The Redbreast(7)

before returning and meeting his own. His hands

had found a cloth to clean his glasses again and

again.

‘I know how you —’

‘You know nothing, doctor.’ The old man had

heard himself utter a short, dry laugh. ‘Don’t take

offence, Dr Buer, but I can guarantee you one thing:

you know nothing.’

He had observed the doctor’s discomfort and at

the same time heard the tap dripping into the sink at

the far end of the room. It was a new sound, and all

of a sudden and incomprehensibly he seemed to

have the hearing of a twenty-year-old.

Then Dr Buer had put his glasses back on, lifted a

piece of paper as though the words he was going to

say were written on it, cleared his throat and said:

‘You’re going to die, old chap.’

The old man would have preferred a little less

familiarity.

He stopped by a gathering of people, where he

heard a guitar being strummed and a voice singing

a song that must have sounded old to everyone

except him. He had heard it before, probably a

quarter of a century ago, but to him it could have

been yesterday. Everything was like that now – the

further back in time it was, the closer and the

clearer it seemed. He could remember things he

hadn’t thought of for years. Now he could close his

eyes and see things projected on his retina that he

had previously read about in his war diaries.

‘You should have a year left, at any rate.’

One spring and one summer. He would be able to

see every single yellowing leaf on the deciduous

trees in Studenterlunden as if he were wearing

new, stronger glasses. The same trees had stood

there in 1945, or had they? They hadn’t been very

clear on that day, nothing had. The smiling faces,

the furious faces, the shouts he barely heard, the

car door being slammed shut and he might have

had tears in his eyes because when he recalled the

flags people were waving as they ran along the

pavements, they were red and blurred. Their

shouts: The Crown Prince is back!

He walked up the hill to the Palace where several

people had collected to watch the changing of the

guard. The echo of orders and the smack of rifle

stock and boot heels reverberated against the pale

yellow brick façade. There was the whirr of video

cameras and he caught some German words. A

young Japanese couple stood with their arms

around each other, happily watching the show. He

closed his eyes, tried to detect the smell of

uniforms and gun oil. It was nonsense, of course;

there was nothing here that smelled of his war.

He opened his eyes again. What did they know,

these black-clad boy soldiers who were the social

monarchy’s parade-ground figures, performing

symbolic actions they were too innocent to

understand and too young to feel anything about.

He thought about that day again, of the young

Norwegians dressed as soldiers, or ‘Swedish

soldiers’ as they had called them. In his eyes they

had been tin soldiers; they hadn’t known how to

wear a uniform, even less how to treat a prisoner

of war. They had been frightened and brutal; with

cigarettes in their mouths and their uniform caps at

a rakish slant, they had clung to their newly

acquired weapons and tried to overcome their fear

by smacking their rifle stocks into the prisoners’

backs.

‘Nazi swine,’ they had said as they hit them, to

receive instant forgiveness for their sins.

He breathed in and savoured the warm autumn

day, but at that moment the pain came. He

staggered backwards. Water in his lungs. In twelve

months’ time, maybe less, the inflammation and the

pus would produce water, which would collect in

his lungs. That was said to be the worst.

You’re going to die, old chap.

Then came the cough. It was so violent that those

standing closest to him moved away involuntarily.

4

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Viktoria

Terrasse. 5 October 1999.

THE UNDER SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

BERNT Brandhaug, strode down the corridor. He

had left his office thirty seconds ago; in another

forty-five he would be in the meeting room. He

stretched his shoulders inside his jacket, felt that

they more than filled it out, felt his back muscles

strain against the material. Latissimus dorsi – the upper back muscles. He was sixty years old, but

didn’t look a day over fifty. Not that he was

preoccupied with his appearance. He was well

aware that he was an attractive man to look at,

without needing to do very much more than the

training that he loved anyway, as well as putting in

a couple of sessions in the solarium in the winter

and regularly plucking the grey hairs from what

had become bushy eyebrows.

‘Hi Lise!’ he shouted as he passed the