Norwegian by Night Read online

  ‘What’s with your neighbours?’ says Sheldon, changing the subject.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Sounds like the fascist beats his wife.’

  ‘We’ve called the police before.’

  ‘So you have heard it!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You got a gun? Lars, you got a gun?’

  ‘Not here.’

  ‘But you’ve got a gun, right? I mean, you don’t run through the forest naked, blond hair flapping in the breeze, and tackle the reindeer with your bare manly chest, right? Kill ’em with your teeth? Blood-stained peach fuzz on your chin? Big grin? There’s a gun involved, right?’

  ‘Up at the summer house. Moses and Aaron. They’re in a locker by the sauna. One of them is broken.’

  ‘You have Jewish rifles?’

  Lars smiles. ‘Ah, no. A Winchester and a Remington. They’re named after the two cannons in Drøbak that sank the German ship during the war. In the fjord.’

  ‘Norway has Nazi-killing Jewish cannons?’

  ‘I never thought of it quite that way.’

  Sheldon raises his brows and opens his palms as though to ask what other way one could possibly think about two cannons named Moses and Aaron in Norway that sank a Nazi ship.

  Lars relents. ‘Yes, Norway has Nazi-killing Jewish cannons.’

  ‘But the guns aren’t here. Moses and Aaron are wandering.’

  ‘At the summer house. Right.’

  ‘That’s OK. I’m sure we can win a knife fight. What does the Balkan mafia know about knife fighting compared to the three of us?’

  ‘You know, the cabin is out by the Swedish border. The Norwegian resistance used to operate there. We called them the Boys in the Woods. My father says my grandfather used to hide them in the sauna out back. They used to wear paperclips on their lapels. Many people did. It was an act of rebellion against the occupation.’

  Sheldon nods. ‘So Operation Paperclip was effective, was it? That must have been what broke their backs. Who could tolerate such impertinence?’

  Rhea says, ‘Papa, I think you need to take a shower, put on some matching clothes — some underwear even — and in return we can slip out the back door.’

  Sheldon changes the subject.

  ‘You know why I wear this watch?’

  ‘To tell time?’ answers Rhea, submitting to the diversion.

  ‘No. That’s why I wear a watch. The question is why do I wear this watch. I used to wear one with the heart of your father in it. I’ll explain someday. But I decided, on account of your news, and my coming to the land of blue and ice, to splurge and get a new one. And you know which one I bought? Not an Omega. Not a Rolex. I’ll tell you what I bought. One from J. S. Watch co.

  ‘Never heard of them? Neither had I. Heard about them by chance. They’re in Iceland. Between the old world and the new. Four guys at the base of a volcano in the middle of the Atlantic who want to try making a buck by crafting exquisite and refined timepieces because they love them. Because they understand that a timepiece is an affirmative and creative act of engineering and beauty in response to a pitiless structure of functionality and form. Like life itself in response to death. Plus, mine’s a looker! See this?’

  ‘Outside. We’re going outside.’

  ‘I don’t have any keys to the house. I’m not autonomous.’

  ‘We’ll make you some. So what?’

  ‘When your father was little, he deliberately stopped matching his own clothes. It was an act of rebellion against his oppressive father. So we bought him nothing but Levis — the jeans named after a tribe of Israel that can magically match any top. Tie-dye, plaid, stripes, camouflage. You can throw anything at Levis. With this I out-manoeuvred your father. In return, we ended up with a child with no fashion sense.’

  ‘I think breakfast is over.’

  ‘He’s in the book, you know.’

  ‘I know, Papa.’

  ‘And your grandmother.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And a lot of angry Europeans.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘And a dog.’

  ‘Right-o.’

  The book. ‘The book’ was Sheldon’s only verifiable claim to fame. In 1955, still a bit lost after the war and not much looking to be found, he somehow cottoned on to the idea of becoming a photographer. As it happened, he turned into a popular one. Long before thematic coffee books became the rage, Sheldon decided to travel and take portraits. Unfortunately, despite his talent with the camera, he lacked certain social graces — which was problematic, as taking portraits required willing subjects.

