The Wolves of Eternity, page 10
In addition to the absorbed dose, the biological effect of the radiation, which is quantified by the equivalent dose, also depends on the dose rate (absorbed dose per unit time), that is, it depends on how long a period a given dose is accumulated. There is a larger effect from a high dose rate than from a low dose rate even if the accumulated dose is the same.
The equivalent dose is quantified in the unit sievert (Sv), which equals the absorbed dose measured in gray multiplied by a quality or efficiency factor, which equals 1 for low dose rates of beta- and gamma-radiation, but which equals 20 for alpha-radiation, and increases with increasing dose rates.
But what was it even saying? Something about how the effects of radioactivity on living creatures were measured, but nothing about the nature of the effects themselves.
What could be more important than that?
It was a bit funny though that the unit of measurement for radioactive effects was the same as my name! All right, the spelling was slightly different, but if you said it out loud it was almost impossible to tell the difference between Syvert and Sievert.
I closed the book and put it back on the shelf, and went outside again into the street.
I’d hardly spoken to anyone all day. When had that happened last?
It wouldn’t harm to pop in on Dag and see if he had a few minutes to spare, I decided, and went across to the offices on the corner.
Marianne had the phone wedged between her shoulder and cheek while she noted something down on a pad in front of her. She glanced up when I came in and gave a little nod in the direction of Dag’s office. She didn’t smile, but at least she remembered who I was.
‘All right,’ said Dag, swivelling to face me in his chair.
‘All right, Tintin,’ I said. ‘You busy?’
‘Just about done for today.’
‘You what?’
‘Came in at six this morning.’
‘The working man’s lot,’ I said, sitting down and crossing my legs. ‘I can give you a lift home, if you want.’
‘Can you? That’d be great. Now, you mean?’
‘Now’s fine.’
He nodded, grabbed his coat and picked up his bag, and was halfway out the door before I’d even stood up.
‘You’re in a hurry,’ I said when I caught up with him.
‘I can stay on, if it suits you better.’
‘That’s not what I meant. You just seem a bit hyped up. Something got you going?’
He shook his head.
‘Pressures of work, that’s all. Been trying all day to get hold of someone from Kjeller who can give me something on Chernobyl. Only no one’s called back. Probably got every journalist in the country clamouring after them. I had to make do with someone from the technical college here instead. And the spokesperson from No to Nuclear Weapons.’
He looked at me and smiled.
‘Better than nothing, I suppose.’
‘You could always have tried Jönsson,’ I said. ‘He’d have stepped up.’
‘Ha ha.’
‘But I wonder how much he actually knows. We never heard a word about quantum theory or nuclear physics, did we? It was as if it didn’t exist.’
‘I don’t think it’s on the curriculum until you get to gymnas,’ he said.
‘Do you know much about it, then?’
‘A bit,’ he said. ‘The gist of it.’
‘Go on, then.’
He looked at me again. His curly white hair took on a slight blush in the sunshine.
‘You are joking?’
We emerged onto Festningsgaten and went left.
I shrugged.
‘I just found out I know nothing. I don’t even know what radioactivity is. Not really.’
‘It’s not like you to make an admission like that.’
‘That there’s something I don’t know?’
‘Mm.’
‘But quite like you to make out you know something you don’t,’ I said. ‘So go on, then. What is radioactivity?’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Basically, the nucleus of an atom consists of protons and neutrons. You with me so far?’
He laughed before going on.
‘Protons are positive and neutrons are neutral.’
‘That’ll be why they’re called neutrons?’ I said.
‘Exactly.’
‘So how come protons aren’t called positons?’
‘All right, stop arsing about. When the atomic nucleus is broken apart, energy is released. That’s the protons. Or actually, I’m not sure about that. Sounds right, though, doesn’t it? Anyway, that’s what a radioactive process is.’
‘The atoms get broken apart,’ I said. ‘And energy abandons ship.’
‘You could say.’
‘But why is radiation dangerous? That’s what I don’t understand. What does it do?’
‘It gives you cancer, for a start,’ he said.
‘I know that,’ I said. ‘But how?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ he said.
We stopped by the car and I unlocked the driver’s side, got in, put the carrier bag with my record in it on the back seat, leaned over and opened the door for him on the passenger’s side.
‘And how come radiation lasts such an incredibly long time? It’s like hundreds of years, isn’t it? I mean, if radiation is protons that have been slung out, how many protons are there exactly?’
‘In a nucleus?’
‘Yes,’ I said, and started the car, reached my hand over the back of his seat and turned my head so I could see to reverse out.
‘Not that many protons. But all the more atoms. We’re talking billions, aren’t we? Or are we?’
‘I haven’t a clue. I might have to give Jönsson a ring when I get in.’
