Before the Frost Read online

  He stepped aside without asking for her name or why she was there, hurrying her into the hall.

  “I sometimes forget when I have a new student,” he said. “I don’t always make a note of everything as conscientiously as I should. Please feel free to hang up your things. I’ll wait in there.”

  He disappeared down a long corridor with short, almost springy steps. A student of what? Linda wondered. She took off her jacket and followed him. It was a large apartment, perhaps the result of knocking down a wall between two smaller ones. In the room farthest in from the door there was a black baby grand piano. The white-haired man was over by the window, leafing through the pages of a monthly planner.

  “I can’t see an appointment for today,” he complained. “What did you say your name was?”

  “I’m not a student,” Linda said. “I just want to ask you some questions.”

  “I’ve been answering questions my whole life,” he said. “I’ve told them why it’s so important to sit correctly when playing the piano. I’ve tried to explain to countless young pianists why not everyone can learn to play Chopin with the right combination of caution and power that is required. Above all I try to get my impatient opera singers to stand properly, and not attempt the hardest pieces without wearing good shoes. Have you got that? Opera singers need good shoes, and pianists need to take care to avoid developing hemorrhoids. What did you say your name was?”

  “It’s Linda and I’m neither a pianist nor an opera singer. I’ve come to ask you about something that has nothing to do with music.”

  “Well, you must have the wrong man because I can only answer questions about music. The world beyond that is incomprehensible to me.”

  Linda was momentarily confused.

  “Your name is Fredrik Vigsten, isn’t it?”

  “Not Fredrik: Frans. But the last name is right.”

  He sat down at the piano and began turning over the pages of some music. Linda had the feeling that he had forgotten she was there.

  “Your name appears in my friend Anna Westin’s diary,” she said.

  Frans Vigsten tapped his finger on the paper rhythmically and did not seem to hear her.

  “Anna Westin,” she repeated in a louder voice.

  He looked up abruptly.

  “Who?”

  “Anna Westin. A Swedish girl.”

  “I’ve had many Swedish pupils,” he said. “Of course, now it is as if everyone has forgotten about me, and—”

  He interrupted himself and looked at Linda.

  “Did you tell me your name?”

  “I’m happy to tell you again. It’s Linda.”

  “And you are not a pupil? Not a pianist? Not an opera singer?”

  “No.”

  “You’re asking about someone called Anna?”

  “Anna Westin.”

  “I don’t know an Anna Westin. Vest-in. My wife was a vestal, but she died thirty-nine years ago. Do you have any idea what it is like to be a widower for almost forty years?”

  He stretched out a thin hand with finely etched blue veins and touched her wrist.

  “Alone,” he said. “It was one thing when I had my day job doing rehearsals at Det Kongelige. But then one day they told me I was too old. Maybe it was that I insisted on doing things the old way. I didn’t tolerate sloppiness.”

  “I found your name in my friend’s diary,” Linda broke in.

  She took his hand. The fingers that grabbed onto hers so hungrily were surprisingly strong.

  “Anna Westin, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve never had a pupil by that name. My memory is not what it once was, but I can still remember all their names. They are the only ones who have given my life any meaning since Mariana was taken by the gods.”

  Linda didn’t know if there was any point in continuing the conversation. There was really only one thing left to ask.

  “Do you know anyone by the name of Torgeir Langaas? I’m looking for him.”

  But Frans Vigsten was lost in dreamland again. He picked out some notes on the piano with his free hand.

  “Torgeir Langaas,” she repeated. “A Norwegian.”

  “I have had many Norwegian pupils. The one I remember best was Trond Ørje. He was from Rauland and a wonderful baritone, but he was so shy he could only pull it off in the recording studio. He was the most remarkable baritone and the most remarkable person I ever met in my life. He cried with consternation when I told him he had talent. A remarkable man. There are others. ...”

  Linda got up. She was never going to get a sensible answer out of him. It also seemed unlikely to her that Anna had had any contact with him.

  She left the room without saying good-bye. As she walked to the front door, she heard him start playing on the piano. She glanced into the other rooms on her way out. The apartment was a mess and the air was stale. A lonely man who only has his music, she thought. Just like my grandfather and his painting. What am I going to do when I get old? What about Dad? And what about Mom—the bottle?

  She lifted her jacket from the hook in the hall. Music filled the apartment. She stood motionless and studied the clothes hanging by the door. Vigsten might be a lonely old man, but he had a coat and a pair of shoes that did not belong to an old man. She glanced back into the apartment. There was no one there. But she already knew that Frans Vigsten did not live alone. Fear flooded her so quickly that she jumped. The music stopped, and she listened for any sounds. Then she fled, running across the street to the car, and driving away as fast as she could. She only started to calm down when she was back on the Öresund Bridge heading home.

  At the same time that Linda was driving over the bridge, a man broke into the Ystad pet store. He doused the rows of caged birds, hamsters, and mice with gasoline, threw a match on the floor, and left just as the animals caught fire.

