Dancing in the Dark

~ ~ ~

Yngve was standing behind the counter studying a sheet of paper when I went into the hotel to get the keys. I said nothing about what had happened. Were we going out together now? I wondered as I walked up Arendal’s steep hills in the hazy darkness of the late summer night. In which case how strange it would be for Yngve and me to be going out with two sisters! Wasn’t there something a bit circus-like about this? Roll up, roll up, come and see the two brothers who go out with two sisters! But why should I care? He lived in Bergen while I lived in Kristiansand, and soon he and Kristin would be in China.

This had completely bowled me over.

She was walking home now too, likewise bowled over.

Yngve drove me to the bus the following morning. I didn’t say anything then either. When I sat down in a window seat and looked for him, he was already on his way up the street.

I closed my eyes and could feel how thoroughly exhausted I was. As the bus turned into Grimstad town centre I was asleep and didn’t wake until it passed Kristiansand Zoo. I jumped off at the Timenes intersection and caught a different bus for the last part up to Boen. Out of habit I looked for a glimpse of Jan Vidar in his window as the bus crossed Solsletta, but he wasn’t there and his car wasn’t in the drive either.

I took out a cigarette and looked down at the waterfall, the last kilometre home was a drag, but I did finally manage to motivate myself and set off with my bag on my back.

As I came up the last hill I saw mum by the barrel we used to burn paper in. A thin, almost transparent flame flickered to and fro over the edge. She caught sight of me and walked down.

‘Hi,’ she said with a smile. ‘How was it?’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Everything all right here?’

She nodded.

‘I’ve been fine,’ she said.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Think I’ll have a shower and change.’

‘You do that,’ she said. ‘I’ve made dinner. Just have to heat it. Are you hungry?’

‘Yes, starving.’

In the evening I sat at my desk reading, but I couldn’t settle, my thoughts ran hither and thither, and everywhere they went they confused me, none of them were as they had been. Now and then I looked out of the window, saw the garden merge imperceptibly into the dense forest behind the little potato patch, felt the trees close to us waiting or listening, darkness always gave me this sense, and as the gentle gusts of wind grew stronger the leaves trembled and the branches swayed. A week ago I had never seen her, hardly knew who she was. Now we were going out.

What about Hanne?

And the girl in the ice cream stand, what had that been?

It was as though I was faced with a jigsaw puzzle made of pieces from several sets. Nothing fitted, nothing made any sense.

I went downstairs to mum in the living room.

‘Are you sure you’ve been fine while I’ve been away?’ I said.

She put down the book she was reading on the table.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I really have been.’

‘You weren’t lonely?’

She smiled. ‘Not at all. I was at work. There was a lot to do. And then it was wonderful to come up here afterwards.’

Presumably roused by our voices, the cat padded across the floor with a sleepy face. He jumped straight into my lap and rested his heavy head on my thigh.

‘How about you?’ she asked.

I shrugged.

‘It was fine,’ I said. ‘I liked selling the cassettes on the street. In a way I lived from hand to mouth. Earned money during the day and spent it at night.’

‘Oh?’ mum said. ‘What did you spend it on?’

‘Well, various things,’ I said. ‘I went out for meals quite often, for example. That costs money. And then I had the odd beer with Yngve. But I’ve saved a bit too. I’ve brought a bag of money back with me. Nearly three thousand kroner.’

I hadn’t counted the money, in fact I had forgotten all about it, so now I got up and went into the hall to check and keep it in something more suitable than a plastic bag.

But the bag wasn’t there.

I had dropped it on the floor just inside the door, hadn’t I?

Yes. On top of the shoes. A white Beisland bag it had been. Full of creased notes.

Had mum put it away?

I went back into the living room.

‘The bag that was in the hall,’ I said. ‘Have you moved it?’

She looked up at me, her index finger keeping her place on the page.

‘A plastic bag in the hall?’ she said. ‘I chucked it away.’

‘Chucked it away? Are you crazy? There was three thousand kroner in it!’

And it wasn’t even mine, it was Rune’s. In fact, he should have had more than that because I had spent quite a chunk of his money during the last few days there.

‘You had money in it?’ mum said. ‘And you left it on the floor? How was I supposed to know?’

‘Where did you throw it?’

‘In the barrel. Where we burn paper.’

‘Have you burned it? How could you? Have you burned the money?’

I shook my hands in the air. Then I dashed into the hall, slipped on a pair of shoes and ran up the slope.

There was the bag.

But was the money in it?

I snatched at it and peered inside.

Oh, thank God. There it was.

I took the bag, emptied the money onto the floor of my room, counted it, there was a bit more than three thousand two hundred kroner, put it in a drawer and went down to the living room.

‘Find it, did you?’ mum said.

I nodded. Put on a record, ran my eye along a bookshelf, eventually picked out Hamsun’s Pan, sat down on the sofa and began to read.

There was a week left before school began and I decided to spend it writing some reviews, went down to town, dropped in on Steinar Vindsland, it was good I came, he said, he had been trying to get hold of me, had rung a couple of times without any luck.

‘Thing is I’m finishing here. I’ve got a new job on Fædrelandsvennen. You can probably carry on here, but I can’t guarantee it, after all it was me who hired you.’

‘That’s a shame,’ I said.

‘Yeah, well,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I have an offer for you. I’ll be responsible for the young adults and music sections. Would you fancy writing for Fevennen? It won’t be record reviews, Sigbjørn Nedland does that, as I’m sure you know. But material for young adults, and then perhaps reviews of gigs and interviews with bands.’

‘Yes, I would,’ I said.

‘Great,’ he said. ‘See you!’

Nye Sørlandet was a sinking ship, that was common knowledge, so this was good news. Fædrelandsvennen was a paper everybody read. If I wrote something there everyone would see it.

I went to Platebørsen and bought five LPs to celebrate my promotion, which was how I considered it. I had taken the money from the plastic bag, the odd couple of hundred kroner wouldn’t make any difference anyway, somehow I would have to find the money to pay Rune.

When I returned home Yngve rang, eager to know what had happened on the last evening. Cecilie had been so strange and secretive and was writing a letter to me.

I told him.

‘So you’re going out with Cecilie?’

‘Yes, that’s about the size of it.’

‘Isn’t that a bit weird?’

‘Yes. Does it matter?’

‘No. . I don’t suppose it does.’

‘Good!’

But it made no sense to me. Two days later the letter arrived. She was confused, it had been like a dream, she wrote, and she ought not to tell me, but when she had left me that evening tears had been streaming down her cheeks. On the Friday I went to see her, we were alone, we had to edge our way forward. We talked about what had actually taken place. She said she had been so intrigued by me after all the things that Kristin had told her and the photos she had seen. She had wondered whether perhaps something might happen, and after she had seen me she wanted something to happen, but it couldn’t, after all we were just the younger siblings. I said I had felt the same. She said Yngve had looked at us one evening, first of all at her, then at me, then at her again. It had been in the air. Yes, I said, and I ached. We didn’t know each other, didn’t know what it was, but then it happened again, suddenly we were embracing, kissing each other and then we went to bed. .

But we didn’t make love. I thought she was so young, we didn’t know each other and I ought to tread carefully. .

No, that was not the real reason.

The real reason was that I came before anything had happened.

I was so ashamed that I lay totally still so as not give myself away.

And not only then, it happened every time we lay together in the ensuing weeks.

At the first editorial meeting I attended at Fædrelandsvennen I suggested writing an article about the Sissel Kyrkjebø phenomenon. She was eulogised by all the newspapers, had sold an unimaginable number of records, but why actually? I asked.

‘Good idea. Go for it,’ Steinar said.

‘Why does Sissel sell?’ I called the article. ‘Savour the name,’ I wrote. ‘Sissel Kyrkjebø. .’ And then I made fun of all the associations you could make, with Christianity, the farming community and nationalism, she was even wearing national costume on the LP cover, wasn’t she? She stood for everything I disliked, it was false, manipulative, clichéd, a dreadful picture postcard of the world, who could bear the beauty of it, and on top of everything in such an undemanding form?

There were lots of letters to the editor over the following days. One opened with the words ‘Karl Ove Knausgaard. Savour the name,’ then feasted on its associations with the sterility of rocks (knaus) and the scant yield of a farm (gård). Fædrelandsvennen was a popular newspaper, it was loyal to its readers, the qualities that I preferred — innovation, the avant-garde, provocation — were not for the likes of them, and in the months that followed there was a conspicuously large number of glowing articles about Sissel Kyrkjebø.

I loved it, finally my name had been raised above the anonymous ranks of the crowd, not much, though not so little either.

The weekend after the article appeared Yngve came to visit, and as usual we dropped in on grandma and grandad. On this occasion Gunnar was there. He rose to his feet and stared straight at me as we entered the kitchen.

‘Well, here he is, the world champion,’ he said.

I smiled at him inanely.

‘Who do you think you are?’ he said. ‘Do you realise what an idiot you’ve made of yourself? No, you don’t, do you. You think you’re something special.’

‘What do you mean?’ I mumbled, even though I knew all too well what he was talking about.

‘What makes you think that you of all people are right and everybody else is wrong? You, a seventeen-year-old schoolboy! You don’t know anything. Yet you assume the lofty position of an arbiter of taste. Oh, it’s so pathetic!’

