The Ravens Read online

  The Ravens

  Minnesota Trilogy

  The Land of Dreams

  Only the Dead

  The Ravens

  The Ravens

  Vidar Sundstøl

  Translated by Tiina Nunnally

  Minnesota Trilogy 3

  University of Minnesota Press

  Minneapolis

  This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA (Norwegian Literature Abroad, Fiction and Nonfiction).

  Copyright 2011 by Tiden Norsk Forlag, Oslo, an imprint of Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS. Originally published in Norwegian as Ravnene.

  English translation copyright 2015 by Tiina Nunnally All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published by the University of Minnesota Press

  111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290

  Minneapolis, MN 55401–2520

  http://www.upress.umn.edu

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Sundstøl, Vidar.

  [Ravnene. English]

  The Ravens / Vidar Sundstøl ; translated by Tiina Nunnally.

  ISBN 978-1-4529-4473-9

  1. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 2. Family secrets—Fiction. 3. Brothers—Fiction. 4. Minnesota—Fiction. 5. Mystery fiction. I. Nunnally, Tiina, translator. II. Title.

  PT8952.29.U53R3813 2015 839.823'8—dc23 2015000051

  The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  Epilogue

  1

  LAKE SUPERIOR had frozen over and was transformed into a desolate white wasteland. In Duluth the temperature hovered at a steady twenty below. No ships passed under the old Aerial Lift Bridge, although normally that would have happened several times a day. Now the bridge remained motionless all day long as the low January sun glinted off the frost-covered steel.

  Inga Hansen was knitting. Only the faint clacking of her knitting needles disturbed the silence. From the walls stared so many faces from her long life: her husband wearing his police uniform, the two of them in their wedding picture, her grandchildren at various ages, her sons in high school photos. One picture showed a group of dark-clad people, maybe thirty or forty in all, both adults and children, formally posed for the photograph taken on the deck of a ship. Behind them steam rose up from the smokestack. In the bottom right-hand corner someone had written, “Duluth, October 3, 1902.” In among the solemn-looking crowd were two young people who would become Inga’s grandparents—a fact that almost brought her to tears whenever she thought about it. This was a response that had gradually emerged over the years. In the past she’d been able to bear anything at all without shedding a single tear. Nowadays it took very little to make her cry.

  She looked at the newest photo of her granddaughter, Chrissy. With her neatly brushed blond hair forming a halo around her head, she looked like an angel, Inga thought. But Chrissy hadn’t come to visit in a long time. Truth be told, they hadn’t seen each other in over a year, although they’d talked on the phone a few times. No doubt that was what happened when kids became teenagers; suddenly there were things that were far more interesting than grandmothers. Even so, Inga had decided that the green-and-white scarf taking shape under her never-idle hands would be a birthday gift for Chrissy when she turned eighteen.

  On the slope below the nursing home the houses and yards were covered with a blanket of snow. High overhead was the pale blue vault of the sky, looking as it had every day for nearly a month. And stretching out beneath it like the marble floor of a vast cathedral was the lake, once again frozen over. She couldn’t look for very long at the white surface that extended eastward until it merged with the sky; the sight hurt her eyes. And she found it alarming that the entire lake looked exactly the same. So she tried not to dwell on it, although occasionally the thought would slip into her mind, unnoticed, until she suddenly pictured a place so far away that there was no land in sight in any direction; nothing but a dazzling whiteness with no shadows, because there was nothing out there that might cast a shadow. Yet the worst was imagining the total lack of sound. She imagined a piercing silence.

  Someone was knocking on the door. Quickly she set down her knitting and smoothed out her skirt.

  “Come in!”

  One of the staff members opened the door.

  “Hi, Inga. Postcard for you,” she said, stepping into the room and holding out the postcard, as if it were a major event for someone to be writing to Inga Hansen.

  “Is that all?” asked Inga.

  “Yes. But it’s nice to get a card in the mail, don’t you think?”

  Inga smiled politely as she set the card down without much interest. But as soon as the door closed, she picked up the postcard and eagerly read what it said.

  “Oslo, Norway” was printed diagonally in big white letters across a nighttime scene showing a street decorated for Christmas. She turned the card over and read the few lines written in the familiar script.

  Dear Mom—

  Having a good time in the “old country.” Staying at another hotel now, it’s a little cheaper. Haven’t yet made it to Halsnøy but of course I will soon. The Norwegians are nice, polite people, as you can imagine. Won’t be home for a while yet. It’s really cold here! Happy New Year, and say hello to everybody.

  Lance

  The postmark showed that the card had been sent from Oslo on January 17, which was five days ago. The two other cards she’d received from her son had also been sent from there. It was back in November, right after the deer hunt, that he’d phoned to tell her he was going to Norway. She was glad that he’d decided to do something different for a change. Otherwise he spent all his free time immersed in those history archives of his.

