Norwegian by Night

‘Light it for me,’ he says.

Enver is holding the Bowie knife in his right hand.

Gjon slides his own blade into his belt and takes the Swedish matches from the pocket of his blue jeans.

He strikes a match along the side of the pack and immediately cups it like the Russians. He holds the flame gently in his hands, as though he were cupping a small bird before release.

‘Hold it higher for me,’ says Enver.

Gjon steps in closer and raises his two hands closer to Enver’s face. Close enough so that, even in the shadowed daylight, the flame glints off Enver’s tired eyes.

As Enver leans forward to place the tip of the cigarette into Gjon’s cupped hands, Burim sees the tip of the Bowie knife angled up to Gjon’s torso.

Then, as the cigarette is lit, he sees the two men look hard at each other.

There have been so many conversations about what they call home. The smells of the land. The taste of the food. The values of the men, and the memories of the women. They talk about those who are lost and what it is we owe the dead. What the Serbs did to us. If every recollection, every so-called fact, is not real, then at least the emotions are, and they come from memories that have been torn from life.

He had looked into history to find out what was true and what was myth. He had followed Adrijana to the library, and spent hours on the Internet looking up the names of villages he’s heard them talk about. Bela Crkva. Meja. Velika Krusa. Djakovica. There had been Serbian massacres in every one of them. But Burim has never been to these places. Never experienced it. His debt to Enver, in particular, and the cause of Kosovar independence — and dignity — is abstracted and distant.

Here, in this tree-covered lane, two thousand kilometres from the whispered stories and the even louder silences, Burim watches these two men stare into each other’s eyes — and he sees, for the first time, how close death really is. What it is that terrifies Adrijana. What she smells on his clothes when he comes home at night. And what he brings into their bed with them. What stalks them is History.

Enver lights his cigarette and then lifts his head. Gjon opens his palms and drops the burning match. It taps the ground and then burns for a moment before being snuffed out.

Gjon does not look down at the knife. He does not step back, either. He just says to Enver, ‘What now?’

Enver takes a long pull on his cigarette, and feels the hunger fade. Then he nods to Gjon. ‘Last night they sensed me, but they saw nothing. Today they rested, and we all waited for the old man and the boy. Tonight we take the house.’

Last night, Rhea stared into the woods for a good, long time. Then she started walking to the wood line. She couldn’t see Enver watching her through the binoculars, staring at her, eyeing her black leather trousers, black boots, vintage leather jacket with steel zippers, bright-blue eyes, and very long black hair.

Watching her hips as she approached.

Far enough away to feel safe, but close enough to look carefully, she crouched down on the ground and started picking up small stones. And some not so small. Then she pitched them into the woods. She wasn’t aiming exactly in his direction. Instead, she was making a sweep.

But nothing happened. No flock of birds few off. No deer rushed out. No dog with a limp hobbled out, looking for love. Just silence.

Rhea turned back to Lars, shrugged, and walked back to where he stood. She slapped him a few times on the chest. ‘Thanks for putting up with me.’

And then, very unexpectedly for Lars, she began to cry. It only lasted a moment before she wiped her tears, smiled, laughed a bit, and slapped him on the chest again.

‘What a day!’ she said.

In silence, he fixed her a simple meal of pasta with tomato sauce from a jar. After dinner, he took off her clothes and put her in a pair of striped pyjamas. He shook out the duvet and pulled it up over her as she snuggled into a foetal position. He tucked in the edges to protect her against the cool night air, and stroked her hair. He read her a short story from an ancient issue of The New Yorker. Then he opened the window just a little so the room would be fresh, turned out the light, and retired to the living room to clean up and make sketches for a new video game he had in mind — one where you wander the famous sound stages of Hollywood with a giant gun offing zombie versions of actors and other celebrities.

This morning, Rhea had slept topless in bed with the covers pulled down as the rising sun warmed the cabin. Lars got up naked to make coffee on the iron stove. There were no neighbours for kilometres, so he went outside and ground the beans on the steps while looking out into the forest.

It was easy for Lars to imagine why Rhea got spooked. The path to the house is more than five hundred metres long through a thicket that Rhea once likened to the ride of Ichabod Crane fleeing the headless Hessian. But Lars grew up here. He knows these trees, the animals, the sounds they make, and their rhythms by day and night. They change with the seasons, and the seasons come, one after the other, with all their unique pleasures and challenges. Things are not spooky by themselves, Lars decides. They need us.

They spend the day quietly. Lars insists.

You had a miscarriage. And the next day our neighbour was murdered in our apartment. And your father is missing.

He’s my grandfather.

He might as well be your father.

I suppose.

There’s nothing we can do now but wait and rest. You need your strength. Your focus. We can play Scrabble in English. You can make up words and convince me they’re real.

Why don’t they release a missing-person report on him? Why don’t they put his face all over the news?

Sigrid said it’s because his name is the same as yours, and your name is on the door, and its possible that if the killers know he is missing they’ll start to look for him, too. Maybe they’ll wonder if he saw something. And they say a boy might be with him. If the killers are looking for the boy, and they know that Sheldon is missing, they’ll know the police don’t have him.

It all sounds a little convoluted.

It’s like chess. This woman… Sigrid. She’s cautious.

Does she think we’re in danger?

No. The crime seems unconnected to us. And there is no way the killers should know about this house. All the same, the police in Kongsvinger know we’re here. We should be safe.

They wait for calls throughout the day, and rest.

At six in the evening, while the day is still inviting and warm, Enver Bardhosh Berisha walks through the front door of their house with Burim and Gjon, and heads directly to the refrigerator.

Part III NEW RIVER

Chapter 15

There is a Norwegian poem in Sheldon’s room, far away in Oslo. Rhea found it at an antiquarian bookshop in New York, and was struck by its power and early use of free verse in translation. She carefully photographed it, framed the print, and gave it to Lars as an anniversary present.

It hangs above the lamp by Sheldon’s bedside table. When he sits on the bed and looks at the photos of his lost family, he sometimes looks away. When he does, his eyes fall on the poem.