Chapter 1 - Only Human

I switch on the TV, listening to it as I walk out onto the veranda and down the stone steps into the garden. The press conference is being shown. Hearing the noises from it through the open window seems to divide everything into two streams of sound: one fast flowing, choppy with bright light, belonging to the TV, and the other. Out here. Which is slow-moving, ponderous and indefinable. Midges and mosquitoes buzz about my face, my shoes sink a little in the moss that has supplanted the grass in the more shaded areas around the house. On the news they are saying there have not been any new developments. I step into the sunshine to feel the warmth. Rainwater from last night’s showers has accumulated along the folds of the tarpaulin protecting the firewood. It might get wet. Every time it rains I think about covering the woodpile with strips of corrugated iron instead. But I never get around to it.

A white plastic chair stands at the gable wall of the house. There is green mould spreading up the legs, and two of them have sunk into the soft earth, leaving me slightly lopsided when I sit, but the chair has to stand in this spot, precisely where the sunlight breaks through the foliage. The stool on which I usually place the radio is made from wood and has begun to rot because of its soaking up the damp. Small snails cling to it.

The plastic feels warm against my back as I sit down. I have my mug with me. In the mornings I fill it up with tea or coffee, in the evenings usually red wine. The peony, gooseberry bushes and plum tree are still doing well among the scrub and weeds. Strips of sunlight rest upon all the green, upon the bracken and the moss growing where previously there was a lawn. Now and again, a damp smell from the wall of the house hits me, possibly the foundations have absorbed moisture, that would explain the musty odour in the cellar. I am sensitive to smells. When down in the cellar you can see the sunlight through the spiderweb over the window, dead flies, the four legs of the chair outside, white, flaked plastic.

They were in the garden just before six this morning. I was not afraid.

No, I was not afraid, and maybe that was a bad sign, I thought and rolled onto my back to hear better, I have become listless, irresolute, could not care less about things. That was the customary accompanying self-analysis, I would usually admonish myself for that too, even at the same time as I was indulging in it, filled with self-contempt. This inner nagging, always there. At the same time I listened to what was going on outside, tried to identify the noises. Could it be animals? A badger or cat, perhaps the roe deer I sometimes saw making their way through the garden early in the morning. But the rustling of the tarpaulins covering Dad’s junk seemed too purposeful, and it could only have been footsteps I heard going across the grass. When the sound of men’s voices reached me, I got up and opened the window. The casement stay struck the window ledge as I was fitting the hole over the peg. A man wearing an orange reflective vest came out from behind the garage and said something to another man standing in the yard. They both looked up at the window. The logo of the Red Cross was visible on their vests.

We’re searching for someone.

The one who spoke was about my age, with short hair, greying at the temples, and glasses, an academic sort I thought, but evidently an out-of-doors type too. He was tall and well built, healthy, agile-looking. I felt something stir in my chest, before remembering how it was too late for that, men, sex, all that stuff. I had spent my sexual prime on individuals with serious faults and shortcomings. Individuals with low self-esteem, not unlike myself, as I was only too well aware.

The men neither smiled nor apologised for the intrusion into my garden. They knew what they were doing, and how it took precedence over other considerations. It was all to do with dignity and respect. They had undertaken an important duty to society. They were searching for a person. I did not dare to ask whom, did not want to appear nosy. Sensation-seeking. I was above that kind of thing. I missed out on a lot because of it, had done my whole life.

I withdrew from the window, made my way downstairs and went online. Sure enough, the newspapers already carried stories of a missing person. A twelve-year-old girl had disappeared from her home in Slemdal in Oslo.

The photograph must have been taken in the early hours, at daybreak. The tarmac was wet, the leaves on the trees still dark, the street lamps glowing orange. It was on this road, they believed, that she had been walking at two o’clock the previous afternoon, and since then nobody had seen her. I recognised it immediately as Skådalsveien, and suddenly felt my body drain, my thoughts grasping at the words on the screen. Like believing yourself hidden, only to be seen, incredulous, the blanket being torn away. I was panic-stricken, and the anxiety took its usual form, a chaos of black and white dots in my vision. Alertness.

