November

My father is dead.

And yesterday I took the life of an elk.

What can I say?

It was either her or me. I was starving. I'm beginning to get quite thin, I really am. The night before, I was down in the Maridalen district of Oslo and helped myself to some hay from one of the farms. I cut open one of the bales with my knife and filled my rucksack. Then I slept for a bit, and at daybreak I went down to the ravine east of camp and spread out the hay as bait in a place I had long considered perfect for an ambush. Afterwards I lay on the side of the ravine and waited for several hours. I knew there were elk here. I'd seen them. They've even been right up by the tent. They lumber around here on the ridge apparently following their own rational impulses. Always on the move, elk are. They seem to think all other pastures are greener. And perhaps they're right. Anyway, in the end one came along. With its calf tagging behind. That put me off a bit, that did, the calf being there. I would have preferred it if it hadn't been there. But it was. And the wind was coming from just the right direction. I put the knife in my mouth, not the little one, the big one, the big knife, and waited. The two elk were ambling slowly towards me. Nibbling at the heather and some of the young birch trees down in the ravine. And at last there it stood. Right beneath me. A hell of a size. Elk are big. It's easy to forget how big they are. I leaped onto its back. Of course I had rehearsed the routine in my head dozens of times before. I had anticipated that she wasn't going to like it and would try to get away. And I was right. But before she managed to get any speed up, I had driven the knife down into its head. With one mighty thrust the knife had gone right through the elk's skull and into its brain, from which it stuck out like a slightly odd hat. I jumped off and crawled to safety on a large rock while the elk saw its life flashing before its eyes: all the good days of plentiful food, the lazy, hazy, days of summer, the brief love affair with the bull during the autumn breeding season and the subsequent loneliness. The birth and the joy of having passed on the genes, but also the taxing winter months of earlier years, and the restlessness, that unsettled force from which, for all I know, she may have considered it a relief to be delivered. She went through all this in a few short seconds before she dropped.

I stood watching her for a while, and her calf, which had not run away but was now standing beside her dead mother, not totally aware of what had happened. I felt a pang of something unpleasant, something alien. Even though I'd lived out here for quite a while this was the first time I'd killed, and now I had killed a large animal, perhaps the biggest in Norway and, contrary to all my good intentions, I had brutally exploited nature and probably taken out more than I could put back in, at least in the short term, and I did not like that. There should be a kind of balance in things. Hunger is hunger, though, and I would have to give something back later, I thought, jumping down from the rock and chasing away the calf before I pulled the knife out of the skull and slit open the dead elk. Piles of intestines spilled out and I sliced myself a bit of the belly and ate it raw. There and then. Like a Red Indian. Next I hacked what I could into manageable pieces and carried some of them up to the tent, where I collected the axe and went back to chop up the rest. By the evening I had transported the whole of the animal to camp. I fried large chunks of meat on the fire and ate my fill for the first time in several weeks. I hung the rest of the meat to smoke in a primitive kiln I had spent the previous days building. Then I went to sleep.

And when I awoke today, I heard the calf outside my tent. I can still hear it. I hardly dare get up. I can't look it in the eye.

I can't stay lying here, though. I need some milk. Skimmed milk. I don't function well if I don't have any milk. I get irritable and I'm quick-tempered. And I know very well that I'll have to go down amongst people for some milk. That's why I'm reluctant to go, but I simply have to have some milk. Occasionally I do go down to Ullevål Stadium like any normal man. I used to do it a lot more before, I know, every day in fact, but after I, well, how can I put it, after I moved into the forest, for that is actually what happened, that's what I do, I live in the forest, since then I have been there less and less often. One of the reasons is that I don't have any money. Another is that I don't wish to meet people. They disgust me. Increasingly so. But I must have milk. My father also drank milk. But now he's dead.

I can still hear the calf outside the tent. It's actively and noisily reproaching me. It's trying to psych me out. But I burrow even further down my sleeping bag and tie up the top so that there's like a gap between me and the rest of the world. I can't get out and the world cannot come in and I'm lying there as quiet as a mouse, like a child, pretending nothing has happened for quite some time. But the calf won't give in. It just stands there, and stands there. And then I have to go for a piss. My God, it's just a calf, I tell myself. Why should I, a grown man, have a bad conscience about killing an elk? It's nature's way. The calf will have to learn, and it should be happy that it's me, Doppler, who is teaching it and not some more unscrupulous individual who might have made cold meat of the calf as well while he was at it.

I go outside for a piss. Same place as always. On the flat rock below the tent. From there I can usually see the whole town and the fjord, but not now because it's misty. And I completely ignore the calf. I simply pretend it doesn't exist. It's wary and watches me pissing. I try standing with my back to it, but it must have caught a glimpse of me and wants to see more. It moves and watches from a new angle. I turn away but the calf follows me. It's as if it wants to make sure it wasn't seeing things. Like everyone else. The story of my life. OK, OK, for Christ's sake, I say, and turn to it with my trousers around my knees and my arms in the air. Have an eyeful, I say. Feel better now? Have you seen enough? Satisfied?

But the cheeky little bugger's not satisfied. It keeps staring. And there are limits to the shit I can put up with from elk. I grab the axe lodged in a nearby tree and hurl it with all my might at the calf. It leaps to the side and runs off between the trees.

Life's taught me that I come off badly if I try to hide the truth, so I may as well give it to you straight: I have a big member.

What can I say?

I have a remarkable, indeed an extremely large, organ.

In short, a gigantic chopper.

I always have had. It is large. There's no better word for it. It's long and it's heavy. And fat. Hence, large.

At school they called me Chopper Doppler.

Fortunately, that's many years ago now. It's not something I think much about any more. But it was hurtful. After all, I did have other qualities I wanted people to see.

Chopper...