Dancing in the Dark

~ ~ ~

In the afternoon I rang dad. His voice was sombre and cold and sober. He asked me how things were, I said fine but I was looking forward to the Christmas holidays.

‘Are you going to celebrate Christmas with your mother?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘We thought you would. Fredrik isn’t coming either. So we’re off down south again this year. You’ve got a sister here, Karl Ove. Don’t forget that.’

Did he really think I would fall for that? If I had said I wanted to celebrate Christmas with them they would have come up with a thousand and one excuses. He didn’t want me there. So why the impression that we were letting him down?

‘But I could maybe come up during the winter break,’ I said. ‘Is that convenient? You won’t be heading for the sun?’

‘We haven’t planned that far ahead,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to see when the time comes.’

‘I could catch the express boat or something,’ I said.

‘Yes, you could. Have you heard from Yngve recently?’

‘No, it’s a while ago now,’ I said. ‘I think he’s very busy.’

Throughout the short telephone conversation it was as if he was trying to find a way out. We rang off after about two minutes. I was glad it was like this. Whenever it happened I became aware that he wasn’t someone I needed.

Wasn’t it like this with everyone?

Walking downhill, with the snow arrowing in off the black sea, I wondered whether there was anyone I needed. Whether there was anyone I could not manage without.

If so, it had to be mum and Yngve.

But they weren’t indispensable either, were they?

I tried to imagine what it would have been like if they hadn’t existed.

Roughly like now, minus the phone calls and the get-togethers at Christmas and in the summer.

Weren’t they indispensable?

But when I got my breakthrough as a writer, mum would have to be there.

I kicked away the snow in front of the door and went in. And perhaps if I had children?

But I wasn’t going to. The notion was unthinkable.

And, the way things were going, unfeasible anyway.

I smiled to myself as I removed my jacket. The next moment I was depressed. Everything connected with it lay like a shadow over my life. I couldn’t do it. I had tried, I hadn’t succeeded, it was no good.

Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, shit.

I threw myself onto the sofa and closed my eyes. How unpleasant it was, it was as though someone could appear outside at any moment and look in at me, indeed as if someone was standing there right now.

On Friday evening all the temporary teachers went to Hege’s, ate pizza and drank beer. Hege was the driving force and the centre of attention, as high-spirited as she was fast-talking, telling one story after the other. Nils Erik liked her and tried to impress her with his imitations and caricatures. I didn’t get a look-in, and that was strange as she had been at my place quite a bit over the last few weeks talking on and on about matters that were close to her hard heart.

After the food had been cleared from the table, she got a bottle of vodka from the freezer. The cold shiny drink elevated me into a cold happy world while Hege gradually began to lose control of her facial muscles and physical coordination. When she stood up to go to the toilet she raced over to the wall, supported herself on it, swayed and focused on the hall, laughed and set off again across the large open living-room floor, with more luck this time, for apart from the exaggeratedly straight line and a couple of staggers she reached the toilet door without further mishap. Half an hour later she was dozing off in a chair. I stroked her cheek, she opened her eyes and looked at me, I said she should go for a walk with me, the cold air would do her good. She nodded, I helped her to her feet and half carried her downstairs, she grinned, put her arms into the sleeves of the jacket I held out for her, pulled the hat over her head and slowly wound the scarf around her neck.

Outside, it was dark and still. The temperature had taken a nosedive over the last few hours, and the cloud cover that had hung over the area like a tarpaulin all week was now drawn to one side: the stars twinkled above us. I hooked her arm in mine and we began to walk. She stared straight ahead as we walked, her eyes were glazed and vacant, now and then she burst into laughter for no reason. We went down to the chapel and back, on to the school and back. Just above the mountain to the west a wave of green rippled across the sky, leaving a yellow and green veil after it was gone.

‘Look at the Northern Lights,’ I said. ‘Did you see them?’

‘Northern Lights, yes,’ she said.

We walked down to the chapel once again. Our shoes creaked in the dry snow. The mountains across the fjord stood silent and wild, a touch lighter than the night around them because of the snow. The cold lay around my face like a mask.

‘Are you feeling better?’ I said as we turned again.

‘M-hm,’ she said.

If this didn’t clear her head, nothing would.

‘Shall we go in then?’ I said by the drive to her house. She looked up at me and smiled what I interpreted as a devilish smile. Then she wrapped her arms round my neck, pulled me close to her and kissed me.

I didn’t want to offend her, and let her continue for a moment, then straightened up and freed myself.

‘We can’t do this,’ I said.

‘No,’ she said and laughed.

‘Let’s join the others, shall we?’ I said.

‘Yes, let’s.’

The clarity of mind she had gained dissolved quickly once she was back in the warm, soon she repaired to her bedroom, where she stayed for so long that we, without our hostess, cleared the bottles and glasses from the table, glanced in to see her, she was lying on her back in a large double bed, fully clothed and snoring, and then we all went our separate ways.

I wrote for all the rest of the weekend. On Sunday afternoon Hildegunn, Vivian, Andrea and Live came, they were bored as usual, I chatted with them for half an hour, avoided looking at Andrea, didn’t look at her, apart from once, and it was as though my eyes were magnets and hers were made of iron because a quarter of a second later she glanced towards me and blushed.

No, no, no, little Andrea.

But she wasn’t little, her hips were a woman’s, her breasts as big as apples, and it wasn’t just a child’s happiness that shone in her green eyes.

I said they had to go, I had other things to do than entertain children all evening, they snorted and groaned and left, Andrea last, she leaned forward and pulled on her high boots, flashed me a look before leaving to join the others, who were already outside waiting, surrounded by driving snow, motionless for an instant. Then life flooded back into them, and they walked down the hill laughing while I slammed the door and turned the key.

On my own at last.

I turned the music up as loud as I could without speaker distortion, and sat down to try to finish the short story I had started the day before.

It was about some seventeen-year-olds who were on their way home from a party and saw a car that had been driven into a cliff. They were drunk, it was early one Sunday morning, the road they were on was empty, thick wet mist hung over the countryside. They came round a bend and saw the car, the front was smashed in, the windscreen shattered. At first they thought it had happened a long time ago, it was just an old wreck lying there, but then they spotted someone in the car, a man, he was sitting in the driver’s seat, which had been shunted back, his face was covered in blood, and they realised the accident must have only just happened, perhaps no more than ten or fifteen minutes before. Are you all right, they said to him, he stared at them and slowly opened his mouth, but not a sound emerged. What shall we do? they said, looking at one another. There was something dreamlike about the whole scenario because the surroundings were so quiet and the mist so thick and because they were so drunk. We have to ring for an ambulance, Gabriel said. But where from? The nearest house was on an estate a kilometre away. They decided that one of them should run there and ring, and that the other two should stay by the wrecked car and keep an eye on it. Moving the man was out of the question, he was trapped and probably also had internal injuries.

That was as far as I had got. What would happen next I had no idea, other than that the man would die while they were standing there watching. Perhaps he would say something, anything from a different context, incomprehensible to them yet still clear. I also toyed with the idea of the man coming from a place where another story was being enacted. He had locked his father in a room, for example, where he had subjected him to brutal treatment, a secret that he was now taking with him to the grave. Or this was all there was, a car accident early in the morning, a man who died.

Immersed totally in this image — the gleaming tarmac, the motionless spruce trees, the glass splinters and the contorted metal, the smell of burned rubber and the rain-wet forest, perhaps the pillars of a bridge just visible thanks to flashing red lights deep in the mist — I jumped up from my chair like a lunatic when someone knocked on the window in front of me.

It was Hege.

My heart seemed to stampede, for even when I saw that it was her and realised that she must have been ringing the bell for some time without any success my chest was still pounding. She laughed, I smiled and pointed to the door, she nodded, I went to the door and opened up.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise you were so jumpy!’

‘I was writing,’ I said. ‘My head was somewhere else entirely. Would you like to come in?’

She shook her head.

‘I told Vidar I was going down to the kiosk. So I thought I could pop by and apologise for Friday.’

‘There’s nothing to apologise for,’ I said.

‘Maybe not,’ she said. ‘But I’m doing it anyway. Sorry.’

‘Apology accepted.’

‘Don’t you go getting any ideas, by the way,’ she said. ‘I’m always like that when I’m drunk. Completely lose control of my emotions and launch myself at the first person I see. It doesn’t mean anything. You do understand, don’t you?’

I nodded.

‘I’m the same,’ I said.

She smiled.

‘Good! So everything’s back to how it was. See you on Monday!’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Bye.’

‘Bye,’ she said and walked back to the road.

I closed the door and noticed that I was angry, it would take me at least an hour to get back into the text, and it was already eight o’clock. Might as well go up to the school and watch Sportsrevyen, I thought, standing by my desk and staring at the last sentences I had written.

No. If this was going to be any good I had to invest everything I had into it.

I continued writing.

Then there was someone at the door again.

I switched off the music and went to answer it.

It was three of the young fishermen. None of them was in the football team, two of them I had barely exchanged a word with, despite being at the same table three or four times. The third was Henning. He was a year older than me, had been to gymnas and set great store on showing himself to be different in minor details, like the pointed shoes he wore, his black Levi’s, the music he played on his car stereo, which had more in common with what I liked than anything anyone else here listened to.

