This is primarily a love story; sex will occur sporadically, not in every other paragraph.
Love will never abide by religion or by law. Love can be punished, but it cannot be cured. Love is the ultimate anarchist. The term "sin" is meaningless in love's language, as is the term "underage".
If you disagree with this statement, go find another story to read.
If some law says you should not be here at all, it's your own choice to stay or go away.
If you should happen to like my story, please tell me: winterboy@tutanota.com
And please remember: http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html
Note:
As you, my dear readers, may have gathered from the excerpts from Sander's diaries 2018, this story does not have a happy ending. Some of you may hate me for this, but it's been on the cards from the start, and I want to stay true to my original plan.
THE SOUND OF HIS FOOTSTEPS
Magnus Winter
CHAPTER 12
The click of the key in the lock, the sound of his footsteps in the hall. Thomas comes into the kitchen carrying a bunch of papers in a clear plastic folder.
"Can I use your typewriter?"
"Sure. It's on the floor under the desk in the bedroom. You can sit there, if you like."
Quick as a flash he disappears, almost as if he has a secret. Sander continues what he had just started, cleaning the baking oven. One of the screws holding the double glass doors in place is bent, and he struggles for a long time to open up so the inside of the glass can be properly cleansed. The racks and the pans are already in the dishwasher, he puts on rubber gloves and dives in to remove the burnt and blackened fat that sticks to the inside. Why would he never take time to do this a little more often? When was the last time, before Christmas last year? And why hadn't he remembered to check if the spray can with oven cleaner still had something in it, instead of being as good as empty? He swears and curses himself as he starts with scouring cream and a stiff brush.
It takes the better part of an hour to finish the job. He makes cocoa with milk, brings two cups into the bedroom. And he sees what Thomas is busy doing.
"Job applications? I though you were happy with your current job?"
Thomas turns away from him. Sits for a small eternity and stares at his feet. Finally his voice comes out, timid, almost sheepish.
"I want to be with you. All the time. If you want to ... "
He turns to Sander, his glittering eyes bottomless, heavy with questions, fearful of answers. Sander kneels down and lays his head in Thomas' lap, feels a hand lightly touch his hair, then feathery fingers caress his hairline, his ears, his jaw.
It's as if Sander's years of misery and loss, of frustration and agony, of black, black hatred, unfasten themselves and disconnect, like scabs off wounds. The disturbing longing for the teenage body fades and evaporates, in stead he is enveloped in a new certainty: Whatever was broken, it is whole again. Nothing is missing. I am complete. Thomas is complete. And he is larger than I ever dreamt he would be, he is more than I ever wanted.
And a world without frontiers opens up to him, like a promise, like a knowledge, like an epiphany, as he lifts his head and his lips seek Thomas' lips.
Lips locked together, they rise and Sander backs him towards the bed. Fingers unbutton shirts, skin touches skin. Thomas holds Sander's face between his hands as Sander caresses his buttocks. He tries to speak, but Sander won't let go of his lips, and his sentence floats like cloudy noises into Sander's mouth. Sander hears it anyway: "What do you want?"
"I want you now. And I want you tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow." He kisses Thomas again. "And next year.
And ... "
His lips move down, his tongue tastes the skin on Thomas' throat, revels in the silkiness and firmness. Down his still hairless chest, oh, the joy! and seeks his nipple as his hands sweep Thomas' shirt off.
Thomas, flat on his back now, moans almost inaudibly as Sander kisses his belly and unfastens his belt. Sander lifts his head and watches as he opens Thomas' jeans, pulls them down along with his underwear, and sees that magnificent cock slowly come into view, bent down before it flops loose and smacks loudly against his stomach.
Sander buries his face in the musky darkness between his legs, inhales the intoxicating scent of the essential Thomas. This is all that exists, this is where he knows he belongs. The tip of his tongue seeks into the depths and finds the tight, small orifice, his hand closes around Thomas' long, lovely cock as his tongue teases him open. Blood pounds in his ears, he doesn't hear Thomas whisper:
"It's you. It's always been you."
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
→ Sander → → Diary 2018
Here's religion:
Somewhere, some place in some heaven there's a small, dingy and dusty office. Here sits a small, grey and shriveled demiurge with a huge ledger in front of him, crossing out days in blue or red ink. In the column headed Aleksander Sveen he has until now crossed out 23737 days. Of these, 229 are marked red. That's less than 1%. He has put the red ink away.
On the other hand: There is no god. There is no goddess. There is no devil. There are no angels, flying or falling.