I said nothing, studied the floor. Yngve did the same.

‘Sissel Kyrkjebø is a popular artist loved by everyone. And she gets good reviews. Then you come along and say everyone’s wrong! You! No!’ he said, and shook his head. ‘No, no, no!’

I had never seen him so angry or het up before, and I was shaken.

‘Well, I was actually on my way,’ he said. ‘Nice to see you, Yngve. You’re still in Bergen, are you?’

‘Yes, for the time being,’ he said. ‘But I’m going to China in the autumn.’

‘There you go,’ Gunnar said. ‘Off to see the world!’

Then he left, and we turned to grandma and grandad, who had been sitting at the kitchen table minding their own business during this little interlude.

‘I agree with you anyway,’ Yngve said as we got into the car to go home. ‘I think what you wrote was perfectly reasonable.’

‘Yes, of course it is,’ I said, laughing, there was something exhilarating about all this.

Cecilie and I talked for hours on the telephone. She trained hard, was enormously disciplined and determined, things came to her easily and she was open to life. But there was also something closed inside her, or silent, I didn’t know quite what, but I noticed it. At the weekend I hitch-hiked to hers, unless she came to mine. I preferred to be there because I too was treated like a son of the house, though not with the same acceptance as Yngve, I sensed, we were younger and siblings of the other two, something to do with that meant we weren’t taken as seriously, I felt, as though we were imitations, as though we weren’t ourselves or people in our own right.

When we were alone, we were, of course. Autumn descended upon us, we walked into the deepening gloom, hand in hand or entwined, Cecilie both delicate yet strong-willed, open yet closed, full of platitudes yet passionately herself.

One evening we went to the primary school I had once attended, not so far from their house. I had been twelve when I left, now I was seventeen. The five years felt like an eternity, there was almost nothing that connected me with the person I had been, and I remembered next to nothing of what I had done then.

But when I saw the school before us, hovering in the mist and darkness, my memories exploded inside me. I let go of Cecilie’s hand, approached the building and pressed my hand against the black timbers. The school really existed, it wasn’t merely a place in my imagination. My eyes were moist with emotion, it was as though the whole bounteous world that had been my childhood had returned for an instant.

And then there was the mist. I loved mist and what it did to the world around us.

I remembered Geir and me running around with Anne Lisbet and Solveig in the mist, and the memory had such power that the thought was painful. It tore me to pieces. The soft gravel, the trees glinting with humidity, the lights shimmering, shimmering.

‘Strange to think that you actually went to this school,’ Cecilie said. ‘I don’t connect you with Sandnes at all.’

‘Neither do I,’ I said, gripping her hand again. We walked alongside the building, towards the annexe, which in my imagination was brand new. I craned my neck the whole way, running my gaze over everything I could, absorbing it all.

‘We must have been here at the same time, mustn’t we?’ I said as we clambered down the ‘steep’ slope to the football pitch.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘When you were in the sixth class, I was in the fifth.’

‘And Kristin was in the eighth and Yngve the first at gymnas,’ I said.

‘And now I’m in the second at gymnas,’ she said.

‘Yep, it’s a small world,’ I said.

We laughed, walked across the empty field and followed the gravel path through the forest to Kongshavn. Only a few hundred metres further on, the sensation of coming home, of recognising, was gone, we were stepping into the outer zone of childhood, where I had been only a few times and where the scenery assumed a dreamlike quality which I both recognised and discovered anew.

Everything was so odd. It was so odd to be here, and it was odd to be with Cecilie, the sister of Yngve’s girlfriend. It was also odd to go home to mum and our life there, which differed so starkly from the life I lived away from home.

I had started at another local radio station, it was bigger, all the equipment was new, the rooms were fantastic, they had asked if I wanted to work for them and I did. I still played football, I still wrote for the newspaper, and I went out more and more often. When I wasn’t with Hilde, Eirik and Lars, I drank with Espen and his friends, or with colleagues from the radio station, unless I was hanging out with Jan Vidar. It was hard to take Cecilie into this world. She was something different for me. When I sat in Kjelleren drinking she was infinitely distant; when I was sitting next to her she was infinitely near.

One problem was her devotion to me, it placed me in a superior position, which I didn’t want. Yet I was inferior to her, indeed as low as anyone can be, that was where I was for the weeks that became months because what I was slowly realising, the terrible truth that my relationship with her had revealed, was that I couldn’t make love to anyone. I couldn’t do it. A naked breast or a hurried caress across the inside of a thigh was enough, I came long before anything had begun.

Every time!

So there I lay, beside her, this girl who was such a delight, and I was pressing my groin against the mattress in an attempt to hide my humiliating secret.

She was young, and for a long time I hoped she wouldn’t realise, she probably did though, but I doubted she could imagine it was a permanent condition.

One evening she mentioned that her mother had asked whether she had considered going to the doctor for the contraceptive pill.

She said this with a smile, but there was expectation in her voice, and I, trying to repress it, or deceiving myself into believing this really wasn’t happening, began to look for a way out. Not that I didn’t want it, I did too of course, no, there were other problems, greater ones, for example, that we lived in separate towns and that I couldn’t spend all my weekends with her. Those were my thoughts, at the same time I thought about her devotion, it was immense, she would do anything for me, I knew that, not least through her letters, which were permeated with longing even though they were written barely hours after we had last seen each other.

No, I had to get out of this relationship.

She came over one Saturday morning at the beginning of December, intending to stay until the following day, when her parents would come to pick her up, they wanted to meet mum, after all she was the future mother-in-law of both of their girls. It was a kind of endorsement of our relationship, and perhaps I didn’t want this. We went for a walk, the countryside was frozen, the grass in the meadow below the house glittered with rime in the light from the street lamps, afterwards we had dinner with mum, and then we caught the bus down to the Hotel Caledonien, Cecilie was wearing a red dress, we danced to Chris de Burgh, ‘Lady in Red’, and I thought, no, I can’t finish this, I don’t want to finish it.

We caught the night bus home, walked hand in hand over the last part, it was cold, she snuggled up to me. We entered the house, took off our coats and I thought: I’m going to do it now. We went upstairs, Cecilie first, she opened the door to my room.

‘What are you doing?’ I said.

She turned and gaped at me in surprise.

‘Going to bed?’ she said.

‘You’re sleeping in there,’ I said, pointing to Yngve’s room, which was adjacent to mine.

‘Why?’ she said, looking at me with big eyes.

‘It’s over,’ I said. ‘I’m finishing with you. I’m sorry, but this is no good.’

‘What did you say?’

‘It’s over,’ I said. ‘You have to sleep in there.’

She did as I said, her every movement leaden. I undressed and went to bed. She was crying, I could hear her clearly, the wall was thin. I put my fingers in my ears and went to sleep.

The next day was torture.

Cecilie cried, mum was wondering what was wrong, I could see, but she didn’t ask, and neither of us wanted to say anything. After a while her parents drove up. Mum had laid on a big brunch, now we had to sit there and have a nice time, both families. But Cecilie was silent, her eyes were red. Our parents made conversation, I chimed in with the odd comment. Of course they knew something was wrong, but not what, and probably thought we’d had an argument.

But we had never argued. We had laughed, played, chatted, kissed, gone on walks together, drunk wine together and lain naked in bed together.

She didn’t cry while they were there, she sat quietly and ate very slowly, her movements constrained, and I could sense her parents were very concerned, it was as though they were embracing her with their presence and their actions.

Then at last they left.

Thank God they were going to Arendal. It was far away, and the bridge Yngve represented between the two families was even further away.

Some time between Christmas and New Year Dad phoned. He was drunk, I could hear that from the slur. He didn’t quite have full control of his voice, there was an added timbre, although the tone didn’t sound any more resonant or complex as a result.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Happy Christmas. Are you still in the Canaries?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’re here for a few more days. It’s wonderful to get away from the darkness, you know.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘We’re going to have a baby,’ dad said. ‘Unni’s pregnant.’

‘Is she?’ I said. ‘When is it due?’

‘Straight after the summer.’

‘That’s good news,’ I said.

‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘Now you’ll have another brother or a sister.’

‘That’ll be strange,’ I said.

‘I don’t think it’ll be strange,’ he said.

‘Not in that sense,’ I said. ‘Just that there’ll be such a large difference in age between us. And we won’t be living together.’

‘No, you won’t. But you’ll be siblings anyway. That’s as close as you can get.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

In the kitchen mum was setting the table. The coffee machine was chugging away with small puffs of steam rising from it. I quickly rubbed my arm several times.

‘Is it nice where you are?’ I said. ‘Can you swim there?’

‘Oh yes, you bet you can,’ he said. ‘We lie by the pool all day. It’s wonderful to get away from the darkness in Norway, we think.’

There was a silence.

‘Is your mother there?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Would you like a word with her?’

‘No, what would I have to talk about with her?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘Don’t ask such stupid questions then.’

‘Right.’

‘Did you go to Sørbøvåg at Christmas?’

‘Yes, we’ve just got back. Half an hour ago in fact.’

‘They’re still alive?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘And grandma was ill?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know that’s a hereditary illness she’s got, don’t you? Parkinson’s.’

‘Is it?’ I said.

‘Yes, so you’re vulnerable. You could get it. And then you’ll know where it came from.’

‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,’ I said. ‘Dad, food’s ready here. Have to go. Say hello to Unni and congratulations!’

‘Give me a call some time, Karl Ove, when we’re back. You hardly ever ring.’

‘Will do. Bye.’

‘Bye.’

I put the phone down and went into the kitchen. The cat had settled on the chair under the table, I could see his bushy tail hanging over the edge. Mum opened the oven door and put some frozen rolls on the shelf.

‘There wasn’t a lot of food in the house,’ she said. ‘But I found some rolls in the freezer. How many do you want?’

I shrugged.

‘Four maybe.’

She added one more and closed the door.

‘Who was it on the phone?’

‘Dad.’

I pulled out the chair beside the cat and sat down.

‘He’s in the Canaries, isn’t he?’ mum said, crossing the floor to the fridge.

‘Yup,’ I said.

She took out one white and one brown cheese, fetched a chopping board from the worktop, put it on the table and placed the cheeses on it.

‘What did he have to say? Were they having a good time?’

‘He didn’t say much. Just wanted to chat. He was a bit drunk, I think.’

She put the slicer on top of the white cheese. Removed the jug from the coffee machine, filled the cup on the other side of the table.

‘Do you want some?’ she said.

‘Yes, please,’ I said, passing over my cup. ‘But he said one thing that was a bit strange. He said Parkinson’s was hereditary. And that I was in the danger zone.’

‘Did he say that?’ mum said, meeting my eyes.

‘Yes, that’s precisely what he said.’

I cut the rind off the white cheese, moved it to the edge of the plate, changed my mind and threw the rind in the bin under the worktop.

‘Not much is known about that,’ mum said.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘You don’t think I’m bothered by it, do you?’

She sat down. I opened the fridge, took the juice from the door and looked at the date: 31 December. Shook it. There was a drop left.

‘Did he really say that?’ mum said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But don’t give it another thought. He was a bit drunk, as I said.’

‘Have I ever told you about the first time he met grandma and grandad?’ she said.

I shook my head. Opened a cupboard and took out a glass.

‘They made a deep impression on him, both of them. But especially grandma. He said she was like nobility.’

‘Nobility?’ I said, sitting down and pouring the juice into my glass.

‘Yes. He saw something special in her. Dignity, he said. You know, it was tough, very different to what he was used to. We weren’t poor in any real sense, we always had food and clothes, but things were tight, they were. At least, compared with his childhood home. I don’t know what he’d been expecting. But he was surprised. Perhaps also because they dealt with him in a way he was unused to. They took him seriously. They took everyone seriously. Perhaps it was as simple as that.’

‘How old was he then?’

She smiled.

‘We were nineteen, both of us.’

‘Do you want some juice by the way?’ I said. ‘There’s a drop left.’

‘No, you take it,’ she said.

I emptied the carton and threw it into the sink. A perfect aim. The sudden noise made the cat stir.

‘He talked about her eyes,’ mum said. ‘I can remember that. He said they were piercing yet gentle at the same time.’

‘That’s true,’ I said.

‘Yes, he’s always been good at observing others, your father has,’ she said.

‘You wouldn’t believe it now, the way he behaves,’ I said, taking a sip of the juice.

The acid taste made me grimace.

‘That’s partly why I’m telling you,’ she said. ‘So you can appreciate that he’s more than what he’s showing at the moment.’

‘I realised that,’ I said.

Some steam escaped from the gap at the top of the oven door and from the outlet at the back of the stove. How long had they been in now? Six minutes? Seven?

‘He was a very gifted person. There were so many sides to him. Much more so than any of the others around him — when I met him anyway. And there can be no doubt that it was a problem that his talents were never really appreciated when he was growing up. Do you understand what I mean?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Mm.’

‘But if he was as gifted as you say he was, how could he do to us what he did when we were growing up? I was petrified of him. The whole damn time.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he was confused. Perhaps he was driven by external demands incompatible with what was inside him. He grew up with so many demands on him, so many rules and regulations, and when he met me I brought along other demands that probably didn’t suit him at all. Well, obviously they didn’t.’

‘Yes, he mentioned something about that,’ I said.

‘Did he?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you talk about all this?’

I smiled.

‘Wouldn’t exactly say that. It’s more him sitting there and moaning. But I think the rolls are done now.’

I got up, walked around the table, opened the oven door, took out the burning-hot rolls one by one as quickly as I could, put them in the bread basket and set it on the table.

‘Lots of external rules and monumental internal chaos, is that your diagnosis?’ I said.

She smiled.

‘You could put it like that,’ she said.

I split open a roll and then handed her the bread knife. The butter I spread melted the second it made contact with the greyish surface, which was partly doughy from the heat. I cut myself two slices of brown cheese and placed them on top. They melted too.

‘Why didn’t you just leave?’ I said.

‘Leave dad?’

I nodded with my mouth full.

‘I’ve wondered about that many times myself,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’

We ate for a while without speaking. It was odd to think we had been in Sørbøvåg only this morning. It seemed like much longer. It was a different world.

‘Well, I don’t have a good answer to that,’ she said at length. ‘There were so many reasons. Divorce would have been a defeat. And then we’d been together all our lives. That creates a lot of bonds of course. And I loved him, that goes without saying.’

‘I don’t quite understand that,’ I said. ‘But I hear what you say.’

‘You can say what you like about your father,’ she said. ‘But he wasn’t boring to live with.’

‘No,’ I said and stood up to get my tobacco pouch from my jacket in the hall.

‘What about Kjartan then?’ I said as I returned. ‘Surely there’s a kind of inner chaos in him too?’

‘Is there?’ mum said.

‘Isn’t there?’ I said, and opened the pouch, took a rolling paper, filled it with tobacco and plucked a bit out to create better air flow.

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘At any rate, he’s searching for something. He’s been searching all his life, I would say. Now he’s found it he’s holding on to it.’

‘You’re thinking of communism, are you?’

‘For example.’

‘What about you?’ I said, rolling the paper back and forth around the tobacco. ‘Are you searching?’

She laughed.

‘Me, no! I’m trying to survive. That’s what I’m doing.’

I licked the gum on the edge, stuck it down and lit up.

The next evening I went out, first of all I sat around drinking with a few others in a gymnas friend’s house, we pinched some beers from the cellar and were thrown out, ran downhill to town, everywhere was covered with snow, it cracked and creaked beneath our shoes, and the freezing-cold wind was all around us, buffeting against our faces as we walked, we forced our way through, it was endless. At the Shell station in Elvegate we flocked around a little man who had been talking to one of the girls there and laughed at him, we sang, ‘Here comes toughie, toughie, toughie, tough,’ and then, ‘Here comes dickie, dickie, dickie, dick’ to the tune of ‘Here comes Pippi’. I kicked him up the arse as he turned and everyone laughed. After we had paid and left, he was standing there waiting for us all, with a pal. The pal was much bigger than him. Who could possibly have guessed? ‘Him,’ the little man said, pointing at me over by the pumps. The big pal came over to me, said nothing, then looked me straight in the eye. A second passed, perhaps two, then he nutted me. I collapsed in a heap. Hot blood ran from my nose down onto the concrete. What happened? I thought. Had he nutted me? It didn’t hurt.

Behind me I heard Hauk. I’m only sixteen! he was shouting. I’m only sixteen! I’m only sixteen! I sat up. They ran down the hill. Hauk and two others in front of him, the big man at the back. He was brandishing a knife. I got up and went over to the girls, whom no one had threatened. Marianne dashed into the toilet and emerged with an armful of paper, and I wiped off the blood. Not long afterwards Hauk and the others returned from the opposite direction, they were still frightened, went into the kiosk and asked the assistant to ring the police. The sparkle went out of the evening, the group dispersed, suddenly I was the only person left who wanted to carry on, and I had to catch a taxi home, sitting on the back seat while my nose and head pounded and throbbed.

The moment I opened the door I knew that Yngve had come home. Luggage scattered across the floor, his jacket on a hook, his sturdy boots. I decided to surprise him. My joy at the idea made my chest bubble with excitement, and when I opened the door, switched on the light and shouted, ‘Da-da!’ and he sat up in bed, utterly bewildered, I burst into laughter. I completely lost control, just kept on laughing, he looked at me, what happened, he asked, what’s up with your nose, I was laughing so much I couldn’t answer, he said, go to bed, Karl Ove, that’s best and we can talk tomorrow.

‘Have you just got back from China?’ I said, continuing to laugh, closed the door behind me and went into my room, where I undressed and clambered into bed still sniggering. My head felt as if it were a box full of objects swaying to and fro whenever I moved it. Now they were continuing to sway even though my head was still, I noticed, and then I fell asleep.

I woke up with my face aching. I remembered what had happened and sat up in horror.

Then I remembered Yngve was here.

Great.

There was a faint smell of smoke, they had lit the fire. Their low voices could be heard from the floor below, they were probably sitting in the kitchen and having breakfast.

I put on a T-shirt and a pair of trousers and went downstairs.

They looked at me. Yngve smiled.

‘Just need a wash,’ I said and went into the bathroom.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

My nose was slightly crooked, the bone beneath the bridge. In addition, it was extremely swollen and my nostrils were full of crusted blood. I washed it carefully and went back into them.

‘What happened to you yesterday?’ Yngve said.

