Dancing in the Dark

~ ~ ~

We arrived at Sørbøvåg in the evening. Rain, a couple of degrees above freezing, the darkness as solid as a brick wall as we carried our luggage up the road to the illuminated house. The countryside around us was saturated, everywhere water dripped and trickled.

Mum stopped, put down her suitcase and opened the brown wooden door with the grooves and the window at the top. The smell, a touch musty from grandad’s cowshed gear hanging in the hall, wafted towards me, and together with the sight of the door and the white wall at the end of the hall unlocked my whole childhood in an instant.

In those days they would have met us on the drive or at least come out the second the door was opened, but now nothing happened: we deposited our cases on the floor and removed our jackets to the sound of our own breathing and the rustle of our clothes.

‘Right,’ mum said. ‘Shall we go in then?’

Grandad, who was sitting on the sofa, stood up with a smile to greet us.

‘The Norwegian population is going through a growth spurt, I can see!’ he said, looking up at Yngve and me.

We smiled.

Grandma was sitting on a chair in the corner looking at us. Her whole body trembled and shook. She was completely in the grip of the illness now. Jaws, arms, feet, legs, everything twitched.

Mum sat down on a stool beside her and held her hands in hers. Grandma tried to say something, but all that came out was a hoarse whisper.

‘We’ll just carry up our bags,’ Yngve said. ‘We’ll be sleeping upstairs, I suppose?’

‘You can do whatever you like,’ grandad said.

We went up the creaky staircase. Yngve took Kjartan’s old room, I took the former children’s room. Switched on the main light, put my rucksack down by the old cot, drew the curtain and tried to peer through the darkness outside. It was impenetrable, but I sensed the landscape there nevertheless, the wind gusting through seemed to open it up. The windowsill was covered with dead flies. In the corner under the ceiling hung a spider’s web. The room was cold. It smelled old, it smelled of the past.

I switched off the light and went downstairs.

Mum was standing in the middle of the floor. Grandma was watching TV.

‘Shall we make some supper then?’ mum said.

‘OK,’ I said.

It was grandad who did the cooking in this house. He had learned to cook when his mother died, he had been twelve years old and the responsibility had fallen on him. Not many men of his generation had experience of this kind and he was proud that he could cope. But he wasn’t very fussy about washing pots and pans and ladles and so on. The grease that had collected in a thick yellowish-white layer at the bottom of the frying pan appeared to have melted and solidified countless times, the saucepans in the cupboard bore scum marks around the top from boiling fish and there were bits of overcooked potato stuck to the bottom. Otherwise the kitchen wasn’t dirty, a cleaner came twice a week, but it was run-down.

Mum and I scrambled some eggs, made some tea and took in a selection of sliced meats and cheese while Yngve set the table. When supper was ready I went to fetch Kjartan, who had built himself a house beside the old one a few years ago. Light droplets of rain settled on my face as I walked the three metres to his door and rang the bell. I opened the door, went into the hall and shouted up the staircase that supper was ready.

‘OK, OK, I’m coming!’ he called down.

When I went back mum was standing next to grandma in the middle of the floor, holding her arm and guiding her slowly towards the table, where grandad and Yngve were already seated, grandad was telling him all about the various types of salmon breeding. If he had been younger that is what he would have done, he said. One of the neighbours had done it, down below in the fjord there was a small breeding station, he was earning so much money it was as if he had won the lottery.

I sat down and poured myself a cup of tea. Kjartan came into the hallway, closed the door after him, went straight to a chair and sat down.

‘Are you studying political science?’ he asked Yngve.

‘Hi, Kjartan,’ Yngve said. As Kjartan didn’t respond to the discreet reproof, Yngve simply nodded. ‘Or comparative politics, as it’s called in Bergen. But it’s the same thing,’ Yngve said.

Kjartan returned the nod.

‘And you’re at gymnas?’ he said to me.

‘Yes,’ I said.

I stood up and pulled back a chair for grandma. She slowly lowered herself onto it, mum pushed the chair into the table, sat down on her other side while Kjartan started talking. He didn’t look at us. His hands transported bread and meat, buttered bread and raised it to his mouth, poured tea and milk into a cup and raised it to his mouth, all somehow independently of himself and what he was saying, this long unstoppable stream of words that issued from his lips. Occasionally he corrected himself, he laughed a little, he even peeked up at us, but otherwise it was though he had disappeared in order to let the speaker in him speak.

He talked about Heidegger, held a ten-minute monologue about the great German philosopher and his struggle with him, then stopped in midstream and fell quiet. Mum picked up on something he had said, asked whether that was what he meant, had she understood him correctly? He looked at her, smiled briefly and then continued his monologue. Grandad, who had previously dominated the conversations around this table, said nothing as he ate, stared down at the table in front of him, occasionally glanced around the table, a cheery expression on his face as though he had remembered something and was about to tell us what, but held back and lowered his eyes again.

‘Not everyone here has heard of Heidegger,’ Yngve said in an unexpected lull. ‘Surely there must be other topics we can discuss apart from some obscure German philosopher?’

‘Yes, I suppose there are,’ Kjartan said. ‘We can talk about the weather. But what shall we talk about then? The weather is what it always is. The weather is what existence reveals itself through. Just as we reveal ourselves through the mood we are in, through what we feel at any given moment. It’s not possible to imagine a world without weather or ourselves without feelings. But both elements automate das Man. Das Man talks about the weather as though there is nothing special about it, in other words he doesn’t see it, not even Johannes,’ Kjartan said, nodding towards grandad, ‘who spends an hour every day listening to the weather forecast, and always has done, who absorbs all the details, not even Johannes sees the weather, he just sees rain or sun, mist or sleet, but not as such, as something unique, something which reveals itself to us, through which everything else reveals itself in these moments of, well, grace perhaps. Yes, Heidegger is close to God and the divine, but he never fully embraces it, he never goes the whole way, but it’s there, in close attendance, perhaps even as a prerequisite for the thinking. What do you say, Sissel?’

‘Well, what you say sounds quasi-religious,’ she said.

Yngve, who had rolled his eyes when Kjartan had started talking about the weather, speared a piece of salmon with his fork and put it on his plate.

‘Is it going to be lamb ribs and pork belly this year as well?’ Yngve said.

Grandad looked at him.

‘Yes, it is. We’ve dried the lamb in the loft. Kjartan bought the pork yesterday.’

‘I’ve brought some aquavit with me,’ Yngve said. ‘You need that.’

Mum raised a glass of milk to grandma’s mouth. She drank. A white stream ran from the corner of her mouth.

The countryside was like a tub filled to the brim with darkness. The next morning the bottom slowly became visible as the light was poured in and seemingly diluted the darkness. It was impossible, I reflected, to witness this without feeling it involved movement. Wasn’t Lihesten, that immense vertical wall of rock, creeping closer with the daylight? Wasn’t the grey fjord rising from the depths of darkness in which it had been hidden all night? The tall birches on the other side of the meadowland, where the fence to the neighbouring property was, weren’t they advancing metre by metre?

The birches: five or six riders who had kept watch on the house all through the night and now had to pull hard on the reins to curb the restless horses beneath them.

During the morning the mist thickened again. Everything was grey, even the winter-green spruces growing on the ridge beyond the lake were grey, and everything was saturated with dampness. The fine drizzle in the air, the droplets collecting under the branches and falling to the ground with tiny, almost imperceptible, thuds, the moisture in the soil of the meadow that had once been a marsh, the squelch it gave when you trod on it, your shoes sinking in, the mud oozing over them.

At eleven I walked with Yngve to Kjartan’s car, he had borrowed it, we were going to Vågen to buy the last bits and pieces for the Christmas dinner. Sauerkraut, red cabbage, some more beer, nuts and fruit and fizzy drinks to quench the thirst that lamb ribs always produced. And some newspapers, if there were any, I needed them to kill the time until the evening, for childhood Christmases were so deeply rooted in me that I still looked forward to them.

With the wipers swishing to and fro across the windscreen we drove across the yard, through the gate and down to the road in front of the school, where we turned right and set out on the narrow two-kilometre carriageway to Vågen, which had seemed an interminable distance to me as a child. Almost every metre along the road constituted a special place, the most exciting by far, however, was the bit leading to the bridge over the river, where I used to hang over the railings for hours just looking.

By car, it took three, maybe four minutes. If I hadn’t had my previous attachment to the area I wouldn’t have noticed anything. The trees would have been any trees, the farms any farms, the bridge any bridge.

‘Kjartan’s incredible,’ Yngve said. ‘He doesn’t take any account of others at all. Or does he believe everyone’s as interested in what he says as he is?’

‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘Speaking for myself, I have no idea what he’s talking about. Do you?’

‘A bit,’ Yngve said. ‘But it’s not as impressive as it sounds. It’s just a question of reading.’

He turned in and parked, we walked towards the co-op shop. A woman in a long raincoat came out of the door clutching a small child. She was startled to see us.

‘Goodness, Yngve! Is that you!’ she said.

Who was she?

They hugged.

‘This is my brother, Karl Ove,’ Yngve said.

‘Ingegerd,’ she said, sticking out a hand.

I smiled. Her child clung to her.

‘You’ve got grandparents here,’ she said. ‘Now I remember. How funny to see you here!’

