Dancing in the Dark

~ ~ ~

We talked a bit about what had happened; when Kai Roald came back I told him he could fight as much as he wanted as long as he didn’t do it on school premises. At the weekends you can fight from the moment you get up until you go to bed, and in the afternoons too, but not at school. Can you manage that? I said. He shook his head. It was Stian who started it, he said. OK, I said. You’ll have to settle your differences with him when you get home. But not here. If it happens again I’ll have to punish you, do you understand? And it isn’t worth that. Wait a few hours and you can do whatever you like. Now, though, I’m afraid we’ll have to start the lesson. You have to learn as well, all of you. Especially you, I said. You don’t know anything!

The four girls sent me a particularly sulky expression.

‘Nothing at all!’ I said. ‘So, get out your books.’

‘And how much do you bloody know?’ Hildegunn said.

Vivian and Andrea laughed.

I raised a forefinger.

‘No swearing! I don’t want to hear that in the classroom.’

‘But everyone swears in Northern Norway,’ Vivian said.

‘The same rule applies to swearing as fighting,’ I said. ‘Swear as much as you like at home. But not here. I’m serious. I mean it. Right. You can carry on with the exercises you started last time. Page thirteen onwards. If you need any help I’m here. At the beginning of the next lesson we’ll go through any problems that arise. OK?’

I went to the window, leaned against the frame and crossed my arms. Heard Nils Erik’s voice at the other end of the open-plan block; he had English with the fourth class. I thought of Stian, saw that cheeky smile of his in my mind’s eye, and saw the girls in the class, their eyes watching his every movement. They admired him, I was fully aware of that. Perhaps they even dreamed about him?

They probably did.

The thought smarted. He was just a little shit.

I went to my desk, glanced at Hege, who had taken her pupils over to the little library corner, where they sat on cushions in a circle around her and listened while she read.

She noticed that I was watching, looked across and smiled. I smiled back, sat down at the desk, thumbed through the textbook to see what I could do in the next lesson.

When I looked up again my eyes met Andrea’s. Blood suffused her cheeks. I smiled. She raised her hand and lowered her gaze. I got to my feet and went over to her.

‘What do you need help with?’ I said.

‘This bit,’ she said, pointing. ‘Have I done it right?’

I leaned forward and went through what she had written. She sat motionless, following my finger as it moved down the page. A faint fragrance redolent of apples emanated from her. It had to be the shampoo she used, I thought, and felt a quiver spread through my chest. Her breathing, the hair that fell over her face, her eyes staring through it. All so close.

‘We-ell,’ I said. ‘It looks right to me.’

‘Does it?’ she said, looking up at me. When our eyes met I straightened up.

‘Yes, it does,’ I said. ‘Stick at it!’

No one was in the staffroom when I entered after the lesson. It was only when I had sat down that I noticed Torill — she was in the kitchenette buttering a slice of bread.

‘Have you had a free period?’ I said.

She nodded and took a bite, holding a finger up while she chewed and swallowed.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I’ve been busy preparing for my next lessons!’

‘Right,’ I said, reaching over for the newspaper on the table. As I browsed through it I was aware of her movements. The slice of bread that went up to her mouth and down again as she scurried around.

She leaned forward and opened the fridge door. I looked up. She was wearing a pair of black stretch pants. I examined her thighs so clearly outlined in them, and her bottom. It was broad but not too broad; on the contrary, it was curvaceous and so utterly feminine.

The blood began to throb in my member, and I crossed my legs without shifting my gaze. How wonderful it would be to sleep with her and feel her thighs and bottom against my body. Oh Lord. To penetrate her. Oh Lord God. Oh. Her breasts cupped in my hands! Oh, just her skin! Oh, just the smooth insides of her thighs!

I swallowed and studied the ceiling. It would never work. Even in the highly unlikely event that I ended up in bed with her or someone like her, it would never work. I knew that.

She stood up with a carton of milk in her hand. Opened it and started filling a glass as she shot me a brief glance. When our eyes met she smiled.

She had noticed everything.

I blushed and smiled back, feverishly trying to think of something that might divert her attention from the colour in my cheeks and what I had just seen and thought.

She threw back her head and finished the milk in one draught. Wiped the white moustache off with the back of her hand and looked at me again.

‘Would you like some coffee, Karl Ove? You look like you could do with some!’

What did she mean? Why did I look like I needed coffee?

‘No, thanks,’ I said.

But a no drew attention!

‘Erm, well, perhaps I will,’ I added quickly. ‘Yes, please!’

‘Milk?’

I shook my head. She poured out two cups and brought them over, passed me one and sat down beside me with a sigh.

‘You sighed,’ I said.

‘Did I?’ she said. ‘It’s just late in the day. I slept badly last night.’

I blew on the black impenetrable surface with the small light brown bubbles at the edge and took a sip.

‘Do I make a lot of noise?’ I said. ‘The music and so on, I mean.’

She shook her head. ‘I can hear you’re there,’ she said. ‘But that doesn’t matter.’

‘Sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure.’

‘OK, but tell me if it’s too loud.’

‘Can you hear anything from our flat?’ she said.

‘Hardly anything. When you walk across the floor, that’s all.’

‘That’s just because Georg is away fishing,’ she said. ‘I’m a lot quieter when I’m on my own.’

‘Is he going to be away for long?’

‘No, they’re back on Saturday actually.’

She smiled and her lips were so soft and red and supple against her hard white teeth.

‘Right,’ I said and looked up because the door at the end of the room opened and Tor Einar, then Hege and Nils Erik, came in.

‘Here they come, in serried ranks,’ I said.

‘Yes, some of us respect lesson times,’ Nils Erik said. ‘We know that every minute is important for the pupils’ future lives. So we cannot, I repeat, cannot finish three minutes before the bell rings. That would be grossly irresponsible. In fact, I would go so far as to say it would be unforgivable.’

‘Yes, regular temps have a heavy cross to bear,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you become a form teacher like me? Then you would have had more control over your time, you know.’

‘It’s my ultimate goal to become a head teacher without studying,’ Nils Erik said. ‘It’s not very common, and it won’t be easy, but that’s what I’ve set my heart on.’ He rubbed his hands and grimaced in a caricature of greed. ‘Now for a few decent slices of dry bread with a bit of hard goat’s cheese!’

Then in came Vibeke, Jane and Sture. I got up, thinking I should make some room for those who wanted to eat, and stood by the window staring out with a cup in my hand.

The sky was grey but not heavy. The girls from my class were standing by the wall on the far side chatting. The eighth and ninth years were allowed to stay inside if they wanted, and they invariably did, at least the girls. The children in the lower school generally stayed on the other side by the football pitch.

I still hadn’t done a break duty.

I turned to the others.

‘Who’s on playground duty?’ I said.

‘A wild guess — you,’ Sture said, leaning against the door frame with one hand pointing in my direction.

I went over to the list on the wall. And yes, it was me.

‘Shit, I’d forgotten all about it,’ I said and went into the corridor, grabbed my jacket and put it on as I hurried out.

From the wet-weather shelter a small, plump figure came towards me. This was a boy called Jo. I pretended I hadn’t seen him and made for the other side of the playground, where a whole crowd of kids rushed one way, then the other in front of a goal with a heavy grey ball in their midst.

They saw me and stopped the game.

‘Do you want to join in?’ they said.

‘Could do,’ I said. ‘For a little while anyway.’

‘It’s you against the rest then!’

‘OK,’ I said.

They gave the ball to the goalkeeper, who kicked it into the melee. There were lots of boys, but their legs were short, so it was relatively easy to get the ball and keep it. Occasionally I knocked some of them flying, they shouted for a free kick, I shouted they were little weeds, and they got stuck in again and chased after me. A couple of times I let them have the ball, just to keep them motivated, but in the end I ran towards the goal and shot the ball past the keeper and shouted I had won and the game was over. No, don’t go, they shouted, we’re going to smash you! Some of the smallest boys grabbed my trousers. I freed myself and had to run a few steps to get away. They were soon engrossed in the game again and I started to walk over to see to the pupils on the other side.

Jo was standing on his own by the wall with his hat tugged down over his forehead.

‘Don’t you want to play football with the others?’ I said as I passed.

He came after me and I had to stop.

‘I don’t like football,’ he whimpered.

‘Just try!’ I said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Can I come with you instead?’

‘Me?’ I said. ‘I’m just walking around.’

He took my hand and looked up at me with a smile.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘If you want.’

Didn’t he understand how this would look to his classmates, walking around hand in hand with the teacher?

Obviously not.

With the chubby little boy in tow I went towards the other part of the playground, where the pupils in my class had now been joined by the eighth and ninth years.

‘Yesterday I finished my homework and tried the next bit,’ he said, looking up at me again.

‘Really?’ I said. ‘That’s very good. Did you understand any of it?’

‘I think so,’ he said. ‘Some of it anyway.’

‘But if you don’t like football, what do you like?’

‘Drawing,’ he said. ‘I love that.’

‘No outdoor hobbies?’

‘I quite like cycling. With Endre.’

‘Is he your best friend?’

‘Off and on.’

I looked down at him. His face was completely expressionless.

So the poor boy had no friends.