  To Sheldon’s credit, however, he turned even this to his advantage by changing the subject of his portraits to unwilling subjects. In this, he demonstrated a certain penchant. And so, ‘Photos of Unwilling Subjects’ was the name of the project.

  By 1956, Sheldon had collected exactly six hundred and thirteen photographs from twelve cities across five countries of people apoplectically angry at him. Over two hundred made it into the book. The rest remained in storage boxes that he guarded, hid, and never let anyone see. It wasn’t until Saul brought it up in conversation one time that anyone even suspected there were more photos. But even then Sheldon kept them hidden.

  In the book, there were women screaming, men shaking their fists, children hysterical, and even dogs in mid-flight with their teeth bared. In his own graceless sarcasm, the book — which found an unusually fine publisher and no small audience — was entitled ‘What?’

  In a brief interview with Harper’s, they asked what he did to make everyone so angry.

  ‘Whatever I could think of,’ he’d replied. ‘I pulled hair, teased kids, hassled dogs, tipped over ice-cream cones, heckled the elderly, left without paying, snatched cabs, cracked wise, walked off with other people’s luggage, insulted wives, complained to waiters, cut in line, tipped hats, and I didn’t hold the elevator for anyone. It was the best year of my life.’

  Saul was on page one. Sheldon had just taken the toddler’s candy away, and then took photos of him with a flash that enraged him entirely. Mabel became livid, thereby earning herself a place on page two.

  There is a copy of the book in Rhea’s living room. She has shown it to Lars. Their favourite photo is modelled on Doisneau’s ‘Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville’ in Paris, which had only just been printed in Life magazine. Sheldon had intuited the photo’s iconic power of being a moment snatched from time during a period of change. In Sheldon’s version, two lovers have been interrupted during a kiss. They are gripping the iron railing of the bridge, and the woman is hurling a bottle of wine at the camera (technically, at Sheldon). It was a bright day, so Sheldon had used a small aperture-setting to capture a long depth of field, which managed to keep most of the scene in focus. The black-and-white photo — of superb composition — captured not only the angry face of the woman (her hand still extended from the throw, her face contorted, her body bent slightly over the railing as though hurling her very self at the camera), but also the vintage of the flying bottle (1948 Chateau Beychevelle, St Julien, Bordeaux). It was, genuinely, a brilliant photograph. And in 1994, when Doisneau admitted that his own photo had been staged (because the girl in it wanted some cash forty years on, and sued him, thereby forcing the photographer’s admission that she’d been hired, thus breaking the spell of the original photo), Sheldon went bananas and proclaimed himself the master.

  ‘The original was a fake, and the fake was an original!’ In 1995 his own photo was reissued, bringing him another week of notoriety and an opportunity to be incorrigible at family gatherings. This, for Sheldon, was a joy beyond description.

  ‘Get dressed. We’ll take a walk,’ Rhea says.

  ‘You two go. I’ll catch up.’

  Lars looks up at Rhea, who glances back know
ingly.

  ‘Papa, we want to tell you something about last night. Come with us.’

  Sheldon looks at Lars, who is innocently placing a piece of herring on dark bread.

  ‘You don’t want me wandering around alone. You want me supervised. Which is why you want to strap that mobile phone on me. But I won’t have it!’

  ‘We like your company.’

  ‘Your grandmother was better at manipulating me than you two. I’m not giving in until you raise your game.’

  ‘Right, well, I’m going out. So who’s with me?’

  Lars raises his hand.

  ‘Lars! Great! Anyone else?’ She looks around the room. ‘No one else?’

  ‘I have things to do,’ says Sheldon.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Private things.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘It’s a nice day, and I want you out of the house.’