The Universe is blind. Nature is neither wild nor cruel, it just is. But could it be, could it be that there is such a thing as soul? A soul that some of us carry in our bodies, and those of us that have no bodies to carry it in anymore still have it somewhere?. And everyone, living or dead, lovers or murderers, saints or sinners, are equal in the sense that no one is bigger, no one is smaller, no one is better, no one is worse, all are permeated, all are saturated with this elusive and untouchable something they call soul? And if that is so, does it matter? Does it make the slightest difference?
Here's religion:
I believe in the eternal life of nature. I believe in the immortal soul of every grain of pollen, of every seed, of every drop of sperm.
I believe in another heaven where I naked, open and unrestricted was pumped full of Thomas' soul. Where I naked, elated and unreserved pumped Thomas full of my soul.
And even when every cell is dust and every molecule is dissolved, this soul will last forever. Forever.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
E6, January 6, 1990
He isn't used to this car. He regrets not having asked his father to borrow his car instead of Sander's. The roads are slippery and icy, the storm whips the dense snow against the windshield, the wipers clog up and fail to clear the snow away. Every now and then he has to stop the car, go out in the harsh weather and scrape off the thick cakes of icy snow gathered on the rubber of the wipers.
The snowplow hasn't yet cleared the road, some places it's impossible to see where the road ends and the shoulder starts. He is impatient, he wants to get back to the city without all this delay, but he knows there's nothing he can do, this is going to be a slow ride. The wipers clog up again. He can vaguely make out the sign for a picnic place a little further ahead, he'll stop there and fix the wipers.
He has just turned on the blinker to turn right when the huge truck suddenly fills his windshield. He doesn't even have time to scream. In a flash he sees his mother's dissatisfied face before all the lights go out.
Sander is trampling restlessly from room to room. Where is he? He should have been here more than an hour ago! His annoyance trembles in his chest, in his fingers, in his jaw. Couldn't he at least call to say he is delayed? The lasagna has already sat for too long in the oven, he has to take it out. Damn, it never tastes the same when it's reheated. Shit, shit!
Doorbell rings. Female voice comes through the callbox. Police. May we come in?
There's two of them. A man and a woman, both in uniform. The female officer introduces them.
"You are Aleksander Sveen?"
He nods.
"Are you the owner of a Mercedes 250E license number DF 80604?"
He nods again, wary now.
"Is Thomas Olsen an acquaintance of yours?"
He leans against the wall, his knees are about to buckle. Goosebumps rush like pointed knives all over him. He swallows. And swallows again. The officers notice his face go white.
"Is there a place we can sit?"
He nods in the direction of the dining room. Sinks down on a chair by the table, unable to look up. The female officer sits down facing him, the man vanishes into the kitchen, comes back with a glass of water that he places in front of Sander. They both watch him intently. The woman speaks.
"There has been an accident on the E6 south of Hamar, and your car was involved. The accident was serious, your car is totaled, and the driver is flown to the hospital. His next of kin is notified, and since it's your car, you need to be informed too."
Sander's brain locks up completely, he folds his arms tightly around his chest and starts to rock back and forth on his chair. This is not possible. This is a bad dream, I'll wake up any minute now. You can't do this to me!
"Thomas?" he finally croaks. "How is he?"
He looks up with a pained face, eyes blind from anguish, disbelief and powerlessness. His whole being is a silent scream.
"Our only information is that he was taken to the hospital. Is he a good friend of yours?"
Sander continues his rocking. His breathing is short and sharp like an axe chopping wood.
"A good friend? Of course he is!" His voice is shaky, words come out like stabs, directed not at them, but at himself. He's not a friend ... He's the whole goddamned world! Oh god ... god, what am I going to do?
The officers observe him. The man looks uncomfortable, slightly awkward, the woman gets up and touches his shoulder.
"Take a sip of water. Don't think the worst. He was alive when the helicopter came for him."
Sander somehow manages to pull himself together. Straightens his back, shudders. Breathes deeply in and out, focuses on their faces. Feels he can mobilize a certain hostility and project it onto them, this will help him cope. His voice becomes acid and cold.
"I'm sorry if I have embarrassed myself. It's not always easy to ... to control feelings. Would you mind leaving now?"
Sander feels like he's walking through a maze. Time and time again he has to seek out his way, address someone, explain himself, justify himself. What is your business? Are you next of kin? Questions, skepticism, ill will. When he finally finds the emergency ward, another obstacle materializes.
"You are not on our list of relatives."
"Listen, he's my friend! He's my lover! It was my car!"
He pulls out his wallet, extracts a photo: Thomas and himself in front of their Christmas tree.