His eyes met mine and his face softened into a smile. I rested my hand on his shoulder and crouched down in front of him.

‘What about if we go and play football?’ I said. ‘You and I can be in the same team.’

‘But I can’t play football,’ he said.

‘Get away with you,’ I said. ‘Of course you can. All you have to do is run around and kick the ball! I’ll help you. Come on, we’ll have to hurry if we’re going to get a game. The bell will go soon.’

‘OK,’ he said, and we jogged over to the goal.

I stopped in front of the boys and raised my arm.

‘I’m back,’ I said. ‘Jo’s in my team. So it’s Jo and I against the rest of you. OK?’

‘But Jo’s so bad!’ Reidar shouted.

‘You’re all bad,’ I said. ‘Come on then!’

He really was bad! If I passed the ball to him he could barely kick it. But he was trotting around now with a smile on his face, and then fortunately the bell rang a couple of minutes later.

‘You take the ball, Jo, and put it in the staffroom. OK?’

‘Yes!’ he said and headed off with the ball under his arm. I quickly followed, hoping to catch a brief glimpse of Liv, the girl in the ninth, before she went in.

And I did. She was walking beside Camilla as I arrived, and she sent me a stolen glance as she turned into the corridor. I eyed her slim firm backside, formed to perfection, and a kind of abyss opened inside me.

After the last lesson I remained in the staffroom waiting for the others to go home, partly because I longed to be alone but in a different way from how I was in my flat, and partly because I wanted to use the phone.

Eventually only Richard’s car was left in the car park. He was in his office but could come into the staffroom at any moment, so I sat leafing through an encyclopedia as I waited for him to pack up and go home.

In the last few hours the clouds had slowly darkened, and while I was sitting there the first raindrops began to pitter-patter on the windowpanes. I turned and watched them hitting the tarmac at first without leaving a mark, as though it wasn’t really happening, then a few seconds later the dark wetness spread as the heavens opened. It poured down, stripes of rain cut through the air and with such force that I could see the raindrops bouncing off the tarmac. The water gushed out of the drainpipes from the gutters and down the hill along the side of the building opposite. A hard drumming sound came from the windows and the roof above me.

‘Now that’s what I call a storm!’ Richard said from the door with a smile. He was wearing his green anorak and had a knife on his belt.

‘It’s no passing shower,’ I said.

‘Are you doing some overtime?’ he said, coming in.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I was planning to at any rate.’

‘How has your first week been?’

‘It’s gone well, I think,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘Next Friday you can talk to Sigrid. The mentor, you know. Wouldn’t be a bad idea to write down all the questions and thoughts you have before you meet her. So you can make the best use of the opportunity.’

‘OK, I’ll do that,’ I said.

He chewed his lower lip and he looked like a goat again.

‘OK then,’ he said. ‘Have a good weekend!’

‘You too,’ I said.

Half a minute later he appeared outside running towards his car with his briefcase over his head.

Keys out, door open, in.

The car lights came on, shivers ran down my spine. The rear lights shone red against the wet black tarmac and the headlamps cast two shafts of yellow light against the wall, which seemed to diffuse them as it was lit up.

The pattering rain, the broad Vs of water running down the hill, the overflowing gutters.

Oh, this was the world and I was living in the midst of it.

What should I do? I felt like hammering my fists on the windows, running round the room and yelling, tossing tables and chairs aside, I was full to the brim with energy and life.

‘IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!’ I sang out at the top of my voice in the staffroom.

‘IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!

‘AND I FEEL FINE!

‘AND I FEEL FINE!’

Once Richard’s car was out of sight I went for a walk around the school building to see whether anyone might still be there. The caretaker, for example, could have been pottering about fixing things. But it was deserted and after I had made sure this was the case I went into the little telephone cubicle and dialled mum’s number.

She didn’t answer.

Perhaps she had been working late and had popped into a supermarket on the way home, if she wasn’t eating out, that is.

I rang Yngve. He picked up at once.

‘Hello?’ he said.

‘Hi, this is Karl Ove,’ I said.

‘You’re in Northern Norway, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, of course. How are things?’

‘Fine. Just got back from lectures. Going to chill first and then I’ll be off out.’

‘Where to?’

‘Hulen nightclub probably.’

‘Lucky sod.’

‘You’re the one who chose to go to Northern Norway. You could have moved to Bergen, you know.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘How are things up there? Have you got a flat and stuff?’

‘Yes. It’s nice. Started teaching on Tuesday. Actually it’s quite a lot of fun. I’m going out tonight as well. But not to Hulen exactly. It’s a local community centre.’

‘Any nice girls up there?’

‘Yeees. . There’s one I met on the bus. That might develop into something. Otherwise they’ve all left home. Seems like they’re either schoolgirls or housewives.’

‘It’ll have to be schoolgirls, then, eh?’

‘Ha ha.’

There was a brief silence.

‘Did you get my short story?’ I said.

‘I did.’

‘Have you read it?’

‘I have but only quickly. I skimmed through it. I was going to write to you about it. Bit hard to do that on the phone.’

‘But you did like it, didn’t you? Perhaps it’s not easy to say.’

‘Yes, I did. I liked it well enough. It was nice and lively. But let’s talk about it later, as I said, OK?’

OK.

Another silence.

‘What about dad?’ I said. ‘Heard anything from him?’

‘Nothing. And you?’

‘No, nothing. Thinking about phoning him now.’

‘Say hello from me. Save me having to call him for a few weeks.’

‘I will,’ I said. ‘I’ll write to you in the week.’

‘You do that,’ he said. ‘Catch you later!’

‘OK,’ I said and rang off, went into the staffroom and sat on the sofa with my feet on the table. Something about the conversation with Yngve had depressed me, but I didn’t know what. Perhaps that he was going to Hulen in Bergen with all his friends while I was going to a party in a village in the middle of nowhere and didn’t know anyone.

Or was it the well enough.

Yes, I did. I liked it well enough, he had said.

Well enough?

I had once read a short story by Hemingway, it was about a boy who accompanied his father, who was a doctor, to an Indian reservation — a woman was giving birth, it didn’t go so well, as far as I remembered, perhaps a woman had even died — anyway after they had been there they went back home and that was that. All very straightforward. My short story was just as good, I knew that. The context was different, but that was because Hemingway wrote in a different era. I wrote in today’s world, and that was why it was as it was.

But what did Yngve know, actually? How many books did he read? Had he read Hemingway, for example?

I got up and went back into the telephone cubicle, took the slip of paper from my back pocket and dialled dad’s number. May as well get it over with.

‘Yes, hello?’ he said. Brusque voice. The conversation was going to be brief, no doubt about that.

‘Hi, this is Karl Ove,’ I said.

‘Oh, hi, son,’ he said.

‘I’m all set up here now,’ I said. ‘And I’ve started working.’

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Are you getting on OK?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s good.’

‘How are things with you?’

‘Well, same as always, you know. Unni’s at home and I’ve just got back from work. Now we’re going to eat. But it was nice you rang.’

‘Say hello to Unni!’

‘Will do. Bye.’

‘Bye.’

The deluge had eased when I trudged down the hill from school to my flat, but it was still raining enough for my hair to be soaked by the time I opened the door. I dried it in the bathroom with a towel, hung up my jacket, put my shoes by the stove and switched it on, fried some potatoes, some onions and a sausage, which I chopped up into pieces, ate the lot at the sitting-room table as I read yesterday’s paper, then went to bed, where I fell asleep within minutes, swathed by the comforting pitter-patter of rain on the window

I woke to the bell ringing. Outside it had not only stopped raining, as I saw when I got up to open the door, the sky over the village was also blue.

It was Nils Erik.

He was holding his arms to his sides like two brackets, with his knees bent outwards, his lips compressed into a zany smile and his eyes wide and staring.

‘Is this where the party is?’ he squeaked in an old man’s voice.

‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘It’s here. Come in.’

He didn’t move.

‘Are there any. . any. . any really young girls here?’ he said.

‘How young?’

‘Thirteen?’

‘Yep! Come on in! It’s bloody freezing!’

I turned my back on him and went in, took a bottle of white wine from the fridge and opened it.

‘Do you want some white wine?’ I shouted to him.

‘My wine should be as red as a young girl’s blood!’ he wheezed from the hall.

‘Nasty,’ I said. He came into the kitchen with a bottle of red wine in his hand and put it on the worktop. I passed him the corkscrew.

He was wearing a blue Poco Loco shirt, a black leather tie and a pair of red cotton trousers.

The impression he made on people didn’t bother him at any rate, I thought with a smile. Not caring what others thought about him was an essential part of his personality, it seemed.

‘I must say you’re colourful tonight,’ I said.

‘You’ve got to strike while the iron is hot,’ he said. ‘And I’ve heard you have to dress like this if you want to attract women up here.’

‘Like that? Red and blue?’

‘Exactly!’

He put the bottle between his knees and pulled out the cork with a plop.

‘Wonderful sound!’ he said.

‘I’m just going to have a quick shower. Is that all right?’ I said.

He nodded.

‘Of course. I’ll put some music on while you’re in there, OK?’

‘No problem.’