  Inga turned the card over again to look at the picture on the front. A long street gently sloping up toward a building painted yellow with a flag flying from the roof. The street was crowded with people. It was possible that some of them might even be relatives of hers. She liked that idea. There they were, her relatives, and all of them spoke Norwegian, just like her grandparents and the rest of the immigrants in the photograph taken on board the steamship in Duluth on that October day in 1902. When she was a child, she sometimes heard her grandparents speaking their native language to each other. She almost thought she could hear all those people on the street decorated for Christmas on the postcard. All those Norwegian voices humming on a winter evening in Oslo, where her son Lance was also walking around.

  Inga put down the card and picked up her knitting. She couldn’t sit idle for long if
she was going to finish the green-and-white scarf in time for Chrissy’s birthday.

  Yet she soon found herself thinking again about the ice-covered lake, and she felt a shiver pass through her.

  2

  HE LUNGED OUT OF BED, striking his head so hard on the floor that flames shot up in the back of his eyes, and he tore at his pajama top, sending several buttons flying. It was pitch dark in the room, and he was dying. His breath had stopped somewhere between his lungs and his mouth, like an elevator stuck between floors. Desperately he began flailing around in the dark, trying to make something happen, although he didn’t know what that might be. Nothing was certain anymore except that he didn’t have long to live. His hand touched something that fell to the floor with a bang and shattered into pieces. He inhaled with a gasp, as if suddenly returning to the surface after making a lengthy dive. He greedily drew in great quantities of air, noticing how the paralyzing fear slowly released its hold on his body. Maybe he wasn’t going to die after all.

  With trembling arms and legs he hauled himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed and turned on the lamp on the nightstand. His pajama top hung open, without a single button. His big white stomach gleamed in the faint glow of the lamp. Fear was still circulating through the room like electrical pulses, or like arrows shot from bows by thousands of little demons that had descended upon him as he slept. A sob suddenly filled his throat like a cork; it felt so tight that he didn’t even dare swallow. He knew that under the painful cork was a bottomless reservoir of self-pity, and right now he was close to giving in to it, but he refused.

  Anything but a nervous breakdown, thought Lance Hansen.

  He stood up, still on the verge of tears, and caught sight of himself in the mirror. A fat, middle-aged man with tearful eyes, a white whale living in total isolation in a hotel room in a foreign country. The next moment he was over at the desk, swinging his right arm like a sledgehammer and slamming his fist down on the surface, sending scraps of food skittering across the floor. A beastly howl echoed through the room, and the jolt of pain reverberated all the way up to his shoulder, but he didn’t give a shit. Again he pounded the desk with his leaden fist, this time splintering the wood. Oh, how good that felt! Lance turned around and jabbed the air with several left-right combinations, like a boxer just before a fight, throwing swift punches that would have knocked anybody out cold. “That’s enough!” he shouted. “I won’t stand for this anymore!”

  HE MUST HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP AGAIN, and when he woke, there was no longer anything wrong with his breathing. He took a shower, got dressed, and went downstairs to the small room where breakfast was served. But he found no food and no people. The hotel seemed dead, and his footsteps echoed along the empty hallways as he went back to his room. He checked his watch, which he’d left on the nightstand. It was 5:10 in the morning.

  Lance was ravenous and desperate for a cup of coffee, but it would be almost half an hour before he could get breakfast, and nowhere else was open this early. So he really had no choice but to undress and go back to bed, although he really didn’t want to. He wanted breakfast and some strong coffee. Resigned, he sat down at the desk and looked inside the carton from yesterday’s Chinese takeout. There was still a little food left. He used his fingers to stuff his mouth with the cold rice and sauce that had now congealed like butter. Then he remembered that several days ago he’d put a couple of rolls in one of the desk drawers. He had intended to eat them with dinner, but then forgot. He pulled out the drawer, and there were the rolls along with the old diary written by his grandmother Nanette. That had been one of the first things he’d packed when he decided to make this trip. The book was over a hundred and twenty years old and written in French. Inside were two sheets of paper with an English translation of a few pages. Lance ran his finger over the worn binding; it was so soft that it was almost like touching living flesh. The diary and the two sheets of paper contained quite a number of truths about him. That was probably why he’d brought them along when he left—to remind himself, here in this foreign land, of who he was and where he came from.

  Lance closed the drawer and placed the two rolls on the desk. With his fingertip he poked at one of them. The roll was hard as a rock, but when he broke it in half, the bread was still edible; only the crust was too hard. After devouring the insides of both rolls, he finished off the meal with a couple of glasses of water from the tap. Then he began packing his suitcase.