Skådalsveien branches off from Gulleråsveien, continues uphill, past my house and straight on to the lower side of Vettakollen railway station, where it intersects Skogryggveien, before swinging uphill to Skådalen station. On the far side of the railway tracks, a little way up the slope, a forest path leads off to the left, past Mindedammen pond, and carries on into Nordmarka, the huge forested region north of Oslo, while Vettaliveien continues towards the top. This is where the Montessori school is situated. On the other side of the school playground, Huldreveien runs down to Vettakollen station and Skogryggveien. Skådalsveien joins this road again a little further down and the ring is closed, unless you walk up the steep slope between the blocks of flats behind the station and end up in the woods.

So that was where she had taken her dog for a walk. On the residential streets, close to the woods the whole time, and my heart pounded, because it could not have been anyone else but Emilie, the Emilie I knew, Emilie with the poodle, my Emilie. Yes, my heart pounded madly, the blood beating in my chest, throbbing at my temples and by my collarbone, it was fear that could easily be mistaken for anticipation. This was happening, finally something was happening.

A child. I should have guessed. Their faces would not have borne those expressions had it been a senile escapee from the nursing home, because old people run away, it is not uncommon, they stumble and fall in confusion, end up out at night, exposed to the elements, freeze to death.

The rescue services had not searched gardens when Agnieszka Andresen was killed the summer before last, nor did they use helicopters. Now two of them hung high above the rooftops. Perhaps they never got as far as organising a search from the air, seeing how a rambler came across Agnieszka’s dead body less than twenty-four hours after she was reported missing. Up by Mindedammen pond, in the thicket. It was a warm, quiet summer afternoon, midges swarmed in the sunlight, the forest smelled of pine and evergreen needles.

She had been beaten with both blunt and sharp objects. Perhaps with rocks, a club or cudgel, and something resembling a pickaxe. The newspapers and online media published drawings of possible murder weapons, and I was not the only one to associate these with the medieval, due no doubt to these illustrations, which left you with the sense that we were dealing with something from a different era. A monk made an appearance on TV, talking about how he could not go out in his cowl any longer. He had, of course, always attracted attention when wearing it, he said, but this was different. Children were terrified, and grown men ran after him in the street, demanding to know both his name and his details. He had been interviewed by the police and they had searched his flat and storage space in the cellar of his building. Everyone who knew him described it as absolutely ridiculous. Two tabloids, Dagbladet and VG, featured lengthy interviews with his brothers from the monastery, his family and his friends, many of whom were well known. In the comments sections beneath articles and in editorials there was debate about how the enormous media focus on the case had given rise to a certain level of hysteria and whether or not this was healthy. Jesus, this was the way things had become. All the talk and talk and talk made me feel as though my head would explode, and yet I followed the story closely, gorged myself upon it, but in an almost absent-minded way, with indifference, yes, that was the way I had become. The newspapers piled up on the table, the TV had been on, the radio too, as well as the PC.

I listened to an in-depth interview with the monk on the radio. The journalist asked what made a young man choose an existence behind monastery walls, rejecting the chance of a family, children and an ordinary love life.

Love is not ordinary, he had replied, not enough.

I did not know whether he meant there was not enough of it, or if love was not enough, as in a person’s life, and if that was the case, I thought, not enough for what or for whom? Because what is greater than love, what could be? Something extra, something that unfolds, and then unfolds anew, and so on, a blossom within a blossom?

You could say, he said, that I have turned away from loving one in order to love everybody. I have such great yearning. So I seek expansion, constant expansion.

I can remember being frightened of men in coats when I was little, at least when it was dark outside and I had to pass one on my way home, in the autumn gloom or on winter evenings. He might open his coat and trap me. He might be naked underneath, with a huge willy sticking right out. When I was around eight years old, a flasher used to turn up on the streets from time to time, he would open his coat and expose himself, or at least that is what I remember. I also recalled an aunt, laughing, opening her coat and jumping out in front of me in the living room and saying boo. Perhaps there was no flasher, just a prank. Or perhaps I remembered both a flasher and a prank? It can be hard to know the difference. If what you think you see is what you actually see. I was even more scared if a man had both his hands in his coat pockets, or walked slowly. If I could see he had his hands in front of him, in the pockets, over his crotch. When I thought about it, I was sure that on several occasions I had seen men on the road touching themselves under their coats. I did not believe it, but even so it happened. They touched themselves while looking into my eyes and walked slowly past. Why did they do that?

No one knows exactly what happened to Agnieszka Andresen, the police would not go public with all the details and neither the perpetrator nor the murder weapons were found. Agnieszka was fifty-two years old when she was killed, living on benefits and a moderate alcoholic, but described as kind and unassuming. She had no husband, but she had a dog, as well as a crowd she hung out with, they would meet at a bar in Kampen.