"Would I carry this with me if it wasn't true?"
In the end they give in. He is led through doors and left to wait in the middle of a row of uncomfortable chairs. The huge lump in his chest grows and becomes unbearable, he gets up and wanders aimlessly around, repeating Thomas' name in his mind, like a mantra, like a prayer.
A nurse finally comes up to him and takes him into a small anteroom where he is told to wash and disinfect his hands. Then he's taken into the main room.
The sight that meets him is like a punch in the gut. The room is blindingly lit, and filled with an eerie, rhythmic wheezing sound pierced every ten seconds by a series of three sharp beeps. He feels like he's been transferred into a Science Fiction movie: The bed is surrounded by sinister-looking machines and monitors with ominous curves snaking across them, the prostrate figure on the bed seems almost hidden in the amount of tubes and wires. But it's him, it's his Thomas lying there, so pale, so still. Sander feels like he's suffocating, everything inside him goes into lock-down. He whispers to the nurse.
"Can I touch him?"
"By all means. Just make sure you don't move him. Or anything else."
Sanders folds his fingers around Thomas' hand. His face, so pale with eyes shut, seems so far, far away, his body so distant and unreachable. Sander flinches from a small coughing sound, there's a tiny movement at Thomas' lips, like he's trying to get rid of the thick tube that goes into his mouth and throat. A flicker of hope soars through Sander's heart and lights up a small corner of the unfathomable picture he's looking at, but the movement does not return. All that's there is the weak rise and fall of his chest in time with the wheezing respirator.
Sander pulls up a chair and sits as close to the bed as space allows. Bends carefully over, lightly kisses Thomas' ear and whispers:
"Please come back to me, Tomas, you can't leave me now, you're supposed to be with me, Thomas, always, always, you know that? I need you so badly, I can't lose you again, Thomas, I love you so much, I love you, I love you ...Don't leave me, Thomas ... "
He has to stop. His words choke him. He sobs a few times. Don't cry now, you can't cry now, you have to be strong for him. He keeps Thomas' hand secure in his own, tries to concentrate all his willpower, all his strength, all his furious love into this sole thought: Live, Thomas! Live!
Jan Ola Braathen enters and breaks into Sander's bell jar. His face looks as if it's going to fall off, his narrowed eyes are moist, his whole demeanor looks defeated. Sander heaves a strained breath, rises and leaves the chair for the father to sit at his son's bed.
Hours pass. Sander and Jan Ola switch places every now and then, both respectful of the other person's need to be alone with Thomas. But eventually they're summoned by a doctor they haven't seen before who wants to talk them outside.
They hadn't found a donor card among Thomas possessions. Would any of them know anything about his attitude towards organ donation? Sander reacts as if he'd been head-butted, everything inside him explodes. Organ donation? But he's not dead!
Oh yes. According to the doctor, he is. His brain is dead, he's only kept artificially alive to wait for the decision regarding his organs. Sander is torn apart, nothing makes sense, he gapes at the doctor and at Jan Ola as if they're creatures from a nightmare. His body goes colder than ice.
"I won't ... I can't ... " he stutters, then points at Thomas' father. "You have to deal with this ... I don't know ... I can't ..."
He tries to sink into the chair and disappear. But suddenly there's something urgent, something vital he has to do. He runs back into the room where Thomas lies, and while the respirator still sings its monotonous, hoarse song he kisses Thomas' forehead, his cheek, his ear:
"Thomas. My love, my boy in the hallway, they tell me you're dead. I don't know if they're right, but I have to tell you this anyway."
He caresses the pale skin, the shoulder, the arm.
"Forgive me, Thomas, but I was the one who got your mother killed. It wasn't meant to happen, it just ... it was an accident. And now you're leaving too. Forever. And I've no idea what I'll do without you."
He gets up, everything is unreal. Everything is a haze.
"Good night, Thomas," he chokes as his tears pour out and blind him.
He doesn't ask Jan Ola if a decision has been made. Doesn't say a thing, he just stands in front of the man, puzzled, helpless. Stares at the floor, then up again, as if he is trying to find some way out of this absurdity.
A hard voice penetrates his fog.
"I want you to leave. I don't want to talk to you. I can't stand even seeing you now! If you hadn't come looking for him last autumn, he would have been alive! God damn you to hell!"
EPILOGUE
Hamar 02.02.89
Mr Aleksander Sveen.
