Excerpts from
The Lemonade Murder
By Thøger Birkeland
We talked about our cousin Peter for a
long time after Teodore’s christening. We couldn’t believe we had such a
fathead for a relative.
We lay awake at night and made things up
about him. Mostly Anne. She was good at it.
“Our cousin Peter,” Anne said, “our
cousin Peter is a parasite, pure and simple. That’s exactly what he is, a
parasite.”
Both Tina and I asked Anne what a
parasite was, but she could only tell us her idea of one, not what one really
was. She was very sure that all parasites were disgusting, and maybe even
dangerous, because she remembered reading that about them somewhere.
Parasite. I lay in bed and practiced
saying it, and Peter seemed worse and worse. A parasite!
Every night before we went to sleep, we
talked about how Anne had forced Peter to say everything she wanted about our
room and Teodore.
“I think we let him off to easy,” Tina
whispered in the dark. “He was asking for it!”
Hating our cousin kept us busy, even
though he lived way off in Aalborg. […] it was late summer and very hot. Just
still made you sweat. The four of us were out in the nyard, Teodore lay on a
blanket, playing with his toes. Once in a while an ant scurried up his pants
leg and hurried out again. Anne was in the lawn chair reading, and I guess Tina
and I were in a kind of stupor.
Suddenly Anne slammed her book down and
fixed her eyes first on Tina and then on me.
“Have you heard?”
“Heard what?” Tina and I asked drowsily.
Anne let the book fall to the grass,
lifted her arms over her head, and stretched so that the lawn chair cracked.
“There was a letter from Uncle Sivert
this morning. He’s going on a trip to Germany – something to do with his
business – and he ask if Peter can stay with us for two weeks.”
I sat up.
“That jerk! Not as long as I’m
alive.”
Tina was lying with her eyes closed.
“Maybe it would be good for him.”
Translated by Virginia Allen Jensen
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