‘Can we come in?’ he said.

‘Course,’ I said, and stepped aside. They hung up their jackets, with snow on the shoulders, kicked off their shoes, dark from the slush, went into the sitting room and sat down.

The wind had picked up. Down by the sea waves were hurling themselves at the shore like furious beasts. The wash that was always present had a darker undertone when there was a storm, a kind of boom or a muted rumble.

They each put a bottle of Absolut on the table.

‘I haven’t got any mixers, I’m afraid,’ I said.

‘We stick them in the freezer and drink it neat,’ Henning said. ‘That’s what the Russians do. That’s how it’s supposed to be drunk. If you add a bit of pepper, it tastes fantastic.’

‘OK,’ I said and went for some glasses. After they had filled theirs, and also mine, to the brim, I put on one of the two U2 mini LPs I had, which not many people had heard. Henning, who liked U2, actually asked me what the music was, and I was able to bask in the sun for a while.

The music evoked at once the atmosphere of my ninth class and the first class at gymnas. The enormous bare beautiful but also lonely space for music that I had loved, and now discovered that I still loved, as well as everything else around it, everything that had been going on in my life then, condensed into this unbelievably vibrant concentrated moment which only feelings can produce. A year relived in a second.

‘Just fantastic!’ I said.

‘Skål,’ said Kåre.

‘Skål,’ said Johnny.

‘Skål,’ said Henning.

‘Skål,’ I said, and drained my glass with a shiver. Turned up the music. With the darkness so dense outside and the lights so bright inside, it was as if you were being transported. In a shuttle of some kind. Way out into space.

And it was true too. We were hovering out in space. I had always known that, but it was only when I came here that I understood. Darkness did something to your perception of the world. The Northern Lights, this cold burning in the sky, as well. And the isolation.

I cursed myself for not having been able to keep my eyes off Andrea. Whatever I do I mustn’t encourage her feelings.

Mustn’t look at her again.

Or at least only in a teaching context.

I didn’t need it. Liking her had nothing to do with it, I liked lots of the others as well. Fourth years as much as seventh years. The exception was Vivian’s sister Liv, but for Christ’s sake she was sixteen, only two years younger than me, no one could object to my looking at her.

‘Did you get back today?’ I said, looking at Henning.

He nodded.

‘Did you catch anything?’

He shook his head.

‘Black sea.’

They didn’t leave until five. By then I had drunk almost a whole bottle of vodka. I had enough presence of mind to set the alarm clock, but when it rang at a quarter past eight I must have been dead to the world because it was still beeping in its devilish way when I was brought to by other sounds that had merged with it, namely, someone ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door.

I tumbled out of bed, threw some cold water over my face and opened up.

It was Richard.

‘You’re awake, are you?’ he said. ‘Come on then. Your class is waiting. It’s a quarter past nine.’

‘I’m ill,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to stay at home today.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Come on. Have a shower and get your clothes on. I’ll be waiting here.’

I looked at him. I was still drunk, my brain was in a corridor with glass walls. I saw Richard from far off although he was a metre from me.

‘What are you waiting for?’ he said.

‘I’m ill,’ I said.

‘You’ve got one chance,’ he said. ‘I suggest you take it.’

I met his eyes. Then I backed away and went into the bathroom, turned on the shower and stood under it for a few seconds. I was furious. I was an employee, a teacher, and if one of the others didn’t appear for work one day and said they were ill, Richard wouldn’t dream of going to get them. Not a hope. The fact that he was right — after all I wasn’t ill — was irrelevant. I was an adult, not a child, a teacher not a pupil; if I said I was ill, I was ill.

I turned off the shower, dried myself, rolled deodorant under my arms, got dressed in the bedroom, put on a coat, shoes and a scarf in the hall and opened the door again.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Let’s go up then.’

He had humiliated me, but there was nothing I could do about it. Right and power were on his side.

I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with others I loved it and the change to the world it brought. Running around in the forest or between houses was different in the darkness, the world was enchanted, and we, we were breathless adventurers with blinking eyes and pounding hearts.

When I was older there was little I liked better than to stay up at night, the silence and the darkness had an allure, they carried a promise of something grand. And autumn was my favourite season, wandering along the road by the river in the dark and the rain, not much could beat that.

But this darkness was different. This darkness rendered everything lifeless. It was static, it was the same whether you were awake or asleep, and it became harder and harder to motivate yourself to get up in the morning. I succeeded, and five minutes later I was standing in front of my desk again, but what happened there was also rendered lifeless. It felt as though I was getting nothing back from what I was doing. However much effort I put in, nothing came back. Everything vanished, everything dissolved into the great darkness in which we lived. I might as well say this as that, do this as that, nothing made any difference.

At the same time I was depressed by being under constant observation, by everyone always knowing who I was, by never being allowed to have any peace. Especially at school, where Richard hovered over me like some damn bird of prey, ready to pounce on me the second I did something he didn’t like.

All the drinking reinforced my unease, and since nothing of what I did gave me anything back I became more and more worn down, it was as though I was being drained, I became emptier and emptier, and soon I would be walking around like a shadow, a ghost, as empty and dark as the sky and the sea around me.

I drank several times in midweek after the day Richard came to fetch me, but I always managed to stagger out of bed and get myself to school punctually. The next occasion he had reason to find fault with me was different. I had been to a party in Tromsø at the weekend, Jøgge was on leave and wanted to meet me, and on Sunday evening I missed the boat to Finnsnes, had to stay overnight in Tromsø, and then when I finally returned to the village it was too late in the morning for it to be worth going to school.

The next day Richard called me into his office. He said he had confidence in me, I was an important part of the school, but things had to function smoothly, things had to function smoothly every day, and if I didn’t turn up for work this created big problems for everyone. Also for the pupils. It was my responsibility, no one else’s, and this must not happen again under any circumstances.

As I stood there, with pupils running hither and thither outside the window and him sitting behind his desk and telling me this in a loud harsh voice, I was raging inside. But his voice paralysed my fury, it could not find a vent, except in the old despised way it used to do, as tears in my eyes.

He humiliated me, although he was right, it was my responsibility, I couldn’t skip work the way I had skived from gymnas.

All my strength had ebbed away, and all my resolve.

I closed the door behind me, washed my face in the staff toilet, sat down on the sofa without even the energy to pour myself a cup of coffee.

Torill was sitting at the table making some Christmas decorations. She noticed me looking at her.

‘Just have to make sure I can do this before I ask the kids to do it,’ she said.

‘Don’t they teach you that kind of thing at training college?’ I said.

‘That wasn’t the main priority, no. Pedagogics and that kind of useless stuff was more the style,’ she said with a grin.

I sat up.

I could just stop teaching.

Who said I couldn’t?

Who said so?

Everyone said so, but who said I had to listen to them?

No one could stop me handing in my notice, could they? I didn’t even need to hand it in, all I had to do was stay down south after Christmas, just not return. I would be putting the school in a predicament, but who said I couldn’t do that?

The teacher my class had had the year before turned up drunk for classes, was always taking days off and in the end had simply slung his hook and never returned.

Oh, how they had moaned and groaned about him in the months I had been up here.

I got up, the bell rang the next moment, so deeply were the routines ingrained in my body. But the thought of stopping shone bright in me. I wanted to be free, and freedom existed everywhere but here.

After the last lesson that day I rang mum. Caught her as she was about to leave work.

‘Hi, Mum,’ I said. ‘Have you got time for a little chat?’

‘Yes, of course. Has something happened?’

‘No. Nothing has changed here, but the job’s beginning to weigh me down. I can only get out of bed in the morning with the greatest of difficulty. And it struck me today that I could just hand in my notice. I’m not enjoying it at all, you see. I haven’t been trained for this either. So I wondered about studying after Christmas instead. Doing the foundation year.’

‘I can understand you being frustrated and that it’s tough going,’ she said. ‘But I think you should sleep on it before you decide. Christmas is around the corner, and you’ll be able to unwind and relax lying on the sofa here if you like. I think everything will look different then, when you go back up.’

‘But that’s exactly what I don’t want!’

‘Work goes through patches. There was a time when you thought it was a lot of fun. It’s quite normal for you to have a down period now. I’m not going to say whether you should stop or not. That’s up to you to decide. But you don’t need to make up your mind right now, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘I don’t think you understand what I’m telling you. It won’t get any better. It’s just a bloody slog. And for what?’

‘Life is a slog at times,’ she said.

‘That’s what you always say. Your life may be a slog, but does mine have to be?’

‘I was only trying to give you some advice. In my opinion, it’s good advice.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘The odds are I’ll give up the job, but you’re right, I don’t need to make a decision now.’

Usually I took care to make sure the staffroom was empty when I phoned, or that only Nils Erik was there, but this time I had been so upset and desperate that I hadn’t given it a thought. When I opened the door to leave Richard was in the kitchen.

‘Hi, Karl Ove,’ he said. ‘I’m just doing the washing up. Are you on your way home?’

‘Yes,’ I said, turned and left.

Had he heard? Had he been standing there and listening as well?