  ‘Did you know that I went through eight cameras making that book? Six were brutally smashed by the subjects — Mario’s was the first to go, one I dropped in the Hudson, and one was actually eaten by a dog. What I loved was how the dog blamed the camera and not me. The photo of the inside of his mouth is on page thirty-seven. And, of course, having pushed the button himself, the dog got the photo credit.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘It’s cute how you think I have a point.’

  She scowls. Sheldon smiles. Lars announces he is going to get dressed. Breakfast is over.

  Rhea is alone with Sheldon.

  ‘What’s with you? I said there was something I wanted to tell you.’

  ‘Go out with your husband. Go to the cabin. Make love on a fur blanket. Eat moose jerky. Drink akevitt that’s crossed the equator a few times. Two hundred years ago, we Jews wouldn’t have been allowed in this country. Now you’ve found a nice boy, and he loves you, and you’re going to have pretty babies. I’ll be here when you get back.’

  ‘Sometimes I think there’s an actual person in there with you, and then other times … I think it’s just you.’

  ‘Go get dressed and go. I’ll rinse my mug.’

  Rhea’s arms are still crossed. She looks at Sheldon as though deciding something. And then, in a low voice touched with anger, she says, ‘I had a miscarriage.’

  There is a deep silence from her grandfather, and his face settles. The muscles release, and for a moment she sees him in all his force. The years flow into him. A frightening weariness comes to his mouth and brow. She immediately regrets saying this. She should have stuck to her agreement with Lars. To break it slowly. To prepare the ground.

  Sheldon stands quietly and wraps the robe around himself. And then, as though the tears were there all along, he walks back to his room and openly weeps alone.

  Hours later, at two in the afternoon, he is alone in the apartment. His earlier insistence that Rhea and Lars go out had become quite different in tone when it was repeated later. He’d made it clear to them that he needed solitude, and so they went.

  Dressed in jeans, a white button-down shirt, and a pair of workman’s boots, he has recovered his composure and is comfortably stretched on the sofa with a book by Danielle Steele when the shouting starts again.

  He has heard domestic squabbles before — the rounds of yelling, the escalation, the occasional banging, and even the beatings and sobs. But this is different. The cadence of the argument is wrong. There is no turn-taking between angry participants. The man had started screaming and then kept it up. The woman, this time, hasn’t made a sound.

  She must be in there, Sheldon thinks.

  It doesn’t have the pauses of a phone conversation. The diatribe is too linear, too intimate. The hollering voice is too present.

  It doesn’t matter in the slightest that Sheldon can’t understand a word, because the message is clear. He has had enough experience with humanity, with its range of rage, to know what is happening. There is cruelty and viciousness in that voice. It is more than a squabble. It is a battle.

  Then there is a loud bang.

  Sheldon puts the book down and sits upright on the sofa. He is attentive, his brows furrowed.

  No, not a gunshot. It wasn’t sharp enough. He knows gunshots from his life and from his dreams. It was probably a door slamming. And then he hears approaching footsteps that are quick and even. The woman, perhaps. A heavy woman, or one wearing boots, or carrying something heavy. She is coming down the stairs. First the one flight, then a brief pause on the landing, then the other.

  It takes her the same time to manoeuvre down the staircase as it does Sheldon to get to the front door and spy her through the peephole.

  And there she is. The source, or focus, or even the cause of it all. Through the fisheye lens, Sheldon sees a young woman around thirty years old standing directly in front of his door. She is close enough that he can only see her from the waist up, but it is enough to place her. She wears a dark T-shirt under a cheap brown-leather jacket. She has gaudy costume jewellery, and her hair is styled with some thick mousse or gel that prevents it from responding to the normal forces of gravity.

  Everything about her says Balkans. Sheldon can only guess her life, and yet everything about it seems scripted, aside from her incongruous presence in Oslo. But that is easily explained by asylum practices. Maybe she was Serb or Kosovar or Albanian. Or maybe Romanian. Who knows?

  His first feeling is one of pity. Not for the person she is, but for the circumstances she faces.

  The feeling lasts until a memory transforms it.