‘Someone nutted me,’ I said, sat down and put a roll on my plate. ‘I didn’t do anything. A guy at the petrol station came over and just nutted me. Then he ran after the others I was with and chased them down the hill with a knife. Pure thuggery.’

Mum sighed, but she said nothing and in a second it was over because Yngve talked about China, which I assumed he must have been doing for a long time. He was full of it. He talked and talked, and I could visualise it: throngs of people swarming around Kristin when they arrived, attracted by her blonde hair, what fun it had been on the Trans-Siberian Railway, how wild it had been in Tibet and how foreign the colours were. Big yellow rivers and tree-clad cliffs, the alien cities and cheap hotels, the Great Wall of China, ferries and trains, crowds of people everywhere, dogs, hens, as far from the deserted snow-covered frozen countryside as it was possible to be.

Two days later, on New Year’s Eve, Yngve went to Vindilhytta while I went down to Bassen’s wearing shiny new shoes and a dinner suit I had rented. Hanne was there. I drank vodka and juice, I wanted to dance with her, we did, I drank more, I said we should get together even though it was ages since I had last seen her, it was almost an obsession, she laughed off my suggestion, I was offended, danced with other girls, got more and more drunk, and at twelve when everyone gathered together on the road, including people from the other houses in the vicinity, things degenerated, people lit rockets and held them until the very last second so that they whizzed around those standing there, people screamed and shouted, there were bangs and explosions, and I watched Hanne, she was shivering, and she was so beautiful, she really was, why couldn’t I be hers and stand there with my arm around her? I thought, and then a rocket landed by her feet.

People screamed and ran away.

But this was my chance, so I ran forward, I went to kick it away and just as I did, it exploded. It was a bizarre feeling, my calf went all hot, and looking down I saw my trousers in tatters. Blood was flowing. There was even a big hole in my shoe! I refused to go to A & E, someone washed the blood off with a cloth and wound a bandage around my leg, I shouted that I was Hamsun’s Lieutenant Glahn and had shot myself in the foot so that Hanne would realise how much I loved her, jumped around in tattered trousers and with the bandage soaked in blood, I’m Lieutenant Glahn, I yelled, and I have a vague memory of sitting on a chair in a corner and crying, but I am not absolutely sure. At any rate I got home at five, I remember asking the taxi driver to stop by the post boxes, as I always did, so the engine noise wouldn’t wake mum, and I put my trousers and shoes at the back of the wardrobe before going to sleep. The next morning I took off the bandage, put it in a plastic bag and shoved it to the bottom of the rubbish bin, washed the wound, which was quite deep, put a plaster over it and went in to have a hearty breakfast.

We don’t live our lives alone, but that doesn’t mean we see those alongside whom we live our lives. When dad moved to Northern Norway and was no longer physically in front of me with his body and his voice, his temperament and his eyes, in a way he disappeared out of my life, in the sense that he was reduced to a kind of discomfort I occasionally felt when he rang or when something reminded me of him, then a kind of zone within me was activated and in that zone lay all my feelings for him, but he was not there.

Later, in his notebooks, I read about the Christmas when he rang from the Canary Islands and the weeks that followed. Here he stands before me as he was, in mid-life, and perhaps that is why reading them is so painful for me, he wasn’t only much more than my feelings for him but infinitely more, a complete and living person in the midst of his life.

It was Yngve who found his notebooks. A few weeks after the funeral he rented a large car, drove back to Kristiansand and fetched dad’s things from the garage, and then he drove to the Østland town where dad had lived for his last years and collected the little that was left there, then he had it all sent to Stavanger, and he put it into the loft until I arrived and we could go through it together.

When he rang that evening in the autumn of 1998 he said that for a moment he had been convinced dad was alive and was following him in a car on the motorway.

‘There I was, in a car full of his things,’ he said. ‘Can you imagine how furious he would have been if he’d found out? It’s absolutely absurd of course, but I’m sure it was him following me.’

‘It gets me in the same way,’ I said. ‘Whenever the phone goes or someone rings at the door, I think it’s him.’

‘Anyway,’ Yngve said, ‘I’ve found some diaries he’d been writing. Well, actually, they’re notebooks. He jotted down a few notes every day. From 1986, 1987 and 1988. You’ve got to read them.’

‘Did he write a diary?’ I said.

‘Not exactly. Just a few notes.’

‘What does he say?’

‘You’ll have to read them.’

When I went to Yngve’s some days later, we threw away nearly everything dad had left behind. I took his rubber boots, which I still wear ten years later, and his binoculars, which are on my desk as I am writing this, and a set of crockery, as well as some books. And then there were the notebooks.

Wednesday 7 January

Up early, 5.30. Pjall.

The shower was cold.

Bus 6.30 from Puerto Rico. Nipped a quick snifter here too.

At the airport. Bought a Walkman. Dep. 9.30. Delayed — Kristiansand 16.40. Flight to Oslo 17.05. Problem.

The same in Alta. Met Haraldsen here. Via Lakselv (-31 degrees)

Taxi home. Cold house. Warmed myself on duty-free. Hard day.

Thursday 8 January

Tried to get up for work. But had to ring Haraldsen and throw in the towel. Grinding abstinence — stayed in bed all day. . I made an attempt to read Newsweek. Managed a few TV progs. School tomorrow?

Friday 9 January

Up at 7.00. Felt lousy at breakfast.

Work. Survived the first three lessons. Had terrible diarrhoea in lunch break and had to give the HK class a free. Home for repair — rum and Coke. Incredible how it helps. Quiet afternoon and evening. Fell asleep before TV news.

Saturday 10 January

Slept in. Made short work of the sherry in the kitchen. Evening spent in the company of blue Smirnoff!

Sunday 11 January

Had a feeeling when I woke up it was going to be a bad day. I was right!

Monday 12 January

Slept badly. Tossing and turning and hearing ‘voices’. Work. Started with English background. Hard going when you’re out of shape. Evening classes even more stressful!

Tuesday 13 January

Another sleepless night. My body won’t accept being without alcohol. Went to work.

Tuesday 20 January

Another bad night. Always like that when you don’t take any ‘medicine’. After an hour and a half you’re too exhausted to do a good job. Lutefisk for dinner — my favourite. I had a siesta after dinner — a very long nap — up at 10. Worked till 3. Working through the night is the norm now!

And so it goes on. He drinks every weekend, but also more and more often during the week, and then he tries to stop, to have some alcohol-free days or even weeks, but it doesn’t work, he can’t sleep, he is restless, hears voices and is so worn out it’s almost a relief when he finally goes to the Vinmonopol or buys beer and comes home with the drinks, and all his inner conflict eases.

Under ‘Wednesday 4 March’ his notebook just says Yngve, Karl Ove, Kristin. We went up north in the winter holiday to visit them. Dad paid for us all. Unni had invited her son, Fredrik, who was there when we arrived. I flew with Kristin from Kristiansand to Bergen, I was a bit nervous about it of course, because of what had happened between Cecilie and me, but she didn’t say a word about it and treated me as she always had. Yngve joined us in Bergen, then we flew up to Tromsø, where we changed to a propeller plane for the last bit.

The terrain beneath was wild and deserted, there was barely a house or a road to be seen, and when we reached the airport there was no pilot announcement of a slow descent, no, the plane simply swooped down like a bird of prey that had seen its victim, I thought, and the moment the wheels touched down on the runway, we braked and were hurled forward towards the seat in front.

The passengers filed out of the plane across the tarmac to the tiny terminal building. It was cold and overcast, the countryside was white with a scattering of shiny black patches where the rock was too steep for snow to settle.

Dad stood waiting in the arrivals hall. He was formal and tense. Asked us how the trip had been, didn’t listen to the answer. His hands shook as he inserted the key into the ignition and let go of the handbrake. He was silent for the whole journey through the vast misty desolate terrain to the town. I observed his hand, he rested it on the gear lever, but as soon as he raised it, it shook.

The building he parked under was outside the centre, facing the sea, on an estate that must have been built in the 1970s, judging by the shape of the houses. They had rented the whole of the upper floor and had a big balcony outside the living room. The windows were rough, I supposed the salt from the spray had caused that, even though it was several hundred metres to the sea from there. Unni met us in the doorway, smiled and gave everyone a hug. A boy who must have been Fredrik was sitting in a chair watching TV and got up and said hi.

He smiled, we smiled.

He was tall, had dark hair and was a distinct presence in the room. When he sat down again I went into the hall for my rucksack and caught a glimpse of dad as I passed the open kitchen door. He was standing by the fridge and knocking back a beer.

Unni showed us where we would be sleeping. I left my things there. On my return the first bottle was on the table while he was attending to the second. He belched quietly and put the bottle down next to the first, wiped the froth from his beard and turned to me.

The tension was gone.

‘Are you hungry, Karl Ove?’ he said.

‘I suppose I am,’ I said. ‘But there’s no hurry. We can eat when it suits you.’

‘I’ve bought steaks and red wine today. We can have that. Or shrimps. They’ve got good shrimps up here, you know.’

‘Both fine by me,’ I said.

He took another beer from the fridge.

‘It’s good to have beer in the holidays,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You can have some later, with the food,’ he said.

‘Great,’ I said.

