Aksel put his hand on the door handle.
“And one more thing,” she said, holding him back. “There’s an old lady. She’s very ill. It’s thanks to her that the truth has eventually come out. Her name is Alvhild Sofienberg. I want you to come with me to meet her. Later, when all this is over. Do you promise me that?”
He gave a slight nod and then went in.
Johanne followed.
Karsten Asli’s face was bruised and swollen and was barely visible among the bright white sheets, bandages, and gurgling machines that would keep him alive for a few more hours. Aksel sat down on the only chair in the room. Johanne went over to the window. She was not interested in the patient. It was Aksel Seier she looked at when she turned around again, and it was only him she thought of.
You served the sentence for your son, Aksel. You have atoned for your son’s sins. I hope that you’ll be able to see it like that.
Aksel Seier was sitting with his head bent and his hands folded around Karsten’s right hand.
The ceiling was blue. The man in the store claimed that the dark color would make the room seem smaller. He was wrong. Instead the ceiling was lifted; it nearly disappeared. That’s what I wanted myself, when I was little: a dark night sky with stars and a small crescent moon over the window. But Granny chose for me then. Granny and Mom, a boy’s room in yellow and white.
I think someone’s here.
Someone is holding my hand. It’s not Mom. She used to do that, every now and then, when she came into my room at night, when Granny had gone to bed. Mom always said so little. Other children were told stories when they went to bed. I always fell asleep to the sound of my own voice, always. Mom said so little.
Happiness is something I can barely remember, like a light touch in a crowd of strangers, gone before you’ve had a chance to turn around. When the room was finished and it was only two days until Preben was going to come, I was satisfied. Happiness is a childish thing and I am, after all, thirty-four. But naturally I was happy. I was looking forward to it.
The room was ready. There was a little boy sitting on the moon. With blond hair, a fishing rod made from bamboo with string and a float and hook at the end: a star. A drop of gold had dribbled down toward the window, as if the Heavens were melting.
My son was finally going to come.
It hurts.
It hurts everywhere, a great aching without beginning or end.
I think I’m going to die.
I can’t die. On the nineteenth of June I’m going to complete my project. On Preben’s birthday. I lost Preben, but I made up for it by giving the others what they deserved. They betrayed me. Everyone always betrays me.
We agreed that he would be named Joakim. He was going to have my surname. His name was going to be Joakim Asli and I bought a train. Ellen got angry when I took it to the hospital. She’d expected some jewelry, I think, as if she’d earned a medal. I chuff-chuffed the Marklin locomotive over his face and he actually opened his eyes and smiled. Ellen turned away and said he was just making a face.
I would have been an excellent father. I’ve got it in me.
I’m little, standing on the kitchen table in some winter clothes that someone has sent me. Later I asked Mommy if it was Daddy who wanted to give me a present. She never answered. Even though I was only four, I can remember the stamps, big and foreign; the brown paper was covered in strange stamps and markings. The jacket and pants were blue and light as a feather and I wanted to go out and play in the snow. Granny pulled them off. Someone else got the clothes.
Someone else always gets what is mine.
Ellen and the child just disappeared. She hadn’t even registered me as the father. It took four months before I found out that the boy was named Preben.
I have to finish. I have to live.
Someone is holding my hand. It’s not Mom. It’s a man.
I’ve never had a father. Granny always got a hard look in her eyes when I asked. Mom looked away. In a small town, the fatherless are given a thousand fathers. New names were constantly being whispered in corners at school, wherever people gathered and played. It was unbearable. All I wanted was to know. I didn’t need a father, but I wanted to know. A name was all I needed.
Emilie. She’ll die in the cellar. She’s mine, just like Preben. Grete cried and refused and wanted to go back to her home and family. I was so young then and let her go. I didn’t care about the child. I don’t care about her. It was Preben I wanted.
Emilie can die for all I care.
The other children might also have been mine.
I owned their mothers. But they didn’t understand that.
Someone is holding my hand and there is an angel in the light by the window.
In spring 2000, I heard a true story. It was about Ingvald Hansen, a man who had been sentenced to life in prison in 1938. Hansen was accused of raping and killing a seven-year-old girl, Mary. The story, as it was told to me over a table in a restaurant, was fascinating. There was much to indicate that the man had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
My first impulse was to investigate the case in more detail. But instead, I was inspired to create this book’s Aksel Seier, another character in another time. Hansen and Seier share a similar fate on certain crucial points, but they are of course not the same person. Everything I know about Ingvald Hansen comes from an article written by the professor of law, Anders Brathom, published in the Norwegian law journal Tidsskrift for lov og rett 2000, pp. 443 ff., and from a report in Aftenposten on Saturday, November 4, 2000. Apparently Hansen died a couple of years after a surprising and apparently unexplained release.
Those readers who take the time to read these articles will see that I have also been inspired by reality on another point: when Ingvald Hansen applied for a pardon in 1950, his case was dealt with by a young female lawyer. This woman, Anne Louise Beer, a former judge in the probate court in Oslo, is primarily responsible for reviving the interest in Ingvald Hansen’s story. She never forgot the case, even though circumstances made it impossible for her to pursue the possibility that the man had been unfairly imprisoned. According to these articles, she tried to get ahold of the case documents in the nineties. They had vanished without a trace.
I don’t know Judge Beer, and as far as I know I have never met her. Alvhild Sofienberg in this book is, like all the other characters in the book, entirely fictitious. However, Alvhild’s experience of Aksel’s case is, on several points, very similar to the experiences of Judge Beer in relation to the Ingvald Hansen case.
The way in which I have “solved” the mystery of Aksel Seier in this book is purely imagination. I have absolutely no grounds for saying anything whatsoever about what happened when Ingvald Hansen was first sentenced and then later released under peculiar circumstances.
I have had invaluable help from many people while working on this book. I would particularly like to mention my brother, Even, who gave me a frightening recipe for murder when writing his medical doctorate. Berit Reiss- Andersen is a very dear friend and wise critic. My thanks also to my editor and most important advisor, Eva Groner, and to my Swedish publisher, Ann-Marie Skarp, for their enthusiastic and valuable support. I would also like to thank Oystein M?land for his useful contribution. And I am particularly grateful to Line Lunde, a loyal mainstay since Blind Goddess. She told me the exciting story that was the inspiration for What Is Mine.
And finally, a big thankyou to you, Tine.
Anne Holt