  PART III

  the noose

  30

  He chose the location for his ceremonies with great care. This was something he had learned as early as during his flight from Jonestown: where could he rest, where would he feel safe? There were no ceremonies as such in his world back then; that came later, when he had reestablished a connection to God that was finally going to help fill the emptiness that threatened to consume him from the inside.

  Now it was more important than ever not to make any mistakes in selecting the places where his assistants prepared their assignments. Everything had gone well until now, until the unfortunate incident where a woman accidentally hit upon one of their hideouts and was killed by his disciple, Torgeir.

  I never saw Torgeir’s weakness for what it was, he thought. The poor little rich boy that I plucked out of the sewer in Cleveland had a temper I never succeeded in taming. I treated him with infinite patience and listened to him talk. But he carried a powerful rage behind those locked doors.

  He had tried to get Torgeir to explain his actions. Why this senseless fury at a woman stumbling down the wrong path? They had even talked about what they should do in the event that someone chose to follow the abandoned path one day. They always had to remain alert to the possibility that the unexpected could happen. Torgeir had not been able to give him an answer. The plan had always been to meet unexpected visitors in a cordial fashion, then remove themselves from the area as soon as was practical. Torgeir had chosen the opposite approach. A fuse had blown in his brain. Instead of giving the woman a friendly welcome, he had reached for an axe. Why he dismembered her body he couldn’t say, nor why he saved the head and posed the hands as if in prayer. Then he had put the remaining body parts in a sack with a heavy rock, removed his clothes, and swum out into the middle of the nearest pond, where he let the whole parcel sink to the bottom.

  Torgeir was strong—that had been among his first impressions of the drunk man he encountered in one of Cleveland’s worst slums. He was simply going to walk on when he heard the man sprawled in the gutter moan a few slurred words in a language that sounded like Danish or N
orwegian. He had stopped and bent down, understanding that God had sent this man his way. Torgeir Langaas had been near death. The physician who later examined him and prepared the rehabilitation program had been very insistent on this point: there was no room left for any more alcohol or drugs in his body. Only his natural strength had saved him. But now his organs were using their last reserves. His brain was damaged and would perhaps never recover large portions of memory that were missing.

  It was a moment he would always remember, the day when a homeless Norwegian by the name of Torgeir Langaas looked up at him with eyes so bloodshot they glowed like a rabid dog’s. But it wasn’t the look that had made such an impression, it was what he said, because in Torgeir’s confused mind the face bending down toward him belonged to God. He had grabbed his coat with his massive hands and directed his putrid breath into his redeemer’s face.

  “Are you God?” Torgeir asked.

  In that moment everything that had been unresolved in his life—his failures, dreams, and hopes—were reduced to a single point, and he answered:

  “Yes, I am your God.”

  In the next moment he had been beset with doubts, although there was no reason his first disciple couldn’t be one of the lowest. But who was he? How had he ended up here?

  He had walked away and left Torgeir there, but his curiosity got the better of him. He returned to the slum the very next day. It’s like stepping down into hell, he thought, lost souls everywhere. In looking for Torgeir he came close to being mugged several times, but at last an old man with an oozing, stinking sore in the place where his left eye should have been told him that there was a Norwegian with large hands who sometimes took shelter behind a rusty bridge pillar. That was where he found him. Torgeir Langaas was sleeping, snoring loudly. His body reeked of sweat and urine and his face was badly cut.

  It didn’t take more than a couple of sessions under the crumbling bridge to get Torgeir’s life story. He had been born in Baerum in 1948, heir to the Langaas shipping enterprise, a company that specialized in oil and cars. His father, Captain Anton Helge Langaas, had studied the shipping industry during his years at sea. Langaas Shipping was an offshoot of the established Refsvold Shipping Company. The parting had not been amicable. Nor was it known where Captain Helge Langaas had initially made the fortune that forced the unwilling board members of the Refsvold Shipping Company to admit him into their midst. Rumors abounded.

  Captain Langaas waited to marry until his company was in the black and he was financially secure. In a gesture of contempt for the shipping aristocracy, he chose a wife who was as far from the sea as it was possible to be and still be in Norway, from a village in the forests east of Røros. There he found a woman called Maigrim who delivered mail to the isolated farms of the region. They built a large house in Baerum outside Oslo and had three children one after the other: Torgeir, and then two girls, Anniken and Hege.

  Torgeir Langaas sensed what his parents wanted of him from an early age, but realized just as early that he would never be able to live up to their expectations. He never quite understood the role he was supposed to play in life, nor what the play was about, nor why he had been chosen for the starring role. He started rebelling in early adolescence. Captain Langaas fought a battle that was doomed from the outset. Finally he capitulated and realized that Torgeir would never take over his place in the family business. Instead, he turned to his daughters. Hege resembled her father, showed a focused determination even as a child, and retained an executive position within the company at twenty-two years of age. At that point Torgeir had already started his long slide into oblivion with a focused determination of his own. He had already developed several addictions, and despite Maigrim’s best efforts, none of the expensive clinics nor therapists called in to help did any good.