I wandered across and gazed over Vågen. The water was perfectly still. Some boats were moored to buoys, which glowed red in the middle of the fjord in all the grey. When we were small the Bergen boat used to dock here. Once we had caught it at night, slept on a hard bench, there had been a smell of petrol and coffee and sea, what an adventure it had been. Kommandøren it had been called. Now the hurtigbåt, the express boat, had superseded it. The boat didn’t stop here any more.

‘Are you coming?’ Yngve said from behind me. I turned. The woman and the child were on their way to a car.

‘Who was that?’ I said.

‘Someone I know from Bergen,’ he said. ‘She lives with Helge.’

On our return, the house smelled of green soap. Mum had washed the floors. Now she was turning her attention to the windowsills. Grandma was asleep in the chair nearby. Mum wrung the cloth over the bucket, straightened up and looked at us.

‘Will you put some porridge on?’ she said.

‘Yes, I can do that,’ Yngve said.

‘Are we going to put up the tree soon?’ I said.

‘You can bring it in, if you like,’ she said.

‘Where is it?’

‘Actually, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Ask Kjartan.’

I slipped my feet into a pair of much too small clogs and shuffled over to the other house. Rang the bell, opened the door, shouted hello.

No answer.

I walked carefully up the stairs.

He was leaning back in his Stressless chair and taking in the fjord. He had those big headphones on. Tapping his foot to the music.

Obviously he hadn’t heard me. If I walked into his line of vision I would startle him. There was no other option though. Shouting was no good; the music was so loud I could hear it from where I was standing.

I went back out.

Grandad was walking from the barn to the house. A cat sauntered along behind him.

‘Any luck?’ mum asked when I went back in.

‘He was busy,’ I said. ‘He was listening to music.’

Yngve sighed. ‘I’ll go and see him,’ he said.

Five minutes later he was wrestling with a large straggly Christmas tree in the hallway. We screwed it into the rusty metal stand and then set about hanging decorations on it from a box mum had located in the meantime. After we had eaten I went for a stroll around the farm, over to the old derelict mink sheds, down to the black mere, past the place where the beehives had been. Further on, by the remains of the foundations of the house that had once stood there, I smoked a cigarette. There wasn’t a sound to be heard, nor a soul to be seen. I threw the stub into the wet grass and walked back to the house. My shoes glistened. In the downstairs bathroom mum was helping grandma to take a shower. Yngve sat listening to grandad, who was bent forward on the sofa, his arms resting on his knees and chatting the way he always did.

I plumped down in the other chair.

Grandad was talking about the time he had fished for herring in the 1920s with his father, how you could hit the jackpot with one cast of the net and how that had actually happened once. His eyes gleamed as he recalled those times. He told us about the skipper who had stood in the bows as they approached Trondheim one evening, like a baying dog, he said laughing, because what he was baying for was women. He had spent a long time smartening himself up, now he stood at the very front of the boat sniffing the wind as they glided into the illuminated town. Then he talked about the time he had been the explosives boss on a road-building project: in the evenings they had played poker in the workmen’s hut and he had won time and time again, but he couldn’t spend the money, he had to buy a wedding ring for grandma and didn’t want the money for it to come from gambling, so he kept putting all the money back in the pot and sat watching the sweat pouring from the others’ foreheads. He laughed so much he had tears in his eyes as he described how the others had looked, and Yngve and I laughed too, grandad’s laughter was so infectious it was impossible not to. He was bent double with laughter, unable to speak and tears were streaming down his cheeks. But he not only entertained us with stories of the past, he wasn’t given to nostalgia, for as soon as he had regained his composure, he started to tell us about a trip he had made to America to visit his brother, Magnus. About how he had sat alone at night zapping through the endless variety of channels Magnus had, it was incredible, a miracle, and I smiled because he couldn’t speak English and understood nothing of what was being said as he sat there mesmerised in front of the television night after night.

Yngve shot me a look and got up. ‘Are you coming for a breath of fresh air?’

‘Yes, you boys do that,’ grandad said, leaning back against the sofa.

It was raining and we stepped under the overhang by Kjartan’s front door and lit up.

‘How’s it going with Hanne then?’ he said. ‘It’s a long time since you mentioned her.’

‘It’s going nowhere,’ I said. ‘We chat on the phone now and then, but it’s no good. She doesn’t want to go out with me.’

‘I see,’ Yngve said. ‘Might just as well forget her then, eh?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to do.’

He ground his heel into the soft gravel. Stopped, looked across at the barn. It was falling to pieces, the paint was peeling off here and there and the ramp to the hayloft was overgrown with grass, but even though the barn was decrepit it still stood out because the background — the green meadows, the grey fjord and the leaden grey sky — somehow thrust it forward, somehow elevated it.

Or else it was because the barn had been so important when I was young, it had been one of the most pivotal buildings in my young life.

‘Incidentally, I’ve met a girl,’ Yngve said.

‘Oh yes?’ I said.

He nodded.

‘In Bergen?’

He shook his head, took such a deep drag his cheeks were hollow.

‘In Arendal actually. It happened this summer. I haven’t seen her since then, but we’ve exchanged letters. And I’m going to meet her on New Year’s Eve.’

‘Are you in love?’

He eyeballed me. Such a direct question could go both ways; he didn’t always want to talk about things like this. But he was in love of course, he glowed in that peculiarly introverted way at any mention of her and probably wanted to talk about her all the time, at least if he was like me he would, and he was.

‘Yes, basically,’ he said. ‘That’s what it boils down to! To so few words! To one word, in fact!’

‘What does she look like then? How old is she? Where does she live?’

‘Can we start with her name? That’s the most practical.’

‘All right.’

‘Her name’s Kristin.’

‘Yes?’

‘She’s two years younger than me. She lives on Tromøya. She’s got blue eyes. Blonde curly hair. She’s quite small. . You went to the same school as her. She was in the class two years above you.’

‘Kristin? Doesn’t exactly ring any bells.’

‘You’ll recognise her when you see her.’

‘You’ll have to get together with her then.’

‘That was the idea.’ He looked at me. ‘Why don’t you come to the party? At the Vindilhytta cabin? If you’re not going to another party, that is.’

‘I don’t have any special plans,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I should.’

‘I’ll be going anyway. Come with me!’

I nodded and looked away so that he wouldn’t see how happy I was.

When we went back in, grandad was asleep with his chin resting on his chest and his arms folded.

It was five o’clock, Sølvguttene, The Silver Boys, was starting on TV, I went downstairs from my room dressed and ready. White shirt, black suit, black shoes. The whole house smelled of lamb. Grandma was wearing her finest dress and her hair was brushed. Grandad was in a blue suit. Kjartan a 1970s-style grey suit. The table was set, a white cloth, the best dinner service, green serviettes next to the plates. Four bottles of beer, room temperature, the way it was drunk here, and a bottle of aquavit in the middle. All that was missing was the food, which Yngve had gone out to fetch. Grandad had cooked it.

‘There are only five potatoes,’ Yngve said. ‘There isn’t even enough for one each!’

‘I can go without,’ mum said. ‘Then you can have one each.’

‘Even so,’ Yngve said. ‘One paltry potato for Christmas dinner. .’

I helped him to carry in the dishes of food. Steaming lamb ribs, square pieces of roast pork with crackling, some with tiny bristles intact, mashed swede, sauerkraut, red cabbage, five potatoes.

The lamb was delicious, grandad had cured it, soaked it in water and cooked it to perfection. The sole criticism of the meal, the most important in the year, was the lack of potatoes. You should never skimp on anything, and certainly not the potatoes! But I recovered from my disappointment and no one else seemed to give it a thought. Grandma sat hunched over the table trembling, but her mind was clear, her eyes were clear, she saw us and she was pleased to have us there, I could see. Just the fact that we were there, that was enough for her and always had been. Grandad wolfed down the meat, his chin glistening with fat. Kjartan hardly touched the food, he rambled on about Heidegger and Nietzsche, a poet called Hölderlin and someone called Arne Ruste, to whom he had sent poems and who had made some kind comments. He mentioned several other names in his monologue and all of them were spoken with a familiarity he seemed to assume everyone shared.

When the meal was over Yngve and I carried the plates and dishes out while mum whisked the cream for the rice pudding. Kjartan sat in silence alone with his parents.

‘I suggest we institute a Heidegger-free zone,’ Yngve said.

Mum laughed. ‘But it is quite interesting,’ she said.

‘Perhaps not on Christmas Eve?’ I said.

‘No, you’re probably right there,’ she said.

‘Shall we have the dessert a bit later?’ Yngve said. ‘I’m absolutely full.’

‘Me too,’ I said. ‘The lamb was good this year.’

‘Yes, it was,’ mum said. ‘Bit salty though maybe?’

‘No, no,’ Yngve said. ‘It was just right. It was perfect.’

‘Shall we start on the presents then?’ I said.

‘Could do,’ Yngve said.

‘Will you do the honours?’

‘OK.’

