Dancing in the Dark

~ ~ ~

When we returned a few hours later Tor Einar and Nils Erik were going to go skiing. They asked me if I wanted to join them, as usual I said no, I was going to write. The moment they were out of the door I took out the lump of hashish, warmed it up, mixed it with tobacco and rolled a joint. I drew the curtains, locked the door, sat down on the sofa and smoked it.

On the wall next to my Betty Blue poster Nils Erik had hung one of Charlie Chaplin. Sitting there, I imagined I was him and then I mimicked his walk. With my feet at a quarter to three and a stick happily whirring around in one hand I walked to and fro across the floor. It was a perfect imitation and I didn’t want to stop, I waddled up the stairs into my bedroom, which was bare except for a pile of clothes and a mattress against the wall, down again, did a circuit of the kitchen, back into the sitting room. I laughed several times, not because it was funny but because it felt so good. I was the tramp, I swung my stick and staggered around taking tiny footsteps, sometimes I lifted my hat and made a little pirouette to greet everyone. I could do no wrong. And my insides were lubricated to perfection, every movement rippled through my body, soon I was lying on the sofa and lifting first one shoulder, then the other, tensing my calf muscles, knees, abs, biceps, and it was as if I was both floating in the sea and the waves therein.

I woke up to someone knocking on the door. Outside, it was pitch black. I looked at my watch. It was half past five. I sat up, rubbed my hands over my face several times. There was another knock. The smell of hashish still hung in the air. I considered not answering, but when the third bout of knocking started I thought the person knocking must be sure I was here, I let some air in through a window, closed the sitting-room door behind me, went to the hall and opened up.

A man in his forties was standing outside. He was the father of one of my pupils although offhand I couldn’t say which. I had a faint rushing sound in my ears.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m Jo’s father. I wanted to have a little chat with you. It’s nothing serious, but I’d like to talk about Jo. It’s been on my mind for a while to drop by, but it hasn’t been convenient until now. Is this a suitable time for you? I know this is not exactly school hours but. .’ He laughed.

‘No problem at all,’ I said. ‘Come in. Would you like some coffee?’

‘Please, if it’s on the go. But don’t make any especially for me.’

He walked past me into the kitchen.

‘I was just about to make some,’ I said. ‘I’ve been having a nap. It’s been a long week.’

He sat down at the kitchen table. Hadn’t taken off either his jacket or his boots. I filled the coffee pot with water.

It was always women who took care of everything to do with children and school. They were the ones who went to parents’ evenings, they were the ones who signed the slips children took home, they were the ones who did voluntary work and made sure school trips and so on were paid for.

I switched on the stove and sat down opposite him at the table.

‘Yes, our Jo,’ he said. ‘He’s not happy at school at the moment.’

‘Oh?’ I said.

‘No, he isn’t. He says he doesn’t want to go to school any more, he wants to stay at home. Sometimes he cries as well. If I ask him why, he won’t say. Or else he says it isn’t anything. But we can see there’s something wrong. He really doesn’t want to go. Well, he is. . he always got on fine before, when he was smaller. He liked school then. But now. . no. .’

He looked at me.

‘I’ve come to you. . erm, you aren’t his form teacher. . I know perhaps it would have been more normal to go and see her. . but he talks very warmly about you. He likes you so much. It’s Karl Ove said this and Karl Ove did that all the time. And so I thought I could talk to you about this. After all you know him.’

I was so upset when he said that, I hadn’t been so touched for many years. The trust he showed in me I had already betrayed. Not through anything I had done, but through what I had thought. Now, with him sitting opposite me, his face grave and tormented, it was obvious he loved his son, that for him Jo was unique and precious. I realised that what for me had been a minor matter, a maladjusted boy who cried for nothing, for him was major, it filled his life, indeed it was his life, everything he had.

My guilt burned in me like a forest fire.

I would have to make amends. I would have to make amends now, to the father, who fortunately, oh how fortunately, had no idea what I had been thinking. And then I would have to make amends to Jo. As soon as I saw him I would do that.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘He’s a fine boy.’

‘Have you noticed anything at school? Have there been any incidents?’

‘No, nothing specific. But I’ve noticed he doesn’t fit in. And that sometimes the others don’t want him along, or they make fun of him. Nothing serious though, if you know what I mean. That is, no violence or systematic bullying. I haven’t seen anything like that. I don’t think it happens either.’