Middle-aged old bag, was my first thought, and I found myself filled with contempt, something flabby and ageing that had a knife put to its throat and was suddenly thrashing about, full of life.

Where did that disdain come from? Because it often came, an abhorrence of people I did not know, a furious urge to destroy, to crush and obliterate. Or I might hear the most terrible stories without feeling anything at all. A person was killed, raped, blown up – you don’t say. Then I would just think about something else. About the weather. About myself. My children. Cold. Selective.

But when they found Agnieszka Andresen’s dog, all those callous thoughts of mine melted away. It had been strung up in a tree. A black, flat-coated retriever. Its stomach had been slashed open, and it was hanging helplessly from its hind legs; stretched out like that it was as long as a person. That made me cry, and made the police revise their theory of the murder being an alcohol-related incident.

I had stood at the window watching the police cars that time too. They drove back and forth on the road outside. An ambulance arrived, but without sirens. I turned on the TV, sat up all night following the story. They showed footage of the crime scene, the walking trail, the neighbourhood I had never really settled into. Was angry with. All those unfriendly, rich cows who lived around, in their perfect make-up. I had caught a glimpse of my own house on the screen. The residents were outside on the street talking to one another. Some of them had given interviews on camera, and they kept showing them on a loop, the same clips over and over again of the neighbours’ nosy faces. Horrible to think it happened so close by, they said, and we could not understand what she was doing up at Mindedammen pond. Why would she take her dog for a walk up around here when she lived on the other side of town? Those who knew her said she never went far from home. Mostly down to the bar in Kampen, but she did not take the dog with her then. She walked it close to the block of flats where she lived, or took it for longer walks in the woods, from Steinbruvannet lake and further into Østmarka, the forested area east of the city. So how could she have known about the trail in Skådalen? She was not even Norwegian. Polish, married to a Norwegian, then divorced. Agnieszka did not like dogs at all, her weeping mother in Warsaw had revealed. An entire TV crew had made the trip there to talk to her: ‘It was his dog, Olaf’s dog.’ Olaf was the husband. He knew nothing about it, he said on the phone from Spain, while the TV displayed a blurry photograph of a plump man playing golf in the sunshine. It’s just awful, he said. And the dog, here he was on the verge of tears, Agnieszka loved that dog, he had not had the heart to take it with him when they divorced. He had given it to her, he said. She had taken it in, the mother said, because Olaf ‘wanted to kill it’. Agnieszka was dutiful and kind, she said, ‘of course she was not drinking’. I wouldn’t have said she drank more than anyone else drinks, said Olaf, she didn’t drink any more than him in any case, it was rather, look, he met someone else, you know. A bit more perky.

They did not find the killer. I thought about that now, while the search parties walked through the woods towards the forest lakes of Bånntjern and Sognsvann, went over gardens, outhouses and paths in the neighbourhood with a fine-tooth comb. Maybe he has been here all the time, I thought, maybe he lives nearby, has a face I know or a gait I recognise because I usually see him at the shop, on the train or on the road.

Yes, it might be down to pure chance, because sometimes you are lucky and other times not. If you cannot be with the one you love, then love the one you are with, all food is good food, and so on.

Maybe things were looking up for Agnieszka at the time, and she was thinking about doing something with her life, trying new things. At any rate, she had begun going to the library to read the newspapers every morning, and that, her best friend had said, was something new. Maybe it had been a sunny day and she had been dazzled by the light on the newspaper spread out on the table in front of her. As she lifted her head and looked around for a chair in the shade, she caught sight of the librarian filling up the nearest display shelf with newspapers and brochures. The sunlight shone on the librarian’s bronze-coloured hair, it was so beautiful. Agnieszka felt the impulse to take a look through the adult-education catalogue she saw in the librarian’s hand. Maybe she could enrol for something, she thought, a sewing course, for instance, she’d had that in the back of her mind for a long time, to learn how to make her own clothes. Sometimes at night she would dream about patterns and colour combinations, in fabrics she had never seen the like of in real life, they would hang in an open window, diaphanous in the sunlight. In the dream, she only had to run her fingers over them, and they turned into outfits and dresses, garments she had never imagined could exist, and the body they adorned was her own, Agnieszka’s own face, ethereal, she dreamt.