I was given an EP by Yngve, The Dukes of Stratosphear, a sweater and Wandrup’s Bjørneboe biography by mum, a torch by Kjartan and a big slice of salmon by my grandparents, as well as a cheque for two hundred kroner. I gave mum a cassette of Vivaldi she could listen to in the car, Yngve the solo LP by Marty Willson-Piper, the guitarist in The Church, Kjartan a novel by Jan Kjærstad. Yngve read out the names in a confident voice and distributed the presents with a firm hand, I scrunched up the wrapping paper, threw it into the roaring wood burner and took occasional sips from the cognac grandad had brought in. Yngve passed him a present from Kjellaug and Magne’s youngest daughter Ingrid, born many years after her siblings, and when he opened it and saw what it was he stiffened. Suddenly he was on his feet and heading for the wood burner.

‘What did you get?’ mum said. ‘Don’t throw it away!’

Grandad opened the stove door. Mum hurried over.

‘You can’t burn it,’ she said, and took the present from him.

Grandad looked hostile and bewildered at the same time.

‘Let me see,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s a plaster cast of her hand,’ mum said.

The impression of a small hand in plaster, why would he want to burn that?

Kjartan laughed. ‘Johannes is superstitious,’ he said. ‘It means death, that does.’

‘Yes, it does,’ grandad said. ‘I don’t want to see it.’

‘We’ll put it here then,’ mum said, putting the plaster cast out of sight. ‘She made it at the nursery and sent it to you. You can’t throw it away, you know that.’

Grandad said nothing.

Was that a smile on grandma’s lips?

Yngve passed Kjartan a present from him. A bottle of wine.

‘Bull’s eye,’ Kjartan said. He was sitting on a chair at the back of the room with a glass of cognac in his hand, wearing a milder, more conciliatory expression on his face now.

‘Perhaps we could listen to our records on your stereo tomorrow, could we?’ I said.

‘Yes, help yourselves.’

Kjartan was sitting by the Christmas tree, which wasn’t quite straight, it was leaning towards him, and then while I was looking him in the eye I saw on the margins of my vision that it had started to move. He turned his head. His eyes lit up in panic. The next second the tree crashed down on top of him.

Grandad burst into laughter. Yngve and mum and I laughed too. Kjartan jumped up from his chair. Yngve and I straightened the tree, screwed it into position again and moved it against the wall.

‘Even the tree won’t leave me in peace,’ Kjartan said, running a hand through his hair, and then sat down again.

‘Skål,’ Yngve said. ‘And Happy Christmas!’

Over Christmas we took the express boat to Bergen and flew from there to Kjevik. Mefisto was ecstatic to see us when we arrived, almost clawing my trousers to pieces when I let him lie on my lap during supper.

It was good to be home and it was good to have Yngve there.

The next day he wanted to visit our grandparents on dad’s side, he hadn’t seen them since the summer, and I went with him.

Grandma beamed when she saw us standing on the doorstep. Grandad was in his office, she said as we were going upstairs, and Yngve immediately sat down in his chair. With him the atmosphere with grandma was not as humdrum as it was when I was there on my own; Yngve was much better at hitting the right tone in our family: he joked, made grandma laugh and had fun with her in a way that I would never be capable of, even if I practised for a hundred years.

Suddenly, completely out of the blue, she looked at Yngve and asked him if he had bought something nice with the money.

‘What money?’ he said.

I flushed scarlet.

‘The money we gave you,’ grandma said.

‘I haven’t been given any money,’ Yngve said.

‘I forgot to pass it on to you,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

Grandma stared at me as if she couldn’t believe her ears. ‘You didn’t give it to him?’

‘I’m really sorry. I forgot.’

‘Did you spend it?’

‘Yes, but I only borrowed it. I was going to give him the money back in Sørbøvåg and then I forgot.’

She got up and went out.

Yngve sent me a quizzical look.

‘We were given a hundred kroner each,’ I said. ‘I simply forgot to give you yours. You’ll get it later.’

Grandma came in with a hundred-krone note in her hand and gave it to Yngve.

‘There we are,’ she said. ‘Now let’s forget all about it.’

Yngve did in fact get together with Kristin on New Year’s Eve. I saw it all. From the moment they met and she looked up at him with her head tilted and a smile. He had said something and seemed strangely shy. I laughed inwardly. He was in love! Afterwards they didn’t talk but they did cast occasional glances at each other.

Suddenly they were sitting opposite each other at a long wooden table. Yngve was talking to Trond; she was talking to one of her friends.

They sent each other furtive looks.

Still talking.

Then Yngve got up and was gone for a short while, sat back down, continued to chat to Trond. Picked up a slip of paper and a pen, wrote something.

And then he pushed the slip of paper over to Kristin!

She looked at him, looked at the piece of paper and read what he had written. Looked at him, pinched her thumb and first finger together several times, and he passed her the pen.

She wrote something, pushed the sheet across, he read it. Got up and went over to her, and then suddenly they were immersed in deep conversation, there were only the two of them in the room, and the next time I saw them they were kissing. He had managed it!

After that evening for him everything was about Kristin. He went to Bergen on 2 January and the house felt empty, but only for a day or two until I was used to it, and life continued as it had before with its minor developments in one direction or another, all the unforeseen events that fill our lives, some of which lead to a locked door or a deserted room while others might have consequences which only come to fruition many years later.

I started doing local radio with Espen. We broadcast one programme a week, it was live and the basic format was that we played records by our favourite bands and talked about them. I told everyone I knew they should listen, and many of them did, now and then, it was not uncommon for people at school or on the bus to comment on something we had said or some of the music we had chosen. Radio 1 was a small station, there were not many listeners on a normal weekday evening, and Nye Sørlandet was not a big newspaper, but between them they gave me a sense that I was on my way.

The radio programme meant that I had to stay in town after school, there was no point going home, turning round and going back, and I made it a habit to pop in to see grandma and grandad, they were a safer bet than dad for food, and I also avoided the uncertainty that a visit to dad entailed: would he ask me in or not, would it be too much for him or not?

After these long evenings in town, having dinner with my grandparents first, then meeting Espen at the radio station, planning the programme with him and then doing it, I would get on the bus and listen to music the whole weary way home, including the last kilometre, locked inside myself, hardly noticing the white world I was passing through until I removed my headset, opened the door, untied my boots, hung up my jacket and went into the kitchen to have a bite of supper.

Mum was on the first floor watching TV. When she heard me she switched it off and came down.

‘Did you hear it?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Was it embarrassing when we got the giggles or was it OK?’

‘No, it wasn’t embarrassing. Just funny. Karl Ove, grandma rang while you were out.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. It wasn’t a pleasant conversation, I’m afraid. She said. . well, she said you weren’t to go there any more. She said you’d never had anything to eat whenever you turned up, you were shabbily dressed and were always asking them for money.’

‘What?!’ I said.

‘Yes,’ mum said. ‘She said it was my job to look after you and not theirs. It was my responsibility. So now they don’t want you to go there.’

I started crying. I couldn’t help myself, the tears came with such force. I turned away from her, my face contorted into ugly grimaces, I covered it with my hands, and even though I didn’t want to, I sobbed.

I took a saucepan from the cupboard and filled it with water.

‘This has got nothing to do with you,’ mum said. ‘You have to understand that. This is about me. It’s me they want to hurt.’

I put the pan on the stove, barely able to see through all the tears, raised my hand in front of my face again, bowed my head. Another loud sob rolled out.

She was wrong, I knew that, this was about me. I had been there, I had physically felt all the silences and all the unease I carried with me, and in a way I understood them.

But I said nothing. The convulsive twitches in my face let up, I took a few deep breaths, wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my jumper. Sat down on a chair. Mum didn’t move.

‘I’m so angry,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry before. You’re their grandchild. It’s difficult for you now. It’s their duty to support you. No matter what.’

‘It isn’t difficult,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You have hardly anyone around you. The few people you have cannot turn their backs on you.’

‘I’m absolutely fine,’ I said. ‘Don’t give it a second thought. I’ll manage fine without them.’

‘I’m sure you will,’ mum said. ‘But they’re turning their backs on their own grandchild! Can you imagine! No wonder your father struggles.’

‘You don’t think he’s behind this then?’ I said.

She looked at me. I had never seen her so furious before. Her eyes were blazing.

‘No, I truly don’t. Well, not unless he has changed totally in these last six months.’

‘He has,’ I said. ‘He’s a completely different person.’

She sat down.

‘And there’s one more thing,’ I said. ‘Which you don’t know. Yngve and I were given a hundred kroner each for Christmas. I was supposed to pass the money on to Yngve, but I spent it. Afterwards I forgot all about it. When we were there over Christmas it all came out.’

‘But, Karl Ove,’ mum said with a sigh, ‘even if you’d stolen the money that’s no reason for them to turn their backs on you. It’s not up to them to punish you.’

‘You’ve got to understand,’ I said. ‘It’s obvious they were angry. And what grandma said is right. I eat whenever I’m there and they give me money for the bus.’

‘You’ve done nothing wrong. Don’t even think it,’ she said.

But I did, of course. I lay awake for the first hours of the night as the cold took a grip on the countryside and caused the timber walls of the house and the ice in the river below to creak. Then, in the darkness, I was able to see the matter in a colder, clearer light. If they didn’t want to see me, well, then they wouldn’t see me. I hadn’t gone to visit them for my benefit, I lost nothing by staying away. And there was a sweetness in my decision never to see them again. Not even when they lay on their deathbeds would I go and see them. Indeed, even when they had died and were about to be buried, even then I wouldn’t go and see them. Unlike dad, who during my childhood years had boycotted them for periods, cut off all contact for a month or two, only to resume relations as though nothing had happened. No, I would stand firm. I would never see them again, I would never talk to them again.