‘No,’ he said, rubbing his chin as he looked at me.

‘But he’s a. . well, chubby lad. Others tell him that. And perhaps he’s not as good at ball games as some of the others. So he avoids them. And that means he’s sometimes left to his own devices. He goes around on his own.’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know what we should do,’ I said. ‘But it’s a small school. We’re not talking about a lot of pupils. Everything’s quite open. Everyone knows everyone else inside out. So if he was being bullied it would be easy to do something about it. I mean, these are not children we don’t know, big gangs or anything like that. This is Stig, Reidar, Endre. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? It shouldn’t be impossible to talk to them about it.’

‘No,’ he said.

Oh, he did trust me, he was thinking through what I had said, and it hurt, it hurt him, he was a father in his forties, I was a boy of eighteen, so should he listen to me?

‘It’s all fine in the classroom,’ I went on. ‘There may be the odd comment, but there is about everyone, more or less, and if anything more serious crops up of course it’s dealt with at once, so what we’re really talking about is the breaks. Maybe we can try to set up some activities he likes and can do, and get others to join in? I can talk to Hege about it, and then we can draw up a little plan. It might be as simple as talking to the other boys and explaining the situation to them. I don’t think they know how he feels.’

‘I think they do,’ he said. ‘I think they know all too well. They never come back to play with him any more, and they exclude him from their games.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘But I don’t have the impression there’s anything malicious in it or that it means much to them. It’s more that it’s just happened that way.’

‘Won’t it get worse if you talk to them about it?’

‘It’s a risk we have to take. It has to be handled sensitively. And they’re nice children, all of them. I think it’ll be fine.’

‘Do you think so?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘I’ll have a word with Hege on Monday. Then we’ll put together a plan of action.’

He got up. ‘Then I won’t take up any more of your time.’

‘It’s not a problem,’ I said.

‘Thank you very much!’ he said, and shook my hand.

‘Everything will be fine,’ I said.

After he had gone I flopped down on the sofa. The sitting room was freezing cold, the window was still open. Noises filtered in from outside and filled the room, which in the atmospheric conditions became distorted, everything seemed to be close. It sounded as if the waves on the shore were beating against the house wall. Footsteps on the road, the crunch of the snow, seemed to come from out of thin air, as though a ghost were walking past, on its way to the sea. A car passed, the drone of the engine rebounded off the wall I was lying next to. Someone laughed somewhere, how eerie, I thought, the devils are out tonight. The state of disquiet Jo’s father had produced in me, the chasm between his trust and my betrayal, was like an ache in my chest. I got up, put on a record, the one I had been playing most of that year, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions’ latest, which I sensed would always remind me of the moods up here, lit a cigarette, closed the window, pressed my forehead against the chilly glass. After a while I went into the little study adjoining the sitting room, full of piles of books and papers, switched on the light and sat down at the desk.

The second I laid eyes on the sheet in the typewriter I saw someone had written something on it. I went cold. The first half of the page was mine, and then came five lines that weren’t. I read them.

Gabriel stuck his fingers up her wet cunt. Oh my God, Lisa groaned. Gabriel took his fingers out and smelled them. Cunt, he thought. Lisa was squirming underneath him. Gabriel knocked back a slug of vodka. Then he grinned and unzipped his fly and stuffed his hard dick up her wrinkly cunt. She screamed with delight. Gabriel, that’s my boy!

Shaken to the core, close to tears, I sat there staring at the five lines. It was a well-observed parody of the way I wrote. A good imitation. I knew who had done it, it was Tor Einar, and I recognised the spirit in which it had been done, the spirit of the good-natured joke, he’d ‘had a good laugh’ while he was doing it, read it aloud to Nils Erik, who had laughed his Østland laugh.

It wasn’t meant nastily, but I couldn’t forgive them for this. I wanted nothing more to do with them, didn’t want to speak to them beyond what was absolutely necessary: work and practical arrangements.

I tore the sheet out of the typewriter, crumpled it up and threw it on the floor. Then I got dressed and went out into the night. No point going to the village, along the illuminated road, I would be seen and perhaps also spoken to. Instead I followed the dead-end road after the bend, it ran along the gentle mountainside, it was dotted with houses. At the end there was a huge pile of snow. Behind it there was nothing, just snow, low trees and a rock face that after approximately fifty metres rose sharply in the darkness. The snow reached to above my knees, it was futile going any further, so I turned and waded through the snow down to the sea, stood gazing at the black water and the waves that rolled into the shore again and again, without much power, they were more like thoughtless little slaps.

