Read Norwegian by Night for Free Online

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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Donny? Donny, you up?’
    Donny didn’t answer.
    â€˜Donny. Donny, you up?’
    This went on for minutes.
    â€˜Donny. Donny, you up?’
    â€˜It will not help my cause by answering you,’ he’d said.
    â€˜Donny, I don’t get this invasion. I don’t get this war. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do. What are we doing here?’
    Donny was dressed in flannel pyjamas that were not government-issue. He replied, ‘You get out of the boat. You shoot Koreans. You get back in the boat. What confuses you?’
    â€˜The middle part,’ Mario explained. ‘Although, now that I think about it, the first part, too.’
    â€˜What about the third part?’
    â€˜No, that part is like crystal.’
    â€˜So what about the first two?’
    â€˜My motivation? What’s my motivation?’
    â€˜They’ll be shooting at you.’
    â€˜Then what’s their motivation?’
    â€˜You’ll be shooting at them.’
    â€˜What if I don’t shoot at them?’
    â€˜They’ll still be shooting at you because other people will be shooting at them, and they won’t differentiate. And you’ll want them to stop, so you’ll shoot back.’
    â€˜What if I ask them not to?’
    â€˜They’re too far away, and they speak Korean.’
    â€˜So I need to get closer and have a translator?’
    â€˜Right. But you can’t.’
    â€˜Because they’re shooting at me.’
    â€˜That’s the problem.’
    â€˜But that’s absurd!’
    â€˜Yes, it is.’
    â€˜It can’t be true!’
    â€˜Most things are both true and absurd.’
    â€˜That’s also absurd.’
    â€˜And yet …?’
    â€˜It may also be true. Jesus, Donny. I’m going to be up all night.’
    Then Donny whispered, ‘If you don’t go to bed, there will be no tomorrow. And it’ll be all your fault.’
    The monster’s feet stop outside the door. What were stomping, pounding footfalls of a pursuer are now gentle shuffles. Whoever is chasing them is now spinning