Out Stealing Horses (2 page)

He seems a bit embarrassed. I probably would be if it were
my
dog. I don't know what I would do if Lyra had run off, whether I would go out by myself to search for her.

'Did you know that they say the border collie is the most intelligent dog in the world?' he said.

'I have heard that,' I said.

'He is smarter than I am, Poker, and he knows it.' My neighbour shook his head. 'He's about to take charge, I'm afraid.'

'Well, that's not so good,' I said.

'No,' he said.

It struck me that we had never really introduced ourselves, so I raised my hand, shining the torch on it so he could see it and said:

'Trond Sander.' That confused him. It took him a moment or two to change his torch to his left hand and take my right hand with his, and then he said:

'Lars. Lars Haug. With a g.'

'How do you do?' I said, and it sounded as bizarre and strange out there in the dark night as when my father said 'Condolences' at a funeral in the depths of the forest many, many years ago, and immediately I regretted saying those four words, but Lars Haug did not seem to notice. Maybe he thought it was the proper thing to say, and that the situation was no odder than it might be whenever grown men greet each other in a field.

There was silence all around us. There had been days and nights of rain and wind and incessant roaring in the pines and the spruce, but now there was absolute stillness in the forest, not a shadow moving, and we stood still, my neighbour and I, staring into the dark, then I felt certain there was something behind me. I could not escape the sudden feeling of sheer cold down my back, and Lars Haug felt it too; he directed his torchlight at a point a couple of metres past me, and I turned, and there stood Poker, quite stiff and on guard. I have seen that before, how a dog can both sense and show the feeling of guilt, and like most of us it was something it did not like, especially when its owner started talking to it in an almost childlike tone of voice, which did not go well with the weather-beaten, lined face of a man who had undoubtedly been out on a cold night before and dealt with wayward things, complicated things in a contrary wind, things of high gravity—I could tell that when we shook hands.

'Ah, where have you been, Poker, you stupid dog, been disobedient to your daddy again? Shame on you, bad boy, shame on you, that's no way to behave,' and he took a step towards the dog, and it started growling deep down in its throat, flattening its ears. Lars Haug stopped in his tracks. He let his torch sink until it shone directly on the ground, and I could just pick out the white patches of the dog's coat, the black ones blending with the night, and it all looked strangely at odds and unsymmetrical as the growl low in the animal's throat went on from a slightly less definite point, and my neighbour said:

'I have shot a dog once before, and I promised myself then that I would never do it again. But now I don't know.' He had lost his confidence, it was clear, he could not work out his next move, and I suddenly felt desperately sorry for him. The feeling welled up from I don't know where, from some place out in the dark, where something might have happened in a different time entirely, or from somewhere in my own life I had long since forgotten, and it made me embarrassed and ill at ease. I cleared my throat and in a voice I could not wholly control I said:

'What kind of dog was it that you had to shoot?'

Although I do not think that that was what I was interested in, I had to say something to calm the sudden trembling in my chest.

An Alsatian. But it was not mine. It happened on the farm where I grew up. My mother saw it first. It ran around at the edge of the forest hunting roe deer: two terrified young fauns we had several times seen from the window grazing in the brushwood at the edge of the north meadow. They always kept close, and they did so then. The Alsatian chased them, encircled them, bit at their hocks, and they were exhausted and didn't stand a chance. My mother could not bear to look any longer, so she phoned the bailiff and asked him what to do, and he said: 'You'll just have to shoot it.'

