It's Fine By Me

11

THE SPRING AND the summer of the year I was thirteen were sunk in yellow haze. I was sweating all over my body for weeks and weeks and it was hard for me to see clearly. I walked up the gravel path to the house like a drunk, the air about me thick and quivering with a light that could explode at any moment it seemed, and sometimes I would aim for the door and miss. I sat hunched over my school books rubbing my eyes, but the yellow haze would not go away, and I kept going to the kitchen for something to drink. My throat felt so dry, I was constantly thirsty, and in the end I turned away from the school books. When I came home, I took them out of my satchel and the next morning I put them back, but I didn’t open them. And I didn’t read anything else. The Davy Crockett books were on the shelves, but there was an emptiness surrounding them that made me restless, an emptiness everywhere that made me gasp for air, and I felt sick. I lay in bed for a week gazing at the curtains. They were as sun-yellow as everything else that was on my mind, and outside my head the sticky silence hung thick and hot, and my temperature rose to thirty-nine degrees.

‘I have yellow fever,’ I said.

‘Yellow fever makes your skin go yellow,’ my mother said. ‘You’re poorly, no doubt about it, but if you ask me you look pretty pale.’

‘I’ve definitely got yellow fever,’ I said.

‘You may have, of course,’ she said and went to look it up in the family encyclopaedia, and the symptoms listed there were quite different, but if ever there was something called yellow fever, that’s what I had, and no one could tell me different.

After a week I was fed up lying in bed. I got up and put on a baseball cap and sunglasses.

The morning before the last day of school, I woke early, but stayed in bed, gazing at the ceiling, thinking about things. And when my thinking was done, I jumped out of bed and went down to the kitchen where my mother was standing with her forehead against the window looking out at the road.

‘Tomorrow I’m going off for a while,’ I said.

‘Fine,’ she said, and was relieved, for she didn’t really know what to do with me in the two months that lay ahead of us. She had to work all summer in the cafeteria at Gardermoen airport, and no one had seen my father for months. Kari would work at the newspaper kiosk, and my mother had enough on her plate looking after Egil.

‘Where are you going, then?’

‘Frank and I are going to the woods, we’ll set up camp by Lake Aurtjern. I’ll be away for about two weeks.’

‘You’ll need quite a bit of food then.’

‘Not that much. We’ll do some fishing. Have you got any money?’

‘You can have some. I haven’t got a lot,’ she said, turning her apron pockets inside out, so I could see for myself.

‘I’ll take whatever you can spare,’ I said and tossed the schoolbag over my shoulder, put my sunglasses on and set off for school. She didn’t ask which tent we were going to use. We had never owned one; neither had Frank. Besides, I hadn’t even spoken to him. We hadn’t been friends for a year.

It was quite a trek to school. But that was not where I went. By the chapel, where the roads meet, I turned right towards the railway station. Even that was not a short walk. We lived on the outskirts of the village, and the school and the railway station were at opposite ends.

It was so hot. Not a single leaf stirred on the trees, and sweat ran from my eyebrows over my face, and whenever I moved my arms, my armpits felt raw. Although my schoolbag was half empty, it was painful to carry, so I jumped into a ditch and hid it under a bush. I could pick it up on my way home, or it could just stay there. I really didn’t care.

As I walked, my body eased up and gradually the stiffness disappeared, and by the time I reached the station building, I could have run the sixty metres in under nine dead. Perhaps there was something in the air that had changed, I don’t know, but still I kept my sunglasses on. I decided to wear them at all times, at least during the day. I liked the distance they created.

For a couple of weeks I had been pestering the manager of the Co-op for his biggest cardboard boxes. Now I had three, and they were really big, I could almost stand upright inside one of them. I had kept them hidden behind a shed, and now I pulled them out and along the railway lines up to some big bushes. There I placed them one against the other, the largest in the middle and cut openings so I could move between all three. I had a hall, a lounge and a bedroom. There was not much space, but it felt right. Then I cut down some twigs from a nearby tree and laid them over the roof as camouflage. On this side of the railway lines there were just fields, so the chances of anyone stumbling upon me were small, and when I crossed the line to the road on the other side, my shack looked just like part of the scrub. I changed a few details and was home at the usual time. There was a large clock on the station building I could see from where I was camping.

I went home empty-handed; my bag was still where I left it, but my mother didn’t notice, or if she did, she didn’t mention it.

The next day, I packed my rucksack, sleeping bag, blanket for a groundsheet, torch, some extra clothes, fishing rod and the money my mother had given me. Egil stood in the doorway: he wanted to go with me, but she held him by the shoulders so he wouldn’t run off, and when I reached the gate I turned, and she looked so small and worn out, and I guessed it wasn’t such a bad idea to stay away for a while.

