The Redbreast(127)

May 2000.

THE OLD MAN WAS CAUGHT COMPLETELY

UNPREPARED; THE sudden stabbing pains took his

breath away. He curled up on the ground where he

lay and forced his fist into his mouth to stop

himself screaming. He lay like that, trying to retain

consciousness as waves of light and dark surged

through him. Opening and closing his eyes. The sky

rolled in over him. It was as if time were

accelerating: the clouds sped across the sky, the

stars shone through the blue. Day turned into night,

into day, night, day, and back to night again. Then it

was over and he could smell the aroma of wet

earth beneath him and he knew he was alive.

He remained in the same position until he had got

his breath back. The sweat had stuck his shirt to his

body. Then he rolled over on to his stomach and

looked down towards the house again.

It was a large black timber house. He had been

lying there since the morning and he knew the wife

was the only one home. Nevertheless, all the

windows were lit on the ground and the first floor.

He had seen her walking round to switch all the

lights on as soon as there was a suspicion of dusk,

from which he assumed that she was frightened of

the dark.

He was frightened himself – not of the dark

though, he had never been afraid of that. He was

frightened of time accelerating. And the pain. It

was a new experience and he hadn’t learned to

control it yet. Nor did he know if he could. And the

time? He did his best not to think about cells

dividing and dividing and dividing.

A pale moon appeared in the sky. He checked his

watch: 7.30. Soon it would be too dark and he

would have to wait until the morning. In that case

he would have to spend the whole of the night in

the bivouac. He looked at the construction he had

made. It consisted of two Y-shaped branches he

had pushed into the earth leaving half a metre

above the ground. Between these, in the fork of the

branches, was a stripped branch from a pine tree.

Then he had cut three long branches which he

placed on the ground and rested against the pine

branch. He had covered them with a thick layer of

spruce twigs. Thus he had a kind of roof which

would protect him from the rain, retain some

warmth and camouflage his presence from

walkers, should they unexpectedly stray from the

path. It had taken him barely half an hour to make

the windbreak.

He calculated the risk of being seen from the road

or by anyone in the nearby houses as negligible. It

would have to be an unusually sharp-eyed person

to make out the bivouac between the tree trunks in

the dense spruce forest from a distance of almost

three hundred metres. For safety’s sake he had

covered nearly the whole of the opening with

spruce twigs too and tied rags around the barrel of

the rifle so that the low afternoon sun would not

catch the steel.

He checked his watch again. Where the hell was

he?

Bernt Brandhaug twirled the glass in his hand and

checked his watch again. Where the hell was she?

They had arranged to meet at 7.30 and now it was

getting on for 7.45. He downed the rest of his drink

and poured himself another from the bottle of

whisky room service had brought up: Jameson. The

only good thing ever to come out of Ireland. He

poured himself another. It had been one hell of a

day. The headlines in Dagbladet had meant that the

telephone never stopped ringing. He had received

a fair amount of support, but in the end he had

called the news editor at Dagbladet, an old friend

from university, and made it clear that he had been

misquoted. As a quid pro quo he had promised

them inside information about the Foreign

Minister’s major blunder at the European Finance

Committee meeting. The editor had asked for some

time to think. After half an hour he rang back. It

seemed that this Natasja was new to the paper and

she had admitted that she might have

misunderstood Brandhaug. They wouldn’t issue a

disclaimer, but they wouldn’t follow up the matter

either. The damage limitation exercise had been

successful.

Brandhaug took a large gulp, rolled the whisky

around his mouth and tasted the rough yet smooth

aroma deep down in the nasal channel. He looked

around him. How many nights had he spent here?

How many times had he woken up in the slightly

too soft king-size bed with a bit of a headache after

one drink too many? How many times had he asked

the woman by his side – if she was still there – to

take the lift to the breakfast lounge on the first floor

and walk down the stairs to the reception, so that it

looked as if she was coming from a breakfast

meeting, and not from one of the bedrooms. Just to

be on the safe side.

He poured himself another drink.

It would be different with Rakel. He wouldn’t