‘No one can say that we aren’t polite young men,’ he said with a laugh. I went into the bathroom, undressed at speed, turned on the water and stepped under the shower, hastily washed under my arms and between my legs, looked at my feet, leaned my head back and wetted my hair, then I turned the shower off, dried, put some gel in my hair, wrapped the towel around my waist and went into the sitting room, past Nils Erik, who was on the sofa with studiously closed eyes listening to David Sylvian, and into the bedroom, where I put on clean underpants and socks, a white shirt and black trousers. I buttoned up my shirt, then put on my shoelace tie and went back to Nils Erik.

‘But I was told that’s exactly how you shouldn’t go dressed!’ he said. ‘If you want to pull. White shirt, shoelace tie with eagle and black pants.’

I tried to come up with a smart retort, but failed.

‘Ha ha,’ I said, filling my glass with white wine and drinking it in one long draught.

The taste was of summer nights, discotheques bursting at the seams, buckets of ice on the tables, gleaming eyes, tanned bare arms.

I shuddered.

‘Not used to drinking?’ Nils Erik said.

I sent him a withering glance and recharged my glass.

‘Have you heard the new Chris Isaak single?’ I said.

He shook his head. I went and put it on.

‘It’s brilliant,’ I said.

We sat for a while without speaking.

I rolled a cigarette and lit it.

‘Did you have a look at my short story?’ I said.

He nodded. I got up and lowered the volume.

‘I read it before I left. It’s good, Karl Ove.’

‘Do you really think so?’

‘Yes. Lively style. Actually I don’t have much more to say than that. I’m not exactly a literary expert or a writer.’

‘Is there anything you particularly liked?’

He shook his head.

‘Nothing really, no. The writing’s even and good. Hangs together well.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘What do you think about the ending in relation to the rest?’

‘It was a strong ending.’

‘That’s what I want, you know,’ I said. ‘Something completely unexpected, the bit about the father.’

‘It is as well.’

He filled his glass. His lips were already red from the wine.

‘Have you read Saabye Christensen’s Beatles by the way?’ he said.

‘Of course I bloody have,’ I said. ‘It’s my favourite novel. That was what made me decide to become a writer. That and White Niggers by Ambjørnsen.’

‘Guessed as much,’ he said.

‘Oh? Is it similar?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Too similar?’

He smiled.

‘No, I wouldn’t say so. But I can see you were influenced by it.’

‘What did you think of the blood bit? The bit that comes in the middle? Where everything changes into the present tense?’

‘I don’t think I noticed it.’

‘That was what I was most pleased with, in fact. I describe him seeing Gordon’s blood and veins and flesh and sinews. It’s quite intense in the middle there.’

Nils Erik nodded and smiled.

Then there was another silence.

‘It was much easier to write than I’d thought,’ I said. ‘It’s the first short story I’ve ever written. I’d written bits in papers and so on before, but that was quite different. That was sort of why I came up here. I just wanted to try and write a book. And then I began and well. . yes, all I had to do was write. It wasn’t difficult at all.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Are you planning to go into writing as a career?’

‘Yes, yes, that’s what this is all about for me. I’m planning to write another short story this weekend. Have you read Hemingway by the way?’

‘Oh yes. Part of growing up.’

‘A bit like that, yes. Straight to the point. Simple and clear.With weight behind it.’

‘Yes.’

I refilled my glass to the brim and drank it in one go.

‘Have you wondered what it would have been like if we had applied for a different school?’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, it’s such an incredible quirk of fate that it happened to be Håfjord. It could have been anywhere. Then we would have had to adjust to whoever lived there, wouldn’t we, and life would have been very different from what’s going to happen here.’

‘Not to mention the fact that two different people would have been listening to wine and drinking Chris Isaak. Or vice versa. The wine would have been listening and Chris Isaak drinking. Well, have you ever heard the like? Or is it: have you ever leard the hike? I’m all inside out! Spoutside up! Upside down!’

Nils Erik laughed.

‘Skål, Karl Ove, and I’m glad it’s you sitting there and not someone else!’

We raised our glasses and said skål.

‘Although, if it’d been someone else would I have said the same to him?’

At that moment the doorbell rang.

‘That must be Tor Einar,’ I said, getting up.

He was standing with his back to me and staring down at the village when I opened the door. The grey August light hung between the mountainsides, seemingly of a completely different texture from that which illuminated the sky, for that was blue and gleamed like metal.

‘Hi,’ I said.

Tor Einar turned in a slow studied manner. Here was a guy who had plenty of time.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘May I enter?’

‘Step right in.’

He did so in the same precise punctilious way I had associated with his personality from the first moment I saw him. It was as though he had thought through his movements a couple of times before he executed them. All with a smile playing on his lips.

He raised his hand and waved in greeting to Nils Erik.

‘What are you two talking about?’ he said in broad dialect.

Nils Erik smiled.

‘We’re talking about fish,’ he said in his version of the dialect.

‘Fish and fanny,’ I said in mine.

‘Salty fish and fresh fanny or fresh fish and salty fanny?’ Tor Einar asked.

‘What’s the filleting difference, can you tell me that?’ I said.

‘Yes, now listen here: salty sole and sole salt, they’re not the same thing. Nor are fish and fanny. But they’re close. Incredibly close.’

‘Sole salt?’ I queried.

‘Yes. See, now you’re saying it.’

He laughed, hitched up the knees of his trousers and sat down beside Nils Erik.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘Have you done a round-up of the week?’

‘That’s what we were doing,’ Nils Erik said.

‘They seem to be a good bunch,’ Tor Einar said.

‘Are you thinking about the teachers?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘In fact, I already know them all, apart from you two.’

‘But you’re not from here?’ Nils Erik said.

‘My grandmother lives here. I’ve been up every summer and Christmas since I was small.’

‘You’ve just finished gymnas as well, haven’t you?’ I said. ‘In Finnsnes?’

He nodded.

‘You don’t know someone there called Irene, do you?’ I said. ‘From Hellevika?’

‘Irene, yes,’ he said, brightening up. ‘Not as well as I’d like, I must admit. How come? Do you know her?’

‘That would be saying too much,’ I said. ‘But I met her on the bus on my way here. She seemed nice.’

‘Are you meeting her this evening? Is that the plan?’

I shrugged. ‘She’s coming anyway,’ I said.

Half an hour later we were walking up the hill from the flat. I was drunk in that pure merry way you can be from white wine, when your thoughts collide with one another like bubbles and what emerges when they burst is pleasure.

We had been at my place, I thought, and this filled me with pleasure.

We were colleagues and on our way to becoming friends, I reflected.

And I had written a damn good short story.

Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure.

And then there was this light, dim down among humans and things human, attended by a kind of finely honed darkness which became diffused in the light though did not possess or control it, only muted or softened it, high up in the sky it was gleamingly clean and clear.

Pleasure.

And there was this silence. The murmur of the sea, our footsteps on the gravel, the occasional noise coming from somewhere, a door being opened or a shout, all embraced by silence, which seemed to rise from the ground, rise from objects and surround us in a way which I didn’t formulate as primordial, though I sensed it was, for I thought of the silence in Sørbøvåg on summer mornings when I was a child there, the silence above the fjord beneath the immense Lihesten mountain, half-hidden by mist. The silence of the world. It was here too, as I walked uphill, drunk, with my new friends, and although neither it nor the light we walked in was the main event of the evening it played its part.

Pleasure.

Eighteen years old and on my way to a party.

‘That’s where she lives,’ Tor Einar said, pointing to the house I had strolled past one evening a few days ago.

‘Big house,’ Nils Erik said.

‘Yes, she lives with someone,’ Tor Einar said. ‘His name’s Vidar and he’s a fisherman.’

‘What else!’ I said, stopping at the door and raising my arm to ring the bell.

‘Here everyone just walks in,’ Tor Einar said. ‘We’re in Northern Norway now!’

I opened the door and went in. From upstairs came the sound of voices and music. Smoke hung in the air above the stairs. We quietly removed our shoes and went up. The floor above was open plan with the kitchen straight ahead, a living room at the back to the left, presumably the bedroom was at the back on the right.

There was a group of perhaps ten people in the living room chatting and laughing, squeezed around a table covered with bottles and glasses, cigarette packets and ashtrays. They were all stocky, many had moustaches, age-wise they ranged between twenty and forty.

‘Here come the teachers,’ one of them said.

‘Perhaps we’ll be given detention this evening,’ another said.

Everyone laughed.

‘Hi, folks,’ said Tor Einar.

‘Hi,’ said Nils Erik.

Hege, the only woman there, got up and fetched some chairs from the dining-room table by the window.

‘Sit yourselves down, boys,’ she said. ‘If you need glasses you’ll find them in the kitchen.’

I went in and stood alone staring up at the mountainside behind the house while mixing myself a screwdriver. For a moment I lingered in the doorway observing the people around the table, thinking they looked like trolls sitting there with their variously coloured drinks, depending on what they mixed with their vodka — a variety of juices, Sprite, Coke — with their pouches of tobacco from which they made endless roll-ups and with their moustaches, their dark eyes and the succession of stories, thinking how they came from the four corners of the earth to meet here once a year and act out their exotic natures among their own kind.