'That's a job for you, Lars,' she said when she had put the receiver down. 'Do you think you can manage it?' I didn't want to, I must say, I hardly ever touched that gun, but I felt really sorry for the fauns, and I couldn't exactly ask
her
to do it, and there was no-one else at home. My big brother was away at sea, and my step-father was in the forest felling timber for the neighbouring farmer as he usually did at that time of year. So I fetched the gun and walked across the meadow towards the forest. When I got there I couldn't see the dog anywhere. I stood still listening. It was autumn, the air was really clear in the middle of the day, and the quietness was almost uncanny. I turned and looked back to the house, where I knew my mother was by the window watching everything I did. She was not going to let me off. I looked into the forest again, along a path, and there suddenly I saw the two roe deer running in my direction. I knelt down and raised the gun and laid my cheek to the barrel, and the big fauns were so frantic with terror that they did not notice me, or they had not the strength to worry about yet another enemy. They did not change course at all, but ran straight at me and rushed past a hand's breadth from my shoulder, I heard them panting and saw the whites of their wide staring eyes.'

Lars Haug paused, raised the torch and shone it on Poker, who had not moved from his place just behind me. I did not turn, but I heard the dog's low growl. It was a disturbing sound, and the man in front of me bit his lip and ran the fingers of his left hand over his forehead with an uncertain movement before he went on.

'Thirty metres after them came the Alsatian. It was a huge beast. I fired immediately. I am sure I hit it, but it did not change speed or direction, a shudder might have run through its body, I really don't know, so I fired again, and it went down on its knees and got up again and kept on running. I was quite desperate and let off a third round, it was just a few metres from me, and it somersaulted and fell with its legs in the air and slid right up to the toes of my boots. But it was not dead. It lay there paralysed, looking straight up at me, and I felt sorry for it then, I must say, so I bent down to give it a last pat on the head, and it growled and snapped at my hand. I jumped back. It made me furious and I gave it two more rounds right through the head.'

Lars Haug stood there with his face barely visible, the torch hanging tiredly from his hand, throwing only a small yellow disc of light on the ground. Pine needles. Pebbles. Two fir-cones. Poker stood dead still without a sound, and I wondered whether dogs can hold their breath.

'Bloody hell,' I said.

'I was just eighteen,' he said. 'It's long ago, but I shall never forget it.'

'Then I can well understand why you will never shoot a dog again,' I said.

'We'll see about that/ said Lars Haug. 'But now I'd better take this one inside. It is late. Come, Poker/ he said, his voice sharp now, and started to walk down the road. Poker followed him obediently, some metres behind. When they came to the little bridge, Lars Haug stopped and waved his torch.

'Thank you for the company/ he said through the darkness. I waved my torch and turned to walk up the gentle slope to the house and opened the door and went into the lighted hall. For some reason I locked the door behind me, something I have not done since I moved out here. I did not like doing it, but all the same I did. I undressed and lay down in bed under the duvet staring at the ceiling waiting for the warmth to come. I felt a bit foolish. Then I closed my eyes. At some point while I was asleep it started to snow, and I am sure I was aware of it, in my sleep, that the weather changed and grew colder, and I knew I feared the winter, and I feared the snow if there was too much of it, and the fact that I had put myself in an impossible position, moving here. So then I dreamt fiercely about summer and it was still in my head when I woke up. I could have dreamt of any summer at all, but I did not, it turned out to be a very special summer, and I still think of it now when I sit at the kitchen table watching the light spread above the trees by the lake. Nothing looks as it did last night, and I cannot think of a single reason for locking the door. I am tired, but not as tired as I expected to be. I will last until evening, I know I will. I get up from the table, a little stiff, that back is not what it used to be, and Lyra, by the stove, raises her head and looks at me. Are we going out again? We are not, not yet. I have enough to do, thinking about this summer, which begins to trouble me. And that it has not done for many years.

2

WE WERE GOING OUT STEALING HORSES. That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and one of the first days of July. Three years earlier the Germans had left, but I can't remember that we talked about them any longer. At least my father did not. He never said anything about the war.

Jon came often to our door, at all hours, wanting me to go out with him: shooting hares, walking through the forest in the pale moonlight right up to the top of the ridge when it was perfectly quiet, fishing for trout in the river, balancing on the shining yellow logs that still sailed the current close to our cabin long after the clearing of the river was done. It was risky, but I never said no and never said anything to my father about what we were up to. We could s'ee a stretch of the river from the kitchen window, but it was not there that we did our balancing acts. We always started further down, nearly a kilometre, and sometimes we went so far and so fast on the logs that it took us an hour to walk back through the forest when at last we had scrambled onto the bank, soaking wet and shivering.

