Anne Holt - 1222

‘Calm down. And shut your mouth!’

In order to stress the seriousness of his words, he gave her an extra squeeze and lifted her bodily off the table.

‘Do you understand?’ he yelled, before whispering something in her ear. I have no idea what he said, but it worked.

Kari Thue collapsed like a rag doll in his arms. Carefully he made sure her feet were touching the surface of the table before he slowly let go. She didn’t lash out. She didn’t scream. And neither did anyone else. Even Mikkel’s gang moved back imperceptibly, as if they had realized with sudden embarrassment that they could have hurt someone.

‘Get down,’ I said loudly. ‘Get down from the table and we will decide what we are going to do.’

Suddenly I was looking into fifty faces, all of whom seemed more surprised that I had said something than if I had got to my feet and walked. To tell the truth, I was equally surprised myself.

‘First of all, Berit Tverre is the person in charge here,’ I said. ‘And secondly, there is no reason whatsoever to split into two groups.’

Since I had actually opened my mouth, I should have said something less obvious. My voice sounded strange. It was a long time since I had had any reason to speak loudly. On the other hand, what was actually being said didn’t seem to be the most important thing; it was the way it was said that mattered. Kari Thue allowed herself to be helped down from the table. Geir was already down. People slowly started moving closer to me. I held up my hands and they stopped like obedient dogs. Only Kari Thue, Geir and Berit pushed through the wall of people who were now standing four metres away from me. The South African was the only one who no longer wanted to be involved. He marched angrily towards the stairs and disappeared. I also noticed the Kurd on the fringe of the group, a little distance away from the rest. He was the only one who had already stopped looking at me. Instead he was examining a stuffed raven in a glass case on the reception desk. He was staring into the shiny eyes, apparently uninterested in anything apart from the black bird. The woman in the headscarf, whom I had assumed to be his wife, was standing next to him. Until now she had seemed unusually reserved, a shy creature who shunned any attempt at contact from other people. Now she was looking straight at me. Her eyes were large and green with brown flecks. It struck me that I hadn’t really looked at her before. The headscarf drew attention away from everything else. Which was no doubt the intention. Her face was broad without appearing masculine, extremely and surprisingly open, with symmetrical features and an expression around her mouth that I could not interpret.

‘Carry on,’ whispered Geir; I hadn’t even noticed that he had come right up to me.

‘Who the hell gave you the right to decide?’

Mikkel got there before me. Even when he smiled he looked discontented. He was standing next to Kari Thue with his arms folded. His head was tipped back in order to underline my status as a cripple.

‘I’m not making any decisions,’ I said. ‘Berit Tverre is the person who will make decisions.’

‘And who decided that?’

I have to admit that I do have a number of prejudices.

In the past I thought it was worth trying to do something about them. In recent years I’ve stopped bothering. I’ve given in, so to speak. Since I spend most of my time at home, I don’t really see the point in wasting my energy on trying to be a better person. It’s probably too late, anyway. I’m rapidly approaching fifty. In three years I will pass the meridian, and I prefer to expend my energy on other things, rather than dealing with rich daddy’s boys from Bærum who suffer from an excess of self-confidence. He must have been fifteen years younger than Kari Thue, yet he was allowing himself to be devoured by her eyes, while she was clearly having to restrain herself from touching him.

‘ I have decided,’ I said. ‘And so has everybody else whose intelligence is more or less intact. We are Berit Tverre’s guests. Start acting that way.’

‘We live in a democracy,’ Kari Thue said in her loud, grating voice. ‘A democracy that does not cease to exist simply because we are cut off. If the majority of people here agree with me that it would be safer to -’

‘You’re never going to find that out,’ said Berit, walking into the middle of the floor. ‘Because there isn’t going to be a vote. Hanne Wilhelmsen is absolutely right. You are my guests. I make the decisions. And right now my decision is -’

The crash that interrupted her came from a different world.

As time went by we had all more or less grown accustomed to the roar of the storm outside, the thuds and blows against the walls and the intense whining of the wind as it swept around the hotel and its outbuildings. It was as if the howl of the storm had become a carpet of sound that we recognized, just like the lapping of waves on the coast or the constant rush of the waterfall at some old mill.

This was something completely different.

At first I thought it was a massive explosion. My ears were singing and the walls shook. Powerful vibrations in the floor made my wheelchair move. The sound of clinking glass came from the Millibar. The setter, which was the only dog I could see at the time, leapt up with a high-pitched howl before flattening itself against the rough floorboards. It was as if it thought the ceiling was about to come down. It wasn’t the only one. People sought shelter underneath the table. A few ran towards the side wing, which might have been a wise move; the deafening crash came from the opposite side of the lobby. Geir and Berit were running against the tide of people, and had already reached the stairs. I lost sight of them as Mikkel and his gang rushed past me and down to St Paal’s Bar. Only Kari Thue remained completely motionless. She was sobbing, with her face in her hands. Her shoulders were narrow and so bony that they almost sliced through the thin fabric of her blouse. She was expecting to die, and in a different situation I might have felt sorry for her.

Right now I had neither the time nor the opportunity to do so.

The terrible noise was still going on. The first crash was followed by a piercing, high-pitched noise interspersed with a series of short bangs and thuds that were much worse than anything the storm had come up with in almost twenty-four hours. Even the sound of screaming people searching for refuge wherever they could find it was drowned out by the noise that couldn’t possibly be an explosion.

Explosions are brief. They pass.

This went on and on.

And the temperature was dropping.

I didn’t notice it at first. Only when I had gained some kind of overview and noticed who was running where, and where people were trying to hide, did I realize how cold it had become.

It was getting even colder, and it was happening fast.

The sound of whatever it was that couldn’t be an explosion was dying away. Instead it was as if the howling of the storm had moved indoors. A biting wind swept across the floor, picked up a chocolate bar wrapper and carried it off towards the kitchen in a wild dance.

Suddenly Adrian was standing in front of me. He was holding Veronica by the hand. They looked like a big sister dragging her little brother along. Her face was pale and expressionless, but she slowly let go of his hand and put her arm around the weeping boy’s shoulders. He sobbed:

‘Are we going to die, Hanne?’

I wished I could give him an answer. I had no idea what had happened, or what lay before us. Despite the noise I could hear my own heart pounding beneath my breastbone. I felt sick with fear. But something was happening. I no longer felt incapable of doing anything. The adrenalin, which continued to course through my body with every bang and gust of wind, had sharpened my senses instead of leaving them dulled. I was noticing everything. I had noticed everything. Now, several months later, when I close my eyes to recapture the events of those seconds and minutes at Finse 1222, it’s like watching a film in slow motion. I can recall every detail. But at that precise moment, there and then, as my teeth began to chatter with shock and cold, there was actually only one detail that was worth noting.