However, it was the other way round. They were the rule and I was the exception, the teacher among fishermen. So what was I doing here? Shouldn’t I be at home writing rather than here?

It had been a mistake to go into the kitchen alone. Nils Erik and Tor Einar had already been through the introductory rites, they were now comfortably ensconced alongside the fishermen, and I could have done that too, tagged along behind my colleagues and slipped in without being noticed.

I took a swig and went in.

‘And here we have the writer!’ one of them said. I recognised him at once, he was the fisherman who had dropped by to see me on the first day, Remi.

‘Hi, Remi,’ I said, proffering my hand.

‘Have you been on a name-learning course or what?’ he said, grasping it. Shook it up and down in a way that had not been done since the 1950s.

‘You’re the first fisherman I’ve ever met,’ I said. ‘So of course I remember your name.’

He laughed. I was pleased I’d had a drink before we left. If I hadn’t I would have stood tongue-tied in front of him.

‘The writer?’ Hege said.

‘Yes, he writes, this guy does. I’ve seen it with my own eyes!’

‘I didn’t know that,’ she said. ‘Do you have such fancy ideas?’

I sat down and nodded to her while smiling semi-apologetically and taking the tobacco pouch from my shirt pocket.

For the next hour I said nothing. I rolled cigarettes, smoked, drank, smiled when the others smiled, laughed when they laughed. Looked at Nils Erik, who was pretty drunk and seemed to be in on the jokey tone but wasn’t, he was different, there was something light and Østlandish about him, always on the outside. Not that they rejected him, because they didn’t, it was just that his jokes were of a fundamentally different character, which in this context seemed to expose him. He made puns, they didn’t, adopted a variety of roles, made faces and raised and lowered his voice, they didn’t. When he burst into laughter it was somehow unrestrained, bordering on the hysterical, it struck me; that too was completely different from them.

Tor Einar was more on their level, he knew the appropriate tone and was on nodding terms with everyone there, although he was not one of them either, I could see; he was not an insider, he was more like an ethnological researcher who knows his stuff well enough to be able to mimic it because he likes it so much, and perhaps that was the nub, he liked the tone, whereas for them the tone just came naturally to them. They had never thought about whether they liked it or not.

Tor Einar slapped his thighs when he laughed, which I had only ever seen in films. He would occasionally also rub his hands up and down his thighs when he talked.

The pre-party, as they called it here, pre-loading, excluded discussion. Issues regarding politics, women, music or football were not on the agenda. What they did was tell stories. One story gave way to the next, laughter billowed across the table, and the tales they came up with, they being the trolls they were, all had their origins in the village and the people who lived there, which despite its modest proportions appeared to be an inexhaustible treasure trove of stories. There was the fisherman in his sixties who had been seasick all his life and who only needed to jump on board his trawler to start feeling ill. There was the gang of fishermen who after a good season had hired the suite at the SAS hotel in Tromsø and spent ver-tiginous sums of money in the course of a few intense days of abandon there. One man called Frank, with the fleshy face of a child, was said to have burned his way through twenty thousand kroner, and it took me a while to realise that ‘burned’ meant exactly that, he had set fire to it. Then someone had been drunk shitless in a lift, they said, and again it took me a while to twig that this had to be interpreted literally: he had been so drunk that he had shat himself. Judging by the conversation it had indeed happened in the lift. Frank in particular got so drunk that waking up in his own shit was not an unusual occurrence, from what I could glean. His mother, who was the older teacher at the school, had a hard time, it seemed, because he still lived at home. Hege’s stories were different, but no less bizarre, such as the one about the girlfriend who had been terrified before an exam and whom she had taken into the forest and hit on the head with a bat so that she would have a justifiable reason for being absent. I stared at her. Was she pulling our legs? It didn’t seem like it. She met my gaze and grinned, and then narrowed her eyes to a slit and frowned, opened them again, smiled and looked away. What did that mean? Was it the equivalent of a wink? Or did it mean that I shouldn’t believe everything I heard?

They not only knew one another well, they knew one another inside out.

They had grown up and gone to school together, they worked together, they partied together. They saw one another virtually every day and had done so virtually all their lives. They knew one another’s parents and grandparents, many of them were first or second cousins. One might conclude this was boring, indeed intolerably boring in the long run, because nothing new ever entered their lives, everything that happened, happened among the two hundred and fifty people who lived here and who knew everyone else’s most intimate secrets and quirks. But such did not appear to be the case; quite the contrary, they seemed to be having a whale of a time and if there was anything that marked the atmosphere among them it was their carefree attitude and their joy.

While sitting there I was formulating what I was going to write in the letters I would send south, such as: ‘They all had moustaches! It’s absolutely true! All of them!’ Or: ‘And the music they listened to, do you know what it was? Bonnie Tyler! And Dr Hook! How long ago is it since that music was heard anywhere in the world? What is this godforsaken place I have ended up in?’ And: ‘Here, my friend, the expression “to drink yourself shitless” means just that. Say no more. .’

When at last I got up to go to the toilet I had drunk just over a third of my bottle of vodka and I knocked against the man sitting next to me, who was holding a glass in his hand and spilled some of the contents.

‘So. . rry,’ I said, straightening up and stepping across the living-room floor.

‘One does the talking and the other does the drinking!’ he said behind me and laughed.

He must have been referring to Nils Erik and me.

As soon as I got some speed up my balance was fine.

But where was the loo?

I opened a door. It was a bedroom. Hege’s bedroom, I presumed, and closed the door as fast as possible. If there was one thing I didn’t like, it was seeing other people’s bedrooms.

‘The bathroom’s on the other side,’ a voice behind me said from the kitchen.

I turned.

A man with brown eyes, thick collar-length dark hair and a moustache which hung down on either side of his mouth looked at me. It had to be Vidar, Hege’s partner. There was something about the self-assured way he stood there that told me this.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Just don’t piss on the floor, that’s all.’

‘I’ll try not to,’ I said, going into the bathroom. I leaned against the wall while peeing. Smiled to myself. He had looked like a bass player from a 1970s band. Smokie or someone like them. And incredibly muscular.

What was she doing with such a macho?

I flushed the toilet and stood swaying in front of the mirror. Smiled at myself again.

When I emerged from the bathroom they had decided to leave. They were talking about a bus.

‘Do buses run at this time?’ I said.

Remi turned to me. ‘It’s our band bus.’

‘Is there a band here? Are you in it?’

‘Yes, I am. We call ourselves Autopilot. We play at dances in the community centres round here.’

I followed him down the stairs. This was getting better and better.

‘What instrument do you play then?’ I said, putting on my coat in the hall.

‘Drums,’ he said.

I put my arm round his shoulder.

‘Me too. Or I did. Two years ago.’

‘You don’t say,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said, retracting my arm, leaning forward and trying to put on one shoe. Bumped into someone. Vidar again.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘Have you remembered your bottle?’

‘Oh, no, shit,’ I said.

‘It’s this one, isn’t it?’ he said, holding up a bottle of vodka.

‘Yes, that’s the one,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much! Thanks!’

He smiled but his eyes were cold and impassive. That was not my problem though. I put the bottle on the floor and concentrated on my shoes. When they were on I staggered out under the light night sky, down to the road, where the rest were waiting. The bus was parked in a drive a hundred metres away. One of them opened the door and got into the driver’s seat, we clambered aboard and moved towards the back of the big old vehicle. It was furnished with sofas and tables and a bar, all in plywood and plush, it seemed. We sat down, the engine started with a growl and it was out with the bottles and off down the road. As we jolted along following the bank of the fjord we had a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

What an adventure.

I sang Pølsemaker, pølsemaker, hvor har du gjort av deg — Sausage maker, sausage maker, where have you gone, at the top of my voice while swinging my arms and trying to get the others to join in. The bus had conjured up memories of the old film in which Leif Juster was a bus driver, and Leif Juster had made me think of the film The Missing Sausage Maker.

An hour or so later the bus pulled up in front of the community centre, I jumped out and was swallowed up in the overcrowded room.

When I woke, at first I couldn’t remember a thing.

Everything was a complete blank.

I didn’t know who I was or where I was. All I knew was that I had woken up from something.

But the room was familiar, it was the bedroom in my flat.

How had I got here?

I sat up and could feel that I was still drunk.

What time was it?

What had happened?

I held my face in my hands. I had to have something to drink. Now. But I was too wiped out to go into the kitchen and slumped back on the bed.

I had been to the pre-party and on a bus. And had sung. Sung!

Oh no, oh no.

And I had put my hand on his shoulder. As if we were pals. But we weren’t. I wasn’t even a man. Only a stupid Sørlander who couldn’t even tie a knot. With arms as thin as drinking straws.

No, now I had to have something to drink.

I sat up. My body was as heavy as lead and totally uncooperative, but I forced my feet onto the floor, braced myself mentally and pushed myself onto my legs.

Oh God.

The yearning for my bed was so strong that I had to mobilise all the willpower I had not to go back. The few paces to the kitchen exhausted me, I had to hang over the worktop for a while before I could summon the energy to run the tap, fill a glass and drink. One more, and one more. And the distance to my bedroom seemed so immense that I stopped halfway and lay down on the sofa instead.

I hadn’t done anything stupid, had I?