Everything went fine for a few days. The weather held, and that was a good thing, as I wasn’t sure at all how the house would cope with the rain. I slept and woke and felt the walls all around me. I could stretch my arms out and touch both ends of the box with my fingers and feel the smooth inside of the cardboard. The sleeping bag was snug and dry, and at night I heard noises that were new to me. There were cars coming and going on the road and the clunk of wheels from passing trains and the screech when a train braked and stopped at the station. I could hear voices, but I was never afraid; all these sounds belonged there, and I could go on sleeping, knowing that this was something I had chosen myself.

I had plenty to read. All newspapers and magazines for the kiosks and the shops were dropped off at the news-stand beside the station, and at the crack of dawn I sneaked over and took the top copies out from under the string of the bound packs, and hoped that the number of copies was on the safe side. I read the left-wing Arbeiderbladet, the farmers’ Nationen, and Texas and Cowboy, and Travnytt, for trotting news. I kept well away from Romantikk. When Kari read that magazine, she had a look on her face that made my toes curl.

But mostly I slept. My grandfather used to say you could sleep in your grave. It was something you had to earn, like a legacy, when it was all over. In that case I was taking out an advance on this legacy and withdrew as much as I could, but on the fifth day I woke up and felt good, on top form and all of a sudden very restless. I rolled up the sleeping bag and sneaked over to the tap behind the station, cleaned my teeth and washed my face. The air was chill, the sky overcast and breathing was easy. And yet, in my stomach there was a void that would not go away even after two slices of bread with peanut butter. I took a sweater from my rucksack, put on my sunglasses and started to walk along the silent road by the shops and the railway line, round the long bend and up between the fields by the chapel to the place where our house was. The dew lay shining on everything in sight and made the landscape look moist and grey, and for the first time in a long while, the yellow burning feeling was gone. There was a new shade of green, but my sunglasses made that, and I was used to it.

Not far from home, I rounded a meadow, walked along a rusty barbed wire fence and approached the house from the back. You could take the usual path, but then they could see you from the kitchen window a hundred metres away. I took cover behind a birch tree on the opposite side of the road from our house and stood watching. It couldn’t have been later than six. My mother came out of the door with Egil in tow. He was tired and heavy and listless, but she gave him a firm push and closed the door. She didn’t lock it, though, so Kari must still have been at home. If I hadn’t been standing behind the tree, they would have spotted me; they might have done that anyway, because the birch was not a big birch, but they were in a hurry and just looked straight ahead and rushed down to the main road to catch the Gardermoen bus.

I didn’t move. The house looked different. It was still the same, but it was no longer my house, it seemed more distant, as if behind a wall of coloured glass, and I could not go there, because I was on a fishing holiday with Frank by Lake Aurtjern. If Kari hadn’t been at home, I could have walked over to the window and looked inside, and there was a good chance that what I saw inside would have been something very different from what I remembered was there just a week ago. But really, it wasn’t easy to remember anything, my mind went blank at once, and suddenly my legs began to tremble. It felt as if they could not carry me any longer, so I put my arms around the tree. There was not a breath of wind, but the thin birch was shaking so much, the leaves above me were clattering, and I made up my mind, took a deep breath and set off towards the house on my trembling legs. Then there was the roar of an engine. I turned and looked towards the bus stop. A tractor turned off the main road. It swayed from side to side and slowly came towards me, and then I ran back and hid behind the tree. We were old friends, the tree and I, we were a team. I patted its trunk and stared at the tractor. There was something familiar about the man in the cabin. The left-hand door was missing, and when the tractor came close enough, I could see in, and there sat Kjell from Kløfta. He was one of my father’s drinking pals. He was steering with his left hand, in his right he held a green bottle, and after every mouthful he grinned and toasted the shovel that was as high up as it could go and was dangling there, bulky and mud-streaked. A hand stuck out from one side and a black-trousered leg from the other. The foot had no shoe, only the sock emerged, and from where I was standing, it was easy to see that it was not a clean sock. Besides, I had seen it before.

Kjell was almost level with the birch now, above the roar of the engine I could hear him singing Alf Prøysen’s Tango for Two, and then he turned in to the gate. It was closed, but either he didn’t see it, or he couldn’t care less, and I heard how the thin, white boards were crushed under the wheels before he took another turn up to the house, lowered the shovel and emptied my father on to the flagstones by the steps.