  3

  AFTER DRIVING FOR A GOOD HOUR Lance stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank and buy a couple of hot dogs, a soda, and a cup of coffee. He paid with some of the foreign coins that he was slowly getting used to. Then he gulped down the coffee so greedily and quickly that the young guy behind the counter couldn’t help staring.

  He felt better after eating the food and finishing his coffee. Then he continued southward through a landscape that didn’t change significantly. As he headed into the morning hours and away from the night, the traffic increased. When he encountered a semi on the road, the drifting snow was like a huge cloud of powder.

  For two months he’d been living the same aimless life, like a prisoner. If he awoke in the evening, he would often just lie in bed until he dozed off again. Sometimes he would get up and go to the bar just down the street, but he never ate out, since he felt like everyone was staring at him, even though he looked no different from the local populace. For the most part he’d spent the past two months in bed in his hotel room. Fortunately they had American TV programs. Usually he ate in bed too. But mostly, he’d slept, always without dreaming.

  THE CAR RADIO had stopped working. The only sound it made was a crackling, hissing noise that made him think of the desolate space and cold outside. He’d been driving for over three hours, but the landscape was still the same: snow-covered forests in between empty white expanses of varying size, concealing a tarn, a marsh, or a lake. He drove across narrow bridges with rivers or creeks underneath, but he never saw even a drop of water; the current flowed at least six feet under the snow and ice.

  As he pulled out of a tight curve, he saw a wolf standing in the middle of the road. He stomped on the brakes and managed to stop twenty or thirty yards away. The wolf was wearing its best winter pelt, with a hint of frosty white in the gray. In the wolf’s world, it was clearly the car that had to yield the right-of-way. The animal held its position with its head lowered in a threatening pose. In the background lay the carcass of a stag on which the wolf had been feeding. Lance let the car roll forward slowly until there were only a few yards between him and the wolf, but the animal didn’t move, and he was again forced to stop. Then it bared its teeth, hackles raised. Yet Lance noticed that the wolf also seemed afraid, its body tensed as if ready to run off at any moment.

  To put an end to the standoff, Lance honked the car horn. The wolf spun around and ran, but after only a few yards it stopped and stood still, facing the car. Lance honked again, but this time the wolf merely backed up a few paces, its ears lying flat. Even though he was sitting inside the protection of the car, Lance felt scared. The wolf couldn’t hurt him, but there was something ominous about the completely irrational display of defiance and strength. The wolf possessed something to which no human being had access, and it seemed to consist solely of this incomprehensible otherness as it stood there, refusing to flee.

  Another car appeared, coming from the opposite direction, and both Lance and the other driver honked. Only then did the wolf retreat. Awkwardly it backed up along the snowbank and then disappeared into the woods.

  RIGHT AFTER THAT he drove through a small community and saw a bunch of kids, probably waiting for the school bus, standing in a shelter with their shoulders hunched and their faces buried in thick scarves. He imagined himself and his brother, Andy, on their way to school in the bitter cold, walking along as they’d done so many times in the past. Duluth in the 1970s, the town on the steep hillside with a view of the lake, the ships loaded with taconite, the old Aerial Lift Bridge�
��all those things that he saw and yet didn’t see because they were there every day and always had been. What had they talked about on those mornings? He remembered only the heavy winter clothes, Andy’s book bag that swung from side to side as he ran, the frosty vapor whenever he spoke.

  Without his noticing, the highway had changed into a street, and he recognized the place from the time he’d driven in the opposite direction a couple of months earlier. He came to a traffic light and stopped to wait for it to turn green. At the end of the cross street, off to the right, he could see the smoke from the big paper factory on the American side of the river. As he approached the bridge over Rainy River, the line of cars got longer, until it almost came to a standstill. Otherwise the streets seemed deserted in the small town straddling the river. On the opposite shore the first low rays of sunshine broke through the smoke coming from the American factory, coloring that side of the river pink.

  Thinking about the wolf, Lance drove across the bridge. This was the same border he’d crossed two months ago; it was even the same route he’d taken. But the border he’d crossed inside himself was different this time. When he’d left the States it was with the certainty that one day he would return. But there was no turning back from where he was now heading.

  4

  ELY IS LOCATED on the shores of wind-swept Shagawa Lake, within the Iron Range of Minnesota, and Lance decided that would be a suitable place to begin. He checked in at the Lakeland Motel and ate a slice of pizza at the local Pizza Hut. Afterward he bought some bread and lunchmeat and a pair of snowshoes at a store close to the motel. He flung the snowshoes in the trunk of the car with a feeling that they might come in handy.

  The room was virtually identical to the one in which he’d just spent two months in Kenora, Canada. The bed was no better or worse than the other, but there was one big difference: it was in the United States.