Is it free? she asked, pointing at the catalogue, yes, nodded the librarian, everything here is free. Agnieszka got up and stood by the display shelf, feeling the warmth of the sun on her back as she browsed through what lay there. Between the local newspaper and a stack of events calendars lay maps of hiking routes and walking trails, and Agnieszka picked out a map for each part of Oslomarka, the forested and hilly areas surrounding the city: south, east, north and west. On the way home, she felt buoyed, her thoughts flowed freely and she hit upon the idea of familiarising herself with new places, of taking the dog for a walk in areas she had never been, she was looking forward to it already.

Maybe that was how it was. When the police released information about the investigation it emerged that they had found several such maps open on her kitchen table, and it was as though she had made a packed lunch before leaving: there was a roll of greaseproof paper on the worktop, a bottle of squash out, as well as crumbs on the breadboard.

This, I thought, or similar circumstances, must have been the reason she wound up on the Skådalsløypa trail, on a warm, summer afternoon, the kind of day that drives lonely, disturbed people onto the streets, out of hot, stuffy, dusty rooms where the pressure is only increasing and who knows what is building up. Is it frustrated desire, despair, anger, sorrow, just a mush of emotions without a name, which your mind does not have room for, and is released at some given moment? An explosion of white that could perhaps be called hate, or aggression, or nothing, it is nothing, a cacophony of atoms, snow.

I pictured how he might have looked that day on the trail, wearing a baseball cap, dressed in a green army jacket and carrying a rucksack. Inside it, his home-made weapons, both blunt and sharp, in case the opportunity should arise. Perhaps he had not so much thought in words, as been led by emotions, by the fantasy of striking out, of using all his strength, of injuring, killing someone, these were the types of images he had in his head, bloody, crunching, filled with screams, but he did not so much think about it as picture it, just felt he should take the weapons, on the off chance. Take them with him, along with the bottles of beer and the shiny hipflask. Then he sat there, partially hidden by some bushes, on dry, warm pine needles, and drank, while looking at the dark pond. The trees blocked the sunlight, but now and again the brownish-black water captured a ray of light, making visible the insects hovering above the surface of the water.

When the sun was going down, and the air was getting chilly, he began making his way home, but the alcohol had unsettled his mind, his eyes kept playing tricks on him. He thought he saw people and animals where there were only trunks, and stumps, of trees and large stones. The wind caused the branches to move, he turned to look and trod off the trail, a twig struck him across the face, it stung, making him angry, and just then a black dog appeared. Agnieszka followed close behind, giving a start and coming to a sudden halt as a man stepped out in front of her, short of breath with a dark look in his eyes, but by then it was too late to run.

I would have been the one more likely to encounter him, after all, I usually took walks along Skådalsløypa. But not Emilie, she was barely ten years old at that time and had yet to get a dog. Whereas now she was out all the time, walking that little poodle. I thought she kept to the road but maybe not, maybe she had gone into the woods, had the misfortune to run into him on the way to Bånntjern lake or up towards the summit at Vettakolltoppen. Or had he picked Emilie out long ago, eyed her as she passed him on the road, stood outside her school taking note of what time she finished on which day, watched her walk home with her friends after the last class, tailing them? Did he know when she was in the house on her own? Did he hang back, waiting for her to come out with the dog on a lead, yes, could it have been that guy maybe, that bloody stalker type, was he the one who had grabbed her somewhere in the woods? The guy with the red baseball cap. He was the one I was picturing. Not so strange, his albino-like appearance made him stand out. His eyes were light blue, eyebrows almost white, his hair too, but it was usually shaved, only stubble and pimples on the back of his neck visible below the edge of his hat. I guessed he was about my age, or a little younger, in his mid-forties. He usually looked over my garden fence when passing, walking slowly by with heavy steps. Must be a psychiatric patient, I thought, on medication, that would explain the plodding, and the bloated, puffy face. All the same, he looked fit and seemed alert to some extent. You could see he had strong thigh and calf muscles beneath his clothes, and his jacket sat tightly around his upper arms. Initially, I was nervous every time I saw him, did not like that aggressive stare, but after a while I got used to it. He could hardly be dangerous, could he, if he was free to walk around, in full view, and nobody seemed overly concerned?