I couldn’t believe that.

But then came the last day of school before the holidays, grade books were handed out, coffee was drunk and cakes were eaten, in an hour I would be getting on the bus to Finnsnes and setting off on the long journey down to mum in Førde, where we would stay for a few days before going to Sørbøvåg for Christmas Eve. Richard stopped in front of me.

‘You should know that I consider you’ve done a fantastic job here this term. You’ve been an invaluable member of staff. And you managed the odd spot of bother with aplomb. Now you have to promise me you’ll be back after the Christmas holidays!’

He smiled to soften the impact, to make it seem like a pleasantry.

‘Why would you think I wasn’t coming back?’ I said.

‘You must come back, you know,’ he said. ‘It’s not easy up here in the north, but it is still fantastic. We need you here.’

This was unadulterated flattery, as transparent as glass, but that didn’t stop me puffing out my chest with pride. Because he was right. I had done a good job.

‘Of course I’ll be back,’ I said. ‘Happy Christmas! See you in 1988!’

The next day, in the evening, mum was waiting on the quay as the hurtigrute boat from Bergen docked in Lavik. It was half past eight, pitch black, the crew lowered the gangplank while the roaring propellers churned up the sea. The light from the lamp above the tiny waiting room glimmered in the film of water that lay over the tarmac. I stepped ashore, leaned forward and gave mum a hug, we walked together to the car. Around us doors were being opened and closed, engines started and the express boat was already speeding off down the fjord. The weather was mild, the countryside snowless, the car windscreen dotted with small raindrops which were intermittently swept away by the wipers. The cones of light from the headlamps roamed like two frightened animals in front of us. Trees, houses, petrol stations, rivers, mountains, fjords, whole forests appeared in them. I leaned back in my seat staring. I’d had no idea that I had missed trees until I was sitting there and saw them.

Mum had made a casserole before she left, we ate it, chatted for an hour, then she went to bed. I stayed up to write but didn’t get much done beyond a couple of lines. She had rented the flat furnished, and I felt like a stranger there.

The next day we drove to town to do our final Christmas shopping. The sky was overcast, but the clouds hiding the sun were thin and straggly, my back was cold as I opened the door, stepped out of the building and for the first time in several months saw the burning globe hanging behind the clouds. Even if the colours of our surroundings were reduced to a minimum in which only the pale yellow of the grass and the wan green of the hedges stood out from the grey, to me they seemed to glow. There was no sharpness, there were no marked contrasts, no steep mountain peaks, there was no endless sea. Only lawns, hedges, estate houses, and behind them gentle friendly mountains, all muted by moisture and grey winter light.

In the evening Yngve came. It was his birthday, he was twenty-three, after dinner we ate cake, drank coffee and had a glass of brandy. I gave him a record, mum gave him a book. After mum had gone to bed we sat up and had a couple more glasses of brandy. I asked him to read the latest short story I had written. While he did so I stood outside on the veranda in the drizzle gazing into the distance, I was overjoyed to be home although the few signs of mum and her life that existed in the flat didn’t make the alienness any more homely, as one might imagine, more the contrary, they made the homeliness more alien. Seeing her things there was like seeing them in a museum. But then home was no longer a place. It was mum and Yngve. They were my home.

I craned my neck and looked into the living room. He was still reading.

Was that the last page?

It looked like it.

I forced myself to wait a little longer.

Then I pushed up the long handle and slid open the glass door. Closed it behind me, sat down on the sofa across the table from him. He had placed the sheets of paper in a pile. He was busy rolling a cigarette, oblivious of my presence.

‘Well?’ I said.

He smiled. ‘Well, it’s good.’

‘Sure?’

‘Ye-es. It’s similar to the other ones I’ve read.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I’ve done six now. If I can speed up I could have fifteen ready by the time I finish at the school.’

‘What are you going to do then?’ Yngve asked, putting the somewhat crooked roll-up between his lips and lighting up.

‘Send it to a publishing house, of course,’ I said. ‘What do you reckon?’

He looked at me.

‘You don’t think anyone’s going to publish it, do you? In all seriousness? Do you think they will?’

Chilled to the depths of my soul, I met his gaze. All the blood had drained from my head.

He smiled. ‘You did, didn’t you,’ he said.

My eyes glazed over and I had to avert my head.

‘You can send them anyway,’ he said. ‘And see what they say. They might go for them, you never know.’

‘But you said you liked them,’ I protested, getting up. ‘Didn’t you mean what you said?’

‘Yes, I did. But everything is relative. I read it as a story written by my nineteen-year-old brother. And it is good. But I don’t think it’s good enough to be published.’

‘OK,’ I said, going back out onto the veranda. I watched him carry on reading the Fløgstad book mum had given him. The brandy glass resting in his hand. As though what he had said had no special significance.

Bugger him.

What did he know, really? Why should I listen to him? Kjartan liked it, he was a writer. Or did he also say that based on who I was, his nineteen-year-old nephew, I wrote well considering who I was?

Mum had said she considered me a writer after reading it. You’re a writer, she had said. As though that surprised her, as though she hadn’t known, and she couldn’t have put that on. She meant it.

But for Christ’s sake I was her son.

Surely you don’t think anyone is going to publish it? In all seriousness?

I’ll bloody show him. I’ll bloody show the whole sodding fucking world who I am and what I am made of. I’ll crush every single one of them. I’ll render every single one of them speechless. I will. I will. I bloody well will. I’ll be so big no one is even close. No one. No. One. Never. No bloody chance. I will be the bloody greatest ever. The fucking idiots. I’ll bloody crush every single one of them.

I had to be big. I had to be.

If not, I might as well top myself.

The sight of the pallid winter sun in the damp muted countryside continued to keep me fascinated throughout Christmas, it was as though I hadn’t seen the sun before it was gone again, what energy it brought, how rich the play of light on nature when its rays were filtered through the clouds or the mist or just flooded down from a blue sky, and all the endless nuances that appeared when nature reflected the light back.

Nothing had changed in Sørbørvåg. Grandma’s state hadn’t noticeably worsened, grandad hadn’t noticeably aged and the fervour in Kjartan’s eyes wasn’t noticeably diminished. Since last Christmas he had passed a philosophy exam in Førde, and now it was his lecturer’s name, rather than Heidegger’s and Nietzsche’s, that was mentioned, at least they were not referred to as often as before, in that casual confidential way of his. I might have imagined we could talk about literature, but apart from him showing me some poems, hardly a word of which I understood, nothing came of this. He had also acquired an astronomical telescope, it stood on the living-room floor, beside the ceiling-high window, from where he studied the universe at night. He had also developed an interest in ancient Egypt, ensconced in his old leather chair reading about that mysterious culture which was so far removed from ours it seemed almost non-human to me, as if they actually had been gods. But then I knew nothing about it, and just flicked through his books when he wasn’t there and examined the pictures.

On 28 December I went down to Kristiansand, celebrated New Year’s Eve there, Espen had hired a room with some others at the Hotel Caledonien, which had just reopened after the fire, it was heaving with people, everyone was smoking and drinking, and it wasn’t long before two firemen came dashing along the corridor in full kit. I laughed myself silly when I saw them. I had been on my way up to the rooftop with some others, I sat on the edge and dangled my feet over, with the town beneath me and the sky lit up with fireworks. We talked about a crowd of us going to the Roskilde Music Festival in the summer, and with Lars I semi-planned a hitchhiking trip down to Greece afterwards. I managed to include a visit to grandma and grandad as well, nothing had changed there either, with them, the house, everything inside and its smells. It was me who had changed, it was my life that was on a wild trajectory.

On 3 January I caught the plane up to Tromsø, shortly after halfway we flew into a tunnel of darkness, and I knew it wouldn’t end, this was how it would be, pitch black all day for some weeks yet. Then everything would slowly change, soon the darkness would be gone and the light would fill every hour of the day. This was just as wild, I thought, smoking in the narrow seat.

But first came the darkness. Dense and heavy, it lay over the village when I arrived by bus on the morning of 4 January, not open, as it could be when the sky was cloud-free and the stars were shining out in space, but dense and heavy like at the bottom of an abandoned well.

I unlocked the door to my flat, went in, unhitched my rucksack and switched on the light. It was like coming home.

There was my Betty Blue poster, there was the Liverpool FC poster, there was the new landscape poster I had bought in Finnsnes on one of my first days here.

I put the coffee machine on, crouched down by my record collection and began flicking through it. After that I surveyed the tiny library of books I had bought. It all filled me with pleasure.

I went into the kitchen and poured some coffee into a cup. Through the window I saw a little group of kids coming up the hill. In case they were coming to see me I put on Mozart’s Requiem, one of the two classical LPs I possessed, and turned the volume up to full.

There was a ring at the door.

Andrea, Vivian, Live, Stian and Ivar, the tall ninth-year boy, stood outside.

‘Happy New Year,’ I said. ‘Come in.’

From the hall, where they were hanging up their coats, I heard Vivian say: he likes opera!