If that was how they wanted it, that is how they would get it. I didn’t need grandma or grandad, they were the ones who needed me, and if they didn’t understand that, well, good luck to them.

One afternoon I caught the train alone to Drammen, where Simple Minds were playing at the same venue that U2 had played the year before. I loved their new record, the sound was so monumental and the songs so brilliant I played them again and again that autumn. It was perhaps a bit commercial and the tracks were perhaps not as strong as those on New Gold Dream, but I loved it nevertheless. Leaving the concert, I was, however, somewhat disappointed, not least with Jim Kerr, who had become quite flabby and actually stopped the gig when a fan ran onto the stage and pinched his red beret. He crouched down at the edge of the stage and said they wouldn’t play any more unless he got his hat back. I couldn’t believe my ears and from then on it didn’t matter how good the songs were, for me Simple Minds were a thing of the past.

I arrived back in Kristiansand by train in the middle of the night. There were no buses and it was too expensive to take a taxi home, so I had arranged with Unni that I would sleep in her flat. She had given me a key; all I had to do was let myself in. So half an hour after I had clambered off the train I inserted the key into the lock, warily opened the door and carefully stepped into the flat. It was a 1950s or 60s build, consisted of two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom, and had a view of the town from the sitting room. I had been there two or three times before, for dinner with dad and her, and I liked it, it was an elegant flat. The pictures on the wall were nice, and even though I didn’t care much for the Sosialistisk Venstreparti-style ceramic cups and woven fabrics, it was her style, and that was indeed what I noticed about the room, the harmony.

She had made up a bed on the sofa with a sheet and a duvet, I found a book in the bookcase, Johan Bojer, The Last Viking, read a few pages, then switched off the light and fell asleep. Next morning I woke to the sound of her clattering around in the kitchen. I got dressed, she set the table in the sitting room and brought in a plate of bacon and eggs, some tea and hot rolls.

We sat chatting all morning. Mostly about me, but also about her, about her relationship with her son Fredrik, who was having difficulty accepting that our dad had come into her life, about her job as a teacher and life in Kristiansand before she met dad. I told her about Hanne and my plans to write after I had finished gymnas. I hadn’t said anything to anyone because I hadn’t formulated the thought before, not in so many words anyway. But now the words just poured out of my mouth. I want to write, I want to be a writer.

When I left it was too late to go to school, so I caught the bus home. The sun was cold and hung low in the sky, the ground was bare and damp. I was happy but not unreservedly so, because chatting with Unni, being open and honest with her, felt like betrayal. Whom I was betraying I wasn’t quite sure.

A couple of months later, at the beginning of April, mum went away for the weekend, to visit a friend in Oslo, and I was left alone at home.

When I returned from school I found a note in the kitchen.

Dear Karl Ove

Take care of yourself — and be good to the cat.

Love,

Mum

After frying some eggs and meatballs for dinner, drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette, I sat down in the living room with a history book and started to read. The countryside had not yet emerged from the strange interlude between winter and spring when the fields are bare and wet, the sky is grey and the trees leafless, nothing in themselves, everything charged with what will be. Perhaps it has already started to happen, unseen in the darkness, for isn’t the air slowly warming up in the forest? Is there not scattered birdsong coming from the trees after these long months of silence, which had been broken only by the occasional hoarse screams of a crow or a magpie? Had spring not stolen in, like someone wanting to surprise their friends? Wasn’t it there, ready any day now to explode into a blaze of green, spewing out its leaves and insects everywhere?

That was the feeling I had, spring was in the offing. And perhaps that was why I was so restless. After reading for an hour or so I got up and walked around the house, opened the door for the cat, which headed straight for the food dish, I thought of Hanne and before I could change my mind I was standing by the telephone and dialling her number.

She was happy to hear from me.

‘Are you at home on a Friday evening?’ she said. ‘That’s not like you. What are you doing?’

In fact, it was very much like me, but I had probably exaggerated my social life so much that she had integrated it into her perception of me.

‘I’m swotting for an exam. And I’m on my own here. Mum won’t be home until tomorrow. And so, well. . I was a bit bored. And I thought of you. What are you doing?’

‘Nothing special. I’m a bit bored too.’

‘Right,’ I said.

‘I could pop by,’ she said.

‘Pop by?’

‘Yes, I’ve got my driving licence now, you know. Then we can drink tea and chat until the small hours.’

‘That sounds perfect. But can you do that?’

‘Why shouldn’t I be able to?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Come on then. See you.’

One and a half hours later she rounded the bend in the old green Beetle she borrowed from her sister. I shuffled into my shoes and went out to meet her. She looked completely out of place behind the wheel of a car, it struck me as she drove up the hill, driving required a set of movements and actions that I found irreconcilable with her somewhat gauche girlish charm. She performed every manoeuvre as it had to be done, it wasn’t that, but there was something extra which injected a stream of effervescent happiness into my blood. She parked outside the garage door and stepped out. She was wearing the black stretch pants I had once commented on, I had said they looked incredibly sexy on her. She smiled and gave me a hug. We went indoors, I made some tea and put on a record, we chatted for a while, she talked about what was happening at school and I told her what was going on at mine. Some anecdotes about mutual friends.

But we weren’t quite in synch.

We looked at each other and smiled.

‘I hadn’t imagined this when I woke up this morning,’ I said. ‘That you would be sitting here this evening.’

‘Nor me,’ she said.

A plane came in over the ridge behind our place, the whole house seemed to shake.

‘That was low,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said, getting up. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

I lit a cigarette, leaned back against the sofa and closed my eyes.

When she returned she stopped by the garden door and gazed out. I got to my feet, went over to her, stood behind her and gently placed my hands on her stomach. She put her hands on mine.

‘It’s so lovely here,’ she said.

The river flowed past, shiny and black, it had flooded the football field, only the two home-made goals were visible. The air over the valley had thickened with the dusk. Lights shone in the houses across the valley. Droplets of rain ran down the pane in front of us.

‘Yes, it is,’ I said, moving away from the window. She was in a relationship, she was a Christian, I was just a good friend.

She sat down in the wicker chair, swept the hair hanging over her forehead to one side and raised the cup of lukewarm tea to her mouth. Her lips were perhaps her finest feature, they formed a gentle curve and at the top seemed to crimp as though not wishing to adapt to the otherwise clean lines of her face. Unless it was her eyes, which I sometimes imagined were yellow, because there was something feline about her face, but of course they weren’t. They were grey-green.

‘It’s getting late,’ she said.

‘You don’t have to go yet, do you?’ I said.

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I don’t have anything special on tomorrow. Do you?’

‘No.’

‘When’s your mamma back?’

Your mamma. Only Hanne could say something like that, as though there were still a remnant of childhood in her that hadn’t been eroded yet.

I smiled.

‘My mamma? You make me feel like a ten-year-old.’

‘Your mother then!’ she said.

‘She won’t be back until tomorrow night. Why’s that?’

‘I was thinking I might sleep here. I don’t like driving in the dark much.’

‘Can you do that?’

‘What?’

‘Sleep here?’

‘Why shouldn’t I be able to?’

‘You’re in a relationship for starters.’

‘Not any more.’

‘What! Is that true? Why didn’t you say?’

‘I don’t tell you everything, young man,’ she said, laughing.

‘But I tell you everything.’

‘Yes, you certainly do. But my splitting up has got nothing to do with you.’

‘Of course it has! It’s got everything to do with me!’ I said.

She shook her head.

‘No?’ I said.

‘No,’ she said.

That was a no to me, there was no other way of interpreting it. However, I had given up on her ages ago. She no longer filled my every waking thought, it was several months since she had.

The chair creaked as she shifted position and drew her legs up underneath her.

I liked her. And I liked her being here, in the old house. That was enough, wasn’t it?

We sat there for an hour, until the darkness outside was complete and all you could see through the windows was the reflection of the living room.

‘It’s beginning to get late,’ I said. ‘Where would like to sleep?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘In your room?’

She smiled.

‘I don’t like sleeping alone in a house I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Especially not here. We’re almost in the middle of the forest!’

‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll get a mattress.’

I took the mattress off Yngve’s bed and laid it on the floor next to mine. Fetched a pillow, sheet, duvet and cover and put it on while she cleaned her teeth downstairs in the bathroom.

She came into the room wearing panties and a T-shirt.

My throat constricted.

Her breasts were so clearly outlined under the T-shirt that I didn’t know where to look.

‘There we are,’ she said. ‘I’m ready. Aren’t you going to clean your teeth?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said, holding her gaze. ‘I’ll do it now.’

When I returned she was sitting on the chair by the desk and looking at some pictures Yngve had sent me, which I had left lying around. They were dramatic, in black and white, some of them with me in exaggerated poses.

‘How good you look!’ she said, holding up one of the photos.

I snorted. ‘Shall we go to bed?’ I said.

A shudder went through me as she got up.

Her naked thighs.

Her small bare feet.

Her beautifully formed breasts beneath the thin T-shirt.