  The final breakdown came one Christmas. Torgeir gave his family presents of rotting meat, old tires, and dirty cobblestones. Afterward he tried to set fire to himself, his sisters, and his parents. He ran away, with no intention of ever returning, a considerable amount of money to his name. When his passport expired and was not renewed, he was wanted by the International Police, but no one found him in the Cleveland streets where he was drifting. He kept his financial assets hidden from those around him, changing his bank, changing everything except his name. He still had five million Norwegian crowns to his name when the man he came to see as his savior turned up in his life.

  But I did not take adequate stock of his weakness, he thought again. The rage that would lead to uncontrolled violence. Torgeir was blinded by his fury and hacked the woman to pieces. But there was also something of value even in this unexpected reaction and capacity for brutality. Setting fire to animals was one thing, killing a person quite another. Apparently Torgeir would not hesitate to commit such an act. Now that all the necessary animals had been sacrificed, they would proceed to the next level: human sacrifice.

  They met at the Ystad train station. Torgeir had taken the train from Copenhagen, since he sometimes lost his sense of concentration when driving. Torgeir had bathed—that was part of the purification process that always preceded the ritual sacrifice. It was important to be clean. Jesus always washed his feet. He had explained to Torgeir that everything was there in the Bible. It was their map, their guide.

  Torgeir carried a small black bag in his hand. He knew what was in it and did not have to ask. Torgeir had long since proved himself to be reliable—except with regard to the woman in the forest, which had caused an unnecessary amount of publicity and activity. Newspapers and television stations were still broadcasting the news. The act they were planning now had already been postponed for two days, and he had felt it best that Torgeir use his Copenhagen hideout while they lay low and waited it out.

  They walked up toward the center of town, turned a corner when they reached the post office, and continued on to the pet store. There were no customers inside. The woman behind the counter was young. She was busy putting cans of cat food on a shelf when they arrived. There were hamsters, kittens, and birds in the cages. Torgeir smiled but said nothing; there was no point in letting her hear his Norwegian accent. While Torgeir walked around the store and made a mental note of how he would carry out his actions, his savior selected and bought a packet of birdseed. Then they left the store and walked down past the theater and toward the harbor. It was a warm day, and a number of sailboats were still coming and going.

  That was the second part of their preparations, to be close to the water. Once, they had met by the shores of Lake Erie, and from then on they always sought out a body of water when they had important preparations to make.

  “The cages are close together,” Torgeir said. “I’ll spray with both hands in either direction, light the lighter, and run. Everything will be on fire within a few seconds.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I say: ‘The Lord’s will be done.’ ”

  “And then?”

  “I go to the left, then right. Not too fast, not too slow. I stop on the main square and make sure no one is following me. Then I walk up to the newsstand by the hospital, where you’ll be waiting.”

  They paused their conversation and looked at a small boat on its way into the harbor. The engine was loud and hacking.

  “These are the last animals. We have reached our first goal.”

  Torgeir was about to kneel right then and there on the pier. He dragged him up by his arm.

  “Never in public.”

  “I forgot.”

  “Are you calm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who am I?”

  “My father, my shepherd, my savior, my God.”

  “Who are you?”

  “The first disciple. Found on a street in Cleveland, saved and helped back into life. I am the first apostle.”

  “What else?”

  “The first priest.”

  Once I made sandals for a living, he thought. I dreamed of greater things and had to run away to escape my shame, my s
ense of failure, my sense of having destroyed those dreams by my inability to live up to them. Now I make people in the same way I once cut out soles, insteps, and straps.

  It was four o’clock. They walked around the city and sat on various park benches, remaining silent the whole time. They were past words now. From time to time he looked over at Torgeir. He seemed calm and focused on the task at hand.

  I’ve made him happy, he thought. A man who grew up spoiled but also stifled and desperately unhappy. Now I bring joy to his life by taking him seriously and giving him a purpose.

  They wandered from bench to bench until it was seven o’clock. The pet store closed at six. Many people were out in the streets in the warm evening. That was to their advantage.

  They went their separate ways. He walked up to the main square and turned around. Their plans ticked like a timer in his head. Now Torgeir was breaking down the front door with the crowbar. Now he was inside, closing the broken door behind him, listening for signs of anyone in the store. Now he was dropping the bag, taking out the bottles of gasoline and the lighter.

  He heard the boom and thought he saw a flash of light behind the buildings. A plume of smoke rose up into the sky. He turned and started walking away. He heard the first sirens even before he had made it to the appointed meeting place.

  It’s over, he thought. We are reviving the Christian faith, the Christian dictates of a righteous life. The long years in the desert have come to an end.

  The simple beast who feels pain but lacks comprehension is no longer our concern.

  Now we turn to the human being.

  31

  When Linda got out of the car at Mariagatan, she smelled something that reminded her of a week-long vacation she had taken with Herman Mboya to Morocco. They had chosen the cheapest package deal and bunked in a cockroach hotel. It was during that week that she had begun to think they didn’t have a future together. The following year they had gone their separate ways; Herman had returned to Africa and she had started down the path that finally led her to the police academy.