Jon wanted no company but mine. He had two younger brothers, the twins Lars and Odd, but he and I were the same age. I do not know who he was with for the rest of the year, when I was in Oslo. He never talked about that, and I never told him what I did in the city.

He never knocked, just came quietly up the path from the river where his little boat was tied up, and waited at the door until I became aware that he was there. It never took long. Even in the morning early when I was still asleep, I might feel a restlessness far into my dream, as if I needed to pee and struggled to wake up before it was too late, and then when I opened my eyes and knew it wasn't
that,
I went directly to the door and opened it, and there he was. He smiled his little smile and squinted as he always did.

'Are you coming?' he said. 'We're going out stealing horses.'

It turned out that
we
meant only him and me as usual, and if I had not gone with him he would have gone alone, and that would have been no fun. Besides, it was hard to steal horses alone. Impossible, in fact.

'Have you been waiting long?' I said.

'I just got here.'

That's what he always said, and I never knew if it was true. I stood on the doorstep in only my underpants and looked over his shoulder. It was already light. There were wisps of mist on the river, and it was a little cold. It would soon warm up, but now I felt goose pimples spread over my thighs and stomach. Yet I stood there looking down to the river, watching it coming from round the bend a little further up, shining and soft from under the mist, and flow past. I knew it by heart. I had dreamt about it all winter.

'Which horses?' I said.

'Barkald's horses. He keeps them in the paddock in the forest, behind the farm.'

'I know. Come inside while I get dressed.'

'I'll wait here,' he said.

He never would come inside, maybe because of my father. He never spoke to my father. Never said hello to him. Just looked down when they passed each other on the way to the shop. Then my father would stop and turn round to look at him and say:

'Wasn't that Jon?'

'Yes,' I said.

'What's wrong with him?' said my father every time, as if embarrassed, and each time I said:

'I don't know.'

And in fact I did not, and I never thought to ask. Now Jon stood on the doorstep that was only a flagstone, gazing down at the river while I fetched my clothes from the back of one of the tree-trunk chairs, and pulled them on as quickly as I could. I did not like him having to stand there waiting, even though the door was open so he could see me the whole time.

Clearly I ought to have understood there was something special about that July morning, something to do with the fog on the river and the mist over the ridge perhaps, something about the white light in the sky, something in the way Jon said what he had to say or the way he moved or stood there stock still at the door. But I was only fifteen, and the only thing I noticed was that he did not carry the gun he always had with him in case a hare should cross our path, and that was not so strange, it would only have been in the way rustling horses. We weren't going to shoot the horses, after all. As far as I could see, he was the same as he always was: calm and intense at one and the same time with his eyes squinting, concentrating on what we were going to do, with no sign of impatience. That suited me well, for it was no secret that compared with him I was a slowcoach in most of our exploits. He had years of training behind him. The only thing I was good at was riding logs down the river, I had a built-in balance, a natural talent, Jon thought, though that was not how he would have put it.

What he had taught me was to be reckless, taught me that if I let myself go, did not slow myself down by thinking so much beforehand I could achieve many things I would never have dreamt possible.

'OK. Ready, steady, go,' I said.

We set off together down the path to the river. It was very early. The sun came gliding over the ridge with its fan of light and gave to everything a brand-new colour, and what was left of the fog above the water melted and disappeared. I felt the instant warmth through my sweater and closed my eyes and walked on without once missing my footing until I knew we had got to the bank. Then I opened my eyes and clambered down the stream-washed boulders and into the stern of the little boat. Jon pushed off and jumped in, picked up the oars and rowed with short, hard strokes straight into the stream, let the boat drift a stretch and rowed again until we reached the opposite shore about fifty metres further down. Far enough for the boat not to be seen from the cottage.