Free Before I Burn: A Novel by Gaute Heivoll

twenty minutes the framework collapsed, a shower of sparks rose like fireflies into the sky and fierce flames burst into life again. Someone laughed. It was dark and impossible to see who it had been.
    Two fires in ten days. What could you say?
    The following day was 17 May, Norway’s Constitution Day. As usual, it started with a service in the church, which on this occasion was as full as ever it was. The sun shone through the window above the altarpiece of Jesus’s last supper, making the dust in the room sparkle. Two birch twigs had been bound to the Roman arches, and fresh birch leaves wreathed the lectern. Omland was conducting the service. He wore a black cassock and spoke about a log branded with the owner’s mark floating in the river. In backwaters, where it cannot reach its destination, it still carries the mark, and even from there it can find its way into the correct channel and be what it was originally intended to be.
    Nothing about the fires. Of course not. These were the days before anyone had an inkling of what was to come.
    Then there was food for everyone in the cramped cellar beneath the community centre, where the ceiling was so low that almost everyone had to stoop when they entered. The procession then departed from Brandsvoll and marched for three kilometres past Knut Frigstad’s house, past the old doctor’s surgery on the bend, past Anders and Agnes Fjeldgård’s house, to continue alongside glittering Lake Bordvannet, where birch trees stood with their thin foliage, and culminated at Lauvslandsmoen School, where the flag was hoisted and all the old people sat waiting in the sun.
    My parents were there, too, and I lay asleep in a deep pram. The procession was coming over the Lauvslandsmoen Plain, headed by the flag-bearer, then the band in their red uniforms and cylindrical hats, and I woke and Mamma lifted me out so that I could see where the music was coming from.
    In the evening there was a party in the Brandsvoll Community Centre. Grandma and Grandad were in the hall. As were Ingemann and Alma. Aasta was there with her husband Sigurd. Olga Dynestøl sat on her own, right at the back next to the wood-burning stove. My parents, however, were not there. They needed to sleep, which was quite understandable, given they had a two-month-old child.
    Syvert Maessel read the opening address in a firm voice, as he always did. He stood alone on the small podium with the woven tapestry hanging behind him. Everyone sat still with a solemn expression because what he said always had gravitas and substance. Perhaps the audience thought about everything he had seen and heard during his three years in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Afterwards they sang ‘Finsland, My Homeland’.
Soon shines the sun over snow-white dell,
The evening sun blazes through cloud so well,
Finsland, she sleeps under winter’s fell,
Lies there so frozen and hard.
    Five verses. Teresa sat at the piano, which was situated beneath the podium.
    In the interval, several people went over to Ingemann to enquire about the fires. Two fires in such a short time. What was going on? Ingemann shrugged. They looked at him, and he looked at them with an indefinable expression. He had no answer. He cast down his eyes.
    Then there was food and coffee and entertainment, and before everyone went home they got up and sang the national anthem.
    That night all was still.
    The new fire engine had really been put through its paces. After each emergency the equipment had to be cleaned. The hoses had to be unfurled to dry in the sun, then rolled up and attached to the vehicle. The pumps had to be lubricated, checked and given a round with the grease gun. All this was Ingemann’s responsibility. He rolled the hoses out on the tarmac outside the fire station and left them there for a few hours before painstakingly rolling them up again. This was a job that took the whole morning, and he couldn’t go at it too hard because as soon as he did he felt