Thomas Enger: Burned

Someone is having sex. Just as he is about to stick his key in the lock in his mother’s front door, Henning realises — to his considerable relief — that the noise is coming from a television. Thank God, it’s from a television. And thank God, it’s not coming from his mother’s television, but from her neighbour’s, from Karl’s.

Karl is the building’s caretaker. Karl likes porn. Henning has never said anything to his mother, but he thinks Karl fancies her. If she, against all expectation, were to discover this for herself one day, he hopes she won’t bear him any further grudges for failing to steer her in the direction of Karl’s arms in her old age. Something tells him such a set-up might be a little uncomfortable, though it isn’t a thought he intends to pursue.

As always when he visits his mother, he is nearly suffocated by blue fug. The shade of her wallpaper is Marlboro. If anyone ever dared to wash her ceiling, the suds would be brown bubbles of ancient nicotine and tar. Henning realises how pleased he is that he no longer smokes. Because his flat would have looked exactly the same.

He picks up the shopping bags, all six of them, and goes into the living room. He can hear the radio, he can’t avoid hearing it, it is always on. Christine Juul sits in the kitchen, as usual, smoking. She barely raises her eyes from the newspaper when she sees her son.

‘Hi, Mum,’ he calls out to drown the noise from the radio. The return of the prodigal son. But no tearful embraces await him. She looks at the bags he is holding. He deliberately shows her the brown bag from the off-licence first.

‘About time too,’ she barks. He ignores her remark, enters the kitchen and opens the fridge. The bottles clink. And he knows it’s her favourite sound. He unpacks groceries, milk, cheese, sugar, bread and so on, while he steals a glance. She looks unchanged. She is wearing the smoke-stained trousers which were once white, a smoke-stained blouse, which was once pale yellow and a brown cardigan because it’s cold. And it’s cold, because she is airing the flat. Thank God, she has opened the windows.

‘How are you?’ he says.

‘Bad.’

‘Oh? Any news?’

‘News?’

She grunts. It would have been quicker to check her medical records before I came here, he thinks, and smiles to himself.

There is a debate on the radio. It takes him a minute, while he puts away the shopping, to work out that she is listening to 17.30. He shouldn’t be surprised when he hears Iver Gundersen’s voice, and yet he feels a little bit excited. He listens to the presenter:

So, Iver Gundersen, it was you who solved this case earlier today, what do you think will happen now? Do you think Norway will pay more attention to sharia from now on?

No, Andreas, I don’t think so. I think most people understand that this won’t be something that happens every day in Norway, no matter how many Muslims come here. It might raise our awareness of what sharia actually is. I think we can all benefit from that.

Good boy, Henning thinks. He is about to ask his mother to turn down the volume, but he knows she won’t, so he tries to block out the sound. He watches her try but fail to unscrew the top of a bottle of St Hallvard. He takes the bottle from her and removes the top in a nanosecond. He finds a shot glass from a cupboard above the kitchen counter and places it in front of her. You can pour your own drink, he thinks. And he sees how her hands tremble and she spills as she does so. Bloody hell, how she shakes.

He is consumed by a mixture of compassion and anger. He sighs as he watches her swallow the first big mouthful. She closes her eyes, he sees the viscous liquid warm her from the roof of her mouth to her throat and down into her chest. And he is absolutely sure that this is her best moment today, perhaps for several days.

The radio presenter moves on to the next story.

Justice Minister, Trine Juul-Osmundsen, is courting controversy again.

His mother turns up the volume. Henning wants to scream.

She wants to limit the automatic right to appeal in cases where the defendant has been sentenced to more than two years imprisonment, allegedly as part of an efficiency drive. Her proposal has been met with considerable resistance from some members of the opposition. With us in the studio today, we have Karianne Larsasen from Venstre, who believes that -

She turns down the volume. Thank God, he thinks.

‘Bloody journalists,’ she mutters. He stops in his tracks, he is about to say something, but changes his mind. What’s the point? He shuts the fridge with an impotent gesture and looks around. Crumbs, mixed with cigarette ash, litter the floor. Everywhere. He can see the dust on the television from the kitchen. The living room, which consists of a brown three-seater sofa, a Stressless with a foot stool in front of it, a dark wooden dining table and Hessian wallpaper, appears tidy, but he knows what it really looks like under the table, in the pile of the red Persian carpet, under the three-seater and under the TV unit.

He starts by fetching the Hoover from a hallway cupboard and switches it on. He quickly hoovers the hallway, the small narrow bathroom, the bedroom and whirls his way through the living room. He is about to take the mouthpiece off the Hoover and suck up dust around the fireplace, when something on the marble mantelpiece catches his eye.

The mantelpiece is covered with pictures. He has seen them a hundred times before. Photographs of his mother, when she still was his mother, his parents on their wedding day, pictures of Trine, Trine and her husband, Pal Fredrik, when they got married, pictures of Trine and Henning together when they were kids, on the pebble beach by their cabin.

And he sees a photograph of Jonas.

He picks it up and studies it. Jonas smiles at the photographer. It is taken around Christmas. He knows this because there are Christmas cards on the wall behind Jonas’s blond curls, on a green silk ribbon. Instead of lining all the cards up on the mantelpiece, they would hang them on a silk ribbon with paperclips and create a Christmas-tree shape of good wishes.

Jonas was three years old when the photograph was taken. Henning doesn’t remember the occasion, but Jonas’s smile is filled with pre-Christmas anticipation. He looks at the picture for a long time while the Hoover hums next to him. He is unable to put it down.

He doesn’t know how long he has been standing there, but it’s a long time. He snaps out of his trance when his mother demonstratively turns up the volume on the radio to drown out the Hoover. That’s enough, he thinks, and puts the picture back.

But not face down.

After his one-hour visit to his mother, he buys an economy-sized box of batteries. As he leaves the shop, he sees how Sofienberg Park is filling up with happy people enjoying their Friday. His mobile beeps. He opens the message while he walks and sees, to his great surprise, that it is from Anette.

You still alive?

He smiles to himself and types a reply.

Just about. Am tempted to ask you the same question. How are you?

He strolls on, still holding his mobile, while he watches people spread picnic rugs, unpack barbecue trays and unfold deckchairs. Anette replies swiftly. His mobile simultaneously vibrates and beeps in the palm of his hand. Four short beeps.

A bit groggy, but all right.

He has never been zapped with a stun gun. He hopes he never will, either. And he is convinced that Anette will never forget it.

He sends another text:

I’m hungry. Do you fancy a bite to eat somewhere?

He presses ‘ send ’, and hopes that Anette won’t misinterpret his message. He just feels the need to talk about what has happened. And he is genuinely hungry, he has barely eaten these last few days.