The Redbreast(123)

‘The card, do you . . . ?’

She shook her head.

‘Do you remember where it was sent from?’

‘No. I can only remember that the name made me

think it was somewhere green and rural and that he

was well.’

Harry stood up.

‘How did this Fauke know about me?’ she asked.

‘Well —’ Harry didn’t quite know how to put it,

but she broke in. ‘All the soldiers at the front have

heard of me,’ she said and her mouth smiled. ‘The

woman who sold her soul to the Devil for a shorter

sentence. Is that what they think?’

‘I don’t know,’ Harry said. He knew he had to get

out. They were only two blocks away from the

circular road round Oslo, but it was so quiet they

could have been by a lake in the mountains.

‘You know I never saw him again,’ she said.

‘Daniel. After they told me he was dead.’

She had focused on an imaginary point in front of

her.

‘I received a New Year’s greeting from him via

an orderly and three days later I saw Daniel’s

name on a list of the fallen. I didn’t believe it was

true. I told them I would refuse to believe it until

they showed me his body. So they took me to the

mass grave in the Northern Sector where they were

burning the dead. I went down into the grave, trod

over dead bodies as I searched, going from one

burned corpse to the next, staring into the

blackened, empty eye sockets. But none of them

was Daniel. They said it would be impossible for

me to recognise him, but I told them they were

wrong. Then they said that he might have been put

in one of the graves that had been covered over. I

don’t know, but I never saw him again.’

She started when Harry cleared his throat.

‘Thank you for the coffee, fru Juul.’

She followed him out to the hall. As he stood by

the wardrobe, buttoning up his coat, he couldn’t

help looking for her features in the faces peering

out of the framed photographs hanging on the wall,

but in vain.

‘Do we have to tell Even any of this?’ she asked,

opening the door for him.

Harry looked at her in surprise.

‘I mean, does he have to know that we talked

about this?’ she added hurriedly. ‘About the war

and . . . Daniel?’

‘Well, not if you don’t want him to, of course.’

‘He’ll see that you’ve been here. But can’t we

just say that you waited for him and you had to go

to another appointment?’

Her eyes were imploring, but there was

something else there too.

Harry couldn’t put his finger on what it was until

he was in Ringveien and had opened the window

to let in the liberating, deafening roar of cars,

which blew the silence out of his head. It was

horror. Signe Juul was terrifed of something.

70

Brandhaug’s House, Nordberg. 8 May

2000.

BERNT BRANDHAUG TAPPED THE EDGE OF THE

CRYSTAL GLASS with his knife, pushed his chair

back and dabbed his mouth with his napkin while

gently clearing his throat. A tiny smile flitted

across his lips, as if he were already amused by

the points he was going to make in this speech to

his guests: Chief Constable Størksen with husband

and Kurt Meirik with wife.

‘Dear friends and colleagues.’

Out of the corner of his eye he could see his wife

smiling stiffly to the others as if to say: Sorry we

have to go through this, but it is beyond my

control.

This evening Brandhaug talked about friendship

and collegiality. About the importance of loyalty

and summoning positive energy as a defence

against the scope democracy will always allow for

mediocrity, the abrogation of responsibility and

incompetence at leadership level. Of course you

couldn’t expect politically elected housewives and

farmers to understand the complexity of the areas

of responsibility they were designated to manage.

‘Democracy is its own reward,’ Brandhaug said,

a formulation he had plagiarised and made his

own. ‘But that doesn’t mean that democracy

doesn’t come at a price. When we make a sheet-

metal worker a minister of finance . . .’

At regular intervals he checked that the Chief

Constable was listening and interjected a witticism

about the democratisation process in various ex-

colonies in Africa where he had once been an

ambassador himself. But the speech, which he had

given several times before in other forums, did not

inspire him this evening. His mind was somewhere

else, where it had been for the last few weeks:

with Rakel Fauke.

She had become an obsession with him and he

had on occasion considered forgetting her. He had

been trying too hard to have her.

He thought about his recent manipulations. If it