I smiled to myself, standing with a steaming cup of coffee in my hand as they came in. Stian had been here only once before, right at the start, with Ivar, he had gone through my record collection and asked whether I had any heavy metal. In the few lessons I had with him at school I ignored him as far as I was able, trying not to rise to all the provocation he dished out. I placed no demands on him, he had made up his mind anyway. Tor Einar had them much more than me and had made a stand against them, which didn’t go too well, once he had returned to the staffroom trembling all over, two of them, Stian and Ivar, had knocked him to the ground, Ivar had got him in a stranglehold. They were sent home for a few days because of the incident, but the school was so small, the place so transparent that what would have been a serious matter elsewhere wasn’t so serious here. We were expected to deal with the likes of Stian and Ivar. When they went fishing or hung out with some of the younger men, they were young kids, brats no one bothered about. So Tor Einar could hardly say they had held him by the throat. Not if he wanted to elicit any sympathy or understanding at any rate.

Stian sat down brazenly on the sofa with his legs wide apart. He was the only one not to have taken off his coat. The three girls hung on his every word, I could see, as though ready to obey his every command. If he spoke they watched him with rapt reverence. If he addressed one of them directly they cast down their eyes and squirmed uncomfortably on the sofa.

‘Get anything nice for Christmas?’ I asked.

Vivian giggled.

I went over and sat in the chair opposite them.

‘What about you, Stian?’ I said. ‘Did you get anything nice?’

He blew out his cheeks.

‘I went fishing at Christmas. Earned a fair bit. Gonna buy a moped as soon as the snow’s gone.’

‘He’ll be sixteen in March,’ Andrea said.

Why did she say that?

‘Then you’re only three years younger than me,’ I said. ‘It won’t be long before you can have my job. That’s what you have in mind, isn’t it, to become a teacher?’

He blew out his cheeks again, but a tiny smile crept into the corners of his mouth.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘The only book I’m going to open after I’ve left school will be a bank book.’

They laughed.

‘What about you, Ivar?’ I said.

‘Goin’ fishin’.’

He was only sixteen but already the tallest person in the village. His height was so conspicuous that he probably never thought about anything else. Seeing him beside the three seventh-year girls was painful, anything that was small and delicate caused him difficulty: letters, numbers, conversation, ball games, girls. In most ways he was a child, he burst into loud guffaws at the most basic, the most stupid things, blushed to the roots when he was corrected and only really felt at ease with Stian, who controlled him as you would a dog. He had lost his father when he was small and on the few occasions he had come to talk to me that had been the topic. It had all happened in the 1970s, a fishing boat sank without trace, the whole of Norway talked about it for some days, but then it faded into oblivion except for Ivar, his mother and the rest of the family. Barely a year after the accident they had moved up to Håfjord, where his mother had relatives. That was his story, his fate, the father who died when he was small.

‘What about you?’ I said, looking at the three girls.

They shrugged. Usually they had a certain confidence when they were here, I teased them, they laughed and answered back, found pleasure in being cheeky. But now they were more reserved. They didn’t want to give anything away in front of Stian, this was a different game, the stakes were higher.

‘Vivian’s got a boyfriend,’ Live announced.

Vivian looked daggers at her. Punched her hard on the shoulder.

‘Ow!’ Live exclaimed.

‘Have you?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Live said, rubbing her shoulder. ‘She’s going out with Steve.’

‘Steve?’ I said. ‘Who’s he?’

‘A guy who moved here at Christmas,’ Stian said. ‘He’s from Finnsnes and is going to start fishing this spring. He’s a complete prat, they say.’

‘He is not,’ Vivian said. She blushed.

‘He’s twenty,’ Live said.

‘Twenty?’ I said. ‘Is that possible? You’re thirteen, aren’t you?’

‘Yes!’ Vivian said. ‘And?’

‘They’re crazy up north,’ I said and laughed.

I got to my feet.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to hop it now. I’ve just come in the door. I have to unpack and so on. Prepare some lessons. I’ve got such a terrible class, you know. They don’t know anything.’

‘Ha ha,’ Andrea said, levered herself off the sofa, walked towards the hall, where she had hung her white jacket. The others followed, for a few seconds everything was jackets and arms, hats and gloves, and then they went out into the darkness, laughing and poking each other. I unpacked my clothes, ate some supper, read in bed for a couple of hours before switching off the light and going to sleep. Once I was woken by sounds from the room above, it was Torill and her husband, the floor shook, she shouted and screamed, he groaned, I took the duvet with me to the sofa and slept there for the rest of the night.

Nils Erik and I moved into the house the following weekend. Apart from the bedrooms and the little room leading off the sitting room, where I would do my writing, we shared everything. We took turns to cook and wash up. There was hardly an evening when we didn’t have visitors, either pupils or the other teachers, especially Tor Einar, he dropped by almost every day, but Hege also came a lot. At the weekend Nils Erik went on walks, he always asked me if I wanted to join him, I always answered no, nature was not the place for me, besides more often than not there was a party somewhere, and if I didn’t go I stayed at home writing, no more short stories but a novel called Vann over/Vann under — Water Above/Water Below. I had got the title from a song Yngve and his friend from Arendal, Øyvind, had penned. The novel was about a young man, Gabriel, who went to gymnas in Kristiansand, and would consist of a mysterious frame narrative with short report-like sequences and a present-tense plotline about drinking and girls, punctuated at regular intervals by small episodes from his childhood. It all culminated in him being trussed up at a party in a cabin in Agder province, having a nervous breakdown and being admitted to a psychiatric clinic, where the circle was closed, since this is where the short objective reports that had introduced every chapter stemmed from.

To ensure I had more time to write I completely altered my daily routine, it made no difference when you slept and when you were awake, morning and evening, night and day, in practice everything was the same. I started getting up at eleven at night, I worked through until eight in the morning, had a shower, went to school and had a sleep after I finished at around three in the afternoon.

If I couldn’t write I would sometimes put on my coat and go out, wander around the silent village, listen to the roar of the waves beating against the shore, gaze up at the mountainsides, which at first, because of the snow, seemed to be floating in the darkness and then became totally swallowed up by it. Sometimes I went to school. It might have been three or four in the morning, I saw my reflection in the windows I passed, my vacant expression, my vacant eyes. Occasionally I stayed there, read a book on the sofa in the staffroom or watched a film on the TV or simply slept for a few hours, until the sound of a door being opened suddenly woke me, and Richard came in, he was usually the first to appear in the morning. This was all that was needed for a feeling of chaos to come over me, a feeling of not having anything under control, of finding myself on the edge of. . well, of what?

I did my job. Did it make any difference that I worked at the end of my day rather than the beginning?

But there was something about the darkness. There was something about this small enclosed place. There was something about seeing the same faces every day. My class. My colleagues. The assistant at the shop. The occasional mother, the occasional father. Now and then the young fishermen. But always the same people, always the same atmosphere. The snow, the darkness, the harsh light inside the school.

One night I was out walking, on my way to the school, when a bulldozer drove up behind me. It had a snowplough mounted on the front, the snow flew alongside into mounds by the road, an orange light flashed from the roof, thick black smoke belched from an exhaust pipe at the front. The man driving didn’t look at me as he passed. Some way up the hill he stopped, with the engine still running. As I came alongside he set off again. He drove at the same speed as I walked. I watched him, he was staring straight ahead, and I shivered with unease, the vibrating, roaring, scraping, flashing vehicle shook my soul. I walked faster. He drove faster. I turned right, he turned right. I turned round, he drove straight on, then bugger me if he didn’t turn round as well, and as I reached the hill leading to the school he was right behind me again. I set off at a run, this was scary, because around us everything was lifeless and black, the village was asleep, it was just us two outside, me and some mad snowplough man chasing me. I ran, but I was no match for him, he accelerated and followed me right into the school playground. I unlocked the door, my heart pounding in my chest, would he follow me in here as well?

From the staffroom I watched him steadily and methodically clearing the playground of snow, it took him perhaps a quarter of an hour, before he turned and drove back down to the village.

On my way home from school the following afternoon I caught a glimpse of Vivian’s twenty-year-old boyfriend. She was in his car, so overcome by her triumph that she didn’t know where to look as they drove past and our eyes met. He was a puny-looking fair-haired man who — I could see when I met them by the shop shortly afterwards — laughed a lot. He had been unemployed and had moved here when he was offered a job as a crewman on one of the boats. Nothing of the Vivian we saw in the lessons, her childish questions, the teasing and giggling, was on show here, it had to be stowed away, and it was strange to see, she had sat in the front seat of the car like royalty, with a hard-won stateliness that threatened to crack at any moment, held together only by the fragile bonds of vanity, such that the child she also was could reappear at any moment or even take total control. One giggle, one gesture, one blush and there you were. Her boyfriend was not the world’s brightest, to put it mildly, so in this way they were well matched. In class her behaviour changed, she became more self-important, she no longer liked all the childishness the others exhibited. But she was easily led, it didn’t take many comments before she lost the stateliness she had worn around her like a cloak only a few minutes earlier. That didn’t mean that she was really unchanged, really untouched by what was going on around her, only that everything in her was still fluid. She might refuse to laugh at my jokes and say I was stupid, then burst into laughter anyway, and after that she might look at me with a different nuance in her eyes, and this nuance, which was quite new and also present in Andrea’s eyes, although not so clearly, I had to protect myself against, for what it did, insidiously, was to draw me closer to them. Through this look the distance between me and them narrowed, and it wasn’t because I had approached them, quite the contrary, I saw that in this look, which was completely open, half knowing, half unknowing.