Yngve and Kristin had sat down on the sofa. They were looking around the way you do when you are somewhere new, discreetly absorbing their surroundings, constantly aware of each other, not necessarily with their glances but in the total way that lovers can be when everything is about the two of them. Kristin was a miracle of joy and naturalness, and that rubbed off on Yngve, he was fully open to it and wore an almost childish glow that he only had when he was with her.

Fredrik sat in his chair on the other side of the table and shyly answered the questions Yngve and Kristin asked him. He was a year younger than me, lived somewhere in Østland with his father, played football, was interested in fishing, liked U2 and The Cure.

I sat down in the chair beside him. On the wall above the sofa hung the blue picture by Sigvaldsen that dad had taken with him after the divorce, on the two longer walls there were more pictures we used to have at home. The suite of furniture in the other corner was the one dad had always had downstairs in his office, one of the carpets on the floor came from there too. I recognised the furniture from Unni’s flat.

Dad sat down on the sofa. He put one arm around Unni, in his other hand he held a bottle of beer. I remember thinking I was glad Yngve and Kristin were here.

Dad asked Yngve a question, which he answered briefly but not in an uncivil tone. Kristin slowly tried to bring harmony to the situation with questions about the town and the school where they worked. Unni answered.

After a while dad turned to Fredrik. His tone was light and good-natured. Fredrik’s body language was dismissive, it was obvious he didn’t like dad, and I could understand why. Only an imbecile would not have heard the false ring to dad’s voice, as though he were talking to a child, and not realised that he was doing this for Unni’s sake.

Fredrik gave a surly response, dad stared into the middle distance for some seconds, Unni said something kind but reproachful to Fredrick, who writhed with discomfort.

Dad sat motionless, drinking. Then he got to his feet, hitched up his trousers and went into the kitchen, where he started making dinner. We stayed in the living room chatting with Unni. By the time the food was on the table, at about eight, dad was drunk, he wanted to pour oil on troubled waters but his efforts were too bumbling and he made a fool of himself. Fredrik in particular suffered. We were used to dad, we had nothing else, but Fredrik had lost his mother to this idiot.

Dad sat silent for a long time with a stupid disgruntled expression on his face. Then he got up and went into the bedroom. Unni followed him, we heard their voices, they came back as though nothing had happened, chatted about the holiday they’d had and the dispute they were having with their travel company. It transpired that dad had collapsed in Gran Canaria, fallen over in the room, and had been driven to hospital by ambulance. He said it was heart failure. At any rate he had sued the tour operator because there had been several incidents — rows with the reps, rows with other tourists at the hotel — and now they reckoned that everyone had been against them, indeed bullied them almost, and that had led to dad’s heart problem. He had been kept at the hospital for two days. He showed us photos, and some of them were an unpleasant sight: we saw photos of a couple on a terrace, the camera zoomed in, the couple got up, shook their fists and walked towards the camera. What were they doing? See how cross they were, dad said. What fatheads. They’re as bad as Gunnar. What’s wrong with Gunnar then? Yngve said. Gunnar? dad repeated. OK, I’ll tell you. For a whole summer he was snooping round the flat in Elvegate. He was supposed to be keeping an eye on me, you know, making sure I wasn’t drinking. He’s so self-righteous, that brother of mine. He told me so too, that perhaps I ought to cut down, can you imagine? Is he his brother’s keeper? I was an adult when he was only knee-high to a grasshopper. Can’t a man have a beer in his own garden? He really went too far. And just look how he ingratiates himself with grandma and grandad. He’s after the cabin. He’s always wanted the cabin. And he’ll get it in the end. He’ll inject them with his poison as well.

I didn’t say anything. Met Yngve’s gaze.

How could he stoop so low? They were brothers, Gunnar was his younger brother, and he not only had some order in his life, the children he brought up were close to him, they trusted him, I could see that whenever I saw them, there was not a trace of fear in their eyes, on the contrary, they liked their father. If he had told dad he was drinking too much, he was perfectly within his rights, who else was going to say that? Me? Ha ha, don’t make me laugh. And the cabin? Gunnar was the only one of the brothers who used it and always had done, he loved living out there. Dad didn’t. If dad got his hands on the cabin he would sell it.

I watched him, he sat there with his eyes brimming and the slightly stupid expression around his mouth he always had when he was drunk.

‘Perhaps it would be best to show the slides tomorrow,’ Yngve said. ‘It’s already late.’

‘What slides?’ dad said.

‘Of China,’ Yngve said.

‘Oh, that’s right, yes,’ dad said.

Unni stretched her arms above her head.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Now I really do have to go to bed.’

‘I’m coming too,’ dad said. ‘I’ll just have a few words with my two sons, who have come a long way to see their dad.’

Unni ruffled his hair and went into their bedroom. As soon as the door was closed Fredrik got up.

‘Goodnight,’ he said.

‘Are you off too?’ dad said. ‘You aren’t pregnant, are you?’

He laughed, I looked at Fredrik and raised my eyebrows to indicate to him that he wasn’t alone in what he thought.

‘I’m tired too,’ Kristin said. ‘Either it’s the journey or it’s the sea air. Whichever it is, it’s goodnight anyway!’

After she had gone we three sat saying nothing. Dad gazed into the air and finished his beer, then fetched another. I wasn’t drunk, but I could feel the alcohol.

‘Here we are then,’ dad said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Just like in the old days. Do you remember, in Tybakken? Yngve and Karl Ove. Sitting in the kitchen and having breakfast.’

‘How could we ever forget?’ Yngve said.

‘Yes,’ said dad. ‘It wasn’t an easy time for me either. I’d like you to know that.’

‘Times aren’t easy for lots of people,’ Yngve said. ‘But it’s not everyone who takes it out on their children.’

‘No,’ dad said. He started crying. ‘I’m so happy to have you here,’ he said.

‘Do you have to get so sentimental?’ Yngve said. ‘Can’t we talk about this in a normal fashion?’

‘Unni’s got a new life in her tummy now. It’ll be either your brother or your sister. Think about that.’

He smiled through the tears, dried them, emptied the bottle and rolled himself a cigarette.

Yngve and I exchanged glances. It was hopeless, you got nothing from him but hot air.

‘I’m going to bed,’ Yngve said.

Dad said nothing as he left. I didn’t want him to be on his own and stayed a little while longer, but when he made no sign of either leaving or speaking, and just sat there staring into the room, in the end I got up too and went to bed.

After breakfast next day Yngve, Kristin, Fredrik and I went to town and wandered through the snow-covered windblown night-black streets. While Yngve and Kristin went into a clothes shop I sat in a café chatting to Fredrik. We exchanged a few names of bands, established a kind of base and then we started talking about what we could actually do in this godforsaken town. We couldn’t just sit on our hands in the flat. He said there was a swimming pool not far away, perhaps we could go there later in the day? That’s a good idea, Unni said when we went home. Yes, a great idea, dad said from inside the living room. I haven’t been to a pool in years. Are you going to join them?! Unni said. Yes, why not? he said. I could see Fredrik wasn’t happy, but I thought it might be OK, the evening was a long time away. Unni drove us because dad had drunk a couple of beers. We went into the changing room with our gear and sat down on the bench.

Dad started undressing.

I turned away. I had never seen him undress, I had never been in the same room as him before when he was doing something so intimate. Sitting on the bench, he folded his trousers, rolled his socks in a ball and undid his shirt.

I felt myself getting hot and flustered, didn’t know where to look or what to do with myself, because now he was taking off his underpants and for a few seconds he was completely naked.

I had never seen him naked before, and a shudder went through me as I cast my eyes over him.

He looked at me and smiled.

Everything else had been removed, there was just the smile he sent me before turning away to put on his trunks.

I put on mine and together we walked into the spacious swimming area.

When we returned home Unni had made dinner, a fondue, dad drank a bottle of red wine on his own, afterwards Yngve and Kristin showed their slides of China. Unni had borrowed a projector from school. They talked and explained, dad sat and looked on with no interest at all, I could see Yngve was getting annoyed, why did it bother him, I thought, he should give up on dad.

Fredrik was ironic with dad, who got angry and rebuked him, which made Unni furious, she went to her room, he struggled to his feet and followed, they shouted at each other while, in the living room, we pretended everything was fine. Something smashed against the wall, a shout became a scream, then there was silence. Dad emerged, said nothing, had a drink, suddenly looked up at us and grinned that inane grin of his, looked at Fredrik and said they could go fishing tomorrow if he wanted, his sons weren’t interested in fishing.

Of all the days dad described in his notebooks this is the only one I have a clear memory of, presumably because I saw him naked for the first and only time in his life.

In the notebook he wrote:

Friday 6 March

With K.O. and Fredrik in the swimming pool.

Nice to swim again. Home for fondue and slides of China.

Thereafter chat. Too much to drink. Scenes. Unni fed up — broke clock.

Shame.

On the last evening in Northern Norway I was alone again in the living room after the others had gone to bed. I smoked, made myself some tea, read a book I found, got up and found their photo album, wanting to see the disconcerting pictures once more, and at the back I came across some papers from which it emerged that the travel company had been informed by the hospital where dad had been admitted that the heart problems had been induced by an excess of medicines and alcohol.

I read this with a chill that ran through my whole body.

Medicines?

What sort of medicines was he taking?