I’d danced. Yes, I’d danced with all and sundry.

Hadn’t there been a woman in her sixties as well? Whom I had smiled at and danced with? And pressed myself against?

Yes, there had.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

Oh bloody hell.

Then it was as though the pressure inside me was ratcheted up, although there was no particular place that hurt, everything was painful, and the pain grew and grew, it was unbearable, and then my stomach muscles went into a spasm. I swallowed, dragged myself to my feet and tried to hold it back as I stumbled towards the bathroom, the pressure mounting and mounting, that was all that existed, and then I snatched at the toilet seat, flung it up, knelt down, wrapped my arms around the bowl and spewed a cascade of yellow and green vomit into the water with such force that it splashed back into my face, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered any more, it was so wonderful to feel the relief, so fantastically wonderful.

I slumped to the floor.

Oh God, how good it was.

But then it came back. The muscles in my stomach writhed like snakes. Oh shit. I leaned over the bowl again, caught a glimpse of a pubic hair next to my forearm resting on the porcelain as the cramps tore through my empty stomach, and I opened my mouth and groaned ooooh, ooooooh, ooooooh, and nothing came out.

But then, without warning, a gob of yellow bile was expelled. It slid down the white porcelain, a sliver still hung from my mouth and I wiped it away, and I lay down on the bathroom floor. Was that the last? Was it over now?

Yes.

Suddenly everything was as serene as in church. I lay in a foetal position on the bathroom floor enjoying to the full the calm that had settled over my body.

What had I done with Irene?

Everything inside me tensed up.

Irene.

We had danced.

I had pressed myself against her, hard, rubbed my erect dick against her stomach.

And then?

Anything else?

It was as if this one scene was surrounded by darkness on all sides. I remembered it but nothing of what came before or after.

Anything bad?

I imagined her in a ditch, strangled with torn clothes.

No, no, what rubbish.

But the image returned. Irene in a ditch, strangled, her clothes torn.

How could the image be so clear? Her blue trousers, with those wonderfully full thighs beneath, a white blouse ripped open, part of a naked breast exposed, her eyes lifeless. The mud in the ditch, between the scattered blades of grass, yellow and green, the insane light, late in the night.

No, no, what rubbish.

How had I got home?

Hadn’t I been standing by the bus when the band stopped playing and the car park outside the community centre was packed with people laughing and screaming?

Yes.

And Irene was there!

We were kissing!

Me with a bottle of booze in one hand, drinking straight from it. She grabbed my lapel, she was the type of girl who grabbed lapels, and then she looked up at me, and then she said. .?

What did she say?

Oh hell, no.

Out of nowhere the snakes in my stomach entwined themselves again, and since there was nothing left below they were furious and squeezed so hard that I groaned. OOOOOHH I went. OOOHHHH. I wrapped my arms around the toilet bowl and hung my head over the hole, but nothing came, I was empty.

CHRIST ALMIGHTY! I shouted. STOP THIS! NOW!

Then came a mouthful of unbelievably thick bile, I spat it out and reckoned that was it, but it wasn’t, my stomach continued to churn, and I tried to alleviate it by hawking, from the bottom of my throat, for if only a little came up surely the vomiting would stop.

OOOHH. OOOHH. OOOHH.

Some phlegm came up.

There. That’s the way.

Finished now?

Yes.

Ah.

Oh.

I grabbed the edge of the sink with one hand and pulled myself up. Rinsed my face with cold water and staggered into the sitting room, not too difficult, fine, lay back down on the sofa, thought I should find out what the time was but didn’t have the energy, all that counted now was to wait for my body to recover and then the day could begin. After all, I was going to write another short story.

I had experienced blackouts like this, after which I remembered only fragments of what I had done, ever since I first started drinking. That was the summer I finished the ninth class, at the Norway Cup, when I just laughed and laughed, a momentous experience; being drunk took me to places where I was free and did what I wanted while it raised me aloft and rendered everything around me wonderful. Only recalling bits and pieces afterwards, isolated scenes brightly illuminated against a wall of darkness from which I emerged and disappeared back into, was the norm. And so it went on. The following spring I went to the carnival with Jan Vidar, mum had made me up as Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, the town was heaving with people wearing curly black wigs, hot pants and sequins, everywhere there was the throb of samba drums, but the air was cold, people were stiff, there was a huge amount of embarrassment to be overcome all the time, and this was visible in the processions, people were squirming rather than dancing, they wanted to feel emancipated, that was what this was about, they were not, they wanted to be, this was the 1980s, this was the new liberated and forward-looking era in which everything Norwegian was pathetic and everything Mediterranean was alive and free, when the sole TV channel which had informed the Norwegian population for twenty years about what one small circle of educated people in Oslo considered important for them to know was suddenly joined by new very different TV channels which took a lighter approach, they wanted to entertain, and they wanted to sell, and from then on these two entities fused: entertainment and sales became two sides of the same coin and subsumed everything else, which also became entertainment and sales, from music to politics, literature, news, health, in fact everything. The carnival marked this transition, a nation moving away from the seriousness of the 1970s to the levity of the 1990s, and this transition was visible in the awkward movements, in the nervous eyes and the wild triumphant looks of those who had overcome this awkwardness and nervousness and were now wiggling their lean bottoms on the backs of the lorries that crawled through Kristiansand’s streets on this cold spring morning with a light drizzle in the air. That was how it was in Kristiansand and that was how it was in all the other towns in Norway of any size and any self-respect. Carnival was the rage and would become a tradition, they said, every year these stiff white men and women would affirm their emancipation to the best of their ability on lorries, decked out as Mediterraneans, dancing and laughing to the drums that former school brass band musicians played with such a seductive hypnotic beat.

Even two sixteen-year-olds like Jan Vidar and me understood that this was sad. Of course there was nothing we wanted more than a Mediterranean-style explosion in our day-to-day reality, for there was nothing we yearned for more than inviting breasts and bums, music and loads of fun, and if there was anything we wanted to be it was dark-skinned confident men who took these women at will. We were against meanness and all for generosity, we were against constraints and for openness and freedom. Nevertheless we saw these processions and were overcome by sadness on behalf of our town and country because there was an unbelievable lack of pride about all this, indeed it was as if the whole town was making a fool of itself, without realising. But we did realise and we were sad as we strolled around, each with half a bottle of spirits in an inside pocket, becoming more and more drunk and cursing our town and the idiotic people in it while always keeping an eye open for faces we knew and could perhaps get together with. That is, girls’ faces, or at a pinch boys’ faces we knew who were with girls’ faces we didn’t know. Our project was doomed, we were never going to meet girls this way, but we didn’t give up as long as there was a glimmer of hope, we strolled on, getting drunker and drunker, more and more depressed. And then, at some point, I disappeared from myself. Not from Jan Vidar, he could see me of course, and when he said something to me he received an answer so he imagined that everything was as it should be, but it wasn’t, I had disappeared, I was empty, I was in the void of my soul, there was no other way for me to describe it.

Who are you when you don’t know you exist? Who were you when you didn’t remember that you existed? When I woke up in the bedsit in Elvegaten the following day and knew nothing about anything it felt as if I had been let loose in the town. I could have done anything because when I was as drunk as I was there were no longer any limits in me, I did everything that entered my head, and indeed what would not enter a person’s head?

I rang Jan Vidar. He was in bed asleep, but his father summoned him to the phone.

‘What happened?’ I said.

‘We-ell,’ he said, keeping me on tenterhooks. ‘Strictly speaking nothing happened. That’s what was such crap.’

‘I don’t remember any of the last bit,’ I said. ‘Somewhere on the way to Silokaia, that’s the last thing I remember.’

‘Don’t you? Nothing?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you remember standing on the back of a lorry and mooning at everyone?’

‘Did I do that?’

He laughed.

‘No, of course not. No, relax, man. Nothing happened. Or rather, yes, something did happen when we were walking home. You bent all the wing mirrors along one street. Someone shouted, “Hey!” at us and so we ran for it. I didn’t notice any difference in you. Were you that drunk?’

‘Yes, it was the spirits.’

‘I fall asleep when I get that drunk. Jesus, though, what a crap evening. You won’t get me to go to carnival again, that’s for sure.’

‘Do you know what I think?’

‘What?’

‘When they have the carnival next year we’ll be there again. We can’t afford not to be. Not much happens in this shite town after all.’

‘True.’

We rang off and I went to wash the Aladdin Sane lightning off my face.

The next time it happened was on Midsummer Night, also with Jan Vidar. We had dragged ourselves, each carrying a bag of beers, down to a place on the coast, to some sea-smoothed rocks below the forest in Hånes, where we wandered around drinking and freezing in the pouring summer rain, surrounded by Øyvind’s many pals and a few people we knew from Hamresanden. Øyvind had chosen this evening of all evenings to finish with his girlfriend, Lene, so she sat crying on a rock, away from the others. I went over to console her, sat beside her and stroked her back while telling her there were other boys, she would get over it, she was so young and beautiful, and she looked at me with gratitude in her eyes and sniffled, I thought it was a shame we were outdoors and not somewhere indoors, where there were beds, and that it was raining now we were outdoors. Suddenly she looked at her jacket and screamed, the shoulder was covered in blood and, as it turned out, her back too. It came from me, I’d cut my hand without noticing and it was bleeding profusely. You prat, she said and stood up. This jacket’s brand new. Do you know how much it cost? Sorry, I said, it wasn’t intentional, I just wanted to cheer you up a bit. Go to hell, she said and headed towards the others, where in the course of the evening she found herself back in favour with Øyvind, while I sat drinking alone staring across the grey surface of the water which the falling rain continued to dot with small evocative rings until Jan Vidar came over and sat down next to me and we could pursue the years-long conversation we had about which girls were pretty or not and who we most fancied sleeping with, all as we slowly but surely got drunker until in the end everything disintegrated and I drifted into a kind of ghost world.