I turned onto Festningsgaten and drove up to the lights, waiting there for what seemed like an age, Dag gazing emptily out of the window, while I turned the radio on, only to turn it off again a second later, before the lights went green and we swung up onto the main road.
I’d had no idea he wanted to be a journalist or even had the remotest interest in that sort of thing until he went for an interview to be taken on as the new youth section reporter. He was sixteen at the time. I don’t think anyone else knew either. It was typical Dag. I could never keep my mouth shut about anything, never had a secret from anyone, whereas he had quite different limits as to what he’d share with others.
It had always been like that. I was an open book, he was a cagey bastard.
‘Jönsson’s not there any more, anyway, I suppose you know that?’ he said as we flew along the motorway, the car shuddering as we headed west.
‘He was forced out, wasn’t he?’
‘I believe so. He runs a kind of marriage bureau now. Thai women.’
‘Oh? I didn’t know that. What’s that about?’
‘He arranges contacts between Norwegian men and Thai women.’
‘Any good ones?’
He looked at me and laughed.
‘Are you that desperate?’
‘Desperate? Now you’re being prejudiced. What’s wrong with Thai women?’
Jönsson had been our science teacher at secondary school. He’d been wildly unpredictable, sometimes turning up drunk to our lessons, and of course we’d all had a laugh when he set about his experiments or dissections in that state, his clothes dishevelled and his hair all over the place, dull-eyed and a wide smile on his lips. Something blew up in his face once, it was bedlam, he was all black with soot. Another time, this was in junior school, we’d been scrumping apples in his garden when he appeared with an automatic pistol and demanded to know our names while pointing it at us. Dad had known him, they’d gone to school together, and he wasn’t angry after the phone call he got; when he spoke to me about it he just said it was best to stay away from Jönsson and that there were many other places where we could be kids in the same way as we’d thought we could in Jönsson’s garden.
We passed the steelworks. Two great rusty ships lay moored at the quay. The water on this side was in shadow and completely black, while towards the sea it was bright blue and glittered with tiny shards of light.
‘Does Einar ever talk about my dad?’ I said.
The question came unexpectedly, I saw the way Dag seemed to stiffen in his seat before looking across at me and then relaxing again.
‘Sometimes, yes. Of course he does,’ he said. ‘Not at any great length, but a bit now and again. Why do you ask?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about him today, my dad. I don’t normally. But I dreamt about him last night, that’s probably why. Anyway, I’ve been thinking I don’t actually know very much about him. Which is my own fault, because I’ve never really asked. And Mum never talks about him.’
‘Never?’ said Dag, looking straight ahead at the road now.
‘No. I think she might be bitter. But she doesn’t talk about that either. She doesn’t say anything.’
‘So you want to talk to my dad about him, is that it?’
I glanced at him immediately.
‘No, no, no. That’s not why I was asking at all.’
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
‘Wasn’t there one year when they weren’t on speaking terms?’ I said then. ‘Do you know anything about that?’
‘Not that I ever heard about. Dad and Syvert?’
‘That’s right. I don’t know where I got it from. Maybe I just got the wrong end of the stick at the time and was never put right about it.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Come over for dinner one night. They both ask after you. And you haven’t been round ours for ages.’
‘I will,’ I said.
Dag stared out at the forest we were going through, it was still dark and sopping wet after the winter.
‘Are you not doing too good at the moment?’ he said after a second.
‘How do you mean?’
‘You seem a bit down, to be honest.’
‘No, not at all! Everything’s fine. Just a bit bored, maybe, that’s all. I imagine that’s what you can see.’
‘That’ll be it, then,’ he said.
We followed the river in silence the last part of the way before I turned onto the estate and drove up the winding road to the top where their house was.
‘You can do entrance exams in town here, you know,’ he said. ‘You don’t actually have to do them at the university.’
‘What’s got into you now?’ I said, changing down a gear to make it up the last steep hill. ‘Are you giving me advice? Well, I’ll give you some in return: shut your gob and mind your own business.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the lift, and give them all my best at home! Hope I never see you again.’
‘I doubt you’ll be that lucky. Say hello to Einar and Ida.’
* * *
*
That night I dreamt about Dad again. He was sitting by himself on the living-room sofa when I came in. All the lights were on. He was wearing his checked flannel shirt, staring into space.
‘What are you sitting here for?’ I said.
I wasn’t used to seeing him sit like that, he was always busy doing one thing or another, mending the car or the bikes, soldering something, knocking something together out of some lengths of wood, touching up some paintwork.
‘Just a bit tired, that’s all,’ he said, and smiled at me kindly. ‘There’s been such a lot on the go of late.’
‘Are you feeling a bit down?’ I said.
He nodded a couple of times while looking at me, a bit perplexed, as if he hadn’t expected it of me.
‘I suppose I am. Your mum and I aren’t getting on too well, you see.’