The Holy Almighty God has called me and chosen me among many to bear witness of the sin and debauchery you and others with you have desired to live your lives in, and to declare the punishment the Lord has prepared for you. And the Lord said: The Outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous! Genesis 18:20
Time has come for you to think through what you have done. You led my son astray and set him on the way to damnation. You lured him into acts that are an abomination to the Lord. If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. Leviticus 20:13
You stole my son from me .Anyone who steals from a mother and says, "What's wrong with that?" is no better than a murderer. Proverbs 28:24. You turned my son against me, you made him commit a sin against the Word of God, for it is written in Paul's letter to the Colossians Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. You seduced my son to a life in sin, you waylaid him and planted the seed of ungodliness in him. If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come! Matthew 18:6-7.
The Lord shall hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the flesh. 2 Peter 2:9.
Every time you touch another man with your impure purposes, the blood of grief and pain runs from the wounds of Jesus. Even the merciful God will have no forgiveness to give to those who with their eyes open turn from His path and devote themselves to the pursuit of lechery and submit to the power of the Devil.
My heart and my soul rejoices in the knowledge that the Lord's punishment will soon come over you.
With regards, Elisabeth Olsen.
This was the first letter. It dumbfounded Sander. He tried to dismiss it from his mind, but it stuck there and started to fester. It was like he had got shit all over him and couldn't clean it off. It felt like rape.
More letters came during spring. He opened one more, the rest he burned unread. If the purpose of these assaults were to make him repent, they failed spectacularly. If the intention was to blow on old embers of hatred, they succeeded to the full.
And then one day in early June: Someone must have let her in through the gate, because suddenly she stood at the door to his apartment. A figure with greying, unwashed hair, dressed in a shapeless beige coat and red rubber boots. He only recognized her from the eyes.
My God, how disgust and loathing rose in him. And fear. Who knew what this person was capable of? He told her to go to hell. She put her foot in the door gap, stared at him with something deeply unpleasant in her gaze. Spat out words knitted together by madness, almost triumphantly:
"It will be spoilt for you! All of it! I will destroy you and your evil ways! Like God has told me to do! You can't escape the wrath of God!"
Sander was speechless, the whole absurd situation was close to paralyzing him. Finally he managed to pull himself together and tell her to get the hell out of there before he called the police. She just laughed. An ugly laugh.
"Do you think the police can stop God? Are you stupid? God has sent me to tell you that you will burn in hell! It's the word of the Lord! You are doomed, it is too late to be saved!"
He kicked her foot as hard as he could, she stumbled backwards and he shut the door. She remained on the outside, banging on the door, shouting and ranting. Wanting to shut her noise out, he escaped to the livingroom and put music on loud. Eventually the noise from outside subsided.
His body shook with rage, cold sweat covered his skin. This woman, had she gone completely bonkers? Hadn't she ruined enough in Tromsø? What the fuck was she on about now, more than six years later? God dammit, crazy or not, he would make her pay for this. This, and all she had broken and killed those years ago.
First he thought about the police. Then he thought about his lawyer. But it wouldn't be enough, he realized he needed his revenge to be personal, involved. Something that would satisfy the raging hatred in him, this hatred that grew like mold on old cheese. He needed to crush her as she had crushed him. He had to do something that would release him from this all-consuming fury.
The more he let himself sink into this stinking swamp of bitterness and anger, the more frustrated he became. What could he do? How could he possibly reach her in any way? But he had to find a way to let this black sewage of hatred that infested him out. And suddenly a sentence uttered some time ago in a different setting came into his mind, bright and clear as glass. His burning wish for revenge took a new form and matured in him.
He never thought it would be as easy as it turned out to be. To order a crime, for in his head that was what he called it, it wasn't much harder than ordering take-away. All you needed was to know someone who owed you a favor, someone who knew someone who knew someone. And a little patience. And money, of course. To use his mother's money to punish this other mother from hell, it felt balanced, it felt like justice, and it pleased him.
It wasn't at all in the plan that she should die. He suspected that would have cost a lot more than five grand. The deal was to rough her up good and proper, injure her, make her suffer pain. And then he would subtly make it known to her who she had come up against. And ensure her that it could happen again. If this would help, if it would tidy up her sick brain, he didn't know. He didn't care. It would tidy up his sick brain. He was sure of it.
What went wrong never became clear to him, mainly because he never was in direct contact with the person or persons who took on the job. It all went through Theo's pierced and tattooed lady friend, and he had no idea how many links further. Whoever had agreed to the task didn't seem keen to come forward, having caused such a disastrous mishap, so Sander assumed he or she had collected the money and decided to stay quietly perdû.
