You leave Vik and after a couple of miles the fjord appears on your left. Your father ignores the sign for Lunnis, he turns right at the crossroads and reaches a narrow road leading up a small hill. A church appears in front of you. It’s made of dark wood and reminds you of old Japanese movies and samurais barking their orders like dogs. You can’t know that it’s a stave church, and you can’t know that your father stood in this church at Oskar and Majgull’s wedding, and couldn’t take his eyes off the bride. Beside the church there’s a little graveyard that looks as if people only died here every hundred years. You drive past the church and find yourselves on a forest path.
“And where are we going now?” you ask.
“Surprise.”
After a few minutes you’re surrounded by pine trees. The forest is dense and dark. You lower the window slightly, the scent of resin settles coolly on your face and fills the car. Five hundred yards further on, the forest clears and you see a chapel with a dome. In front of the chapel there’s an abandoned parking lot. You get out, walk down the stone path past the chapel, and reach a second graveyard. Now you know where all the dead end up. A graveyard, surrounded by a pine forest. You follow your father along the rows. He stops by your grandmother’s grave. She’s dropped the name Desche and returned to her maiden name. Sinding. Your father says, “If you die before me, I’ll bury you here.”
“I want to be cremated.”
“You must have loved that crematorium.”
“I don’t want to lie down there and get eaten by worms.”
“Fine, we’ll cremate you, then.”
“And you?”
“I don’t intend to die.”
He looks at the headstone as if he’s looking for something. You were seven months old when your grandmother died. Your father never talked about Norway, or about his mother either. You only know her from Oskar’s stories.
“Do you miss her?”
Your father shrugs.
“She betrayed us when we were children. She stood by our father. A mother should always stand by her children.”
“And what about fathers?”
“Fathers stand by themselves. That’s how it’s always been. When you’re a father you’ll understand.”
He spits on the ground beneath which his mother lies.
“She was a cowardly woman. You don’t miss someone who’s betrayed you.”
“So why are we here?”
He smiles.
“Not because of her.”
Your father sits down on his mother’s gravestone and points to the graves to his left.
“From here over to the statue of the angel, that’s all your relatives. They built Ulvtannen. And this …”
He points to his right, where there is nothing.
“… is reserved for us. Past and future, you see?”
Before you can answer, your father waves his hand dismissively.
“You don’t need to understand. Go back down the path. Beside the chapel there’s a shed. You’ll find spades in there. Fetch us two.”
You don’t move.
“The grave isn’t for you,” says your father, and in his eyes you can read that anything’s possible, even a grave for you if you don’t jump to it.
You go to the shed, the door isn’t locked. There are tools hanging on one wall, standing against the other there are three wheel-barrows, rakes, spades, and a brand-new lawnmower. There are stacked-up buckets and several zinc watering cans. You take two spades and try to imagine burying Tanner and Leo. You know it’s wrong. They deserve a decent burial. When you come back, your father has taken off his jacket and hung it on his mother’s gravestone. You have to ask him.
“What are we doing here?”
Your father takes one of the spades, moves a little way away from his mother’s grave, and sticks it in the ground before he answers.
“We’re going to dig a grave. A nice deep grave for four girls.”
You spend the next hour and a half in the graveyard. The ground feels as soft as if it were dug over every week. You’re working back to back. You have no more questions. You’re on a collision course. You’re only a part of the whole, your father knows the formula and isn’t planning on telling you about it. He scares you, but you know the feeling, and you’re still surprised every time. Like watching a horror movie over and over. You know exactly what’s going to happen and yet the fear won’t leave you.
You climb out of the grave, drenched in sweat, your muscles feel good. You wash yourselves in a water trough beside the shed and your father remarks how lucky you are.
“If it was a Sunday we wouldn’t be alone here.”
You go back to the hole; your father puts his jacket back on and crouches down with his back against the gravestone. He sighs. The sun shines in his face, it’s pleasantly cool, the summer heat hasn’t yet invaded the patch of forest.
“Sit down, rest for a moment.”
You stop and look across the graveyard. You deliberately turn your back on your father. If he takes a nap right now, I’m going to lose it. Your father sighs again. He has all the time in the world. He isn’t planning to die.
You set the spades down by the grave and leave the cemetery, but you don’t go back to the car. Your father heads off in the opposite direction and you walk side by side through the wood until you see water. The fjord is a sliver of blue that gets bigger and bigger with every step. You’d like to sit down on its bank and hold your hand in the water.
“Along here.”
Before you get to the water your father leads you to a steep cliff. A footpath winds its way up. You don’t know how your father knows his way around here. You’re a clueless dork taking a quick holiday in Norway. It would be nice if the bit about the holiday were true.
You climb the cliff. It’s tough, the sun is scorching, you don’t say a word. Before you reach the top, your father grabs you by the arm, so that you have to stop.
“It’s going to be a very nice view.”
“What’s going to be a very nice view?”
“The past …”
He looks to his right. The fjord, the opposite shore and individual houses. All that’s missing is a sailboat drifting gently along the water, and it would be perfect. Your father finishes his sentence.
“… however you look at the past, in the end it always looks shabby.”
Your father lets go of your hand and invites you to walk ahead of him. Six steps and you’re up at the top, and give a start. Your father’s behind you, and rests a hand on your shoulder, there’s no going back.
There it is.
There are all the stories your uncle told you condensed into a single moment: the hotel on the cliff. The mountains on the other side of the fjord. Everything.
Ulvtannen, you think, while your uncle’s stories flee your head with a sudden shriek. Your father was right. It looks as if the Norwegian past had crouched down up here and taken a shit. But of course that’s not enough, because four girls are standing in front of the ruined hotel and all four girls are looking at you in amazement.