There were several documents, I flicked through them, some were connected with a lawsuit he had clearly been involved in that spring. The trigger was an incident with a Securitas guard at the bus station in Kristiansand, and as I read it I remembered that he had mentioned something about it once, he had been harassed, but I knew nothing about him taking the matter to the law courts. However, he had lost resoundingly and had been ordered to pay the costs.

What was he doing?

I put the photo album back, cleaned my teeth and went into the narrow room where my bed was, undressed, got into bed, switched off the light and rested my head on the pillow.

But I couldn’t sleep. After a while I got up, sat down on the sofa closest to the little telephone table, picked up the receiver and dialled Hanne’s number.

I would do this on occasion, call her in the night. If her father answered I would put down the receiver, but he never did, she had a phone next to her room and was always quick to answer. This time too.

We chatted for an hour. I told her about what was going on here, that I would have a brother or a sister by the end of the summer and I was unsure what that would be like. I told her about my father and about Yngve and Kristin. She listened, laughed when I said something funny and in this way the heaviness in me lifted and we began to talk about other things, the exams that were in the offing, all my skiving, her choir, what we would do after we left school.

Suddenly the door burst open and dad charged in.

‘I have to ring off,’ I said and put down the receiver.

‘What are you doing, lad?!’ he said. ‘Do you know what the time is?’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was trying to speak as softly as I could.’

‘And who said you could use the phone? How long have you been talking?’

‘An hour.’

‘An hour! Are you aware how much that costs? I paid for your ticket here! And this is my thanks, is it? Into bed with you, now.’

I lowered my head so that he wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes, got up, my body half-turned away from him, and walked to my room. My heart was pounding, terror had spread to every part of me, I was shaking as I lifted a leg to pull off my trousers.

I waited until I was sure he had gone to sleep, then tiptoed out again, found a pen, some paper and an envelope, wrote an ironic note about how sorry I was for having used his precious phone, anyway here was the money for the call. Then I put a hundred-krone note in the envelope, sealed it, wrote his name on it and slipped it onto the bookshelf, where he would probably find it after I had gone.

At home I seldom gave dad a thought, apart from when he rang or his name came up. But there were still problems. I had gradually begun to live a double life. I liked being at home in the evening with mum, we either drank tea and chatted, listened to music, watched TV or did our own work, but I also liked being out at night and drinking. I didn’t have a driving licence and buses were few and far between, but mum always said she would pick me up, it wasn’t an issue, all I had to do was call, even if it was in the middle of the night. I called, she answered, an hour later I opened the car door and hopped in. She had no objection to me having a glass, but she wasn’t happy if I was drunk, to put it mildly, so I had to hide that from her. I solved this by sleeping at people’s houses or I said she didn’t need to pick me up, there were people around with a car, and sometimes there were, then I got a lift, sometimes I took a taxi, sometimes the night bus. She didn’t wait up, she trusted me, from my behaviour at home she had every reason to. And it was the real me when I was with her. It was also the real me when I was with Hilde. It was also the real me when I got drunk with Espen or any of the others at school. I was the real me, but the real mes were irreconcilable.

There were other matters I hid from mum. For example, all the skiving from school. I did it more and more, I was absent almost more often than I was present. She caught me one day, I hadn’t gone to school, I was at home relaxing, she turned up earlier than usual and we had a row. She said I had to go to school, it was important, I had to get a grip on what was important. She said I’d had a strict upbringing, much too strict, and now she was trying to give me some freedom, but I was abusing it. This was all about norms and they had to come from me. I said school wasn’t the most important thing in my life, she said that was all well and good, but now you’re at school, this is what you do and you have to fulfil your obligations. Can you promise me that? Yes, I could. I didn’t keep the promise, but I camouflaged what I did better. I had a more-than-understanding form teacher, he had realised I was having a difficult time, on a school trip he had been sitting on the seat next to me and said, I know you’re having a difficult time at the moment, Karl Ove, say if there is anything I can do to help or if there is anything you want to talk to me about. I smiled and said I would, and for a few seconds tears were imminent, the concern for me had come out of the blue, but the next moment they were gone. Naturally enough it wasn’t because I was going through a difficult time that I had been skiving, on the contrary it was because I liked doing it so much, drifting around, meeting people in cafés, popping into the radio station, buying records or just lying around at home and reading. I had decided ages ago that I would not continue my education after school, what we learned was just rubbish, basically what life was about was living, and living in the way you want, in other words, enjoying your life. Some enjoyed their lives best by working, others by not working. OK, I was aware that I would need money, which meant that I would also have to work, but not all the time and not on something that would deplete all my energy and eat into my soul, leaving me like one of the middle-aged halfwits who guarded their hedges and peered across at their neighbours to see if their status symbols were as wonderful as their own.

I didn’t want that.

But money was a problem.

Mum had started working overtime to make ends meet. As well as her job as a teacher at the nursing college she had agreed to do extra shifts at Eg Hospital at the weekends and in the holidays. The house must have been making deep inroads into her money. She had bought dad out and taken on big loans. I barely noticed, I had the money I earned from the newspaper and dad’s child maintenance, and when that was gone it was still possible to get something out of mum, so that was fine. She did occasionally criticise my priorities, how could I buy three new LPs one Friday afternoon when I was walking around in shoes with the sole flapping off? They’re just material goods, I responded, objects, while music was completely different. This was the mind, for Christ’s sake. This is what we need, really, and I do mean really, and it’s important to prioritise it. Everyone prioritises. Everyone wants new jackets and new shoes and new cars and new houses and new caravans and new mountain cabins and new boats. But I don’t. I buy books and records because they say something about what life is about, what it is to be a human here on earth. Do you understand?

‘Yes, you’re probably right, in a way. But isn’t it terribly impractical to walk around with your soles coming off? And it doesn’t look very nice, either, does it.’

‘What do you want me to do? I haven’t got any money. I prioritised music on this occasion.’

‘I’ll have a little surplus this month. You can have it to buy some shoes. But you’ll have to promise me you’ll spend it on shoes and nothing else.’

‘I promise. Thanks very much.’

And so from her office in the nursing college I went to town and bought some trainers and a Nice Price LP.

At Easter the football team was going to a training camp in Switzerland, of course I wanted to go with them, but it was quite expensive and mum said no, she was sorry, she wished it didn’t have to be like this, but that was how it was, we didn’t have the money.

A week before the departure date she slapped the money on the table in front of me.

‘Hope it’s not too late,’ she said.

I rang the coach, not too late, no, he said, you can come along.

‘Wonderful!’ mum said.

During the days before we were due to leave I finished an article on Prince that I had been mulling over for ages. His new record, Sign o’ the Times, was absolutely brilliant and I wanted everyone to know.

Then we left. Bus through Denmark and Germany, spirits were high, we were drinking duty-free beer on the way, and when we got to the hotel, Bjørn, Jøgge, Ekse and I jumped off while the bus continued over the border to Italy, where a Serie A match was on the programme. We preferred to be in a bar drinking. When they came back at ten we were in a fantastic mood while they were exhausted after the journey and everyone wanted to go to bed early. I shared a room with Bjørn, it was on the fourth floor and more luxurious than any room I had ever slept in, with attractive furniture, mirrors and a carpet on the floor. We reclined on the beds, bottles of beer in hand. It was eleven at the latest, what about a trip into town to have a look? The rule was no noise after ten, by eleven everyone was supposed to be in bed, but they hadn’t exactly posted guards on the doors. We waited for a while, not wishing to risk meeting anyone in the corridors, then we went out, hailed a taxi, mumbled, ‘Downtown,’ leaned back and were driven along unfamiliar streets with the soft light from the street lamps shining down over us. The driver stopped in a square, we paid, got out and strolled towards the centre. Soon we came across a large building, we could hear music inside, there were bouncers on the door, we went in. There were discotheques, bars, an enormous casino and a stage where beautiful women stripped and other scantily clad women, equally beautiful, wandered around the audience.

Bjørn and I exchanged glances. What was this fantastic place?

We drifted round, looking and drinking, hung around the stage and watched the striptease, discovered to our horror that the scantily clad girls who were walking between the tables were the same ones as those dancing on the stage, hardly had we watched one go up than she was down and walking past us on the floor. We went into a disco, propped up various bars there, mooched around the room with the roulette tables, where the men were dressed in dark suits and all the women wore evening gowns, ended up in front of double doors at the other end and saw a hall beyond, with groups of people standing around and chatting while waiters dressed in black and white carried trays of wine glasses and canapés. We didn’t talk to anyone else, drank non-stop, left at about half past three in the morning and six hours later were running round a field in a semi-conscious state. Slept for a couple of hours before the next round of training, had dinner, drank some beers in the bar and then it was off to find a taxi to go to this palace, where we floated around like in a dream until the following morning. Then we had to get up and go skiing in the Alps, there was something dreamlike about that too, for the sky was completely blue, the sun was shining, everywhere we looked white mountains towered in the air, and after a few minutes on the lift, with our skis dangling beneath us, everything was perfectly still. As though we had passed into another state. All that could be heard was the low hum of the lift close to us, otherwise it was completely and utterly still. A sense of jubilation filled me, for the silence was as vast as an ocean, while there was also something painful about it, as there is in all joy. The silence high up in the mountains, surrounded on all sides by beauty, allowed me to see myself or become aware of myself, not in relation to my psyche or my morality, this had nothing to do with my personal qualities, this was all about being here, this body which was ascending, I was here now, I was experiencing this and then I would die.