Or was I imagining all of this? For when I had seen them in other contexts, such as in Torill’s or Nils Erik’s lessons, or in the shop with their mothers, it was as if this side of them had never existed. They toed the line, and if they didn’t, they tried to rebel with defiance, sulks or protests, and not, as they occasionally did in my lessons, with charged looks.

This wasn’t something I spent tracts of time mulling over, more impressions that blew through me, tiny gusts of pleasure and fear while I was writing during the January and February nights. Nor did I have any concrete basis for these impressions, nothing had been said or done, it was all about moods and feelings triggered by something as intangible as a gaze or a certain way of moving.

As I plodded through the village on my way to the first lesson my feelings were ambivalent — I liked being at school yet I didn’t. Now and then I felt a slight flutter in my chest at the thought that I would be seeing her again the following day.

No one knew, and I hardly knew myself.

One Friday at the beginning of February all these small impressions, which in themselves were insignificant and vague, and as such unexacting, were suddenly intensified. I had as usual got up late in the evening, written through the night, and as the clock passed five in the morning I’d had enough and went out into the darkness. Through the still sleeping village, up to the school, where after a stroll through the teaching block I sat down on the sofa with a book until tiredness overcame me and I leaned back with eyes closed and the book resting on my chest.

The door opened. I sat up with a start, ran a hand through my hair while staring straight into Richard’s eyes with what must have been a guilty expression on my face.

‘Have you spent the night here?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I came here early to do some preparation. And then I dozed off.’

He scrutinised me carefully.

‘I’ll make some extra strong coffee,’ he said at length. ‘That’ll wake you up.’

‘Make it strong enough for a horseshoe to stand upright in,’ I said and got to my feet.

‘What?’ he said. ‘Who said that?’

‘Lucky Luke, I think.’

He sniggered and poured water into the machine while I sat down at my desk. It was several months since I had prepared a lesson in any other way than with a quick glance at a textbook shortly before I walked into the class. I had ditched most of my alternative teaching methods, now the majority of my lessons consisted of going through whatever topic had to be dealt with, after which I gave them some exercises. The aim was to get through the syllabus in all subjects. Whether they absorbed everything or not no longer bothered me. The main thing was the framework this approach gave and, with it, the distance.

‘Coffee’s ready if you want any,’ Richard said, heading for the vestibule with a cup in his hand, probably on the way to his office.

‘Thank you very much,’ I said.

When the bell rang half an hour later, I was standing by the window in the classroom watching the pupils coming up the hill. Tiredness lay in me like stagnant water. We had maths for the first two lessons, incomparably the most boring subject. It was February, incomparably the most boring month.

‘Open your books and make a start,’ I said after they had trickled into the room and found their places. In maths we were joined by the fifth and sixth years, so there were eight pupils in all.

‘Same as always then. You do the sums, and if you run into any problems, I’ll come and help. Then we’ll go through the new material on the board at the beginning of the next lesson.’

No one objected, they slipped acquiescently from the state they arrived in at school to the state the solving of the mathematical problems demanded. Live put her hand up before she had even glanced at the book.

I went over to her and leaned forward.

‘Try on your own first,’ I said. ‘Have a go.’

‘But I can’t do this, I know. It’s so difficult.’

‘Maybe it’ll be easy. You don’t know until you’ve tried. Give it ten minutes, then I’ll come back and see how you’re doing. OK?’

‘OK,’ she said.

Jørn, the sharp little sixth year, waved me over.

‘I did some of the exercises at home,’ he said when I was by his desk. ‘But then I got stuck. Can you help me?’

‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘I’m not that great at maths myself.’

He looked up at me and smiled. He thought I was joking, but I wasn’t; after the syllabus for the seventh class I started having problems. I could even get into difficulties before then too, suddenly forgetting how to divide two big numbers, and I had to wriggle my way out by asking pupils how to do it. Not that I didn’t know of course, it was just that I couldn’t remember.

‘But this one doesn’t look too bad,’ I said.

He followed carefully while I explained it to him. Then he took over, I left him and went to the window.

He was a determined character, but his attitude to school was either/or, on or off. Maths he liked, so there was no problem. In some subjects though he switched off completely.

Live put up her hand again.

‘I can’t do it,’ she said. ‘And I mean it.’

I showed her. She nodded, but her eyes were vacant.

‘Can you do the rest yourself now?’ I said.

She nodded.

I felt sorry for her, almost every lesson held a humiliation of some kind, but what could I do?

I sat down behind my desk, scanned the class and looked up at the clock, which had barely moved. After a while Andrea put up her hand. I met her eyes, smiled and stood up.

‘Karl Ove’s in love with Andrea!’ Jørn said loud enough for everyone to hear.

I gave a start. Red-faced, I pretended I hadn’t heard, leaned over her desk and tried to concentrate on the little maths problem.

‘Karl Ove’s in love with Andrea!’ Jørn repeated.

Some of the pupils giggled.

I straightened up and eyed him. ‘Do you know what that’s called?’ I said.

‘What what’s called?’ he said with a grin.

‘When you say that other people feel what you feel? It’s called transference. For example, if you, a sixth year, were in love with one of the girls in the seventh class. Instead of admitting it you say your teacher is.’

‘I’m not in love with anyone,’ he said.

‘Nor me,’ I said. ‘So shall we do some problem-solving now?’

I leaned forward again. Andrea whisked her hair away from her forehead with one hand.

‘Don’t take any notice of him,’ she whispered.

I ignored her remark, stared at the column of figures she had written and pointed to where she had slipped up.

‘There,’ I said. ‘That’s wrong. Can you see?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But what’s it supposed to be?’

‘I can’t tell you that!’ I said. ‘You have to do the sum. Try again. I’ll be at my desk if you can’t do it.’

‘OK,’ she said, looked up at me and gave a fleeting smile.

My insides trembled.

Was I in love with Andrea?

Was I in love?

No, no, no.

But I was drawn to her in my thoughts. I was.

When I was at the school during the night, when I stood by the dark motionless water in the swimming pool I imagined she was in the changing room, alone, and that soon I would go in. She covered herself, looked up, I knelt down in front of her, she looked at me, at first with apprehension, then tenderness and openness.

I imagined this and at the same time thought the opposite, that she wasn’t in the changing room, how could I think like that, no one must find out how my mind worked.

My insides trembled, but no one knew because my movements were controlled, what I said was thought through, nothing of what others saw could betray my inner thoughts.

I hardly knew I had these thoughts, they lived in a kind of no-man’s-land, and when they came, in an explosion, I didn’t hold on to them, I let them fall back to whence they had come, and so it was as though they didn’t exist.

But what Jørn had said, that changed everything, because that came from the outside.

Everything that came from the outside was dangerous.

There was something almost morbid about writing alone at night while everyone else was asleep and then teaching the children with the dregs of my strength, and I was becoming more and more worn down, so at the end of February I switched back as the tiny pulse of light in the middle of the day slowly began to widen. It was as if the world was returning. And living together with Nils Erik was good: when the pupils came visiting, from the fourth years to the seventh years, the meetings weren’t so charged — if I didn’t play such a dominant role it didn’t make much difference. It was different with Hege, she invariably came when Nils Erik was out, how she knew I had no idea, nor why she did it. But she liked talking to me, and I liked talking to her, we could sit for hours in the evening despite us being so very different.

The writing on the other hand was going badly, I had reached a point where I kept repeating myself, all of a sudden I was unsure why I was writing at all.

Aschehoug Publishing House had put an advert in Dagbladet, announcing a short-story competition, my enthusiasm was rekindled and I sent in two of my best stories: the one about the refuse dump and the one about the funeral pyres on the plain.

Various community centres on the island took it in turns to organise parties, and at the beginning of March it was Håfjord’s turn. We had pre-drinks in our house, almost all the temporary teachers were there, and after only a few drinks I was floating on air, they made me so happy, these people, and I told them so too, on the way up to the community centre, swinging the bag with the bottle of vodka and the extra pouch of tobacco.

What was special about these parties was that they weren’t restricted to or arranged for particular age groups — desperate twenty-year-olds here, resigned forty-year-olds there — no, everyone came to these community centre parties. Seventy-year-olds sat at the same table as teenagers, fish-processing workers at the same table as school inspectors, and the fact that they had known one another all their lives did not prevent them from letting their hair down, normal social relationships were set aside, you could see a thirteen-year-old smooching with a twenty-year-old, a juiced-up old lady dancing and shaking her dress cancan style while grinning a toothless grin. I loved it, couldn’t help myself, there was a freedom in this I had never encountered anywhere else. Yet you could only love it if you were there, part of the untrammelled euphoria, for with even the tiniest hint of criticism or good taste everything would collapse and become a wild parody or perhaps even a travesty of the human condition. The youths who heated their coffee on a low blue gas flame, the very elderly women who looked at you with mischievous flirty eyes, the bald men dressed in formal suits and ties who one minute were making passes at fifteen-year-olds and the next were hunched over a ditch beneath the glittering community centre spewing, women staggering and men crying, all wrapped up as it were, in a long stream of badly performed 1960s and 70s hits by bands that no one but people up here cared about any longer, and a cloud of smoke that was so dense that if you hadn’t known better you might have assumed came from a blaze in the cellar.