  They did this with us, too, he thinks, looking through the peephole. And then the pity vanishes and is replaced by the indignation that lives just beneath the surface of his daily routines and quick retorts.

  The Europeans. Almost all of them, at one time or another. They looked out their peepholes — their little fishy eyes peeping out through bulging lenses, watching someone else’s flight — as their neighbours clutched their children to their chests while armed thugs chased them through buildings as though humanity itself was being exterminated. Behind the glass some felt afraid, others pitiful, others murderous and delighted.

  All were safe because of what they were not. They were not, for example, Jews.

  The woman spins around. Looking for something.

  What? What is she looking for?

  The fight has taken place only one floor above him. The monster upstairs could be down in seconds. Why is she delaying? Why is she hesitant? What is taking so long?

  There is rummaging upstairs. The monster is pushing and heaving and searching for something. He is moving walls and mountains. He is peeling the very darkness from the light to find it. At any moment he will stop and turn on her and demand it.

  Sheldon mutters under his breath. ‘Run, you fool. Get out, go to the police, and don’t look back. He’s going to kill you.’

  And then the bang echoes from upstairs. Same as before. It is the door hitting the wall behind it.

  Aloud, Sheldon says, ‘Run, you dummy. Why are you just standing there?’

  On a hunch, Sheldon turns his head and looks out the front window. And there is the answer. A white Mercedes is parked outside. Inside, men in cheap leather jackets are smoking cigarettes, barring her escape.

  And that seals it.

  Quietly, slowly, but without hesitation, Sheldon opens the door.

  What he sees is not what he expected.

  The woman is clutching an ugly pink box just big enough to hold an adult pair of shoes. And she is not alone. Pressed against her belly is a small boy, maybe seven or eight years old. He is clearly terrified. He is dressed in little blue wellington boots with yellow Paddington Bears painted on the sides by hand. Tucked inside carefully are beige corduroy trousers. On top, he i
s wrapped in a green jacket of waxed cotton.

  The footsteps from up above pound the floors. A voice hollers a name. Vera, maybe? Laura? Clara? Two syllables, anyway. Barked out. Coughed up.

  Sheldon ushers them in with his finger pressed against his lips.

  Vera looks up the stairs, then out the door. She does not look at Sheldon. She does not wonder about his intentions or give him a chance to reconsider by looking into his eyes for clarity. She pushes the silent boy in front of herself and into the flat.

  Sheldon closes the door very, very quietly. The woman with her wide Slavic face looks at him in conspiratorial terror. They all squat down with their backs against the door, waiting for the monster to pass.

  Again he raises his finger to his lips. ‘Shhh,’ he says.

  No need to look out the peephole now. He is no longer one of the people he abhorred. Sitting next to his neighbours, he wants to stand in the middle of a soccer field with a bull horn, surrounded by Europe’s oldest generation and yell, ‘Was that so fucking hard?’

  But outside he is silent. Disciplined. Calm. An old soldier.

  ‘When you sneak up on a man to kill him with a knife,’ his staff sergeant explained sixty years ago, ‘don’t stare at him. People know when you’re staring at the backs of their heads. I don’t know how, I don’t know why. Just don’t look at their heads. Look at the feet, approach, get the knife in. Head forward, not back. Never let him know you’re there. If you want him dead, make him dead. Don’t negotiate it with him. He’s likely to disagree.’

  Sheldon never had trouble with this end of things. Never pondered the imponderables, questioned his mission, doubted his function. Before he got lost and ended up on the HMAS Bataan, he was shaken awake one night by Mario de Luca. Mario was from San Francisco. His parents had emigrated from Tuscany with the intention of buying wine land north of San Francisco, but somehow his father never got out of the city, and Mario was drafted. Where Donny had intense blue eyes and sandy blond hair, Mario was dark like a Sicilian fisherman. And he talked like he’d been injected with some kind of truth serum.

  ‘Donny? Donny, you up?’

  Donny didn’t answer.