Read Before I Burn: A Novel for Free Online

than the others, with room for only one name.
    Before getting into my car I walked over to Pappa, whose last wish had been to be buried in the same grave as Great-Great-Grandfather Jens Sommundsen. And so it came to be. His wish was fulfilled. It was – according to the records – grave number 102. Jens, who had faced so many ordeals in his life and had become so gentle as a consequence. He lost two wives. And two children. He was the type of man people sought out if they needed to unburden themselves. I think Pappa had a desire to be like him, and that was why he wished to be buried in the same grave.
    I didn’t find Kåre. According to the ledger he should have been in grave number 19, but that wasn’t much use. Grave number 19 no longer existed.
    VII.
    A FEW DAYS LATER I RANG ALFRED. Briefly I explained the reason for my call. As always when I am nervous, I struggled to find the words. He answered in a voice that was measured and distant and close all at the same time.
    ‘I remember everything as if it were yesterday,’ he said.
    We spoke for two, perhaps three, minutes about the fires. Then I told him about the TV news item in which he had been standing with his back to the camera, hosing down Sløgedal’s ravaged barn. He hadn’t seen the item himself, he told me; it had been shown on the evening of 5 June, when he had been in quite a different place. He said, ‘I wasn’t aware of anyone filming me.’
    I went to visit him and his wife Else that same evening. I took my black notebook with me, nothing else. It was a mild night, and I set off from home at a little after six. The trees had begun to bud, and this had happened almost without my noticing; some leaves were lemon-yellow, others were orange, akin to a flaming red, and then there were those the wind had blown off, which lay on the tarmac, brown and shrivelled. In the gardens forgotten apples hung from the branches, and wild rose bushes blossomed with blood-red hips which we always used to prise open with our teeth. I remembered the smooth skin, the taste on my lips and the sight of the furry seeds huddled together like tiny sleeping children.
    When I arrived the sun was still high in the sky.
    In some way or other, Alfred was a part of my childhood. I remember him from the time Finsland Sparebank had offices in Brandsvoll Community Centre, right at the end facing the road. I went there with Pappa. It was down a long corridor and then to the right. I often had my piggy bank with me, which had to be cut open to disgorge the money. This opening of the piggy bank was always a matter of great sorrow. Alfred was the bank manager and a cashier at Finsland Sparebank, and he generally sat with a serious expression in an office on the other side of the counter, isolated as it were from the world around him. He never had anything to do with my paltry savings, his head was filled with great and weighty thoughts, or so it seemed. That is why I remember him. Likewise the postman. That was Rolf. I remember him from Kilen Post Office, which has gone now. He would stand there sorting mail without looking up from his work. I can also remember him arriving in a post van, getting out, distributing newspapers and letters to the mailboxes on the old milk ramp by the road as though he was only doing it this once, and never again.
    Alfred was a member of the voluntary fire service in 1978. There must have been around twenty members in all, and they lived within a radius of a few kilometres from the alarm, which was attached to a post next to the fire station at Skinnsnes. All you had to do was place a compass point on the station and draw a circle. No one was allowed to live beyond hearing distance of the alarm. Apart from that there were no special requirements for joining the voluntary service. Actually, yes, there was: you had to have a car. The fire engine had space for only two men.
    The fire station lay at the geographical centre of the region, just a few hundred metres