For me this was alien and exotic. I had grown up where almost no one drank or at least was ever visibly the worse for wear. There was a neighbour who drank himself silly once or twice every six months, this was a sensation and caused quite a stir. There was an old alcoholic who cycled to the shop every day to buy his brown bottles of beer. And that was it. Mum and dad never drank, apart from a couple of bottles of beer or a glass of red wine with their food. Grandma and grandad in Sørbøvåg didn’t drink, grandma and grandad in Kristiansand didn’t drink, none of my uncles and aunts drank, and if they did, never in front of me. It was only two and a half years ago that I had seen my father drunk for the first time.

Why didn’t they drink? Why didn’t everyone drink? Alcohol makes everything big, it is a wind blowing through your consciousness, it is crashing waves and swaying forests, and the light it transmits gilds everything you see, even the ugliest and most revolting person is rendered attractive in some way, it is as if all objections and all judgement are cast aside in a wide sweep of the hand, in an act of supreme generosity, here everything, and I do mean everything, is beautiful.

Why say no to this?

I plunged into the party on this March evening, I was in my element, I even went over to Richard, who was sitting in a late 1970s suit a size too small for him, with his wife, to say how much I liked him, he had kept a tight rein on me, he was right to do so, and everything had gone well, hadn’t it? It was going well, wasn’t it?

Yes, I was doing fine.

He didn’t like me, but he couldn’t say that, all he could do was force a goatish smile. I was in the ascendancy, I was the shining star, he was just the head teacher at a small school, of course I could spare a moment for a cosy chat with him.

I saw Vivian and Andrea’s mothers, they were friends and were sitting at a table smoking, I sat down beside them, I wanted to have a chat about their daughters, they had such fantastic girls, they were so lively and pretty and would do well in life, I was sure of that.

I had never spoken to them before, apart from at parents’ evenings, but those had been formal occasions, I had discussed the girls’ performance and behaviour in various subjects then, they had listened carefully to what I said and asked a few questions, no doubt prepared, before disappearing into the darkness, on their way home to their children, who had been nervously waiting to hear what the meeting might bring, or reveal. Now the situation was different, we each had a glass in front of us, people were staggering past on all sides, the music was loud, the air close and warm, I was drunk and so eager to say something nice that I was leaning over the table towards them with a huge smile on my face. They said their children talked so much about me, there was no end to it, in fact it was almost as though they were in love with me! They laughed, I said yes, that can be difficult, a teacher who is only eighteen years old, nevertheless they are incredibly nice girls!

For a moment I wondered whether to ask one of them to dance, but rejected the idea, they were at least thirty-five, so even though they had a twinkle in their eyes when I appeared, I got up and wandered around the room, sat down first here and then there, went outside and saw Håfjord gleaming beneath me, the black sea straight ahead, and when I went back in I searched for Nils Erik to say what a good friend he was and how much I liked sharing the house with him.

Having done that, I went outside again, I wanted to take in the view one more time. At the bottom of the hill were my girls, I went down, Vivian was with Steve, Andrea with Hildegunn, I asked them if they were enjoying themselves, they were, and they laughed at me, perhaps because I was drunk, who knows, but it made no difference, I moved on, into the thick smoke-filled atmosphere, bounded up the steps in two strides, ploughed my way into the room, and there in front of me, like a revelation, stood a girl.

I stopped in my tracks.

Everything in me stopped. She was beautiful, but there were many who were, that wasn’t the point, it was the eyes she looked at me with, they were dark and brim-full with a life I wanted to share. I had never seen her before. But she was from here. She came from the village, I could see that the moment I clapped my eyes on her, for she was wearing football kit, the whole deal, shirt, shorts, socks and boots, everyone who was working there tonight was, the event had been organised by the football team, and would anyone not from the area volunteer to work at a party for Håfjord Football Club?

She was holding a tray of empty glasses.

Seeing her, so beautiful and so shapely, in football strip and boots, made my senses reel. I glanced at her bare thighs and calves, and I knew I was doing it, so to disguise this fact I looked slightly to one side, and then the other, as though I was inspecting this clubhouse and everything in it very thoroughly.

‘Hi,’ she said with a smile.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Who are you? I’ve never seen you before, I’m sure of that, you’re so beautiful I would have remembered if I had.’

‘My name’s Ine.’

‘You live here, but you never go out, is that right?’

‘No.’ She laughed. ‘I live in Finnsnes, but this is where I come from.’

‘I live here,’ I said.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘You work with my sister.’

‘Do I? Who’s that?’

‘Hege.’

‘Are you Hege’s sister? Why didn’t she say she had such a pretty little sister? Because you are younger than her, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. Yes, why didn’t she tell you? Perhaps she wants to protect me?’

‘From me? I’m the most harmless person out here.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you are. But I have to go in with this. I’m working here tonight, as you can see.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But can we meet again? When you finish? There must be some get-together afterwards somewhere. Why don’t you come along? Then we can chat a bit more.’

‘Well, we’ll have to see,’ she said, turned and made for the little room beside the stage, where the kitchen was.

After that, the party was over as far as I was concerned. Nothing going on there interested me any more. All I had in my head was the beautiful waitress dressed in football kit, and I spent the rest of the evening looking longingly at her.

Hege’s sister!

She told me everything, why hadn’t she told me about her?

I searched for Nils Erik and said we should organise some drinks at home. He hesitated, he was already exhausted, but I was determined, we were going to do this. As long as he didn’t have to join in it was fine by him, he said. You have to stay up for a bit, I said. And you don’t need to invite anyone else. What are you up to? he said. Have you got your beady eye on someone? You bet, I said, filling my glass to keep myself on the boil while doing what I could to kill time. I caught fleeting glimpses of her as she went in and out of the kitchen, for a while she served in the snack bar as well, but I didn’t go over, although I would have loved to buy a hot dog from her, just to watch her squeezing the ketchup and mustard from the plastic bottles over the sausage, but I didn’t want to waste the little time I had on anything that wasn’t to do with my plan for her and me at our place. I didn’t want to be a nuisance or force myself on her. When she smiled at me I said there would be drinks at our place afterwards, we were staying in the yellow house on the bend and it would be an enormous boost for everyone there if she came along.

‘We’ll see,’ she said again, but not without a smile, not without a glint in her dark eyes.

Oh, dear God, please let her say yes! Please let her come along!

The band started up again. Eric Clapton’s ‘Cocaine’.

I applauded when they had finished, couldn’t take much more, staggered out into the cold, saw Tor Einar chatting with two girls in the ninth class with a big smile on his face, a couple further away snogging in a car, the school at the other end of the football pitch looking like an embankment in the darkness, lit a cigarette, drained the vodka, turned and glimpsed Hege on her way over. My intuition told me I shouldn’t say anything about Ine to her, otherwise she would be sure to come along too and the situation would be impossible.

‘Are you OK?’ she said.

‘Can’t complain,’ I said.

‘So you’ve been chatting to my sister?’

‘Yes, you kept her well hidden. I didn’t even know you had a sister.’

‘We’re only half-sisters. Same dad, but we didn’t grow up together. She lives her own life.’

‘Does she live in Finnsnes?’

‘Yes. She opted for the motor mechanics course. She likes motorbikes. And motorbike riders!’

‘Oh yes.’

Vidar appeared in the doorway. His eyes scoured the people standing outside. And stopped at us. Held us in his gaze, then he came in our direction. He was drunk, I could see that by the way he was concentrating on walking properly and in a straight line. Broad and powerfully built, his shirt open at the chest, a gold chain visible, he stopped in front of us.

‘So this is where you are,’ he said.

She didn’t answer.

He looked at me. ‘We don’t see much of you any more. You should drop in. Or perhaps that’s what you do when I’m away?’

‘It has happened,’ I said. ‘We had a little get-together there for the teachers a couple of weeks ago, for instance. But mostly I stay at home and work in the evenings.’

‘What do you think about Håfjord actually?’

‘It’s nice here,’ I said.

‘Are you happy?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘It’s important that teachers are happy.’

‘Shall we go in?’ Hege said. ‘It’s beginning to get cold.’

‘I’ll stay here for a bit,’ I said. ‘Have to clear my head.’

They went in side by side, next to him she was extremely slight. But she was tough, I thought, and looked out over the village again, it was so quiet and peaceful compared to the hubbub of vying personalities and wills in the clubhouse behind me.