Fuck.

It wasn’t just a text he had tampered with, that wouldn’t have offended me in the slightest, it was something else, much more than that, there was a soul in it, my soul. And when he tampered with that, I could feel it. It looked different from the outside than from the inside, and it was perhaps that which lay at the heart of my despair. What I wrote was worthless. So that meant I was worthless too.

I retraced my steps. At the crossroads I stood not knowing what to do. I could walk five hundred metres along one road, ending up at the school, or five hundred metres along the other, also ending up at the school. There were no other options. The shop was closed, the snack bar was closed, and if anyone was drinking somewhere I didn’t know about it. There was no one I knew well enough to drop in on. The sole exceptions were Nils Erik and Tor Einar, whom I no longer wanted anything to do with, and Hege, whom I didn’t feel like visiting now, and nor could I, as her husband, who was always exceptionally open towards me but evidently also had a heart darkened with jealousy, was at home. Sitting at home reading and playing records wasn’t an option either, I saw, a light had come on in the sitting room, which meant that Nils Erik was there.

I couldn’t stay standing under the lamp post much longer either, someone somewhere would be watching me and wondering what I was doing.

Slowly I moved off. On reaching the house I warily opened the door, carefully removed my coat and was about to creep upstairs as quietly as I could when the hall door opened and Nils Erik stood looking at me.

‘Hi!’ he said. ‘We got mølje at Tor Einar’s grandmother’s. Shame you weren’t with us! It’s a bit of a delicacy — cod with liver and roe and onions!’

‘I’m going to bed,’ I said, avoiding his eyes. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Already?’ he said.

I didn’t answer, opened the door to my room, slipped in and lay on the mattress in the dark, fully clothed. Staring at the ceiling. Heard Nils Erik washing up in the kitchen. He had the radio on. Now and then his humming, which I couldn’t hear, but after two months of living in the house with him I knew he was humming, developed slowly into loud hearty singing. A car with its stereo on full blast drove by. The throb of the drums became fainter and fainter as it went up the hill and followed the road to the other end, then the drums grew louder until they were again pounding outside the wall next to which I was lying.

I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes to eight.

What the hell should I do?

All the roads out of here were closed.

I was stuck.

For an hour I lay there in the darkness without moving. Then I swallowed my pride and went downstairs to the sitting room, where Nils Erik was reading.

‘Didn’t you have a bottle of red wine?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said, looking up. ‘Why?’

‘Can I have it?’ I said. ‘I’ll buy you a bottle in the week.’

‘Yes, no problem,’ he said. ‘Are you going out or what?’

I shook my head, fetched the bottle, opened it and went back up to my room. And glimpsed happiness as I started to drink. They had betrayed me, I was despondent, yes, there was black depression inside me, but I was alone and drinking, I was a writer.

They couldn’t say that. They were nothing.

I finished off the bottle in ten minutes. My mind befuddled, as though mist had seeped into my skull, I went downstairs, ignored Nils Erik, opened the door to my study, locked it behind me, switched on the typewriter, sat down at the desk and made a start. A few minutes later it was as if my stomach was being torn apart. I launched myself at the door, but of course it was locked, vomit was pressing up my throat, I cast around, a box, a bucket, a corner, anything, found nothing though, my mouth opened and a cascade of purple spew arced and fell into the room.

I collapsed, my stomach churned, another torrent of wine and sausages was expelled, I groaned, my stomach churned again, but now there was nothing left, only the pain as it writhed and twisted and some thick mucus which I coughed up.

Oooh.

I sat on the floor for several minutes enjoying the peace that had descended on my innards. I didn’t care that my books and papers were covered with vomit.

There was a knock at the door. The handle went up and down a few times.

‘What are you doing in there?’ Nils Erik said.

‘Nothing much,’ I said.

‘What did you say? Are you ill? Do you need help?’

‘Not from you anyway, you bloody idiot.’

‘What was that?’

‘NOTHING! THERE’S NOTHING WRONG!’

‘OK, OK.’

I could imagine him holding up his palms to the locked door, then going back to the sofa. The stench of puke had filled the room, and for a moment I speculated on why the smell of your inner juices should be repugnant while that of your excrement was not. Could it have something to do with some kind of Neanderthal custom, shitting in the forest to mark your territory, whereas vomit had no such function to fulfil, it was no more than a reflex action to dispose of tainted food and therefore had to stink?