He stood up and tousled my hair.
‘Are you going now?’ I said.
He nodded again.
‘Where are you going?’
He didn’t answer, just gave me that mild smile of his, bent down and picked up the brown leather briefcase I hadn’t noticed until then.
‘But before I go, I want to give you something. We’ll do it the other way round this time. You get the present when I go, instead of when I come back. OK?’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘What is it?’
He opened the briefcase and took out two stones. They were rough and jagged, grey-white with something red in them, they looked like granite.
‘Here you are, son. These are for you. Look after them. I’ll see you again when I get home.’
When I took them, one in each hand, they were so much heavier than I’d expected, so my hands were pulled downwards until my brain recalibrated itself and my arms adjusted to employ the strength required to hold them up.
They were a tiny bit warmer than I’d anticipated as well, as if they’d been put on top of the stove for a short time.
The next thing, Dad was crossing the yard outside, leaning slightly into the wind that was making the tree sway and rippling the surfaces of the puddles.
Then I woke up.
It was completely dark outside, raining and windy as it had been in the dream. I got up and went downstairs, anxious to see if the living-room lights were on.
They weren’t, thank goodness.
I drank a glass of water and went back upstairs to bed. I’d never had such vivid dreams before. Normally, I never remembered them either, only occasionally, and then only vaguely, and if I tried to think about them, they dissolved like mist in the sun.
This was something else.
Could it have something to do with the radioactivity?
The stones did, definitely. The dream had recast the radioactivity in a simple image: two warm, heavy stones.
But what about the dreams themselves? The radiation wasn’t enough to be dangerous, all the experts had been saying so. But it was there nonetheless. All around. Invisible atoms that had been destroyed and were giving off their invisible rays. Penetrating into animals and plants, flesh and bark. And our brains too, surely?
Rubbish.
I’d dreamt about Dad, nothing odd about that. I’d come home and some memories had been triggered.
Only he’d been so vivid.
As if he were still among us.
Rubbish, I told myself again, closed my eyes and lay listening to the sounds of the rain and the wind until I fell asleep. Faintly registered the car as Mum went off to work, Joar shutting the front door behind him. By the time I eventually woke up it was already twelve o’clock and Mum was rummaging about in the kitchen downstairs.
I had a shower and went down for some breakfast.
She was sitting at the table with the radio on, smoking and drinking coffee.
‘So there you are,’ she said.
‘I did clear out the garage yesterday,’ I said. ‘And did the hoovering in here.’
‘Have I said you didn’t?’
‘You were criticising me getting up late.’
‘I wouldn’t say that, exactly,’ she said, and stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray. ‘You never used to sleep for so long, though, did you?’
I sighed and got the corn flakes out, a bowl, the sugar and the milk.
She lit another cigarette as I began to eat. I’d never cared for it, the smell of smoke while I was eating, it smothered the taste of the food, but I said nothing, she’d got too much on me with my nights out for me to be able to complain.
‘Do you ever dream about Dad?’ I said.
She turned her head towards me, slowly.
‘Of course I do,’ she said, meeting my gaze before looking down at her hands, picking the nail of one index finger with that of the other. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I dreamt about him last night. And the night before, as it happens. It’s strange though, because I don’t usually. Or else I just don’t remember. I remember these ones, though.’
She looked out of the window again.
Wasn’t she going to say anything about it?
I wouldn’t either, then.
I crunched a few mouthfuls of corn flakes. The radio played an Øystein Sunde song. The sky looked to be clearing up over the fields, a line of blue visible through a crack in the grey-white blanket of cloud.
‘How were things between you and Dad, anyway, when he died?’
I stared at her.
Her eyes darted this way and that a couple of times. But she sat just as calmly as before, and when she looked up at me, her eyes were calm too.
‘What makes you ask that?’
‘In the dream I had, Dad said you weren’t getting on.’
She smiled. It was a smile of relief, I thought.
‘So you think you’re a seer?’
‘It was an odd thing to dream.’
‘We got on fine,’ she said. ‘He was away a lot, but he always was.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘You know where he went,’ she said. ‘To various airports at first. Then to shipyards and factories round about.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I remember when he used to come home.’
‘You were always so excited, you and Joar,’ Mum said, and smiled again.
‘How is it you never talk about him?’
‘Don’t I?’
‘No, never. It’s like he never existed.’
‘I didn’t realise,’ she said.
There was a silence then. She got up and poured herself another cup of coffee.
‘It’s just so awful to think about.’
* * *
*
The paper boy hadn’t shut the mailbox properly, so the newspaper was soggy when I went to get it. It annoyed me, not so much because it made it harder to read the paper, more because he must have known it’d get ruined in this weather, but still hadn’t bothered to make sure he’d put the lid down right before biking off again.