Kjell put the tractor into neutral, the roar of the engine fell an octave, but it was still as fierce, and with the bottle in his hand he clambered down and went over to the black-clad bundle on the flagstones. He poked my father with his foot, but my father did not stir. Kjell grinned, shrugged, and then he stooped and lifted my father’s arm and wrapped it round the bottle so that the green neck stuck up by his cheek, like a baby’s feeding bottle. Then he climbed back in, reversed and missed the opening he had already made in the fence and took another chunk of it with him. I stayed where I was until I saw him enter the main road, then warily I set off towards the house.

I didn’t go straight there, but stopped by the fence first and looked up at the first floor window. Maybe the tractor had woken Kari. There was no one there, and no one came to open the door. I let go of the fence and circled the house, got closer and he was lying there quite still, no arm, no leg moving, not one black hair ruffled by the wind, and it was not possible to see if he was breathing or not. I was almost certain he was dead. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t knock on the door, couldn’t go to Gardermoen to tell my mother, because I wasn’t there. For a few moments I didn’t move, and I don’t think there was a thought in my head. Then I crouched down. His face was brown and thin, and there were furrows down his cheeks and the black fringe hanging over his forehead, the way I had always seen him. Many said my father had style, but to me he looked mean, though not right now, because his fierce blue eyes were closed, and his brow was smooth. I stretched out and touched the lapels of his jacket, felt the rough cloth on my fingertips, and then it happened. He flung himself round and grabbed my wrist and yelled a word I did not understand, he yelled ‘MARANA!’ and I jerked back and pulled at my hand, but it was too late. He was holding it so hard his knuckles turned white and the skin turned white on his fingers. The bottle fell over, I heard the liquid gurgle and run out on the flagstones as I wrestled and tugged. Whatever it was that had spilled out, it smelt strong and evil, and then I tumbled backwards right into it. I felt sticky and scared, my stomach churned, I was a turtle on its back, and I shouted:

‘Let me go, let me go!’ I slung my legs in the air, took aim and kicked my heels against his arm with all my force. He groaned and had to let go, and I got to my feet and half stumbled, half ran towards the smashed gate, jumped over the debris. and when I looked back at the house, I saw Kari up in the window. She was still in her dressing gown, she raised her arm and her eyes met mine behind my sunglasses. I stopped. I was about to point and say something, but then instead I shouted:

‘KARI!’ But it was no good. My father was on his back now with his arms stretched out, his blue eyes gleaming, and I turned and kept running, down the road and all the way to the railway station.

12

I RAN AND the sun came out as I ran and the clouds dispersed. The grey turned yellow and green, and suddenly it was hot and sweat was running down my back, in my armpits, in my groin and behind my sunglasses, and I thought, I will take them off. But I could not face the sun, I could not stop, I just ran, thinking it was better to run, that I liked running, that I could see everything clearer then and what was behind me would stay behind.

I didn’t want to stop, and yet soon I would have to, for I had run past all the fields, past the crossroads by the chapel I had never been in, and then down the entire stretch of the road and into the streets between the houses where people came out to watch me. I saw the railway station ahead of me and people waiting on the platform to go in to work in Oslo. I ran right through the crowd, instead of skirting round them, it would take too much time, and bumped into people without paying heed. One man was shouting after me, but I did not stop to listen to what he was saying or to see who the man was, so his words were left there, hanging in the air before they fell to the ground and were gone, and I ran on along the rails until no one could see me any more and through the bushes to my cardboard house. It was still there, and I had no idea why I thought it would be gone.

I collected my things. I found the torch and the books, stuffed the blanket and clothes into my rucksack and rolled the sleeping bag into a tight bundle before strapping it in its place under the flap, and carried the whole lot to one side. In a rucksack pocket I found some matches, a big box decorated with red felt on the top and small shiny baubles the way you do in kindergarten to make your parents happy. I had made it myself and no one had ever touched it, it had been buried under some junk in a kitchen drawer. Now I was the first one to use it. I walked over to the cardboard house. It had not rained for weeks, so the cardboard was bone dry, and when I struck a match and held it close, it caught fire at once.

In the evening a bonfire can be nice and bright in the darkness, but during the day it is different. Whoosh it went, and within a few minutes the whole house was ablaze. The heat was intense, and I stepped back. When the bushes also caught fire my first thought was to run to the station and get water from the tap at the back, but there were people all around, and I had nothing to say to them. So instead I stood still watching the flames. They rose higher and higher as they spread to the bushes, and I guess they could be seen from a long way away, if anyone cared to look.

‘Kiss my arse,’ I said, and swung the rucksack on to my back. I set off, giving the station as wide a berth as possible. I waded through knee-high grass wet with dew along a path only we kids knew about, and then I was back on the main road. At the crossroads by the chapel, I didn’t go straight on as I usually would have. Instead I turned left on to a gravel road that at first was winding its way between the green fields of barley and then through a cluster of trees and on to places I had never been to before.