She lay down on the mattress on the floor, I lay next to her on the bed. She pulled the sheet up to her chin and smiled at me. I smiled back. We chatted a little, she sat up and pushed the mattress closer until it was right under me.

I thought about lying next to her. Lying close to her. Stroking her breasts, stroking her thighs, stroking her bottom.

But she was a Christian. And she was completely innocent, she didn’t know who she was or what effect she had on others, she could ask the strangest of questions and that side of her, which I loved, was also the reason I had to stay where I was.

‘Goodnight,’ I said.

‘Goodnight,’ she said.

We lay there, breathing, utterly still.

‘Are you asleep?’ she said at length.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Can you stroke my back a little? I just love it.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

She flipped the duvet to the side and bared her back. I gulped and ran the palm of my hand over her back, to and fro, to and fro.

I don’t know how long I was doing it for, a couple of minutes perhaps, but then I had to stop, otherwise I would have gone mad.

‘Can you sleep now?’ I said, withdrawing my hand.

‘Yes,’ she said, pulling her T-shirt back down. ‘Goodnight again.’

‘Goodnight,’ I said.

She left next morning, I read all day on the sofa, ate pizza and watched TV with mum in the evening. She sat with the cat on her lap and a cup of coffee on the table in front of her. I had eaten the best part of the pizza, then sat with my feet on the table and a glass of Coke in my hand watching Albert and Herbert, a Swedish series, it was totally meaningless, it must have been for mum too, but now we were sitting there it required an effort to move.

Hanne filled me to the brim. I had thought about her all day. It was a long time since I had erased her from my mind, she didn’t want to be with me, but now the whole rusty funfair, once shiny and gleaming, returned once more.

What would have happened if I had snuggled up to her last night?

Suddenly I saw everything in a new light. Suddenly I saw what had really happened.

Oh my God.

That was what she had wanted all along.

Oh, how obvious it was.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

Or was it? Was it only in my mind?

I half sat up, I had to ring her, then I slumped back on the sofa.

‘What is it?’ mum said.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘A thought just struck me.’

Down at dad’s the dinners had come to a complete halt, at the weekend he generally sat alone drinking, apart from the occasional afternoon when he was sober and received visits from relatives. I had told him that grandma had rung, yes, he knew, he said, and they’re right, your mother should take better care of you. I pay huge sums in child maintenance, you know. Yeah, yeah, I knew. But the fact that I was so upset about not being allowed to go there any more must have passed him by, or else that was precisely what hadn’t happened, for I had said I would pop by on his birthday, he was turning forty-two, and grandma and grandad were there. I could smell her perfume in the hallway, but by then it was too late, I couldn’t run off now, instead I opened the door to the living room where grandad’s brother Alf and his wife Sølvi were sitting, as well as grandma and grandad, Gunnar and Tove and their children. I didn’t look at grandma when I said hello, nor when I sat down at the table. I kept my eyes cast down as I ate a piece of cake and drank a cup of coffee. The gathering dispersed, some sat on the sofa, some took their plates out, the conversation swung this way and that. No alcohol was served, of course. I got up and went to the toilet, on my return grandma was in the kitchen.

‘That wasn’t how we meant it, Karl Ove,’ she said. ‘Not like that.’

‘I see,’ I said and walked past her.

So now all of a sudden she hadn’t said it?

I suppose she hadn’t rung mum either.

It then struck me that everyone here had heard about what had happened. They might have discussed it. Me and my behaviour. What the most appropriate way of dealing with it was.

While dad, who drank himself senseless several times a week, he could just invite them here and pretend nothing had happened and everything was hunky-dory.

Oh shit, why wasn’t Yngve here?

Why did I have to cope with all this on my own?

I stood my ground against grandma and grandad for a few more weeks, but then, one afternoon when I was down at dad’s, he asked me to go there with him and told me I shouldn’t be so childish, I was too old for that, of course I should visit them.

I did, and everything was as it had always been.

Dad formal, grandad formal, grandma who kept the wheels in motion, grandma who winked mischievously, who served us food and who took dad with her into the garden afterwards. It didn’t matter to me that dad had clearly split into two different personalities, one when he was drinking and one when he wasn’t, which was the one I was used to and knew, this was just how it was, it wasn’t something I gave much thought.

For the whole year, from when he moved out, through all the sentimental drunken blather, all the rows and reconciliations, through all the jealous spats and all the chaos he created, dad never tired of telling us about the day when his separation from mum would become a divorce and he would finally be free to do what he wanted. The moment it happened he would marry Unni. I have such a good relationship with Unni, he said, I’m so happy when I wake up with her beside me, I want to do this for the rest of my life, so we’re going to get married, Karl Ove, you may as well prepare yourself for that. Had it not been for the bloody law we would have done it a year ago. That’s how much it means to me.

That’s fine, I said in response, unless I was drunk myself and just smiled stupidly, perhaps even with tears in my eyes because that happened too, I was as sentimental as he was, and we sat there in our chairs, each with moist eyes.

When the day came he was true to his word. It was July. In the morning Yngve, Kristin and I caught the bus to dad’s flat, where they were walking around nervously, dad in a flamboyant white shirt, Unni in a white dress made from coarse material. They weren’t quite ready; Unni asked if we wanted something to drink while we were waiting. I glanced across at dad. He was standing with a beer in his hand. Help yourselves to anything in the fridge. I’ll get it, I said. I went into the kitchen and returned with three beers. Dad looked at me. Perhaps you might wait a bit with that, he said. It’s early yet and it’s going to be a long day. But you’ve got a bottle in your hand yourself! Unni said, and dad smiled, yes, well, I suppose there’s no harm in it.

Getting ready took longer than they had anticipated, I had time for two beers before we went to wait for the taxi to take us to the registry office. The sky was overcast and it was cold. I could feel the effect of the alcohol, it lay like a thin membrane over my thoughts, a canopy of mixed feelings. Yngve and Kristin had their arms around each other. I smiled at them, lit a cigarette and gazed down at the river, which also seemed heavy beneath the sombre sky, but the taxi arrived before I had even taken the first drag. We couldn’t all fit in, no one had considered that. Dad said he could walk, it was only round the corner. No, Unni said, not on your wedding day.

‘We can walk,’ Kristin said. ‘Can’t we, Yngve?’

‘Of course,’ he said.

And so it was decided. I went with Unni and dad to the registry office, where the witnesseses were waiting. I vaguely remembered them from the party at our house the summer before. A small bald man and a large buxom woman with a mass of hair. I shook hands, they smiled, we stood waiting in a room, dad looked at his watch impatiently, soon it would be their turn, but it would be quite a few minutes before Yngve and Kristin arrived.

They came rushing in through the hall, red-cheeked, ready for anything. Dad stared at them blankly, we went in, they stood in front of the official conducting the ceremony with a witness on either side, both said yes, passed each other the rings, after which dad was married again. They chose a name which was new to both of them, or rather two names, each of which was fine and elegant on its own, but in combination sounded ridiculously stilted and pretentious.

On our way to the Sjøhuset restaurant, where we were going to have lunch, dad said that one of the names, which was originally Scottish, had some connection with our family as actually in the distant past we had come from Scotland. Unni, for her part, said that the name existed in the ancestral past of her family. I could believe that, but what dad had said was just rubbish, that much I did know.

Yngve shared my opinion, for our eyes met when dad started talking.

We were shown to a table at the back of the maritime-themed restaurant and ordered shrimps and beer. Dad and Unni smiled and skål-ed, this was their day.

I had five beers there. Dad noticed, he told me to take it easy, not in a particularly unfriendly way, and I said I would, but I was in control. Yngve had flu, so he wasn’t going at it like me. Besides, Kristin was there, he kept turning to her, they sat there laughing and chatting about something or other.

I was alternately flying — that must have been because of the alcohol, at least I was able to take the initiative and talk to everyone with ease in that lofty manner that occasionally but not very often took hold of me — and alternately completely on the fringes, when everyone around the table, Yngve too, appeared alien to me, indeed not only that, but also totally irrelevant.

Kristin must have spotted this for she often broke out of her twosome with Yngve and said something to draw me into the conversation. She had done that ever since they got together, she had become a kind of elder sister to me, someone whom I could talk to about everything, someone who understood. Yet she wasn’t much older than me, so the elder-sister role could vanish without warning and we would face each other as equals in age, almost as peers.

Eventually we left Sjøhuset and went back to dad’s. The witnesses didn’t join us, they would be coming to the dinner in the evening, which had been booked at the Fregatten restaurant in Dronningens gate. I continued drinking at dad’s place and was starting to get quite drunk, it was a wonderful feeling and slightly odd as it was light outside and all the passers-by on the street were pursuing their everyday activities. I sat there, getting more and more pie-eyed, without anyone noticing, as far as I could judge, since the sole manifestation of my drunkenness was that my tongue was looser than usual. As always, alcohol gave me a strong sense of freedom and happiness, it lifted me onto a wave, inside it everything was good, and to prevent it from ever ending, my only real fear, I had to keep drinking more. When the time came dad ordered a taxi, and I staggered down the stairs to the car that would take us the five hundred metres to Fregatten, and this time there was no question of there not being enough space. Once there we were shown to our table, close to the window in the big room, which was otherwise completely empty. I had been drinking since ten o’clock, now it was six, and it was only by the grace of God that I didn’t fall through the window as I went to pull out my chair and sit down. I barely registered the presence of the others, no longer heard what they said, their faces were blurred, their voices a low rustle as though I was surrounded by faintly human-like trees and bushes in a forest somewhere, not in a restaurant in Kristiansand on my father’s wedding day.

