Excerpts from
Doghead
By Morten Ramsland
1. A Plain in Eastern Germany
Somewhere in Eastern Germany my paternal grandfather is running across a plain. The Germans are after him, and he has lost one of his shoes; there is frost in the air. A half moon casts a pale shimmer across the countryside, turning it into a ploughed field populated by frozen soldiers half buried in mud. Less than three hours ago my grandfather had taken leave of his friend, Herman Hemning. They went in different directions in the hope of luring their pursuers into concentrating on only one of their two trails. My father has not been born yet. My paternal grandmother, who arrived late at the gaol in Oslo and consequently never managed to say goodbye to Askild, has not even married him yet. Officially, they aren’t even engaged. So the whole of my existence hangs on a somewhat thin thread.
Then he pulls out the bones with rat poison smeared over them and scatters them around him. A minute passes, two minutes. Askild has got his breath back; he can continue running. It’s time to get a move on, Askild Eriksson. Is it the bloodhounds howling in the distance or the ship Katarina hooting in the morning mist off Bergen? The memory materialises out of nowhere and threatens to sweep his legs away from beneath him, or is it his deaf ear which has given him a sixth sense now? Now that the fate of the whole Eriksson lineage is in jeopardy. Run. For Christ’s sake, run! But Askild is rooted to the ground, the rat poison and the bones and the ship Katarina all around him, as if lightning in the form of a sudden memory has struck him.
Things don’t look good: grandfather is standing stock still in the middle of a German plain. My malnourished grandmother in Norway goes around with bleeding gums and a bad conscience. The shipping company, which has been in the family’s possession since her grandfather arrived in Bergen from Nordland as a young man, has gone bust. The seven transport ships have been sunk by the Germans, the patrician home has been sold and great-grandfather Thorsten is lying paralyzed in bed with a blood clot while my grandmother has to work in Holst’s clothier’s, her bleeding gums dripping onto the materials. “The German torpedoes sank us all,” grandmother says.
Translated by Tiina Nunnally
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