I staggered to my feet, opened the window and fastened it with the clasp. I couldn’t bring myself to clean up the vomit, that would have to wait until the following day, I thought, unlocked the door and went to the hall without so much as a glance at Nils Erik, up the stairs and into my room, where I undressed, crept under the duvet and slept like a log.

I stayed away from them all the next day, and the day after that too, but then I relented, they were going to the school in the evening for a swim, I joined them, not overjoyed, though not furious either. I didn’t say much as we swam up and down, and I let them go into the sauna first, left them on their own, before I climbed out of the pool and stood by the door to try to catch what they were saying. I knew they were talking about me, and I knew they were laughing at me. That was obvious, they spent a lot of time together, and they ridiculed what I did and invested so much energy in.

But inside it was silent, so at length I opened the door and joined them, sat in the corner at the top, supported my back against the wall, looked down at their two white bodies, which glistened with sweat, Nils Erik bent forward, Tor Einar was resting against the bench behind. Nils Erik’s face was always in motion, either he was talking, smiling, laughing or pulling grimaces, but now it was completely still, and it appeared wooden, as though he really was Pinocchio, a carved stump of wood into which a magician had breathed life.

He must have noticed I was staring at him because he smiled and turned towards me.

‘I saw something today that might interest you, Karl Ove. There was an ad in Dagbladet for some kind of writing school. In Bergen.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said in as bored a tone as I could manage. Surely he didn’t believe I would fall for such an obvious gesture of appeasement?

At school it was decided that I should have the two school-weary disruptive ninth years, Stian and Ivar, a few times a week. I was to teach them to play an instrument, we borrowed some equipment from the band in the village, Autopilot, so every Tuesday we trudged up to the community centre, switched on the amps and went through the few songs I knew, instrument by instrument. Ivar played bass, he was absolutely hopeless, but I told him to play the same note while watching me, then when I nodded he should change to a sequence he had been practising. Stian played the drums, he was better but wouldn’t listen to instructions, he was too proud for that, while I played the guitar. We could play three songs: ‘Smoke on the Water’, ‘Paranoid’ and ‘Black Magic Woman’. I was used to playing them as instrumentals, I had done that with Jan Vidar, it was second nature to me, a voice on top of this jangling inept talentless performance would only sink it further. We stood on the stage and played with the whole of the spacious but empty community centre before us. Stian and Ivar did as much posing with their instruments as playing. Towards the end of one lesson a fourth year opened the door and stood watching us, wide-eyed. Stian and Ivar tried to conceal the pride they felt by spitting and pretending this was no big deal for them.

At a planning meeting some days later Eva went mad at me. We had been given permission to use equipment belonging to the band her son played in, but we had treated it without due care, a string had been broken and not replaced, a drumstick had snapped and not been replaced, the band had had enough, she said, and moved without pause on to the next item on the agenda, which was the seventh class’s attitude to work, you couldn’t talk to them any more, they didn’t listen to her, they informed her Karl Ove had said something very different, and when she told me to reprimand them I said I would, but I never did, at least not as far as she could see.

I said I didn’t have any discipline problems in my lessons, but I would take the matter up with them. She said this was precisely the problem, I would ‘take it up with them’ but I didn’t treat the matter seriously, and they noticed. There had never been any problems with the seventh class before, they had always been hard-working and bright, now they were cheeky and lazy.

‘Not in my lessons,’ I said, looking at her.

She was so angry her head was trembling.

Richard intervened, he said both of us were right, but I needed to make it abundantly clear to them that this behaviour would not be tolerated and there would be consequences for them if it continued. OK, I said, I’ll do that. When the meeting was over and I was in the vestibule putting on my coat Eva said Grete was wondering what had happened to the bed linen they had lent me in August, did I perhaps imagine I had been given it in perpetuity?

Oh, for Christ’s sake, was she never going to let up?

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘It’s not gone anywhere. I can return it tomorrow. It’s not a problem.’

People were so preoccupied with trivialities, they kept searching until they found something and then they went for the jugular instead of keeping sight of the bigger picture, here we all are, humans on one earth, we’re only here for the short term, in the midst of all this wondrous creation, grass and trees, badgers and cats, fish and sea, beneath a star-strewn sky, and you get worked up over a broken guitar string? A snapped drumstick? Some bloody bed linen that hasn’t been returned? Come on, what’s the matter with you lot?