I slept on the bus back, had a headache when I awoke, drank a few beers in the bar, had dinner, downed a few more because tonight everyone was going out, there was a disco near the hotel, we were there until one in the morning. I danced and drank and had a good word for everyone I saw. On the way back Bjørn and I climbed up onto a roof. It wasn’t any old roof, it was a Swiss roof, turret after turret soared upwards, we shinned up, climbed and sweated and finally stood aloft, roughly thirty metres above the car park, where a small crowd had gathered. Our legs trembled as we shouted into the night, then we crouched down and began the descent. When there were only a few metres left two men with torches ran over. The beams wandered back and forth in the blackness. Polizei, they said and came to a halt beneath us. One was holding his ID card and shining the torch on it. That must be Chief Inspector Derrick, I giggled. We jumped down. Our football coach came over to us, he could speak some German, and explained the situation to the two police officers, who, despite their sceptical glares, let us go. On our way down the hill to the hotel one of the players from the senior team came up alongside us. He said he thought we were so courageous, we were so tough, going out and drinking every night and climbing up that roof, he really looked up to us, he said, and wished he could do things like that, he didn’t dare, he wasn’t as tough as we were, and for that, he said, I admire you.

That was the word he used. Admire.

I would never have believed it, I said to Bjørn after he had disappeared into the group behind us. No, said Bjørn. That wasn’t bad, I said. He admired us. Bjørn looked at me. Shit, I said, the police coming and shining their torches on their badges. Polizei! Polizei! We laughed. Then it struck me that he knew we had been out drinking at night. Did that mean everyone knew? What did it matter anyway? The worst that could happen was that we would be barred from playing, but this was the fifth division we were talking about and the end-of-school festivities were in sight, so it wasn’t a big deal.

When we returned everyone had gathered in our room. Some of the senior team had brought girlfriends with them on the trip, a couple were here, and I saw Bjørn talking to one of them, Amanda, who went out with Jøran. She was around twenty-five. Was Bjørn really trying it on with her? Here?

Yes, he was. As people began to withdraw he did too and I was left alone on my bed, I fell asleep fully clothed, only to be awoken an hour later by Bjørn shaking me.

‘Amanda’s coming,’ he said. ‘Could you go somewhere else? For half an hour?’

Befuddled by sleep, I got up.

‘OK,’ I said, went to the window and opened it.

‘You’re not going to go out there, are you? This is the fourth floor or have you forgotten?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’ll be fine.’

Beneath the window, all the way, ran a brick ledge almost the width of my feet. Two metres above it there was another. I stood on the lower one, gripped the upper one tightly and then shuffled along centimetre by centimetre. Bjørn watched me with his head out of the window.

‘Don’t do this,’ he said. ‘Come back.’

‘Now you’re with Amanda and I’m here. I’ll be back in half an hour.’

He eyed me for a moment. Then he closed the window. I looked down. There was a large fountain outside the entrance, around it an open square, on the margins a few parked cars. A high brick wall separated the hotel grounds from the road beyond. There was no one around, but that wasn’t so strange, it had to be three in the morning at least.

I slowly shuffled towards the window of the room adjoining ours. The curtains were drawn, there was nothing to see. I edged back, stopped by the window, leaned forward and peered in. They were lying on Bjørn’s bed and smooching, their legs intertwined, Bjørn’s hands were sliding up and down her thigh under her dress. I straightened up, took a few steps to the side, squinted down again. Still deserted. How long had I been there now? Ten minutes? I let go of the ledge with one hand, patted my jacket for cigarettes and my lighter, succeeded in knocking one out, sticking it in my mouth and lighting it without swaying once. When the cigarette was finished and lay like a small glowing eye on the tarmac far below I shuffled sideways and banged on the window. Bjørn jumped to his feet. Amanda sat up. Bjørn came over to the window, Amanda ran out of the door, Bjørn turned, ready to give chase, or so it seemed, but then he reconsidered and opened the window for me.

‘Five more minutes,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t you have given me five more minutes?’

‘How was I supposed to know?’ I said. ‘From where I was standing it didn’t look like you were making much progress.’

‘Were you watching?’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I was just kidding. But now I want to sleep. You should too, if you ask me. You’ve got a tough day with Jøran ahead of you.’

Bjørn snorted. ‘He’s too conceited to believe she would want anyone else.’

‘He’s all right, I think,’ I said.

‘Yes, I do too,’ Bjørn said. ‘But Amanda’s more than all right.’

He laughed. I lay down on the bed and fell asleep in an instant, without having found the answer to the enigmatic and somewhat vexing question: why would Amanda want Bjørn? What had he done to deserve that?

On the last evening in Lucerne the bus stood with its engine idling outside the hotel after dinner. Everyone was going out on the town. The destination was a secret. It turned out, however, to be our casino. While the other juniors wandered around slack-jawed, Bjørn and I sat nonchalantly at a table in the striptease venue drinking white wine.

‘I got her number today,’ Bjørn said. ‘She said I should phone her when we were home.’

‘Why on earth would she do that?’ I said. ‘Has she finished with Jøran?’

Bjørn shook his head. ‘No. They’re together. But aren’t you happy for me?’

‘Yes, she’s nice.’

‘Nice? She’s great. Absolutely great. And she’s twenty-four!’

We finished our wine and went for a look round. I lost sight of Bjørn fairly soon and cruised around on my own. By the door to the big hall, on a sudden impulse, I looked in. What’s going on in here? I asked a small bald man with glasses. It’s a conference, he answered. Who for? I said. Biologists, he said. OK, I said. Interesting! He withdrew, I went in, people were gathered around the small tables, but far fewer than earlier in the week. On one of them lay a little green and white card. I went over and inspected it. It was a name tag. I pinned it to my lapel and walked towards the big door. It opened onto a conference hall, rows of seats in a wide gradually ascending semicircle around a speaker’s podium. A man was talking below. Stills were being shown on a screen behind him. The room was slightly over half full. I walked down past a few rows, entered one, people stood up just as in the cinema, and I sat down, crossed my legs and concentrated on the speaker. Now, I said to myself in a low voice. What do you reckon? How very interesting! After twenty minutes, during which I spent as much time looking at the other people in the audience as the speaker, whose grating microphone voice filled the whole auditorium and hung like a constant annoying thought in the background, I got up and went back to the disco. Most of the junior players were inside watching the striptease, it appeared. I went in too and when Jøgge spotted me he came rushing over.

‘Can I borrow some money?’

‘How much do you need? I’ve got some but not much.’

‘A thousand? Have you got that much?’

‘What are you going to do with a thousand kroner?’

‘Actually I need two thousand. That’s what champagne costs.’

‘Two thousand for champagne? Are you out of your mind?’

‘If you buy an expensive drink for one of the women you’re allowed to talk to them. And if you buy champagne you can go off with them.’

‘And that’s what you want to do?’

‘Too right. If only I had the money! Have you got it or not?’

He looked around.

‘Come on. Please. I need two thousand kroner. I’ve never slept with a woman. I’m eighteen years old and I’ve never had sex. You have. But I haven’t. And it costs two thousand kroner. Come on. Please, please.’

He went down on his knees in front of me. Held up his hands in supplication.

And, even worse, he was serious.

‘I want to sleep with a woman. That’s all I want. And I can do it here. I don’t give a shit if they’re prostitutes. They’re unbelievably beautiful, all of them. Come on. Show some mercy. Harald! Ekse! Bjørn! Karl Ove!’

‘I haven’t got that much,’ I said. ‘I may have enough for a little chat. .’

‘This is serious!’ Jøgge said, back on his feet. ‘This is my chance. There aren’t any places like this in Kristiansand.’

‘Sorry, Jøgge. Would have liked to help you,’ said Bjørn.

‘Same here,’ said Harald.

‘For Christ’s sake, come on,’ Jøgge said.

‘You’ll have to try the old-fashioned method,’ Bjørn said. ‘Chat someone up. The place is full of girls.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ Jøgge said.

‘Come on. Let’s go in and see the action,’ Bjørn said, dragging Jøgge with him.

I had never experienced such an alcoholic high as the one I had that night. It was like a cool green river flowing through my veins. Everything was in my power. As we stood at the bar I noticed a girl on the dance floor, she might have been a year or two older than me, with blonde hair and a beautiful, yes, an unbelievably beautiful face. When her gaze met mine for a second time I didn’t hesitate, I trotted down the two steps to the dance floor. At that moment the music she had been dancing to changed and, along with three other girls, she walked over to a wall. I followed her. I stopped and said I had seen her dancing and she looked fantastic. You looked amazing, I said. She smiled and said thank you and looked at me with her head tilted. I asked her if she was American. Yes, she was. Did she live in the town here? No, she lived in Maine. They all came from Maine. Where was I from? A small barbaric country up north, I said. We are in fact the first generation to eat with a knife and fork. I turned and nodded to the other members of the team, who were watching me from the bar. I’m with them, I said. We’re football players on a training camp here. Do you want to dance?

She nodded.

She wanted to dance!

We glided onto the floor. I put my arms around her. The feeling of her body against mine provoked an electric storm in my head. Round and round we went, sometimes I pressed her close to me, sometimes I held her away from me and looked into her eyes. What’s your name? I whispered. Melody, she whispered. Melody? I repeated. No, Melanie! she said with a smile.