And oh, the panic that cut through him when he learned from Fred what had happened! They'll find out who's responsible! They'll get me! And the sickness and the despair that eclipsed every other feeling when he learned that Thomas had been put in jeopardy by his plan, it almost broke him. Thomas, that he had loved so dearly, that he still loved and wanted beyond all reason, how could he have put him in such an impossible and dangerous predicament? He had to get hold of him! Had to find out why he had disappeared. And his odyssey had started.
What if he had closed off his feelings? What if he hadn't cared, just let the case take its own course, would he have felt better now? Could he have spared himself this suffocating sorrow? Oh, but he knew himself, he had never in his life been able to tame his feelings, they always came at him like phantoms, like ghosts with icy hands that clawed at his soul, that sucked the juices out of him and left him like waste. No, there had not been other options.
And in a singularly strange way, this on so many levels cruel and meaningless project had a golden edge that overshadowed his horror and guilt: If his plan hadn't gone wrong, he would never had started to look for the boy in the hallway again, would never have found him. And his red days in the big ledger would have been a lot fewer.
And now: Now that pain has broken him down, now that loss has reduced him to nothing, now that all meaning is torn from his life, now he lies in the darkness with a clarity sharper than salt, more bitter than gall, clearer than water: If so shall happen, that he will be held responsible, that they find him, arrest him, punish him, put him away, he will not protest. He will offer no resistance. The red days, be they ever so few, are worth dying for. And even more, if all that is left for him now is to live on with the memories of those red days, he will hold on to them through the darkness and the grief, he will store them and cherish them, protect them and treasure them. They will nourish him and carry him forward until he is dead and obliterated, until worms and rot have their feast on all the love that is burnt into every cell in his body.
Hamar, January 31, 1990
Jan Ola Braathen is facing the awful duty of clearing out Thomas' small apartment. Half blind from misery, half deaf from grief, his whole body filled with a howling No!
The light switch in the hall doesn't work. Nor does the one in the bathroom. They've cut off the electricity. Utterly a reminder of the irrevocable, the terminal truth.
He should have had Aleksander Sveen with him now, he should never have given in to his irrational wrath, shouldn't have blamed him and punished him like that. How he regrets those words! And now it's to late to repair the damage, he just has to get on with what he has to do alone. So alone. Completely and killingly alone.
He opens the fridge and is almost knocked to the ground from the putrid stench. His guts churn and heave, he barely has time to reach the sink before he violently pukes everything inside him into the steel bowl.
Eventually his nausea passes, he dries his eyes and rinses his mouth out with cold water. Dries his face on a paper towel. He has to start somewhere. Preferably with something impersonal, something not so loaded with memories.
But nothing is neutral here, everything is Thomas, Thomas, Thomas. He walks in and out of the three small rooms: Worktable strewn with pencils, brushes and paint. A pile of paper, an empty canvas. CDs on shelves and on the floor. Clothes slung around. Crumbled bed linen. Everything is painful and impossible.
A siren cuts through the air, distant at first, then closer, a slow penetrating crescendo. He covers his ears, starts to mumble meaningless sounds to block out the harsh reminder the siren becomes. He shakes his head hard from side to side, repeats in a loud voice: "You must! You must! You must!"
Start with the bookshelf, perhaps. Encyclopedia, dictionaries. Several large books of art, collect editions of classics: Ibsen, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Plato's Symposium next to an almost worn-out Mio, min Mio. Yards of Agatha Christie. E.M. Forster, Edmund White. David Leavitt. He opens The lost Language of Cranes, finds Sander's dedication on the first page. Do not think! Put it in the box!
Behind a Bible, behind Khalil Gibran next to Dante, behind a misplaced cookery book, he finds a framed picture. He takes it out. In the center is a small black and white photo of a younger and blonder Aleksander Sveen, cut out from a presentation of teachers most likely, and glued to light brown paper. From the photo a web of thin winding lines crisscross seemingly at random, but the longer he stares at it, the more clear it becomes: An idealized male body, almost like the Vitruvian Man emerges, and around him several smaller figures with shaded faces, carrying things in their hands: A bird, a cross, a heart. A small T in a circle and the date oct 83.
He is about to put it away when he notices something written on the back of the frame. And there: Fading slightly, but still screamingly clear, in meticulous calligraphy, Thomas' sixteen year old hand had struggled words from his sixteen year old soul to the yellowing cardboard:
I touch you
With fingers of dust and fog
With lips of earth and dew
With skin of lead and rain
With stone
With flames
Take me
Take me home.
His heart bleeding, Jan Ola Braathen loses his grip and drops the picture to the floor.
His tears mingle with the shards of glass and glitter like diamonds.