The broken drumstick was the height of pettiness for me. So this was what we were going to discuss, not the results I had achieved with Stian and Ivar?

Why choose the little picture when the bigger one existed?

I hated the little picture, and I wasn’t much good at dealing with trivialities, I had to confess. The HP instalments on the stereo had been passed on to a debt-recovery firm, and the case of the dinner suit I had rented a year before and had not returned because it was ruined — a rocket had torn the trouser leg to ribbons — had gone to court, I had been ordered to pay for it and in addition there had been a hefty fine for not appearing in court! A fine for not appearing! What did they imagine? That I would hop on a plane to Southern Norway all for the sake of a dinner suit?

But that was how it was, everyday life with its endless round of petty demands and obligations, petty conversations and arrangements, surrounded us like a fence. I lived this life, but not when I was drinking, then it was all open spaces and grand gestures, and even though the price was high, the fear afterwards great, I always paid, and only a day or two later again I would feel the itch to cast myself out into it, and sod what people said.

One night when I had been out drinking at a community centre at the other end of the island, Nils Erik was sitting up at home waiting for me.

‘You’ve got an enemy,’ he said.

‘Oh yes?’ I said from the doorway, drunk and weary.

‘I went to bed after you left. Then I was woken up by someone sitting on my bed. It was Vidar. He wanted to know where you were. He had a gun in his lap.’

‘You’re joking!’ I said. ‘Don’t mess about.’

‘It’s true. If I were you I’d lock the door. And then I’d get hold of Hege and tell her.’

‘But there’s never been anything between us!’

‘He doesn’t know that. She’s here two nights a week, minimum. That’s a lot of time to spend with someone.’

‘But for God’s sake I’m not even in the slightest bit interested!’

‘This is serious. He had a gun. I’m not kidding.’

I wasn’t frightened until the day after. I could bump into him at any moment, that was how it felt. That night I locked the door. And the following morning the first thing I did was to visit Hege and tell her what had happened.

‘He lost it,’ she said. ‘He won’t do it again. Were you scared?’

‘Me? No. I wasn’t even there. But Nils Erik was.’

‘It’s just nonsense really. He would never have used it, you know. He just wanted to frighten the living shit out of you.’

‘For what? For chatting to you?’

She nodded.

I was already looking forward to describing what had happened in the letters I wrote. It was as crazy as it was flattering; I lived in a place where people broke in brandishing a gun, and I was important enough for it to be me the nutter was after.

For the next few days I was nervous, not perhaps of being shot at, it was unpleasant enough imagining that he would probably beat me up if he got half a chance.

Did he really have a gun?

That is what I remember. But could it have been true?

Unlikely things happened in the north, things that only a year earlier would have seemed deeply alien, perhaps even impossible, and only a year later had that same deeply alien impossible quality although they seemed absolutely normal, a matter of course, when I lived there.

Nils Erik, who had brought back his diving equipment from home at Christmas and in the spring would go down to the harbour wearing a wetsuit and put on a mask, flippers and an oxygen cylinder, sit on the edge holding a harpoon and slip down into the clear transparent water, a shimmering figure who became fainter and fainter until he disappeared, only to reappear ten minutes later with a fish speared on the harpoon, which he cooked for dinner.

Did that happen?

Did he have any diving equipment?

Did he harpoon fish for dinner after school?

I have never been back, but I do sometimes have nightmares about it, really terrible nightmares which consist of me driving into the village again after all these years, nothing else. That is obviously bad enough.

Why?

Did terrible things happen there? Did I do something I shouldn’t have done? Something awful? I mean beyond staggering around drunk and out of control at night?

I once wrote a novel that took place there. I wrote it without a second thought. I paid no regard to the relationship between fiction and reality, for a world opened up when I wrote, it meant everything to me for a while, and it consisted partly of descriptions of real buildings and people, for the school in the book is the school as it was when I worked there, and partly of fictional ones, and it was only when the novel had been written and published that I began to wonder how it would be received up there in the north, by those who knew the world I described and who could see what was reality and what wasn’t. I used to lie awake at night in fear. The story had not been plucked out of the air. On the contrary, it had been in the air. I worked as a teacher for a year in the north, and when occasionally I was able to relish the thought of going to work in the morning it was because she was there.

