Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘I can’t always be here, Carl.’

‘Then I’ll have to go away. I can’t take it any more… I don’t want to live any more with someone who…’

I put one arm around Carl, the other around the back of his head, pressed his head into my chest so that his sobbing wouldn’t wake Mum and Dad.

‘I’ll fix it, Carl,’ I whispered down into his fair hair. ‘I swear. You won’t have to run away from him. I’ll fix this, d’you hear me?’

With the coming of the first pale light of morning my plan was complete.

Just to be thinking about it didn’t put me under any obligation, but at the same time I knew I was ready now. I thought of what Rita Willumsen had said, that soon I would be a man. Well, this was soon. This time I wouldn’t back off. I wouldn’t walk away from that shotgun.

I HAD LEARNED A COUPLE of things during those hours I worked on the Saab Sonett. Not only was the engine mounted back to front, but the braking system was easier too. Modern cars have double braking systems so that if one of the brake hoses is cut, the brakes will still work, at least on two of the wheels. But on the Sonett all you have to do is cut one hose and hey presto, what you’ve got is a freewheeling wagon, a loose cannon on deck. And it struck me that this was generally true of most old cars – including Dad’s 1979 Cadillac DeVille, although that does actually have two brake hoses.

When men in this part of the country don’t die of some routine sickness, they die on a country lane in a car, or in a barn at the end of a rope or a shotgun barrel. I had failed the time Dad gave me the chance to use the shotgun, and maybe I understood too that he wouldn’t be giving me a second chance. That now I had to do the thinking for myself. And once I’d thought it through, I knew I’d found the right solution. It wasn’t about the skipper having to go down with his own ship or anything like that, it was purely practical. A car accident wouldn’t be investigated in the same way as a man who’d been shot through the head, at least that’s what I persuaded myself. And I didn’t know how I was going to get Dad into the barn and shoot him without Mum at least knowing what had happened. And God knows whether she would lie to the police when the man she couldn’t live without had been killed. That’s all the mother I’ve been to you . But sabotaging the brakes on the Cadillac was a simple matter. And the consequences as easy to predict. Every morning Dad got up, saw to the goats, heated up his coffee and watched in silence as Carl and I ate breakfast. After me and Carl had cycled off – him to school, me to the workshop – Dad got in his Cadillac and drove down into the village to fetch the mail and buy a newspaper.

The Cadillac stood under the barn roof and I’d seen him do it countless times. Start the car, drive off and – unless there was snow and ice on the road – not touch the brakes or turn until he was heading into Geitesvingen.

We ate supper in the dining room and then I said I was going out to the barn for a workout on the punchbag.

No one said anything. Mum and Carl scraped their plates, but Dad gave me a quizzical look. Maybe because he and I didn’t usually announce what we were going to do, we just went ahead and did it.

I took my training bag containing the tool I’d brought home from the workshop. The job was a little more complicated than I had supposed, but after half an hour I’d got the set screw loose and the bolt holding the steering column to the rack, punched holes in both of the brake hoses and collected the brake fluid in a bucket. I changed into my workout gear and spent another thirty minutes on the punchbag, so when I entered the living room where Mum and Dad were sitting like some couple from a sixties advert, him with his newspaper, Mum with her knitting, I was dripping with sweat.

‘You were late home last night,’ said Dad without looking up from his paper.

‘Overtime,’ I said.

‘You’re allowed to tell us if you’ve met a girl,’ said Mum. Smiled. As if that’s exactly what we were, the average family in a fucking advert.

‘Just overtime,’ I said.

‘Well,’ said Dad, folding his newspaper, ‘there might be more overtime from now on. They just rang from the hospital in Notodden. Bernard’s been admitted. Apparently they saw something they didn’t like when he was at the doctor’s yesterday. He might have to have an operation.’

‘Oh?’ I said, and felt myself go cold.

‘Yes, and his daughter’s in Mallorca with her family and can’t interrupt their holiday. So the hospital wants us to go.’

Carl came in. ‘What’s that?’ he asked. His voice still sounded as if he’d been anaesthetised, and there was a nasty bruise on his cheek, although it was less swollen.

‘We’re going to Notodden,’ said Dad, pushing himself up out of the chair. ‘Get dressed.’

I felt panic, like the morning you open the front door and aren’t prepared for the fact that the temperature’s fallen to minus thirty, it’s blowing a gale and you don’t feel the cold, just a sudden and complete paralysis. I opened my mouth, closed it again. Because paralysis affects the brain too.

‘I’ve got an important exam tomorrow,’ said Carl, and I saw he was looking at me. ‘And Roy’s promised to test me.’

I hadn’t heard anything about any exam. I don’t know exactly what Carl had or hadn’t understood, only that he realised I was desperately looking for a way out of going to Notodden.

‘Well,’ said Mum, with a look at Dad, ‘they can probably—’

‘Out of the question,’ said Dad curtly. ‘Family comes before everything.’

‘Carl and I’ll take the bus to Notodden after school tomorrow,’ I said.

They all looked at me in surprise. Because I think we all heard it. That suddenly I sounded like him, like Dad when his mind was made up and there was nothing else to discuss, because that was the way things were going to be.

‘Fine,’ said Mum, sounding relieved.

Dad didn’t say anything but kept his gaze fixed on me.

When Mum and Dad were ready to leave Carl and I followed them out into the yard.

Stood there in front of the car in the dusk, a family of four parting company after supper. ‘Drive carefully,’ I said.

Dad nodded. Slowly. Of course it’s possible that I, like other people, make much too much out of famous last words. Or in Dad’s case, the last silent nodding. But there was definitely something there that looked almost like a kind of recognition. Or was it acknowledgement? Acknowledgement that his son was turning into an adult.

He and Mum sat in the Cadillac and it started with a snarl. The snarl turned into a soft purring. And then away they drove in the direction of Geitesvingen.

We saw the brake lights on the Cadillac flare. They’re connected to the pedal, so even if the brakes don’t work the lights do. Their speed increased. Carl made a sound. I could see in my mind’s eye Dad turning the wheel, hear a scraping noise from the steering column, feel the steering wheel turning and meeting no resistance, having no effect on the wheels. And I feel pretty sure he understood it then. I hope so. That he understood and accepted it. That he accepted it included Mum, and that the sums added up. She could live with what he did, but not without him.

It happened quietly and with a strange lack of drama. No desperate pounding on the horn, no scorching rubber, no screams. All I could hear was the crunching of the tyres, and then the car was just gone, and the golden plover sang of loneliness.

The crash from Huken sounded like the far-off rumble of delayed thunder. I didn’t hear what Carl said or shouted, I just thought that from now on Carl and I were alone up here in the world. That the road ahead of us was empty, that all we could see right now in the dusk was the mountain in silhouette against a sky coloured orange in the west and pink in the north and south. And it seemed to me the loveliest thing I had ever seen, like a sunset and a sunrise both at the same time.