Some time after the band stopped playing, the music was also switched off, and as people began to drift away the lights came on, harsh and quivering, and the magic veil in which the darkness had wrapped everything was torn aside. The dance floor, which moments before had been the scene for the sweetest and hottest dreams, was now bare and empty and covered with dirt and gravel from all the boots that had stomped around on it during the course of the evening. The space beneath the ceiling, which as if underwater had pulsated in hues of red, green and blue except when it had sparkled like a starry sky, was empty apart from a light rig with some light cannons and an idiotic cheap shiny disco ball hanging from the middle. The tables, where people had been sitting and enjoying themselves in what resembled a wall of human warmth, were strewn around, beneath them a sea of empty bottles and scrunched-up cigarette packets, here and there shards of broken glass and the odd trail of toilet paper someone had unwittingly brought with them. The tabletops were stained with all sorts of sticky mess and covered with small burn marks from forgotten cigarettes, on top of the tables there were overflowing ashtrays, piles of cups and glasses, empty bottles of all descriptions, cheap Thermos flasks with long rivulets of coffee under the spouts. The faces of those who had not yet gone home were tired and lifeless, bone structures covered with skin, white and creased, eyes two lumps of jelly, bodies either rippling with fat and folds of skin or so bony and lean that your thoughts were led to the skeletons beneath, which would soon be lying picked nice and clean under the ground in some windblown graveyard with saline soil somewhere by the sea.

No, under the lights this room was nothing special. But then in came six girls wearing football kit to tidy up, they scurried around with their trays and cloths and it was as though life had come to chase away death. I would have loved to stand watching them, but now it was important to give the right impression, not to be a pest and stare and harass, so I went for a walk outside, chatted to people and tried to plan the next phase of the evening, that is, to discover where people were going to drink in case she didn’t want to join me.

A quarter of an hour later the crowd outside the community centre had thinned and I ventured in. With another girl she was carrying a table across the floor to the corner below the stage. After they had put it down she ran one hand across her forehead, rested the other on her hip and looked across at me.

‘After all this hard graft you deserve a break,’ I said. ‘I know a house with a great location by the water. You can relax and recover there.’

‘And no one will come and bother me?’ she said.

‘No,’ I said with a smile.

She held her index finger against her cheek, supported her chin on her thumb and regarded me with raised eyebrows. God, she was so attractive.

Five seconds passed. Ten.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll come with you. We’ve finished here anyway. I just need to change first.’

‘I’ll wait outside,’ I said and turned so that she couldn’t see I was smiling so much my mouth was in danger of splitting open.

A few minutes later she came down the steps zipping up her dark blue Puffa jacket and straightening her white woollen hat in a way that was making my heart thump as I waited in the darkness.

She stopped in front of me and put on her gloves, also white, and shifted the bag she was carrying from one hand to the other.

‘Shall we go then?’ she said, as though we had known each other for years.

I nodded.

All the light-headedness vanished as we set off down the hill. Now it was just her and me. And oh, how aware I was of her movements and facial expressions as we walked down the snow-covered road.

She was tall, slim, her nose was small like a child’s, her hips were beautifully rounded, her feet small, yet there was nothing of that dainty grace about her, she wasn’t someone you wanted to protect, someone you wanted to take care of, and her strength, which was also a coldness, was what perhaps I found most irresistible about her.

When her eyes didn’t flash with life they were dark and calm.

This had been my initiative, she had waited for me, I had set this in motion.

We had already reached my old flat.

‘Where do you stay when you come here?’ I asked.

‘At mum’s,’ she said, pointing down to the right. ‘She lives down there.’

‘Did you go to school here?’

‘No, I grew up in Finnsnes.’

‘And now you’re at the tech?’

‘Have you been talking to Hege?’ she said, looking at me.

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘It was a wild guess.’

Then there was silence. I was uneasy and tried to think of something else so that she wouldn’t notice my nerves. If dogs can smell fear, girls can smell nervousness, that was my experience.

From a distance I could see lights in the sitting room. When we went in Nils Erik, Tor Einar and Henning were there. They were playing Nick Cave and drinking what looked like red wine. We sat down on the sofa. It felt as if the party was over, there was no energy in the room, only lifeless eyes and some sipping of wine. Tor Einar tried a couple of times to whip up some atmosphere, but no one was biting, his laughter was met with polite smiles and weary looks.

‘Would you like something to drink?’ I asked Ine. ‘A glass of red wine? Some vodka?’

‘Have you got any beer?’

‘No.’

‘A small vodka then.’

I went into the kitchen, which was freezing cold as usual, and took two glasses from the cupboard, poured a dash of vodka in each and mixed it with 7 Up as I wondered what to do. Perhaps best to wait? They would soon go, and then we would be alone. But if they didn’t, if this dragged on for another half an hour, there would be a good chance she would leave. There was nothing of interest for her here. Could I simply suggest we went up to my bedroom?

No, no, that was the last thing I should do. Then they would be sitting underneath us listening to every movement upstairs, she would know that and refuse, that was no good.

But I had to get her on her own.

Could we go into my study?

With a glass in each hand I went into the sitting room. Put one on the table by Ine, who looked up at me and gave a weak smile.

‘This music is depressing me,’ I said. ‘Can I put something else on?’

‘Be my guest,’ Nils Erik said.

What might she like?

Or should I choose a record I liked, one which might give her a sense of who I was? Hüsker Dü, for example? Or Psychocandy by Jesus and Mary Chain?

‘Any requests?’ I said, crouching by the LPs.

No one answered.

The Smiths maybe?

No, that was too whiny. And something told me she hated whining.

Something hard and masculine. But what?

Did I really not have anything? Was all the music I had fem-inine and whiny?

It would have to be Led Zeppelin.

As the stylus crackled on the first groove I stood up. It was important to keep on the move because if I sat down the inertia in the room would make everything I did from then on conspicuous.

‘Skål!’ I said, reaching out my glass and clinking it against the others, Ine’s last.

‘Come with me,’ I said. ‘I’m going to show you something.’

‘Oh, what?’ she said.

‘It’s in there,’ I said, motioning towards the other end of the sitting room. ‘It’s something I talked about before. Come on!’

She got up, we crossed the floor, I closed the door behind us and there we were, each holding a glass and standing between the towers of books and piles of paper and cardboard boxes.

She looked around. I sat down on the chair.

‘What were you going to show me?’ she said.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It was just so boring in there. Come and sit over here.’

I held her hand, she sat down on my lap. Then she took the initiative, picked up my hand and studied it. Ran her thumb over my palm.

‘Wow, they’re so soft,’ she said. ‘You’ve never done any manual work in your life, have you.’

‘Not a lot,’ I said.

‘Never used a spade? Or a spanner?’

‘No.’

She shook her head.

‘That’s not good,’ she said. ‘And you bite your nails, I can see. Are you the nervy type?’

‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

‘And why was I to go home with you, did you say?’

I sat there with a hard-on, not knowing what to say.

She leaned forward and opened her mouth. We kissed. I stroked her back, then I held her tight and pulled her to me, hard, she was so lovely, and she moved her head away.

She stroked my cheek.

‘You’re nice,’ she said.

Her dark eyes lit up as she smiled.

We kissed again.

Then she got up.

‘I have to go,’ she said.

‘No. You can’t,’ I said. ‘Not now.’

‘Yes, I can. But I’m here tomorrow too. Pop round if you like. I’ll be at mum’s.’

She opened the door, I accompanied her to the hall, she put on her jacket and went out, turned briefly and said bye, disappeared down the road.

Leaving her bag behind.

The next day, well, what was on my mind the next day?

Ine.

A miracle had taken place. In my room, last night, a miracle.

Ine, Ine, Ine.

But I put off the visit. The night before I had been drunk, everything took its own course. Now I was sober and could lose everything.

It was three o’clock before I dared venture out and set off on the long road there.

Her mother, an elderly woman with white hair, opened the door.

‘Is Ine at home?’ I asked.

‘Yes, she is,’ she said. ‘She’s in the living room. Come inside.’

Ine in the living room, that was quite different from Ine at a party. She was wearing grey jogging pants and a white T-shirt with a picture of a motorbike on. Her hair was pinned up. She smiled when she saw me, jumped to her feet and asked if I wanted some coffee.

‘Yes, please.’

She fetched a cup and placed a white Thermos on the table next to me.

I grabbed it and tried to unscrew the top. But my palms were too sweaty. My hand slipped round without gaining any purchase. When I applied all my strength it budged a little, but by then I had used all my strength and had none left to turn it.

She watched me.

I blushed.

‘Shall I give you a hand?’ she said.

I nodded.

‘My hands are so slippery,’ I said.

She came over and unscrewed the top with ease.

‘There we are,’ she said and sat back down.

I poured the coffee, took a sip.

So far I hadn’t said a word.

‘When are you going back? Tonight?’

She nodded. Her mother came in behind me.

‘You work with Hege, don’t you?’ her mother said.

‘Yes.’

‘Hege really likes you,’ Ine said. ‘She talks about you a lot anyway.’

‘Is that right?’ I said.

‘It is,’ she said.

What was this? What was I doing here? Were we going to make small talk? How wrong was that? Wrong, wrong, wrong!

‘Where do you live in Finnsnes?’ I said.

‘Right behind the bank.’

‘Renting somewhere?’

She nodded.

‘Do you like Håfjord?’ her mother asked.

‘Yes, I like it a lot,’ I said. ‘I’m having a great time here.’

‘Yes, it’s a fine little place,’ her mother said.