She: Andrea.

A gaze, a hand cupping her forehead, a little foot bobbing up and down, a child who was a woman who was a child whom I liked to be in the same room with so much.

That was how it was during the months where day was night, and that was how it was when the light unveiled the room in the mornings, at first cold and shimmery, then, slowly and imperceptibly, full of warmth. The snow on the road disappeared, the enormous piles of snow dwindled, patches of shale began to peep through on the football pitch, and from all the roofs and raised surfaces water dripped and gurgled.

It was as though the light rose in the people living there too. Everywhere there was a mood of gaiety and expectation.

In one lesson Andrea and Vivian presented me with a diploma. They had chosen me as the school’s sexiest teacher.

I hung the diploma on the classroom wall and said that the competition might not have been that fierce.

They laughed.

A few days later, with the sun shining from the middle of the endlessly blue sky, I told them to go outside and write down what they saw. They could go wherever they wanted, write whatever they wanted, the sole conditions I set were that they should write down what they saw and it had to be at least two pages.

Some went down to the shop, others sat against the wall outside the school in the sun. I went behind the school building and smoked a cigarette, gazed across the football pitch, which was now almost completely free of snow, and at the glittering fjord beyond. Did the rounds of the pupils and asked how it was going. They squinted up at me.

‘It’s going fine,’ Andrea said.

‘Here comes Karl Ove,’ Vivian said slowly to show me that this was what she was writing as her pen moved across the page of her notebook. ‘He’s really sexy.’

Andrea looked away when she said that.

‘That’s what Andrea thinks anyway!’ Vivian said.

‘Don’t be so daft,’ Andrea said.

Both looked up at me and smiled. They had tied their jackets around their waists and were sitting there in T-shirts with their arms bare.

I was overcome by the same feelings that had filled me in the spring I was in the seventh class myself. When we ran after girls, held them tight, pulled up their T-shirts and fondled their breasts. The girls had screamed but never loud enough for a teacher to hear.

I was overcome by the same feelings, but everything else was different: I wasn’t thirteen, I was eighteen and not their classmate but their teacher.

They couldn’t see my feelings. They couldn’t know anything about what stirred inside me. I was their young teacher, and I smiled at them.

‘I’m going to read out what you’ve written in the class,’ I said. ‘So you might want to choose your material with a little more prudence?’

‘Prudence?’ Vivian said. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Look it up when you get inside,’ I said.

‘Typical of you,’ Andrea said. ‘We always have to look words up. Look it up, look it up! Can’t you just tell us?’

‘He doesn’t know himself,’ Vivian said.

‘Five more minutes,’ I said. ‘Then you have to go back inside.’

I walked towards the entrance, heard them laughing behind me, I felt such warmth for them, not only for them though, for all the pupils and all the people in the village, in fact, for everyone in the world.

It was that kind of day.

Eleven years later I was sitting in the study of our first flat in Bergen answering emails when the phone rang.

‘Hello, Karl Ove speaking,’ I said.

‘Hi, this is Vivian.’

‘Vivian?’

The moment she said her name everything went cold and black inside me.

‘Yes. Don’t you remember me? You were our teacher.’

There wasn’t a hint of accusation in her voice. I rubbed my hand, which was clammy, on my thigh.

‘Of course I remember you!’ I said. ‘How are things?’

‘Fantastic! I’m here with Andrea. We read about you in the paper, and then we saw you were going to give a reading in Tromsø. And so we thought perhaps we could meet you.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘That would be nice.’

‘We’ve read your book. It was brilliant!’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Yes! Andrea does too.’

To avoid going into detail about what was actually in the book, to nip that discussion in the bud, I asked what they were doing now.

‘I’m working at the fish-processing factory. No great surprises there. And Andrea’s studying in Tromsø.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘It’ll be great fun to meet you again. Should we arrange a time and place now?’

She suggested a café close to where I was going to read, some hours before. I said OK, see you then, and we rang off. A few weeks later I opened the café door and saw them sitting at the back of the room, they laughed when they spotted me, said I hadn’t changed at all. But you have, I said, and indeed they had, for although their faces were the same, and the way they behaved, they were adults now and the zone of ambivalence they had lived in then was completely gone. The woman in them held undisputed sway now.