He had a dog for a while, a Rottweiler. I do not remember exactly when he stopped turning up with it, but it was not long after we moved in, after Balder died. Georg was fourteen and Tuva had just turned nineteen. They sat on the floor together at the vet’s, both heartbroken, Balder, feeble, lying over their legs. His kidneys had failed, there was nothing that could be done, the vet said. Balder snuggled his muzzle under the sleeve of Tuva’s jacket, was unable to stir, but beat his tail a couple of times upon hearing his name. The vet crouched down beside us. He’s had a long life, he said, there’s not many people have their dog for fifteen years. We watched as he inserted the cannula into one of the front paws and opened it to allow the flow. Clear fluid ran through the tube and into Balder’s circulatory system, his body quickly grew heavier, then he twitched a few times and a little of the fluid ran from his nostrils. He’s gone now, the vet said. Georg buried his face into the curly, poodle hair and sobbed, Tuva got to her knees and stroked the dog’s head frantically, called his name, shouted it, but his eyes did not see, his tail did not wag, Balder was gone and Tuva howled. I took off the dog collar for the last time, sniffed it, smelled the scent of Balder and hoped I had red wine at home. As we walked across the square in front of the School of Veterinary Science, I became aware of a strong feeling of nausea at the sight of the empty collar in my hand. Was it really necessary for me to take it home? The kids were furious when I tried to put both the lead and the collar into a green plastic bin mounted on a post, and Tuva said that if I didn’t get a boyfriend soon then I would end up completely emotionally stunted, yeah, if I wasn’t already, that is.

The man in the baseball cap often passed by my gate, up to several times a day on occasion. Back when he had the Rottweiler it did not seem so odd, he is just walking his dog, I thought, and has his fixed routes. Still, it was a bit strange, him stopping right outside and staring at the house, it made me uneasy. The dog would sniff and then pee, not on the gatepost, but on the gate itself. It was also peculiar how he let the dog defecate, making no attempt to hide it. Once I was even out in the garden when it happened. The dog squatted down and released the contents of its stomach exactly where the gate would swing out as I opened it, but the man showed no sign of removing it. Why I did not say anything, I do not know, instead I hurried into the house. My heart was pounding and I kept a good bit back from the kitchen window so he would not see I was watching him. When he left, I took a plastic bag, walked out, climbed over the fence, put my hand in the bag and picked up the poo, turned the bag inside out, tied it and threw it in the rubbish bin. I was afraid. I do not remember what I was thinking, how I explained the incident to myself, but I know what I saw, I mean, when I think about it now it is blindingly obvious that I reacted the way a dog would upon encountering an aggressive member of their species. They register the creeping gait and the rigid tail from a good distance off, hear the low growling, turn their head away to placate the other, and walk in an arc around it. The man, not the dog, was the aggressive one in this case. I wonder what happened to that dog. It used to wag its bobtail affectionately and stick its thick snout in between the bars of the gate if I was in the garden. I pretended not to see it and never went over to them. It was due to that hostile, barefaced gawping, I cannot stand people staring like that, getting too close and never letting up. This generally took place in the shop. He would suddenly be standing there, in his baseball cap and tracksuit bottoms, either grey ones or a pair of black ones with stripes down the sides, carrying a shopping basket full of bottles of beer.

Still, it did not necessarily mean he was dangerous. Granted, he was not a pleasant sight, but you get used to unpleasantness too. Besides, he was not the only one. There was local authority housing in the area, in Slemdal, and a number of people living there could behave in an alarming manner. The woman with the wheelie bag and the sunglasses, for example. She was also in the habit of staring. To be fair, I could not see her eyes behind the black sunglasses she wore, but she would stop in front of me and stand mumbling continuously in my direction, disjointed half-sentences. Although the words were recognisable, and obscene, you cunt, you cunt, she could suddenly exclaim. I wondered if there was something wrong with me, my body language, my eyes, if she read something in them that gave her cause to despise me, to allow herself to say whatever it might be. Oh, but I was used to it. Not just around here, not just those two, but constantly, especially in town, always someone getting in my face, begging, being brazen, angry. I wanted to vomit when I caught the odour of filth, piss and unwashed bodies, I hated it and thought what is it with me, what is it, why do I attract all the borderline cases, the decrepit, the dotty or half mad? Or did I have no more of a magnetic attraction to them than other people did, and the crazy treated us all the same, as frightened idiots?

The helicopters hung above us until dusk. I turned off the TV at midnight and lay down on the sofa to sleep. The forest at night. Face down in the heather.