The ghost world: when I was inside it went straight through me, and when I woke up from it there was little I could remember, a face here, a body there, a room, a staircase, a backyard, pale and shimmering, surrounded by an ocean of darkness.

It was nothing less than a horror film. Now and then I would remember the most peculiar details, like a rock at the bottom of a stream or a bottle of olive oil on a kitchen shelf, everyday items in themselves but as symbols of a whole night’s mental activity, in fact all that was left of it, which was bizarre. What was it about that rock? What was it about that bottle? The first two times it happened I hadn’t been afraid, I registered it simply as a kind of objective fact. Then, when it happened again, there began to be something eerie about it because I was so out of control. No, nothing had happened and probably nothing was going to happen either, but the fact was, I had no control over my actions at all. If I was basically a nice person, that was how I would be then as well, but was I? Actually?

On the other hand, I was also proud: occasionally getting so drunk that I couldn’t remember a thing was cool.

At that time, I was sixteen that summer, there were only three things I wanted. The first was a girlfriend. The second was to sleep with a girl. The third was to get drunk.

Or, if I am being totally honest, there were only two things: sleeping with a girl and getting drunk. I had loads of other interests, I was full of ambition in all sorts of areas: I liked reading, listening to music, playing the guitar, watching films, playing football, swimming and snorkelling, travelling abroad, having money and buying myself bits of equipment, but in effect all that was about having a good time, about spending my time in the most agreeable fashion possible, and that was fine, all of it, but when it came to the crunch there were only two things I really wanted.

No, when it actually came to the crunch, there was only one.

I wanted to sleep with a girl.

That was the only thing I wanted.

A fire burned inside me, one that never went out. Even when I was asleep, it flared up, a glimpse of a breast in a dream was all I needed and I came.

Oh no, not again, I thought every time I woke with underpants sticking to my skin and my pubic hair. Mum washed my clothes and at first I always rinsed them thoroughly before putting them in the laundry basket, but there was something suspicious about that too. What are all these sopping wet underpants doing here? she must have thought, and after a while I stopped and put the semen-drenched underpants, which after a few hours became stiff, as if permeated with salt flakes or something, in the basket, and even though she must have noticed, because it happened at least two, often three, times a week, I dismissed the thought of her bemusement as I replaced the laundry basket lid. She never mentioned it, I never mentioned it, and that was how it was with so much, and probably had to be, in the house where she and I lived alone: some things were said, commented on, pored over, and attempts were made to understand them; others were not articulated, not mentioned, and no attempts were made to understand them.

My urges were strong, but they rumbled in the empty rooms of ignorance, where what happened simply happened. Naturally I could have asked Yngve for advice, after all he was four years older and had endlessly more experience. He had done it, I knew that. I hadn’t done it. So why didn’t I ask him for advice?

It was unthinkable. It belonged to the realm of the unthinkable. Why, I didn’t know, but it did. Besides, what good would advice do? It would be like receiving advice on how to conquer Mount Everest. Yeah, well, you go to the right there, see, and then you carry straight on up and there you are.

I would have given absolutely anything to sleep with a girl. Any girl actually. Whether it happened with someone I loved, like Hanne, or with a prostitute, made no difference, if it happened as part of a satanic initiation ceremony with goat’s blood and hoods I would have said, yes, I’m up for that. But it wasn’t something you were given, it was something you took. Exactly how, I didn’t know, and then it became a vicious circle, for not knowing made me unsure of myself, and if there was one thing that disqualified you, one thing they didn’t want, it was a lack of self-assurance. That much I had understood. You had to be confident, determined, convincing. But how to get to that position? How in God’s name could you do that? How did you go from standing in front of a girl in full daylight, with all her clothes on, to sleeping with her in the darkness a few hours later? There was a chasm between these two states. When I saw a girl standing in front of me in full daylight there was a bottomless chasm between us. If I stepped off the edge I would fall. What else? Because she wouldn’t come halfway, she could see I was frightened, she would withdraw, retreat into herself or turn to someone else. But actually, I thought, actually the distance between the two states was very short. It was just a question of lifting her T-shirt over her head, unfastening her bra, unbuttoning her trousers, pulling them off — and then she was naked. It would take twenty seconds, maybe thirty.

There was nothing more deceptive in existence. Walking around, knowing that I was approximately thirty seconds away from all I ever wanted, separated only by a chasm, was driving me insane. Quite often I caught myself wishing we were still in the Stone Age, then all I needed to do was go out with a club, hit the nearest woman on the head and drag her home to do whatever I wanted. But it was no good, there were no short cuts, the thirty seconds were an illusion, as almost everything concerning women was an illusion. Oh what a mockery that they were accessible to the eye but in no other way. That everywhere you turned there were women and girls. That everywhere you turned there were breasts under blouses, thighs and hips under trousers, beautiful smiling faces, hair blowing in the wind. Pendulous breasts, firm breasts, round breasts, bouncing breasts, white breasts, tanned breasts. . a naked wrist, a naked elbow, a naked cheek, a naked eye looking around. A naked thigh in shorts or a short summer dress. A naked palm, a naked nose, a naked neck. I saw all this around me constantly, there were girls everywhere, the supply was infinite, a well, no, I was drifting in an ocean of women, I saw several hundred of them every day, all with their own individual ways of moving, standing, turning, walking, holding and twisting their heads, blinking, looking — take for example a feature such as their eyes, which expressed their utter uniqueness, everything that lived and breathed was here in this one person, was revealed, regardless of whether the gaze was meant for me or not. Oh, those sparkling eyes! Oh, those dark eyes! Oh, that glint of happiness! The alluring darkness! Or, for that matter, the unintelligent, the stupid eyes! For in them too there was an appeal, and no small appeal either: the stupid vacant eyes, the open mouth in that perfect beautiful body.

All this was never far from my mind, and all of them were thirty seconds away from the only thing I wanted — but on the other side of a chasm.

I cursed this chasm. I cursed myself. But no matter how frustrating this was, no matter how depressing this became, women shone with undiminished radiance.

Then a chance presented itself.

Some weeks after the dismal Midsummer Night party I travelled with the football team to Denmark. The town we were going to was called Nykøbing, on the island of Mors in the Limfjord. We stayed in a kind of hostel, perhaps it was a boarding school, just outside the town, surrounded by large pitches bordered by shady old deciduous trees. In the evenings some of us sneaked out, it wasn’t allowed, but the town wasn’t far away and as long as we didn’t miss the training sessions a blind eye was turned, if indeed our absence was noticed at all. We bought cheap plonk from the supermarkets, sat outside on the benches drinking and went to the nearby discotheque. On the second evening I met a Danish girl, and we got together every day for the rest of the time we were there. She was sweet and lively and intense, we sat on the benches and snogged, danced in the disco, one night we went for a walk in the park, and on the final evening I thought, now’s the time, I wouldn’t have another opportunity, it was tonight or never.

On our last night everyone was outdoors; we started with a barbecue on the beach, the group leaders had bought beer, and when that was finished we took a taxi to a big restaurant in a forest not so far from where we were staying. She was coming, she had said, and she did too, greeted me in the same warm way she usually did, stretching up on her toes, giving me a kiss and grasping my hand. We sat down at a table, I was knocking back the wine to summon up the courage for what I was about to attempt. In the bar I confided my intentions to Jøgge and Bjørn, told them I was going to try to get her into our room and fuck her. They smiled, wished me luck. It was a wonderful evening, outside the greyish-black clouds hung heavily over the green trees, inside under the glittering chandeliers people mingled, they drank and laughed and danced, there was a smell of sweat and perfume, cigarette smoke and alcohol, she sat at our table and talked to Harald, but kept looking in my direction and she lit up when she saw me coming with another bottle of wine in my hand. My stomach ached as I sat down next to her. She leaned forward, we kissed, I was about to pour wine in her glass, she held up a palm, she had to work the following day. She had a sudden idea: did I want to go back to hers? But we’re leaving tomorrow, I said. No, she said, no, you’re not. You’re never going home, you’re staying here with me. You can go to school here! Or find a job! What do you say to that? Fine, I said, that’s what we’ll do.

We laughed and a wave of anguish washed through me: soon we would be in my room, soon she would be standing close to me and whispering, convinced I knew what I was doing.

‘Fancy going for a walk?’ I said.

She nodded.

‘What about the wine?’ she said.

‘We’ll be back,’ I said and got up. Put my hand on her shoulder and guided her out of the room. Turned and met the eyes of Jøgge and Bjørn, they gave me a thumbs-up and smiled. Then we were outside.