I took off my coat, went over to the counter and ordered a coffee. I was nervous, they had both read the novel and would probably have recognised themselves in it. I decided to take the bull by the horns. Sat down, lit a cigarette, so you’ve read the novel, I said. Yes, they both replied, and nodded. It’s not you I was writing about, you know, although I’m sure there are similarities, I said. Enormous similarities, Andrea added. But don’t worry about it, it’s just funny, that’s all.

They told me about everything that had happened in the village since I was there, and it was not so little. The biggest sensation was a sex scandal at the school, which had led to a conviction and prison, and the village had been split into two camps. Otherwise lots of the same teachers were still at the school. Vivian often met the people she had known then, as well as the fishermen who had been my age at the time, of course. Andrea lived in Tromsø, where she was a student, and went home during the holidays and for the odd weekend.

I treated them as if they were still thirteen years old, the mould was already set, I couldn’t change that, and when I left an hour later it struck me how stupid that was, especially with regard to Andrea.

They went and listened to the reading and subsequent discussion, came over when it was finished and said their goodbyes, I left with Tore, whom I had done my reading with, and a couple of others and drank all evening. Later that night I saw Andrea again, she was standing with a guy in a taxi queue, he was behind her and she stretched her hands back while he kissed her neck and then stroked her breasts. An almost desperate feeling of failure came over me then, I crossed the street, she didn’t see me or pretended she hadn’t seen me, and I thought, I could be with her now if I had played my cards right. But I was married, and I wasn’t playing a game, so I never got further than the thought, which pursued me across the ensuing months and years: I should at least have tried to get her out of my mind.

Two weeks after Vidar had sat down on the edge of Nils Erik’s bed and asked where I was I went south for the Easter holiday.

Mum, who was standing on the quay in Lavik when I arrived, seemed tired, she had worked a lot that year and when she wasn’t working was looking after her parents in Sørbøvåg.

During the day we chatted, she did all the cooking and I lay on the sofa reading or walked down to the mall in Førde to do the shopping, in the evening we watched TV.

She told me that Jon Olav was also home, I rang him, we arranged to meet in Førde the next night. He had grown up in Dale, an hour’s drive away, and the disco where we went was full of people he knew.

I drank beer and talked to him, and away from the reservation, which was how I had come to consider Håfjord, everything felt much simpler and easier. I said I was thinking of applying for a writing course at the Skrivekunstakademi in Hordaland. He had never heard of it even though it was in Bergen, the town where he was studying. But it was a new course, this year’s intake was the first.

‘Who are the teachers then?’ he said.

‘I’ve never heard of them. Think they’re some obscure Vestland writers. Ragnar Hovland, Jon Fosse and Rolf Sagen. You heard of them?’

Jon Olav shook his head.

‘It’s a bit of a poor do that it’s such a local affair,’ I said. ‘But it’s one year and you can get a study loan. So at least I’d be able to write full time.’

‘In your last letter you were going to Goldsmiths in London,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘I’ll apply there too. Yngve got me the address, and I’ve just written off for application forms.’

Jon Olav was scanning the back of the disco, which was packed, it was the first day it had been open since the weekend.

‘I’ll just be a minute,’ he said.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I said.

Oh, the pleasure of being in a place where no one knew me!

Felt the alcohol going to my head. Smoked a few cigarettes, eyed up some of the girls, relaxed completely for a change.

When he came back an hour later I was sitting on the same stool, in the same posture even, elbow on the bar, chin resting on my hand.

‘I met some gymnas friends,’ he said. ‘We’re over there. Come and join us.’

I slid off the stool and followed him. He stopped by a table at the other end of the room, near the exit.

‘This is my cousin, Karl Ove,’ he said.

Those sitting round the table looked at me without interest and nodded.

In the midst of them was a girl. She was talking to someone on the opposite side of the table and didn’t see me. She laughed and leaned forward with both palms on the table. Her skin was pale, her dark fringe hung over her eyes, but that wasn’t what made me stare at her, it was her eyes, they were blue and at first joyous, only to turn serious and gentle the next second.

There was something French about her, I thought, slipping down onto the chair next to Jon Olav. Her features were beautiful, but it was only when she laughed again that a shiver ran through me.

She had an aura around her.

‘Do you want a beer?’ Jon Olav said. ‘They’re closing soon.’

Two minutes earlier I would have been glad they were closing soon, now the thought made me desperate in the same senseless way that I was sad whenever anyone left a drinks party, as though with every person who left I came a step closer to death or some other calamity.