The waiter came, the food had been pre-ordered, what he wanted to know now was what we were going to drink. Dad ordered two bottles of red wine, I lit a cigarette and gazed at him through listless eyes.

‘How’s it going, Karl Ove? Are you all right?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Congratulations, Dad. You’ve got a lovely wife, I have to say. I really like Unni.’

‘That’s good,’ he said.

Unni smiled at me.

‘But what should I call her?’ I said. ‘She’s a kind of stepmother, isn’t she?’

‘Call her Unni, of course,’ dad said.

‘What do you call Sissel?’ Unni asked me.

Dad looked at her.

‘Mum,’ I said.

‘Then you could call me mother, couldn’t you?’ Unni said.

‘I’ll do that,’ I said. ‘Mother.’

‘What nonsense!’ dad snapped.

‘Was the wine good, Mother?’ I said, staring at her.

‘Indeed it was,’ she said.

Dad fixed his eyes on me. ‘That’s enough of that now, Karl Ove,’ he said.

‘OK,’ I said.

‘Where are you going on your honeymoon then?’ Yngve said. ‘You haven’t told us.’

‘Well, there’ll be no honeymoon straight away,’ Unni said. ‘But we’ve got a room booked at this hotel tonight.’

The waiter came and held a bottle in front of dad.

Dad nodded, not interested.

The waiter poured a soupçon into his glass.

Dad tasted it, smacked his lips. ‘Exquisite,’ he said.

‘Excellent,’ the waiter said and filled all the glasses.

Oh, how welcome that warm dark taste was after all the sharp cold bitter beers!

I knocked it back in four long gulps. Yngve sat with his head supported on one hand staring out of the window. He must have had his other hand resting on Kristin’s thigh, judging by the crook of his arm. The two witnesses sat silent on either side of Unni and dad.

‘We’ve ordered the food for half past six,’ dad said. He looked at Unni. ‘Perhaps we should inspect the room in the meantime?’

Unni smiled and nodded.

‘We won’t be long,’ dad said, getting up. ‘You just relax and enjoy yourselves.’

They kissed and left the room hand in hand.

I looked at Yngve, he met my gaze, then turned away. Dad’s two colleagues were still silent. Usually I would have felt responsible for them and asked them some trivial question in the hope that it might interest them, if not me, but now I couldn’t care less. If they wanted to sit there ogling us, let them.

I filled my glass with red wine and drank half of it in one draught, and then I went for a piss. I found myself in a long corridor, which I followed to the end without seeing a toilet anywhere. I walked back and down some stairs. Now I found myself in a cellar of some kind, completely white with a dazzling light and some sacks piled against the wall. Back up I went. Was it here? Another corridor, carpeted this time. No. I came out by the reception desk. Toilet? I said. Beg your pardon? said the receptionist. Sorry, I said. But do you know where the toilet is? He pointed to a door on the other side of the room without looking at me. I lurched towards it, had to insert an extra step to stop myself falling, opened the door, leaned against the wall, here it was, thank God. I went into one of the cubicles and locked the door, changed my mind, unlocked it, the toilet was empty, wasn’t it? Yes, no one around. I hurried over to the washstand, unzipped, pulled out the todger and pissed in the sink. The yellow stream filled the whole basin for a brief instant before being sucked down the plughole. Once I had finished I went back into the cubicle, locked the door, sat down on the toilet seat, rested my head on my hands and closed my eyes. The next second I was gone.

At one point I seemed to hear someone calling my name, Karl Ove, Karl Ove, I heard, as though I was on some mountain plateau, I thought, and someone had been sent out in the mist to find me. Karl Ove, Karl Ove. Then I was gone again.

Next time I came round it was with a jolt. I hit my head against the cubicle wall. The toilet was completely silent.

What had happened? Where was I?

Oh no. This was the wedding day! Had I fallen asleep? Oh no, I had fallen asleep!

I hurried out, washed my face in cold water, walked past reception and into the dining room.

They were still there. They stared at me.

‘Where on earth have you been, Karl Ove?’ dad said.

‘I think I dozed off,’ I said, sitting down. ‘Have you eaten?’

‘Yes,’ Unni said. ‘We’ve just finished. Would you like to have something now? We’re waiting for dessert.’

‘Dessert’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m not that hungry.’

‘There’ll be coffee and brandy afterwards,’ dad said. ‘You’ll pick up then, you’ll see.’

I finished the wine in my glass and refilled it. My head ached a bit, not much, it was as if a door had been opened a fraction, out streamed the pain, and I knew the wine was doing me good, it seemed to be closing the door again.

When we left it was no later than half past nine. I was drunk, but not as drunk as when I arrived, the sleep had diminished the effect of the alcohol, which the wine and brandy had not managed to replenish. But dad’s drunkenness had escalated prodigiously, he was standing with his arms around Unni waiting for the taxi, the notion of walking five hundred metres had not occurred to him, and it was only with great difficulty that he managed to squeeze himself onto the black leather seat.

Dad fetched some beer from the fridge when we got home. Unni put out some peanuts in a bowl. Yngve had taken a turn for the worse, he had a temperature and was lying on the sofa. Kristin was sitting in the chair next to me.

Unni brought a blanket and spread it over Yngve. Dad stood some distance away watching.

‘Why are you wrapping the blanket round him?’ he said. ‘Isn’t he big enough to do it himself? You’ve never wrapped a blanket round me when I’ve been feeling a bit off colour.’

‘Oh yes, I have,’ Unni said.

‘Oh no, you haven’t!’ dad almost shouted.

‘Calm down now,’ Unni said.

‘That’s rich coming from you,’ dad said, and went into the kitchen, where he sat down in a chair with his back to us.

Unni chuckled. Then she went in to pacify him. I drank half of the beer in one go, belched up the froth and, realising that Kristin was there, swallowed a couple of times with my hand in front of my mouth.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

She laughed. ‘That’s definitely not the worst thing that has happened this evening!’ she said, so low that it could only be heard around the table, and then laughed in an equally muted tone.

Yngve smiled. I went to get another beer from the fridge. As I passed the newly-weds dad got up and went back into the living room.

‘I’m going to ring grandma,’ he said. ‘They didn’t even send me so much as one single flower!’

I opened the fridge door, took out a beer and then, suddenly, I was back in the living room reaching for the opener on the table.

Yngve and Kristin were staring awkwardly into the middle distance. Dad was speaking in a loud voice.

‘I got married today,’ he said. ‘Have you two realised? It’s a big day in my life!’

I threw the bottle top onto the table, took a swig and sat down.

‘You could at least have sent some flowers! You could at least have shown that you care about me!’

Silence.

‘Mother! Yes, but, Mother, please!’ he shouted.

I turned.

He was crying. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. When he spoke his face contorted into an enormous grimace.

‘I got married today! And you didn’t want to come! You didn’t even send any flowers! When it was your own son’s wedding!’

Then he slammed down the receiver and stared into space for a few moments. Tears continued to run down his cheeks.

In the end he got up and went into the kitchen.

I belched and looked at Unni. She got to her feet and ran after him. From the kitchen came the sound of sobbing and crying and loud voices.

‘What do you reckon?’ I said after a while, looking at Yngve. ‘Shall we go out on the town while we’re at it?’

He sat up.

‘I’m not well,’ he said. ‘Think I might have a high temperature. Best to go home. Shall we ring for a taxi?’

‘Without asking dad first?’ I said.

‘Without asking dad what?’ dad said from the doorway between the two rooms.

‘We were thinking of slowly making a move,’ Yngve said.

‘No, stay for a while,’ dad said. ‘It’s not every day your father gets married. Come on, there’s more beer. We can enjoy ourselves a bit longer.’

‘I’m not well, you know,’ Yngve said. ‘I think I’ll have to go.’

‘What about you then, Karl Ove?’ he said, gazing at me through his glazed, almost completely vacant eyes.

‘We’re sharing a taxi,’ I said. ‘If they go, I have to go.’

‘Fine,’ dad said. ‘I’ll go to bed then. Goodnight and thanks for coming today.’

Straight afterwards we heard his footsteps on the stairs. Unni came in to see us.

‘That’s how it is sometimes,’ she said. ‘Lots of emotions, you know. But you go. We’ll see you soon and thanks for coming!’

I got up. She gave me a hug, then she hugged Yngve and Kristin.

Outside I had to sit down on the kerb, I was much too tired to stand up for the minutes it would take the taxi to arrive.

When I woke up in bed the next day there was something surreal about all that had happened, I wasn’t certain of anything, other than that I had been more drunk than I had ever been before. And that dad had been drunk. I knew how drunkenness appeared in the eyes of the sober and was horrified, everyone had seen how drunk I had been at my father’s wedding. That he had also been drunk didn’t help because he hadn’t shown it until right at the end when we were alone in his flat and all his emotions were flowing freely.

I had brought shame on them.