She looked up at me.

Where are we going?

Into the forest? I said. I took her tiny hand in mine and we set off. I had already kissed her breasts, on a bench I had put my head up her jumper and kissed everything I found, she had laughed and held me tight. This was what I did with girls, lay on top of them, smooched with them and kissed their breasts. Once I had pulled down a girl’s panties and poked a finger inside, that was already two years ago now.

A shiver ran through me.

‘What is it?’ she said, wrapping an arm around me. ‘Are you cold?’

‘A bit maybe,’ I said. ‘It’s turned colder.’

The big heavy clouds that had been drifting in and were now over the forest had cast a pall over the gathering darkness between the tree trunks. A gusty wind had picked up. Above us the top branches swayed.

Blood was pounding through me.

I swallowed.

‘Would you like to see where we’re staying?’ I said.

‘Yes, love to.’

The moment she said that I had an erection. It pressed hard against my trousers. I swallowed again.

In the dusk the light in the buildings where we were staying was a deep yellow. It collected around the lamps in haloes. I felt sick and my palms were damp with sweat. But I was going to do it.

I stopped and put my arms around her, we kissed, her tongue was smooth and small. My dick was throbbing so much it hurt.

‘It’s over there,’ I whispered. ‘Are you sure you want to go in with me?’

A flicker of wonderment appeared in her eyes. But she said nothing apart from yes.

I took her hand again, squeezed it hard and we walked quickly over the last two hundred metres. Hugged her again outside the unmanned reception area, almost suffocating with desire. Down the corridor to the room I shared with three others. Key out, into the lock with trembling hand, a twist, handle down, door open and in we went.

‘You back already, Karl Ove?’ Jøgge said with a laugh.

‘Have you brought a visitor with you?’ Bjørn said.

‘How nice!’ Harald said. ‘Would you like a beer, Lisbeth?’

There was nothing I could say. They were my room-mates and had just as much right to be there as me. Nor could I say that they had run back here out of sheer bloody-mindedness, or the cat would have been out of the bag, and although Lisbeth may well have guessed my plans, this was not the sort of thing that could be said out loud. Or at least not when the others were here, what would she think, that I was making fun of her?

‘What the hell are you lot doing here?’ I said.

Jøgge smiled. ‘What are you two doing here?’

I glared at him. He was doubled up with laughter on the bed.

Harald passed Lisbeth a beer. She took it and smiled at me.

‘How funny that your friends came too,’ she said.

What? Did she mean that?

She looked around. ‘Anyone got a fag?’

‘We’re footballers,’ Harald said. ‘Only Karl Ove smokes.’

‘Here,’ said Bjørn, tapping out a Prince Mild from his packet and passing it to her.

Such a wonderful opportunity as this would not come up again for several years. And they had ruined it out of pure devilry.

Lisbeth put her hand in my back pocket and moved close to me. My dick was like a crowbar again. I sighed.

‘Here’s a beer, Karl Ove,’ Jøgge said. ‘It was just a bit of fun.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Very funny.’

He writhed with laughter again.

We stayed there for half an hour. Lisbeth chatted with all of them. After we had finished the beers we went back to the restaurant. Lisbeth left at one, the rest of us stayed until early morning. The next day I met her briefly, we exchanged addresses and she started to cry. Not much, there were only a few tears running down her cheeks. I hugged her. Lisbeth, I said. We can meet in Løkken before very long. It’s only a ferry trip away for me. Can you make it, do you think? Yes, she said and smiled through the tears. I’ll write to you so that we can organise the details, OK? Yes, she said. We kissed, and when I turned round she was standing there watching me.

The Løkken idea was nonsense of course, just something I had said to lighten the atmosphere. She was nothing to me, I was in love with Hanne and had been all winter and spring. Everything had been about her, all I wanted was to be close to her, not to sleep with her, not even in the hope of a kiss or a caress, no, that wasn’t it, it was the light and the excitement I was filled with when I saw her that attracted me and which I occasionally thought was not of this world, it came down to us from another world. How else could it be explained? She was a normal girl, there had to be thousands of girls like her, but she alone, by being exactly the way she was, could make my heart tremble and my soul glow. Once that spring I had knelt down on the tarmac before her and asked her to marry me. She was pushing a bicycle, it was dark and raining, we were walking up by the blocks of flats in Lund, and when I did it she just laughed. She thought I was playing the fool.

‘Don’t laugh,’ I said. ‘I mean it. In all seriousness. We can get married. We can move to a house on an island and stay there, just you and me. We can do that! No one can stop us if that’s what we decide to do.’

She laughed again, that wonderful trilled laugh of hers.

‘Karl Ove!’ she said. ‘We’re only sixteen!’

I got up.

‘I know you don’t want to,’ I said. ‘But I mean it. Do you understand? You’re the only girl I think about. You’re the only girl I want to be with. Should I act as if this didn’t exist?’

‘But I’m going out with someone else. You know that very well!’

‘Yes, I do,’ I said.

I didn’t need reminding. She only went on these walks with me because she felt flattered and because I was so different from the other boys she knew. Any hope that one day I would be going out with her, that was gone, nevertheless I didn’t give up, I never would. So, standing on the deck of the Danish ferry, with the wind blowing in my hair, squinting into the low afternoon sun, surrounded by blue sea on all sides, I was thinking about Hanne and not Lisbeth.

In fact I wasn’t going to go home when we arrived in Kristiansand, I was off to a class party in a cabin on an island, and Hanne would probably be there too. I had written a few letters to her over the summer, two of them from Sørbøvåg, where I walked along the river, alone with my Walkman, without a soul in sight, thinking only of her, and where I got up in the night and went outside, under the starry sky, walked up the river valley to the waterfall, climbed up alongside to sit high on a plateau beneath the stars and think of her.

She had answered my letters with a postcard.

But after Lisbeth my confidence was high, and even the sight of the vast sea could not dent it, or the urges in me, which were so vast that I was driven outside at night and tears formed in my eyes at all the beauty that existed in the world, but I couldn’t turn these urges to any use and nor could I sublimate them.

‘Hi, Elk,’ Jøgge said behind me. ‘Would you like a last beer?’

I nodded, and he passed me a can of Tuborg and stood next to me.

I opened it, foam squirted over the shiny lid. I slurped it up. Then I tipped my head back and took a proper swig.

‘There’s nothing like drinking for four days in a row!’ I said.

He laughed in that strange manner of his, it was almost ingressive, which was so easy to imitate and indeed everyone did.

‘Quite a girl, that Lisbeth,’ he said. ‘How did you nobble her?’

‘Nobble? I’ve never nobbled a girl in my life,’ I said. ‘You’re asking the wrong man.’

‘You were snogging for a week. She went back home with you. If that’s not nobbling, I don’t know what is.’

‘But that wasn’t me! It was her! She just came up to me! Then she put her hand on my chest. Like this.’

I placed my hand flat against his chest.

‘Hey, stop that!’ he shouted.

We laughed.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking at me. ‘Do you think I’ll ever get a girl? Honestly?’

‘Ever? Honestly?’

‘Cut the crap. Do you think there’s someone who will have me?’

Jøgge was the only person I knew who could ask questions like that and really mean them. He could be completely open. He was as honest as the day was long. But good-looking? Maybe not many would call him that. Nor elegant. Robust, that was perhaps the word. Solid. A hundred per cent reliable. Intelligent. A good person. A sense of humour. But he was no male model.

‘There’s got to be someone,’ I said. ‘You aim far too high. That’s your problem. You want. . well, who do you want?’

‘Cindy Crawford,’ he said.

‘Now you cut the crap,’ I said. ‘Come on. Which girls do you usually talk about?’

‘Kristin. Inger. Merethe. Wenche. Therese.’

I spread out my arms.

‘There you are. The cream! You’ll never get any of them! You’ve got to understand that!’

‘But those are the ones I want,’ he said with his broadest grin.

‘Same here,’ I said.

‘Oh?’ he said, turning his head towards me. ‘Thought it was just Hanne with you?’

‘That’s something else.’

‘What’s that then?’

‘Love.’

‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘Think I’ll join the others.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

They were playing cards around a table in the café, drinking Coke now; we were approaching land. I sat down with them. Harald, his protegé Ekse, Helge and Tor Erling were there. They didn’t like me, I had no real relationship with any of them, except on occasions like this. I was tolerated, but no more than that. A sarcastic comment was never far away. It didn’t matter though, I couldn’t give a shit about them.

Jøgge was different. We had been in the same class for two years, discussed politics until smoke came out of our ears, he was a Fremskrittsparti man, a right-winger of all things, I was a Sosialistisk Venstreparti supporter, the left. He liked good music, strangely enough, out there in farming country he was the only person I knew who had an ounce of good taste. He had lost his father when he was small, lived at home with his mother and younger brother, he had always had big responsibilities. Now and then people tried to tease him, he was an easy target, but he just laughed and so they gave up. The crowd we were sitting with used to bait him in a good-natured way and if he reacted they would just imitate his laugh, then he went quiet or laughed along with them.

