for a moment, listens carefully, and then says, ‘No alarm. That’s helpful. Now watch your step. There’s glass there.’
In an Eames-era-inspired living room of fine Scandinavian and mid-century American furniture, Sheldon finds a magazine cradle with maps and the local bus and train times, which he gathers up and brings into the kitchen for review as he starts the water boiling for pasta.
Finding a good area map, he unfolds it delicately across the tabletop and, using the dry tip of a wooden sauce spoon, he points to the Glomma, tracing the blue meandering line up a few centimetres to Kongsvinger.
‘That’s where we’re headed. I’ve never actually been there, but I’ve seen a photo of the place on the refrigerator door in Oslo. So I’m pretty sure we can find it.’ Sheldon starts tracing an overland route. ‘I never knew this country had so many lakes. There’s a lake everywhere.’
With the boiling water, Sheldon makes some instant coffee for himself and pours it into a glass from IKEA. He opens the cabinet to the left of the sink, finds a box of fusilli, and dumps the whole thing into the pot. He has no idea how much a hungry child can eat, and he’s curious to find out. He finds a can of tomatoes, some salt and pepper, some garlic powder, and, with the nuanced expertise that only a grandfather can summon, he combines them into a concoction that only a child could eat.
For himself, he adds three heaping teaspoons of sugar to his coffee, and then comes back to the table, where Paul has grown transfixed by the maps.
‘We’re going there,’ Sheldon points, ‘but the issue is how to get there. While I can barely make head or tail of these timetables here, what is clear is that almost all buses getting you from Drobak to Kongsvinger seem to pass through Oslo. And I don’t want to go to Oslo. I want to avoid Oslo. Oslo is where we came from. So now we’re stuck again. We could hitchhike, but I hardly think that’s inconspicuous, and the chances of a police car coming by and finding us is higher than I’d like. We still can’t rent a car. I suppose we could borrow one, but let’s consider that a last resort. What I’m saying is… we have some thinking to do.’
When dinner is served, Sheldon watches Paul devour the pasta in one long, continuous, and strangely fluid movement.
The experience covers them both in tomato sauce. The boy does not smile. Instead, Sheldon senses a sort of convergence take place, as though the child’s body and mind are both in the same place for the first time since his mother’s murder.
‘All right. Now let’s get you out of those clothes and into bed.’
Once Paul is clean and his teeth brushed — with whatever toothbrush is in the bathroom — they look for clothing in the junior bedroom, and find a long, white T-shirt that Paul can use as a nightgown. The bed is made, and covered by a thick woollen blanket that reminds Sheldon of the Hudson Bay blankets he used as a child in western Massachusetts — the kind that had tick marks on the side. His mother said they showed how many beaver skins they should be traded for, but he wasn’t so sure. The method didn’t seem to count for inflation.
It occurs to him, as a passing thought, that he’s spent so much time remembering his own son’s childhood that he has almost entirely forgotten his own. At his age, it can be overwhelming and painful to harbour a thought accompanied by too much nostalgia. Not that he wanted to. Mabel, in her final years, had stopped listening to music. The songs of her teenage years brought her back to people and feelings of that time — people she could never see again, and sensations that were no longer coming. It was too much for her. There are people who can manage such things. Those of us who can no longer walk, but can close our eyes and remember a summer hike through a field, or the feeling of cool grass beneath our feet, and smile. Who still have the courage to embrace the past, and give it life and a voice in the present. But Mabel was not one of those people. Maybe she lacked that very form of courage. Or maybe her humanity was so complete, so expansive, that she would be crushed by her capacity to imagine the love that was gone. Those of us with the courage to open ourselves to that much lost love and not fear it — who can give joy to a dying child until the very end without withdrawing to save ourselves — those are our saints. It is not the martyrs. It is never the martyrs.
With the boy prepared for bed, Sheldon presses his nose into the thick wool, and takes in as much of the past as he can handle.
In only a moment his eyes begin to tear up, and he stops. He composes himself and goes into the bathroom to wash his face. In the mirror, he sees a man he does not entirely recognise. And for this he is grateful.
At the police station in Oslo, Sigrid loosens her tie just enough to let the blood start flowing again, but not enough to suggest the pressure is getting to her. Her team is working hard, it is late, and everyone is tired. She has issued more orders and instructions in the last twelve hours than in the last twelve weeks, and, while not overwhelmed, she would certainly welcome a break.
For solidarity and convenience, she’s taken a seat in the big, central room with most of the other police, and left her office vacant. There’s nothing in there of special use, other than her work terminal, and she can get the same access to the servers from Lena’s seat, now that Lena’s been sent out to the asylum reception-centre to interview known associates of this former KLA guy who Immigration — somehow, in their infinite, well-meaning wisdom — decided to allow into the country and even provide with a taxpayer-supported stipend. ‘To help him get on his feet.’
Her conversation with her counterparts at Immigration — just to get the name of the director of the reception centre, really — was terse, and ended on a sour note far off the intended topic.
‘They come here with nothing,’ the man on the other end said, with unyielding idealism. ‘How are they going to integrate without some support?’
‘We’ve grouped them together in centres outside the city where they’re forming gangs. How’s that helping them, or strengthening Norway?’
‘It’s a transitional measure,’ the man continued to say. ‘The Kosovars have been through a terrible war, and they’re traumatised by the conduct of the Serbs. The best way to provide the needed psycho-social counselling is by working with them all together. You saw the videos. It was like the concentration camps.’
Sigrid sighed. Everything these people avoided ended up on her desk, sooner or later. Sigrid was developing a theory that many of her compatriots took the same cooperative, optimistic, good-hearted approach to every problem, domestic or international, because it helped them feel more Norwegian. It might even be how they
It wasn’t the compulsion to be good that irked her. That, she admired. It was how they endeavoured to solve every problem with the same approach, independent of the problem. Because that just won’t do. The analysis and the solution simply have to align, and anything else is dreamlike and unrealistic. It’s not for cops, anyway.
Her father — and, as best she could tell, her father’s entire generation — did not exhibit this same kind of self-assured confidence in their own goodness. Something new is clearly afoot, and she doesn’t like it.
She also lacks that particular skill of keeping it all to herself.
‘Did you know that a large proportion of Europe’s heroin is trafficked through the Balkans? Much of it through Kosovo? You didn’t help them integrate. You created a new, isolated node in that network.’
‘That’s bigoted,’ the man had actually said.
‘That’s a fact,’ Sigrid said. And, since she knew this interview was going nowhere added, ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you.’ Then she hung up gently.
The sun is finally below the horizon now, and she switches on her desk lamp. As she does, the bulb blows out with a
Enver Bardhosh Berisha, aka Miftar Vishaj. Against the dimming light, Sigrid lifts his file up, and leans far