That was what I had done.

What good was it that I only wanted the best?

I spent the last weeks of the summer in Arendal. Rune, the programme director at the radio station, ran a kind of agency, he sold cassettes to local petrol stations, and when one evening I complained that I didn’t have a summer job he suggested I sold his cassettes on the street. I bought them from him for a fixed sum, he wasn’t bothered about only making a small profit, and so I could sell them at whatever price I liked. The towns in Sørland were full of tourists in the summer, purse strings were loose, if you were selling music from the charts you were bound to be in with a chance.

‘Good idea,’ I said. ‘My brother’s living in Arendal this summer. Perhaps I can set up there?’

‘Perfect!’

And so one morning I loaded a bag of clothes, a camping chair, a camping table, a ghetto blaster and a box of cassettes into mum’s car, which Yngve had at his disposal all summer, sat in the passenger seat, put on my new Ray-Bans and leaned back as Yngve engaged first gear and set off down the hill.

The sun was shining, which it had done all July, there was very little traffic on this side of the river, I rolled down the window, stuck out my elbow and sang along with Bowie as we raced through the spruce forest, the gleaming river appearing and disappearing between the trees, occasionally alongside sandbanks where children were swimming and screaming and shouting.

We chatted about grandma and grandad, whom we had visited the previous day, about how time seemed to stand still there compared with the house in Søbørvåg, where in the last two years it seemed to have accelerated and caused everything to go into decline.

We drove through the tiny centre of Birkeland to Lillesand and from there onto the E18, the stretch I knew inside out after all the journeys back and forth in my childhood.

I put on a cassette by the Psychedelic Furs, their most commercial LP, which I loved.

‘Have I told you about the girl who came up to me in London?’ Yngve said.

‘No,’ I said.

‘“You’re the spitting image of the lead singer in Psychedelic Furs,” she said, and then she wanted someone to take a photo of us together.’

He looked at me and laughed.

‘I thought it was Audun Automat from Tramteatret you looked like?’ I said.

‘Yes, but that’s not quite as flattering,’ he said.

We drove past Knut Hamsun’s Nørholm property, I leaned forward to look past Yngve and into the grounds, I had been there once, on a class trip when I was in the ninth, we were shown round by Hamsun’s son and saw the cottage where he wrote and a few pieces of furniture he had made.

Now it was empty and looked overgrown.

‘Do you remember dad saying he had seen Hamsun on the bus to Grimstad once?’

‘No,’ Yngve said. ‘Did he say that?’

‘Yes, an old man with a stick and a white beard.’

Yngve shook his head. ‘Imagine all the lies he’s told us over the years. There must be loads we still believe without realising it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can’t say I’m sorry he’s moving.’

‘No,’ Yngve said. ‘Nor me.’

Dad and Unni had got jobs in Northern Norway, they were going to work at the same gymnas and during recent weeks had packed everything they owned and sent it north. They would be driving up in a couple of days’ time.

‘Has Kristin recovered from the wedding?’ I said. ‘I assume it must have been a bit of a shock?’

‘It was somewhat special, yes,’ he said.

We drove down to Grimstad, past the Oddensenter Mall, the old Hotel Norge, where Hamsun had done some of his writing, up the steep incline and onto the wide plain.

‘And what was that business with the hotel?’ I said. ‘They booked a room at the hotel where we ate, they even went up to see it. But did they sleep there?’

Yngve shrugged.

‘Perhaps they went back there after we left?’

‘Didn’t look like that.’

‘No, but there are a few things in their lives they don’t plan. Such as when they said, if you remember, they wouldn’t be having a honeymoon. But the day after they caught the boat to Denmark and stayed at a hotel in Skagen.’

‘That’s true,’ I said.

We drove past Kokkeplassen, mum’s old workplace, where I had been at a nursery for a year, and I craned my neck, there had been a cliff there, we had climbed up a tree over the cliff every day, I seemed to remember. But it wasn’t a cliff, it was just a little slope, I could see now. And the tree must have been chopped down. Then we motored down the hill with Arendal below us and beyond it the island of Tromøya, in all its nostalgic splendour, flooded with sunshine.

‘Well?’ Yngve said. ‘Are you going to find a pitch right now?’

‘May as well,’ I said.

Nothing had been arranged in advance; Rune thought all you had to do was ask in a shop whether they minded if you set up outside in the street and used their electricity, and then hope they didn’t charge you a commission. Offer them a couple of hundred if they dithered was his advice.

Yngve parked the car, we walked down the pedestrianised street, I popped into a randomly chosen boutique and asked whether it was all right if I sold cassettes in the street outside and if they had a socket I could use. Might attract customers for them too.

No problem.

Once that was arranged we drove up to his bedsit. He had taken his prelims that spring, after finishing the foundation year in comparative politics before Christmas, and now he was working at the Central Hotel in town to earn some money for a trip to China he and Kristin were planning later in the autumn.

The bedsit he rented was by Langsæ, outside Arendal, and I would be staying for three weeks, sleeping on a lilo on the floor.

We hadn’t spent so much time together since we were little.

The next day he drove me to the town centre with all my paraphernalia. It was fantastic standing there in the quiet morning streets, with the sea so blue and heavy and still before us, erecting the old yellow 1970s camping table, arranging the cassettes on it — Genesis, Falco, Eurythmics, Madonna and anything else that sold well in those months — pulling the cable from the shop, plugging in the cassette recorder, sitting down on the chair, putting on my shades and pressing play.

The King of Arendal, that was me.

Beside my table was an ice cream stand, and soon after I arrived a girl started work there. She swept the street in front, carried in a few boxes, came out with a rag in her hand and wiped the outside of the window, went back in and stayed there.

She looked great. Reddish hair, freckles, big curves. When I saw her next, half an hour later, she was wearing a white apron.

Terrific!

But she didn’t look in my direction, not once.

That could be arranged.

Gradually people began to trickle by, they walked up and down the small pedestrian street, passed my table several times, I kept a careful eye on them and was quick to recognise faces and bodies. Some of them stopped and examined my selection of cassettes, and if they pointed to one, I jumped up, took an unopened one from the box beside the table, pocketed the money they passed me, thanked them, registered a cross on a sheet of paper I kept handy and sat down.

What a job!

At eleven sales began to take off with a vengeance. Through to one I sold loads of cassettes, then business flagged until I shut up shop at a few minutes to four, when Yngve came to collect me.

At his place I counted out the money due to Rune and put it in a plastic bag. The rest I spent when we went out in the evening. I bought bottles of white wine in ice buckets, danced, chatted to whoever came over to Yngve’s table. White wine, that was the discovery of the summer for me, it slid down like water, and the buzz it produced made me feel light and happy.

The next day the girl in the ice cream stand smiled at me when she arrived. A little smile, it was true, but unmistakable.

I knocked on her window at eleven and asked if I could have a glass of water.

She handed me one.

‘We’re neighbours,’ I said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Sigrid,’ she said.

Her accent was curious. The ‘r’ was hard. She also pronounced the ‘d’.

‘Where are you from?’

‘Iceland,’ she said with a beam.

That was as far as we got, she didn’t come over to exchange a word or two, a little smile and a nod sufficed: the day had begun.

A couple of evenings later she was suddenly standing in front of me at the disco. I was so drunk that everything except her face was blurred. When I woke up in her bed the next morning I couldn’t remember how I had got there, was mystified as to how I had managed it, everything was black apart from a couple of scenes from her bedsit: she is lying on the bed wearing only panties and I’m on top of her, we’re snogging, I kiss her magnificent breasts, I put my hand between her legs, no, she says, absolutely no way, and I get up and take off my underpants and stand in front of her in all my glory, which can’t have impressed her as much as I must have imagined it would because she laughed at me and said no again.

I held my head in shame. I had of course registered long ago that she wasn’t there, but I hadn’t considered where she was until the next second, when I sat up and said hello into the empty room.

No answer. Was she in the toilet perhaps?

I stood up.

Oh no, I was still naked.

On the table in the middle of the room there was a note.

Hi, King of Arendal!

I’ve gone to sell some ice creams.

See you again, maybe.

S.

(Put the door on the latch when you leave)

Why on earth had she underlined maybe?

I got dressed, stuffed the note in my back pocket, put the door on the latch as she had requested and went down the narrow, gloomy and musty-smelling staircase. I hadn’t the slightest idea where I was. For all I knew, I could have been kilometres out of town.

The sunlight hit me in the eyes as I emerged.

A street, a house on the other side.

Where was the town?

I followed the street down, rounded a corner and suddenly saw where I was. Somewhere up by Skytebanen!

I strolled down to the centre, gave the ice cream stand a wide berth and sat down in Pollen with a Coke and a bag of rolls. The mere smell of seawater put me in a good mood.

After watching the boats entering and leaving the harbour, the gulls circling and the cars heading along Langbrygga on the other side, all beneath a deep-blue motionless sky, I went to see Yngve at the hotel. He was dealing with some guests, I sat down on the sofa and observed him, his patient smile and polite nod, speaking in English, dressed in his not quite immaculate hotel uniform.

When they had gone he came over to me.

‘Where did you get to then?’

‘I went back to the ice cream girl’s place,’ I said and could hear what a wonderful sentence that was to say.