Yes, he was a good man. He went to the business gymnas, as a couple of others in the team did, the rest went to the technical school, and I had written a few essays for him and been paid for it, he had been concerned that they shouldn’t be too good, the teachers would never swallow that. Once, when he had been in the danger zone, I had written a poem for him to hand in and his teacher considered that way out of character for Jøgge. But he scraped through; he had been obliged to interpret this poem, which he did satisfactorily and was awarded a pass grade.

I had been a little disappointed because I had put my heart and soul into that poem and I’d had a top grade in mind. But this was the business gymnas, so what could you expect?

In town, in one of the cafés, I would have probably looked in a different direction if Jøgge had walked in, he was a different breed, the wrong breed, but he may have known that himself. At any rate, I never saw him in such surroundings.

‘Hey, Casanova, want another beer?’ he said now.

‘Why not,’ I said. ‘But who are you then? Anti-Casanova?’

‘My name is Bøhn, Jørgen Bøhn,’ he said and laughed.

An hour and a half later I walked ashore in Kristiansand with my big seaman’s kitbag over my shoulder. The others were going up to Tveit, I was going to a party with Bassen, who was waiting for me when I came out of customs.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Had a good summer?’

‘So-so. And you?’

‘Good.’

‘Any women?’ I said.

‘Of course. A couple, I suppose.’

He laughed, and we headed for the bus station to catch a bus to the ferry quay. We had a kind of competition running that year, to see who could make out with most girls in our class, we chatted about that as we sat drinking beer and waiting for Siv to come in her boat and collect us. The approaching night was the last chance to change the score, which was heavily weighted in Bassen’s favour: he had snogged seven; I had snogged only four.

Occasionally I wondered what school would be like in the autumn. He was going down the science route, I was doing social subjects, until now we had been in the same class, which meant it was natural to hang out together.

In one of the first lessons we had sat next to each other, and after the form teacher had handed out slips of paper for us to write down three personal qualities we had Bassen had looked at my answer. Sombre, torpid and serious, I had written.

‘Are you a complete idiot?’ he had said. ‘You should add lacking in self-knowledge! I’ve never seen anything like it. You aren’t bloody sombre or torpid, are you. And there’s no way you’re serious, either. Who’s put these ideas in your head?’

‘What did you write then?’

He showed me.

Down to earth, honest, randy as hell.

‘Chuck your piece of paper away. You can’t write that!’ Bassen said.

I did as he said. Then on a new piece I wrote, intelligent, shy, but not really.

‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Jesus! Sombre and torpid!’

The first time I went to his house, late that autumn, I was filled with respect, I could hardly believe it, he was all I wanted to be, and even later, when we saw more of each other, that thought was never far away. Also now. His presence pervaded every part of me, I admired everything he did, I noticed every look he cast, even across the sea in boredom, and reflected on it.

Why did he want to meet me? I had nothing that was of any use to him.

When we were together I always left early so that he would not discover how boring I really was. There was a kind of fever in me, two conflicting emotions, such as on the spring morning when we skived off school and went by moped back to his and listened to records on the lawn. It was fantastic, yet I had to bring it to a close, something told me I wasn’t worthy or couldn’t fulfil his expectations. So I lay on his lawn with my eyes closed, like a cat on hot bricks, listening to Talk Talk, whom we had discovered at the same time. ‘It’s my life,’ they sang, and everything should have been great, it was spring, I was sixteen years old, had skived off school for the first time and was lying on the grass with my new friend. But it wasn’t great, it was unbearable.

He probably thought I feared a reprimand for skipping school and that was why I got up to go. How could he have known that it was because it was much too good? Because I liked him too much.

Now we hadn’t said anything for perhaps five minutes.

I rolled a cigarette to fill the silence with a normal activity. He glanced at me. Took a packet of Prince Mild from his shirt pocket, poked a filter tip in his mouth.

‘Got a light?’ he said.

I passed him a yellow Bic lighter. He lit up and blew out a cloud of smoke, which hung in the air for a few seconds in front of him before dissolving.

‘How’s it going with your mum and dad?’ he said, passing me the lighter. I took it, lit my roll-up, crushed the empty can with my free hand and threw it down into the rocks by the water.

Dusk fell over the islands in front of us, heavy with the low pressure system. The sea was calm and grey. The can clattered against the rocks below.

‘It’s going OK, I think,’ I said. ‘Dad’s living in Tveit now with his new partner. Mum’s in Vestland. She’ll be home in a few days.’

‘Is it still the two of you living up there?’

‘Yes.’

Around the headland came a boat. The person at the helm had long blonde hair that shone against all the grey, and when we got up and lifted our rucksacks she waved and screamed something which was reduced to a faint squeal across the hundred metres between us.

It was Siv.

We loaded our rucksacks on board, sat down and ten minutes later we moored beneath her cabin.

‘You’re the last,’ she said. ‘So now finally we can eat.’

Hanne was there. She was sitting at the table. Dressed in a white shirt and blue jeans. Her fringe had grown, I noticed.

She smiled, a touch embarrassed.

Probably caused by the letters I had sent.

We ate shrimps. I drank beer, and the intoxicating effect on me was greater and more deeply seated than I had ever experienced before, presumably because of all the drinking over the previous days. It affected not only my head and my thoughts, it started in the depths of my body and slowly spread, and I knew that the wave that was coming would be long-lasting.

And so it was. We cleared the sitting room and danced as night fell over the skerries, we went outside and swam in the darkness, gingerly I walked along the diving board, above me the sky was black, below me the sea was black, and when I dived it felt as if I would never reach the water, I fell and fell and fell and then suddenly I was enveloped by cold salty water, I saw nothing, everything was black, but it was not dangerous, a few strokes and I broke the surface and could see the others standing on land like small pale trees in the darkness.

Hanne was waiting for me with a towel, which she wrapped around my shoulders. We sat high up the mountainside. Some of the girls below were swimming naked.

‘They’re skinny-dipping,’ I said.

‘I can see,’ Hanne said.

‘Don’t you want to join them?’

‘Me? No! That’s the last thing I would do.’

Silence.

She looked at me.

‘Would you like me to?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thought so!’ she said with a laugh. ‘What about you?’

‘The water’s so cold. It’d disappear.’

‘It?’ she said and smiled at me.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You’re a strange boy,’ she said.

There was another silence. I gazed at all the islets, a touch blacker than the sky above. A ribbon of light hung over the horizon. Surely day couldn’t be coming already?

‘It’s great sitting here with you,’ I said. ‘I love you.’

She shot me a rapid glance. ‘I’m not so sure about that.’

‘How can’t you be? I don’t think about anyone else apart from you. When I was in Vestland — oh, by the way, it was fantastic, even though you weren’t there — I was full of you, in a way. Absolutely drunk.’

‘You drink too much,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you be a bit more careful? For my sake?’

‘Drunk with you,’ I said.

‘I know that! But seriously. You don’t have to drink so much, do you?’

‘Happy clappy Christian? Intoxicated by Jesus?’

‘No, don’t make jokes. I am a bit worried about you. Is that a problem?’

‘No.’

We fell quiet. On the diving board there were two figures fighting. One was Bassen, I guessed.

Both fell in the water. Those watching on land screamed and clapped.

Somewhere in the distance a lighthouse flashed. Music blared out from an open door in the cabin behind us.

‘Actually you know nothing about me,’ she said.

‘I know enough.’

‘No, what you see is something else. It’s not me you see.’

‘You’re wrong there,’ I said. ‘You are actually wrong there.’

We stared at each other. Then she smiled.

‘Well, shall we join the others?’ she said.

I sighed and got up. ‘For a bit more to drink, if nothing else,’ I said.

I held out my hand and pulled her up.

‘You promised!’ she said.

‘I promised nothing. Hanne?’ I said.

‘Yes?’

‘Can I hold your hand the short distance to the cabin?’

‘Yes.’

I put on my trousers and jacket and danced to ‘(Don’t You) Forget About Me’ by Simple Minds with Bassen while Hanne sat at the table chatting to Annette and watching us.

I stood next to her and poured vodka and juice into a glass.

‘You’re so sexy when you wear a jacket,’ she said.

‘Do you think so too?’ I said, looking at Annette.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course I don’t. Aren’t you two going to kiss soon?’

‘Not in this life by the look of things,’ I said.

‘Perhaps in heaven then?’ she said.

‘But I don’t believe in God,’ I said.

Hanne laughed, and I went over to Bassen, who was poring over the record collection.

‘Find anything?’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘There’s some Sting. But I need a kip. I’m off to England tomorrow. I don’t want to miss the boat.’

‘You can kip on the boat,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to go to bed now.’

He laughed. ‘Why not? You’ll have a free hand when I’m out of the way.’

‘OK, you win. I didn’t stand a chance.’

He took out the inner sleeve and held it at an angle so the record slid out. With his thumb on the edge and his other fingers on the label in the centre, he placed it on the deck.

‘How’s it going with you and Hanne?’ he said, swinging the pick-up arm to the first groove and lowering it with the little lever.

‘It’s not,’ I said.

‘You looked pretty happy out there on your rock.’

‘That’s as far as it goes,’ I said.

Then ‘If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free’ streamed out of the loudspeakers and soon everyone inside was dancing.