“I moved here in 1967,” she said, without showing any sign of letting Johanne in, “so maybe I can help. Who is it you’re looking for?”
“Agnes Mohaug,” said Johanne.
“She’s dead,” said the woman, smiling broadly, as if she was happy to be able to give this information. “She died the year I moved in. Just after, in fact. She lived there.”
The woman lifted her hand lazily. Johanne assumed she was pointing at the ground floor to the left.
“Did you know her?”
The woman laughed. The roots of her teeth flashed gray against unhealthy pink gums.
“I don’t think there was anyone who knew Agnes Mohaug. She’d lived in the house since it was built. In 1951, I think it was. But still there was no one who really… She had a son. Did you know that?”
“Yes. I’m looking…”
“A…
She laughed again, hoarse and hearty, as if she found the extinction of the little Mohaug family immensely funny.
“He wasn’t quite right, so they say. Not right at all. But Agnes Mohaug herself… no one said a word against her. Kept to herself, always. Sad story, about the boy…”
The woman broke off.
“The boy who what?” asked Johanne, carefully.
“No…”
She thought about it. Then she quickly patted her rollers.
“It was such a long time ago. And I don’t remember Mrs. Mohaug that well. She died only a few months after I’d moved in. Her son had been dead for years. A long time, at least.”
“I see.”
“But…”
The woman lightened up. Again she smiled, so that her narrow face looked like it would split in two.
“Go and ask Hansvold in Number 44. Over there!”
She waved in the direction of a green twin building that was a few hundred yards away, separated from Number 45 by a big lawn and hip-high metal fence.
“Hansvold has lived here longest. He must be over eighty, but he’s clear as a bell. If you hold on a moment, I’d be happy to take you over and introduce you…”
She leaned forward to whisper, without opening the door any wider.
“… after all, I know you now. Just one moment.”
“Don’t worry, that’s really not necessary,” said Johanne quickly. “I’ll manage myself. But thank you very much for your help. Thank you.”
Johanne started to stride toward the gate, so that the woman with the chiffon scarf would not have time to change. A child screamed loudly in the kindergarten. The carpenter on the scaffolding over the road swore loudly and threatened to sue a man in a suit who was waving his arms and pointing at a cement mixer that had fallen over. A car rolled over a speed bump as Johanne came out onto the road; she jumped and stepped in a puddle.
The small town was already starting to lose some of its charm.
“But I’m still not entirely clear why you want to know all this.”
Harald Hansvold knocked his pipe against a large crystal ashtray. A fine shower of burned tobacco sprinkled over the sparkly surface. The old, well-dressed man obviously had problems with his eyesight. A matte gray film blurred the edges of one of his pupils and he had given up using glasses. Johanne suspected that he only saw shadows around him. He had let her, a complete stranger, get some sparkling apple juice and cookies from the kitchen. Otherwise he seemed healthy; his hands were steady when he refilled his pipe with fresh tobacco. His voice was calm and he had no problem remembering Agnes Mohaug, the neighbor with the less than fortunate son, as he chose to put it.
“He was easily led astray. That was the main problem, as I remember. Of course, it wasn’t easy for him to make friends. Real friends, I mean. You have to remember that times were very different then… people’s tolerance of others was different…”
He gave a tight smile.
“… not like it is now.”
Johanne didn’t know whether the man was trying to be ironic. She had a pain in her chest and took a large gulp of the apple juice. It was far too sweet, and in a fluster she let most of it run out her mouth again and back into the glass.
“Anders was not a bad boy,” Hansvold continued, not noticing. “My wife used to invite him in every now and then. It worried me sometimes. I was away a lot, travelling. I’m a retired train driver.”
The fact that Harald Hansvold was so consistently polite was perhaps not so strange, given his age. But there was something unexpectedly refined about the old man and his apartment, with books from floor to ceiling and three modern lithographs on the walls. Somehow it didn’t jive with a lifelong career in the state railways. Afraid that her prejudices would be too obvious, Johanne nodded eagerly to show interest, as if being a train driver was something she had always wanted to know more about.
“When he was very young, it wasn’t a problem of course. But when he reached puberty… he grew to be a big man. Good-looking chap. But, you know…”
He made a telling movement with his finger at his temple.
“And then there was that Asbjorn Revheim.”
“Asbjorn Revheim?”
“Yes. No doubt you’ve heard of him?”
Johanne nodded, confused.
“Of course,” she mumbled.
“He grew up around here. Didn’t you know that? You should read the biography that was published last year. Incredible man. Very interesting book. You know, Asbjorn was always a rebel, even as a young boy. Dressed strangely. Behaved in a bizarre fashion. He really wasn’t like the others.”
“No,” said Johanne, uncertainly. “He never was.”
Harald Hansvold chuckled and shook his head.
“One Sunday, it must have been in 1957 or ’58… It was ’57! Just after King Haakon died, only a few days after. The country was in mourning and…”
He sucked on his pipe, which didn’t seem to want to light up properly.
“The boy organized an execution outside the kindergarten. That is, the kindergarten wasn’t there then. It was a scout hut at the time.”
“An… execution?”
“Yes, he caught a wild cat and dressed it up in royal clothes. Ermine and a crown. The cape was an old rabbit skin with spots painted on. He’d made the crown himself as well. The poor cat meowed and tried to get away and had to pay for it with its life on some homemade gallows.”
“But that… that’s… animal torture!”
“It certainly was!”
But he still couldn’t repress a smile.
“It got very lively, I can tell you! The police came and the ladies down the road here screamed and made a fuss. Asbjorn made a big number of the whole thing too and claimed that it was a political demonstration against the royal family. He wanted to burn the dead cat and had already built a fire when the authorities got involved and stopped the whole thing. You can imagine, when our beloved King Haakon had just died…”
Suddenly the smile disappeared. The gray eye became even duller, as if the old man was looking into himself, back in time.
“The worst thing was,” he said quietly, his voice completely changed. “The worst thing was that he’d gotten Anders to dress up as the executioner, with a bare torso and a big black hood on his head. Agnes Mohaug was deeply affected by the incident. So that’s how things were.”