‘How was it? Are you two together now?’

‘Don’t think so. She wasn’t there when I woke up. But she left me a note on which she had underlined the word maybe. See you again, maybe. What do you think that means?’

He shrugged, suddenly uninterested.

‘Kristin will be at my place tonight, by the way.’

‘Where shall I sleep then?’

‘In the bathroom.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yes. It’s no problem, is it?’

‘No, of course not. I was thinking of you two.’

‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. I’ve warned her. Anyway, I stayed at her place last night.’

It was fine too, though it felt a little strange lying on the mattress in the bathroom listening to Yngve and Kristin giggling and laughing and chatting in subdued voices in the bed.

As I walked down the pedestrian street next morning I was excited. I had got up extra early to be there before her, I thought that would give me an edge. She arrived, smiled her little smile and went into her stand. I stayed where I was, sold loads of cassettes and when I finally did go over to her it was to ask for a glass of water.

I was given one.

‘Thanks for the other night,’ I said.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘I was thinking of going out tonight. Would you like to come?’

She shook her head.

‘Tomorrow night then?’

She shook her head again. ‘You’re not my type,’ she said with a smile. ‘We could meet though.’

‘When?’

She shrugged and smiled again.

I went back to my table and the days passed. She attended to her business in her stand, I attended to mine, once in a while our glances met and we smiled.

That was all.

I bought a felt pen and some cardboard from a bookshop and hung a sign on the tree beside the table. ORGINAL CASSETTES, I wrote, then the price and the names of some Top Twenty artists. It wasn’t long before a man in his mid-forties stopped and said it was ‘original’, not ‘orginal’. I was good at writing, my spelling was perfect, so I said no, you’re wrong, that’s how it’s spelt. There’s not another ‘i’ in ‘orginal’. I stuck to my guns, he stuck to his and in the end he walked away shaking his head.

The money was rolling in. People were crazy about my cassettes, buying four or five at a time, so when evening came and I went out with Yngve I didn’t stint myself. I drank as I had never drunk before. If I ran out of cash all I had to do was sell some more cassettes the next day. Once a week Rune dropped by in his red car with fresh stock. And now and then someone I knew from the old days happened by. Dag Lothar, for example, who had a summer job in a bank and was the same as always. Geir Prestbakmo, who was at vocational college and rode around on a brand new moped, he was his old self as well. And then John, the class tough guy, who just loafed around, as he put it.

Yngve and I went to the other side of Tromøya one day, to the place where dad had always taken us swimming. Yngve parked the car by the rifle range, we walked down through a dense prickly thicket, I relished the incomparable smell of heather, pine needles and saltwater, the massive grey ridge that had been there for so many million years, and then the sight of the sea below. The air was thick with insects. I stamped my foot down hard at every step, the area was full of adders, at least it had been when I was growing up.

Once dad and I had encountered one only a few hundred metres from where I was walking now, it was spring, the snake had been stretched out on a stone slab in the sun. I must have been about ten. Dad went mad, started throwing stones at it, I watched as they seemed to sink into the snake’s body as they struck, the adder tried to get away, it was hit time and time again until it lay still beneath a pile of stones. But as we were about to walk on, out it wriggled again. Dad went closer, continuing to throw stones at it, he wanted me to do the same, I was on the point of throwing up, the snake was still now, dad ventured closer and crushed its head with the big rock he was holding in his hand.

I turned. Yngve was behind me. We walked along the spine of sea-smoothed rocks and found a warm spot by the water’s edge. I went down to examine the great sinkhole in the rock, which wasn’t so big any more, dived into the foaming water, swam out to the long island maybe a hundred metres away and then back again. Lay down to dry in the sun, ate biscuits and oranges, smoked and drank coffee. Yngve suggested going with him to Kristin’s place afterwards, so that would save him having to take me to the town centre. Is that all right? I said, of course, he said, they’re incredibly open and kind. Anyway, the rest of the family’s on holiday, so she’s the only one there.

A few hours later he pulled up outside their house. We watched a video and ate pizza. Yngve had been there a lot over the last six months, he liked her parents, her brother and sister, and they liked him. He was like a son in the house, I could see.

Her sister’s name was Cecilie and she was one year younger than me, I saw some photos of her and was impressed. Her brother was much younger than them, he was still at primary school.

I stayed the night and slept in Cecilie’s bed. We decided to go out together the following night, Kristin would bring along some girlfriends, but first we would eat in a restaurant, just us three.

I drank two bottles of white wine with the food, and when we went to the discotheque I had three more.

And who should I meet there but the girl from the ice cream stand!

The four of us took a taxi to Tromøya. I sat in the front seat. We had stood wrapped around each other snogging while we waited for it to come, and, still dazed by that, I stretched my arms back towards her. She took my hands and caressed them. Her hands were very rough, I noticed.

‘Oh, Karl Ove,’ Yngve said from behind me.

They laughed.

Furious, I retracted my arms.

‘How much have you had to drink, actually?’ Yngve said.

‘Five,’ I said.

‘Five bottles of wine?’ Yngve said. ‘Are you kidding?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘No wonder you’re behaving so weirdly. If it had been me I would have been lying in the street snoring.’

‘True,’ I said.

The taxi stopped, I paid, we went into the house.

The same thing happened there, with the sole exception that this time she was absolutely naked. But no, she didn’t want to. Alabaster skin, full-bosomed and beautiful, she lay there saying no, no, no.

When I awoke next morning she was gone.

Still drunk, I went upstairs and into the kitchen, where Yngve and Kristin were having breakfast.

‘She caught the bus a while ago,’ Kristin said. ‘She said to say hello and thank you for yesterday.’

For a change, the sky was overcast. I decided to give this day a miss, lie on the sofa and read until Yngve went in to do his evening shift. The next day she wasn’t there. There was a girl in her twenties at the hatch. I asked her where Sigrid was, she said she had finished, yesterday had been her last day. Did she have any idea where she was? No, she didn’t.

I went to Kristin’s a couple more times, and on the last evening the family had returned from their holiday. I said hello, they were as nice as Yngve had said they were, we rented a video of Apocalypse Now, Kristin sat leaning against Yngve while I sat beside Cecilie, we exchanged occasional glances and smiled, we were so clearly the little brother and sister on the floor below our two siblings, who, if they had decided to get married, would not have surprised anyone.

There are was a tension in the air, I felt it all evening, but what kind of tension was it?

We were a bit shy with each other, was that what it was?

I saw how Cecilie sometimes tried to wrest the initiative, as though wanting to make it clear that she was not only on an equal footing with her sister but also very distinct from her.

I liked to see that. Her will, how that led the way and she followed.

She did ballet, and she was good, Kristin had said; after leaving school she was going to take the ballet school entrance exams.

The way she threw herself onto the sofa. The way her face could suddenly become quite open and artless when she smiled.

But this was no good. There was no point even thinking about it.

Yet I did.

There was only a week left of the summer job and I joined Yngve whenever he drove to Kristin’s, I enjoyed being in her home too, there was such a nice atmosphere, they were good people and it was reflected everywhere in the house.

I saw how Yngve was treated and how happy he was. I thought to myself, come on now, don’t be an idiot, just let him have it all.

But I also thought about Cecilie, because when she was in the room I could feel her presence with the whole of my body.

And I knew it was the same for her too.

First of all her parents left and went to bed. Then Yngve and Kristin left and went to bed.

We sat alone in the big living room, on opposite sides of the table. We made conversation, for we couldn’t talk about or show anything of what we felt, or rather of what I felt and of what I imagined she also felt.

‘I was there when they got together,’ I said. ‘At Vindilhytta. You should have seen it. It was really sweet.’

‘Yes, they are sweet,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

What kind of situation was this I suddenly found myself in? In a house on Tromøya alone with the sister of Yngve’s girlfriend?

Nothing wrong with the situation. Only with my feelings.

‘Well,’ she said with a yawn. ‘Time to go to bed.’

‘I’m going to stay up for a bit,’ I said.

‘See you at breakfast then.’

‘Yes, goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

She disappeared down the stairs, moving in that self-assured elegant way she had. Thank God I was going home soon and could put all this behind me.

The following evening, which was the last, I went to see Yngve, he was on the evening shift and served me an enormous pizza, which I ate at the table in the lobby while he worked and came over for a chat whenever he could. He said Cecilie and Kristin were in town. Kristin was coming here soon. He didn’t know what Cecilie was doing. But she came as well, I joined them, it was the last night, in very few hours I would be home again. Nevertheless, even though I knew it was stupid, I strung along with Cecilie, we walked side by side, we had nothing to say to each other, we just walked and listened to each other’s breathing, which was deep and tremulous, and then we hugged and kissed, again and again.

‘What are we doing?’ I said. ‘Can we do this?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that ever since I first saw you,’ she said, holding my face between her hands.

‘Me too,’ I said.

We stood wrapped in each other’s arms for a long time.

‘At the last moment,’ Cecilie said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Now you mustn’t have any regrets,’ she said. ‘Or rather, of course you can. But tell me if you do. Do you promise?’

‘I won’t have any regrets,’ I said. ‘I promise. Are you at home next weekend?’

She nodded.

‘Can I come and see you?’

She nodded again, we kissed for a last time and then I went, turned, she waved, I waved.