‘I’ll come with you,’ I said and followed him to the bar.

‘I can carry two beers,’ Jon Olav said.

‘Who’s she?’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘The girl at the table.’

Jon Olav turned. Hadn’t he even noticed there was a girl sitting at our table?

‘Oh her,’ he said. ‘That’s Ingvild.’

‘Do you know her well?’

‘No, hardly at all. She lives in Kaupanger. But I know her bloke. Tord. Sleeping in the chair over there. Can you see him?’

Typical.

As though I could have been in with a chance if she hadn’t been with him.

I was on holiday, at my mother’s, leaving in two days, what was I dreaming of? One look at a beautiful stranger, was that supposed to be the future? Me and her, oh yes?

Why?

She had an aura around her.

I drank half the glass at the bar while Jon Olav was paying, then I ordered another and took both glasses with me to the table.

Four of Jon Olav’s friends at the table got up and left immediately afterwards. They had come in the same car and were going home, I gathered.

Around the table now were only Jon Olav, someone he was talking to, Ingvild and me. As well as her bloke, that is, but he was asleep and so didn’t count.

I took a couple of hefty swigs.

She was staring over her shoulder.

‘Do you want this beer?’ I said when she finally turned her eyes back to the table. ‘It’s untouched. I haven’t had a sip.’

‘If anything was likely to make me suspicious it would be a total stranger offering me a beer he’s had standing in front of him for a while. But you look harmless enough.’

She spoke in the Sogne dialect, and her eyes narrowed when she smiled.

‘I am,’ I said.

‘But no thanks. I have to drive.’

She motioned towards the boy sleeping at the table.

‘I have to drive him home among other things.’

‘I’m a good driver,’ I said. ‘I can give you a few tips if you like.’

‘Oh please! I’m a terrible driver.’

‘First of all, it’s important to drive fast,’ I said.

‘Oh yes?’

‘There are those who claim it’s best to drive slowly, but I think they’re mistaken. It’s better to drive fast.’

‘OK, fast. Anything else?’

‘Well, let me see. . Yep, I was driving along the road once. The car in front of me was going slowly. I think it’s important to drive fast, so I simply overtook him. It was on a bend, I crossed into the opposite carriageway, stamped my foot down on the accelerator and then I was past him.’

‘Yes?’

‘That was all. I just carried on.’

‘You haven’t got a licence, have you.’

‘No. I really admire those who have. Actually it’s incredible that I dare talk to you. Usually I would have just sat staring at the table. But then I’ve had a bit to drink and I love talking about driving cars. The theory, that is. I think a lot about how best to change gear to get the smoothest drive, for example. The whole interaction between clutch and gear and accelerator and brakes. But not everyone likes to talk about it.’

I looked at her. ‘Has your boyfriend got a licence?’

‘How do you know he’s my boyfriend?’

‘He who?’

‘He on the chair.’

‘Is he your boyfriend?’

She laughed. ‘Yes, he is. And he’s got a licence.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ I said. ‘Was it driving cars that brought you together?’

She shook her head.

‘But tonight it seems to be forcing us apart. I could have done with a few beers as well. Especially if he’s asleep. He might have had the decency to fall asleep without drinking. Then I could have had one.’

She looked at me.

‘Are you interested in anything else apart from driving cars?’

‘No,’ I said and took a swig of beer. ‘What are you interested in?’

‘Politics,’ she said. ‘I’m passionately interested in politics.’

‘What kind? Local politics? Foreign affairs?’

‘Just politics. Politics in general.’

‘Are you flirting with my cousin while your bloke is asleep?’ Jon Olav said.

‘I’m not flirting,’ she said. ‘We’re talking about politics. And then perhaps we’ll end up talking about emotions, if I know me.’

‘I’m sure you do,’ I said.

‘I have a wretched emotional life. What about you?’

‘It’s pretty poor, actually. Yes, if I’m honest. I never usually talk about it. But there’s something about you that gives me the courage.’

‘Ironic girls tend to have that effect. That’s my experience. In the end people get so sick of irony they’ll do anything to stop it. Since I started being ironic I’ve been told quite a few intimate details.’

The music in the room was switched off.

Jon Olav turned to me.

‘Shall we go then?’

‘OK,’ I said, and looked at her as I got up. ‘Drive home fast!’

‘I’ll drive like a bat out of hell,’ she said.