When the song was over I thanked her and joined the others, who were still hanging round the bar.

‘How did you manage that?’ Bjørn said.

‘I just asked. Had no idea it was so easy. It’s crazy.’

‘Go back to her. You can’t stay here!’

‘OK. I’ll just have a little drink. Just my bloody luck this is our last night.’

The bus was supposed to be outside waiting at three. It was half past two. I had no time to lose. Nevertheless I hesitated, although I could still feel her, a kind of phantom joy, her breasts, oh her breasts, the feeling of them against my body, the light pressure, the arousal, I had all that inside me, and if I went down there now it would disappear in a new situation, which might not go that well. I knocked back two glasses of wine in quick succession and walked over again. Her eyes lit up when I appeared. She wanted to dance. We danced. Afterwards we stood in the corner chatting, the others were beginning to make tracks towards the exit, I said I had to go, she wanted to go with me, I took her hand, we stopped outside, a stone’s throw from the bus, which was waiting with the engine running. Where do you live? I asked. She said the name of a hotel. No, not here, but in Maine, I said. I’ll write to you. May I? Yes, she said. Then she told me her address. I had nothing to write with. Did she? No. Hurry up, came shouts from the bus, we’re going now. I’ll memorise your address, I said. Say it again. She said it, I repeated it twice. You’ll get a letter, I said. She nodded and looked at me. I leaned forward and kissed her. Put my arm around her and pressed her into me. Now I have to go, I said. All the best to you in your barbaric country, she said with a smile. I paused by the bus door and waved to her, then clambered on board.

Everyone clapped. I bowed to the right, then the left and sat down next to Bjørn. Drunk, happy and confused, I waved to her as the bus drove past.

‘What a bugger it didn’t happen on the first evening,’ I said.

‘Did you get her address?’

‘Yes, I’ve memorised it. She lives in. .’

I had forgotten. I couldn’t drag it up for the life of me.

‘Didn’t you write it down?’ Bjørn said.

‘No. I relied on my memory.’

He laughed. ‘You prat,’ he said.

We carried on drinking in my room. Bjørn accidentally broke a lamp, he was turning round with a bottle in his hand and hit the glass dome, which shattered. Someone else, I don’t recall who, smashed the other one out of pure devilry. Then I took down the big picture hanging on the wall, which had irritated me all week, and threw it out of the window. It exploded into smithereens on the tarmac five floors down. Lights came on in the room beneath us. Shit, what was the point of that? Bjørn said, no problem, I said, we can just take one of the pictures in the corridor and hang it here, they’ll never notice. What about the picture downstairs? I’ll get it, I said, and did as I promised. Took the lift down, went past the unmanned reception into the square, where I collected all the fragments I could find and put them in the pool around the fountain, close to the nearest wall, so that you could only see them if you were standing over them. On my way back along the corridor I grabbed one of the pictures hanging on the wall. The incident must have sobered people up, for the room was empty when I returned, apart from Bjørn, who was lying on his back with his mouth open and his eyes closed. I got into bed and switched off the light.

The next day was all about packing, having breakfast and getting ready for departure. The hotel manager came out as we were stowing the baggage in the bus, he wanted to know who had been in Room 504, that was Bjørn and I, we went over, and he, the little man, was so angry that he was jumping up and down in front of us. People like you shouldn’t be allowed to stay in a hotel! he yelled. You have to pay for this! It was all very unpleasant. We apologised, said we hadn’t meant anything by it and we would pay. I think we even bowed to him. The others stood around grinning. The team coach, Jan, came over, said he would handle this, the hotel would be properly compensated for any damage we had caused, he was extremely sorry, they were young, anything could happen, we bowed again and got on board, people like you shouldn’t be allowed to stay in a hotel! he yelled again. Jan took out his wallet and passed him a wad of notes, the bus started up, he jumped on, we drove slowly onto the road while the hotel manager glowered at us with hatred in his eyes.

Once at home, I quickly fell back into my old self, or it fell back into me. At school, where teachers focused on exams, I stayed in the shadows, I skulked around in the breaks and in lessons filled my notebooks with my scribblings. The trip to Switzerland had been a procession of triumphs, and I hoped the russ — school-leaver — celebrations would be the same. At home I wrote the social studies special paper in one night, a twenty-page comparison of the Russian revolution with the Sandanista revolution in Nicaragua, which I had followed with interest for several years, and I wrote a letter to a hotel in Switzerland asking them for the address of a guest, if at all possible, as in my possession I had a purse I would like to return, belonging to an American girl, whose name was Melanie, surname unknown, but she had stayed at the hotel over Easter.

At the end of April I had a party at home. As editor of the russ newspaper, a duty I shared with Hilde, I probably should have been on the russ committee, as had always been the case, but for some reason we were excluded. Perhaps because Hilde and I didn’t really fit in there, or because we hadn’t accepted our posts with the requisite nonchalance, what did I know? Whatever the reason, I invited the whole of the committee, as well as many others, home one Saturday evening. Mum was sleeping at a friend’s and would be home in the afternoon, so I had told everyone that they must not under any circumstances arrive before six. But at three a red russ camper chugged up the hill. In it were Christian and two girls. He wanted to drop off the beer, he said. But I told you six o’clock, I said. Yes, but now we’re here, he said. Where can I leave it?

Ten minutes later there was a stack of beer crates in the kitchen. The stack went from the floor right up to the ceiling. It was fair to say the ceiling was low, but mum, whom Christian barely greeted when he entered the kitchen, was not enamoured of the sight. What’s this? she said after they had gone. Are you going to drink all of this? You’re not going to have some drunken orgy here, are you? I won’t allow it. Relax, I said. This is a russ party. Everyone’s eighteen. There’ll be quite a bit of drinking. But I’ll take responsibility for everything. I promise you. It’ll all be fine. Are you sure? she said, eyeing me closely. There’s enough beer here for a hundred people. How many crates are there actually? Yes, but take it easy. There’s quite a bit of drinking at russ parties. But that’s the whole point. Is it? she said. Not the whole point, I said. But at any rate an important element. I know you don’t like the idea, and I’m sorry it’s here, but everything will be fine, I promise you. Well, anyway, it’s too late to do anything about it now, she said. But had I known what I know now you wouldn’t have had my blessing. Promise me you won’t drink much yourself now. You’re responsible for everything going well, you know. Yeah, yeah, I said.

We had dinner beside the yellow beer-crate tower, mum got in her car and drove to town, I put on a record, grabbed a beer and lounged on the sofa waiting for the others to come.

A few hours later the drive was full of russ vehicles. Everywhere there were screaming girls and boys in red russ outfits, all holding bottles of beer. Music was pounding from several of the cars, and in the living room the stereo was so loud that the music coming from the speakers was distorted. Three or four times more people had come than had been invited.

At one in the morning everything seemed to build up to a climax. Christian screamed and kicked a big hole in the bathroom door. Trond was sitting in the kitchen beating out the rhythm of the music on the edge of the table with two large knives, every beat was a new notch. People were being sick on the doorstep outside the living room, people were being sick on the shingle between the cars, people were being sick in Yngve’s bed. Behind the lilac bush someone was performing a knee-trembler. Others were jumping up and down to the music, roaring for all they were worth. People stood on car bonnets and roofs, one of them naked, swirling his sweater around his head. Even though I had made up my mind not to give a toss, and had succeeded by getting drunk, I carried a constant horror within me which, at various points, would surface in my consciousness, no, oh no, I thought then, only to recede as I became involved in one of the many incidents going on around me.

At three the tempo began to slow. Some people were still dancing, some were sitting and smooching, some were asleep, lying across the table, hunched in corners, outside under bushes. I sat on the sofa in front of the TV snogging a girl, we had hardly exchanged a word, she had been sitting there, I sat down beside her, we started to snog. She was dark-haired, everything about her was dark, even her clothes, she was the only one not dressed in a red outfit but in a black sweater, black skirt and black tights. Want to come with me to the room over there, I whispered, she nodded, I had drunk a lot and was thinking this will make everything different because now I didn’t give a shit about anything, wasn’t nervous about anything, and I took out my keys and unlocked the door to my room, held my arm around her, she pulled off the little handbag she wore diagonally across her chest, lay down on the bed, my bed, it reverberated through my brain, I rolled her jumper over her head, kissed her dark nipples, rubbed my face between them, lovingly and lingeringly, here we go, I thought, now I’ve got a girl here, now we’re going to have it, and my legs were trembling as I sat up to pull down her tights, she let me do it, I took off my trousers, this is it, she was naked, her skin shone white in the dark, I put my hand between her legs and felt the curly though still smooth hair, and I was naked, and I squirmed a bit, she said you’re so heavy on top of me, I pushed down with my arms and then my dick was in her pubic hair, I thrust, further down, she said, I moved and there it was, wet and soft and then, no, no, oh bloody hell, no.

Long shudders like electric shocks went through me as she lay there, her eyes wide open, staring up at me.

No, no, no.

I hadn’t even penetrated her. A couple of centimetres maybe, no more. And then it was over. I fell on top of her and kissed her neck. She pushed me away and half sat up. I reached out for her, touched her breasts, but she just got up, pulled on her panties and tights and left the room.