As his mother's gaze bore down on him, he noticed how raddled she looked, her lipstick smudged by yet another drink, mascara running in rivulets down her face. He could tell that she had been crying but whether from pleasure or pain he could not say. Her voice, wheedling at first, rose in pitch, thundering, inquisitorial.

"Come to think of it James, you've never said much about the year you spent in Norway."

Suddenly that Sunday afternoon in the living room, the darkness lying impenetrable beyond the bay windows, all eyes were upon him. Could an insect impaled on the end of a pin have felt more helpless?

Blushing, he longed to rush from the house to cover his face with the snow that lay in thick drifts in the garden. But how would he explain? "I had to leave, I felt ill." That would fall flat. The mirrors threw glaring eyes back at him. And, as if taking its cue from the muffled snow falling outside, the babble gave way to a recriminatory hush.

"You lived with him for a year- with that doctor."

"You mean George. He wasn't a real doctor—he had a doctorate."

Lighting another cigarette, then lifting the glass of whisky to her lips, his mother quipped to general laughter, "I propose a toast, not to George but to this liquor, my true religion, and more entertaining than any of Angus Macpherson's Sunday sermons." When he didn't answer, she said, "Come on, James! We can't take the tension any longer. You even went to Hell and haven't breathed a word about it."

For days George had gone on about a Norwegian town called Hell; a colleague had told him, "People go there to send their loved ones postcards saying 'Greetings from Hell'". George enthused, "Why don't we postpone our trip to Edvard Grieg's house and head to Hell on Saturday morning? It's best to approach it from Hommelvik, that way we'll have views, while the light lasts, of the Strindfjorden." Although he had reservations, James was enticed by one of George's kisses, overtures he had once found disquieting but which he had come to hanker after.

That Saturday, having shoveled back the snow around Bernhardhinnasgate 20, they set out. They drove past uniform rows of wooden houses, their privacy guarded by pine trees, and were soon on the highway. There was nothing worth looking out for, just an unremitting whiteness—with everything so white, he felt blinded. Seeking relief, he closed his eyes and, the heating on full blast, started to nod off.

The same torpor had invaded him during the bus trip to London. "You can stay with friends of the family for a week but then you will be on your own, you will have to find lodgings, a job, no-one forced you to leave Scotland. They will miss you in the village, don't forget to write." The bar was cavernous, thick with smoke, the stranger's stare a prelude to his approach. "Another drink? I don't live far, why don't you come home?" The terraced house in the drab district, that snatched embrace, queasy but inciting his hunger. And then Norway. "They need another Engineer-my first posting. I'll go, you come two weeks later."

He opened his eyes to ice-clad hamlets, monstering boulders and now they were climbing higher, soon it would be ether. Later a sudden dive, and with the jolt he woke again, and they were skirting another fjord. He wondered which was more unfathomable, this stretch of water or the vaults of our hearts and our brains where—as Knut Hamsun said—the war with the trolls takes place.

George exerted a slight pressure with his hand. "You've been asleep for hours. Wake up, there's Hell. It's hard to see but you can still make out plumes of smoke."

When he looked back on his year in that Nordic landscape, he saw that he had spent much of it closing the shutters. If it was not against the all-encompassing darkness, it was to shut out the summer light, an insistent intruder that ransacked his sleep. It was easy to close the shutters but often he could not find the strength to open them, not even that day he had heard the brass band, people laughing, children larking about. He knew that summer's day that if only he could drag himself from his bed to fling open the shutters, the course of his life might be different. But his body failed to obey his summons and he lay there all day and into a surreal night.

"Well James, that's a long silence." As his mother lit another cigarette, he noticed that her make-up was more smeared than ever. He tried to speak but could only emit an inarticulate sound. Looking again at the gilt-framed mirrors, he felt that the circle of spectators, their eyes glinting with sharp suspicion, was closing in on him. The balcony lights had been lit and, remembering Bernhardhinnasgate 20 where any illusion of time had been effaced, he saw that it was still snowing. If only more and more snow would bear down on them to render the house a snow-covered sepulchre. Thus interred, the secrets of his year in Norway could never be prised from him.


Peter Robertson is based between Madrid and Buenos Aires. His work has appeared in many publications including "The Oregon Literary Review", "The Mad Hatters' Review" and "Eclectica" and is forthcoming in "The Literary Review", "Turnrow" and "The Houston Literary Review". 

Trip To Hell originally appeared in the Boston Literary Magazine.