‘Mum!’ Ine said. ‘You’re boring him.’

Her mother smiled and got up.

‘OK, OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave you two in peace.’

She left the room. Ine drummed her fingers on the table.

‘Can I meet you again?’ I said.

‘You’re meeting me now,’ she said.

‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘But I meant in a different way. We could have dinner together or something like that. What do you think?’

‘Maybe,’ she said.

She looked fantastic sitting there. A red-faced sweaty boy was the last thing she needed in her life.

‘Actually I dropped by on my way to the school,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to do some work and prepare for tomorrow.’

I got up.

She got up.

I went into the hall, she followed and watched me put on my coat.

‘Bye then,’ she said.

‘Bye,’ I said, and hurried up the hill towards the school, where I had nothing to do, but I unlocked the door anyway, in case she was watching me from her house. I was fairly sure she had forgotten I existed the moment she closed the door behind me, nevertheless, I didn’t want to be caught out telling such a cowardly lie, and now that I was at the school I might just as well watch some TV, it was Sunday, there was always sport on then.

Ine, Ine, Ine, all the girls tittered when I went into the classroom for the first lesson the following day.

So everyone knew.

I ignored them but thought of nothing else.

Ine, Ine, Ine.

At night I lay awake musing on my next move. She had left her bag at mine, she would have to come and get it, wouldn’t she? Or should I take it to Finnsnes?

I had already put the nightmare visit to her house behind me, I hadn’t even been able to open the Thermos, so what could I expect of another visit? That she would throw herself into my arms?

I would have to meet her when I was drunk, that was my only chance.

Ine, Ine, Ine.

The brief memory of her burned inside me, I had never experienced anything similar, it was so unassailable, it was the focal point of everything, suddenly she was all that counted.

I walked back and forth between the house and the school during the day, went for long runs in the evenings to sweat out any thoughts of her, and then the following Sunday she appeared.

There was a knock at the door, I opened up, there she stood.

Beautiful Ine.

‘I left a bag here, I believe. Just came by to pick it up.’

‘Is it this one?’ I said, holding it up.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

She turned to go.

‘Wouldn’t you like to come in for a while?’ I said.

She shook her head, but not from side to side, the movement seemed to stop halfway, and I loved it.

‘I have to go back to Finnsnes,’ she said, starting to walk up the little slope to the road. It was slippery, she took small steps.

‘Did you come all this way just to get the bag?’ I said.

‘No. I’ve been here all weekend,’ she said. She had reached the top now and was striding out.

I knew nothing about her except that she was sixteen, liked motorbikes and went to a technical college.

Not much to base a relationship on.

But she was a miracle of nature, and she was tough.

Her breasts were big, her legs long.

What more could I want?

Nothing, that covered everything.

So what should I do?

Nothing, I meant nothing to her, that had taken her under five minutes to work out.

I told Hege everything. We sat nursing cups of tea.

‘Ine’s no good for you,’ she said. ‘You have no idea. So you’ll just have to forget it.’

‘I can’t,’ I said.

She looked at me. ‘You’re not in love with my little sister, are you?’

‘Yes, I am. That’s exactly what I am.’

She sipped her tea, stroked a long strand of hair away from her eyes.

‘Oh, Karl Ove, what a one you are,’ she said.

‘It’s a terrible cliché, but I can’t stop thinking about her.’

‘You’ll never make it with her. It just won’t work. In fact, it is inconceivable.’

‘Saying that is not helpful,’ I said. ‘I have got to try.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to Finnsnes, go to the disco, miss the bus home and crash out at her place.’

‘Why can’t she come with us to the disco?’

‘She doesn’t like discos.’

It was a plan, and we followed it to the letter.

On Friday night we stood outside a house behind a bank, not far from a disco, Hege rang the bell and Ine came down.

If she was angry that her sister had tricked her, she didn’t show it.

They hugged, I looked down and tried to be as unassuming as possible, followed them up the stairs, sat down on a chair and not on the sofa so that she wouldn’t feel compelled to sit next to me.

She was just as casually dressed this time as last. Shiny tracksuit bottoms tight around her thighs and a plain white T-shirt.

She made some tea and they did the talking, I sat listening and offering the occasional comment.

The bedsit consisted of a single room with a little kitchenette at one end. The room was quite big, though by no means immense, and while I sat there I kept wondering what Hege had imagined. How could anything possibly happen here?

Ine made up a bed on a mattress on the floor, it was positioned right next to the door and that was where I was to sleep. Hege would be sharing the double bed with her.

Ho hum.

The light was switched off, the two of them whispered for a while, then all went quiet.

I lay on my back staring at the ceiling.

How strange my life had become.

As if in a dream a figure rose from the bed. It was Ine, she came over and slipped in beside me.

Jesus, she was naked.

She snuggled up to me, breathing hard.

We kissed, I caressed her whole body, her wonderfully large dark breasts, oh, I devoured them, and I felt her smooth hair against my thigh, and she was breathing heavily and I was breathing heavily, was it going to happen now, I caught myself thinking, with this stupendous motorbike girl?

She rubbed herself against me, and I came.

I twisted away and pressed myself against the mattress.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

‘Did you come?’ she said.

‘Mhm,’ I said.

She got up, crept back into bed and slid back into the dream from which she had so enticingly risen only a few minutes earlier.

And thet was thet, as Fleksnes used to say.

For the next few days my love grappled with the remainder of my pride. I couldn’t go to see her again. I couldn’t ring, couldn’t write a letter, couldn’t look her in the eyes again.

She was still all I thought about, but the incident in her bedsit had been so definitive and so humiliating that not even the most enamoured thoughts could withstand the pressure and slowly but surely they disappeared from my system.

Then it was just school again. School and writing and drinking.

But the days lengthened, the snow melted, spring was on its way. One day there was an envelope marked H. Aschehoug & Co. in my post box. I took it with me outside with the other letters, lit a cigarette, gazed at the jagged white mountains across the fjord gilded by the sun, which with every day that passed came closer to the village with its retinue of rays. The sight was invigorating, there was in fact a light that burned for us out in space.

A car drove past. I didn’t see who it was but waved all the same. Some gulls screeched over by the fish-processing factory, I glanced across, they were circling in the air above the quay. The waves lapped against the stones on the shore. I opened the envelope. There were my two short stories. So they had been rejected. There was a letter attached, I read it. No contributions had been selected, it said. The general standard had been too poor, the anthology would not be published.

So at least I hadn’t been rejected!

I walked up to the road and ambled towards our yellow house. Tor Einar’s old blue Peugeot was parked outside. Tor Einar was chatting to Nils Erik in the sitting room, along with his cousin, Even, a boy in the eighth class, it was Saturday, we were going to Finnsnes. As I turned on to the little path down to the door, they came out.

‘Are you ready?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Are we going now?’

‘That was the idea.’

I went back up, opened the passenger door and got in. On the rear seat Even leaned forward and spread his arms across the front seats. He had kind blue eyes, dark hair, a small wispy moustache above his upper lip. His voice rose and sank in ways even he could not predict. Tor Einar started the car and drove slowly through the village, waving to the right and left to people on their way to or from the shop. I set about opening the pile of letters I had taken from the post box. The original twenty people I corresponded with had shrunk to twelve, still enough to ensure the post box was seldom empty. One of the letters was from Anne. She had worked as a technician on the radio programmes I had done in Kristiansand. She lived in Molde now, went to the university there or whatever it was, I wasn’t very interested, she was though, the letters I received were rarely less than twenty pages.

I opened it and took out the thick wad of paper. A small brownish lump came with it and fell onto my thigh.

‘What was that?’ Even said.

Christ! It was hashish.

‘What was what?’ I said, placing my hand over it.

‘What fell out. What did you get?’

‘Oh that?’ I said. ‘It was nothing. A friend of mine’s studying horticulture. She’s interested in trees. So she’s sent me a piece of bark off a rare specimen.’

‘Can I see?’ he said.

I stared ahead at the tunnel opening a few metres in front of us. What would he do if he knew what it was? Tell someone? There would be a hell of a fuss then. DRUGS SEIZED ON HÅFJORD TEACHER. They drank like nutters, but they didn’t have anything to do with hashish, marijuana, amphetamines or that sort of thing.

‘Let me see then!’ he said.

‘There’s nothing to see,’ I said. ‘Just a rare specimen of bark.’

‘Why did she send it to you then?’

I shrugged. ‘We had a relationship.’

Tor Einar glanced at me. ‘Tell us about it,’ he said.

‘Nothing to tell,’ I said, putting the lump in my pocket with one hand while grabbing the handle above the door with the other. Not that it was necessary, Tor Einar was driving carefully as always. He and Nils Erik had to be the only motorists in the village who kept to the speed limits.

‘Am I going to see it or not?’ Even said.

Strange how persistent he was.

I turned. ‘Give me a break,’ I said. ‘I’ve put it in my pocket now. It’s just a bit of bloody bark.’

‘But it was rare,’ he said.

‘Are you interested in bark?’ I said.

‘No,’ he said, and laughed.

‘Well, there you are. Now I want some peace and quiet to read if that’s all right with you,’ I said, skimming through Anne’s pages.