I walked for most of the morning. As the hours passed by, the landscape turned hilly and rolling, and all the hollows that cut across the path I was taking never ran in the same direction. Downhill it was easy to walk, but my rucksack felt heavy as lead against the small of my back on the way up again, and I didn’t dare stop and take it off until I was certain that what I saw round about was all new to me. And yet I kept seeing familiar things: a crag, a red house, a fence that had collapsed into disrepair. The straps were gnawing the flesh off my shoulders, and I put my thumbs under them to relieve the pressure, and that worked fine for a mile or so, but then that too became painful.

The sun rose and stayed high in the sky. The air was dry in my mouth, and with each step the dust came whirling up from the gravel road. On the track behind me, I could see my footprints like two straight lines in the thick dust, and if I didn’t keep my mouth closed, the dust would crunch between my teeth. At the top of a rise I finally stopped. I really needed a drink.

I didn’t have the strength to walk one step more. I looked around me. Across the little valley ahead, on the next peak, I could just make out a yellow barn behind a grove of birch trees. It stood out, the yellow was shrill and very unusual. I had never seen a yellow barn in my life, and I thought maybe I could get some water there. I had never been here before, so I guessed it was safe.

Briskly I set off downhill. The road curved down the slope, and I heard the river before I saw it. I walked faster even though the soles of my feet were burning as if someone had rubbed them with a grater, but I didn’t care. At the very bottom and around the bend, the river came flowing out of the green shadows between the trees and then into rapids, and the boulders whipped the water into a froth that curved under a bridge, and then the river spread, and there was a deep pool where the water gently whirled before shooting off again over wet, shiny boulders that looked like huge marbles.

That pool looked good.

To get there I had to leave the road, clamber down an incline and over a barbed wire fence. I slid down, took off my rucksack and threw it over the fence. I took a running jump, I was flying, and then I was over. I picked up the rucksack and held it in my arms the last few paces, underneath the bridge on the warm rocks and over to the still water and put it down, avoiding the cowpats. I scouted around. All I could see was a few cows. Not a soul in sight. I took off my sunglasses and all my clothes and stacked them in a pile and went naked over to the pool. I didn’t wait, I didn’t count, I just jumped in.

It was cold as hell.

Suddenly, and just like in the books, I felt a claw around my chest. I sank, I couldn’t move, the water was deep, and I felt my body starting to spin. This can’t be true, it’s too short a life, I thought, I am only thirteen, for Christ’s sake, and then I kicked for all I was worth, but the current was strong and I was pulled into it, my body spinning like a log. I couldn’t hold my breath for much longer, and then my hand hit a rock. I took hold and crouched round what air I had left and put my feet against the rock and kicked off and suddenly there was sun and dazzling yellow foam, and I drifted on to the next rock, and it was towering above me, and I clung to it and took breath after deep breath and gazed towards the bank. I was halfway out in the river, but the bank was not that far. I could make it. The cows lay chewing and watching me, their eyes large and round like vacant mirrors. I was nothing to them. OK, I thought, and then I jumped, and again it was cold, and there was a roar in my ears, I held my head high and swam with all my might, staring at the cows that glided past all too quickly.

‘Shit!’ I yelled and maybe it did some good, for soon I had solid ground under my feet and I could stagger on to dry land. Rotting branches and jagged stones dug into my feet, but I didn’t feel any pain.

Slowly I climbed the bank up to where my clothes were piled. My body was still cold, and my legs were heavy, I didn’t have the strength to run. There was a large cowpat, and I stopped right in front of it and stood there for a good while before deciding to walk around it on the right-hand side. When I got to my things, I lay face down on the grass. I can dry off in the sun, I thought, I will just lie here and rest a little, and then I’ll go on.

When I awoke I was lying in a room with a skylight in the ceiling. The air was grey, like smoke, and a narrow beam of light came down from above. The ceiling was grey and the walls grey. There was no door to the room, but I saw the railings of a staircase coming up in a corner. I ran my hand over my body, and I was naked under the duvet. It too seemed grey, and the faint light was a delicate light and as soft as the duvet, and everything seemed soft in here.

Slowly I rolled over, and my body felt very heavy, and through a window right down by the floor I could see a small part of the yellow barn. Beside the bed was a bucket. I had thrown up in it. I could not remember when. I checked to see if I felt sick, but I didn’t. Only very heavy. I closed my eyes.

The next time I awoke, I heard footsteps on the stairs. I opened my eyes and it was darker now, and I could barely make out a woman coming up behind the railing. She was a large woman and light footed, and her hair was dark in the darkness, and she was coming towards me. She stopped beside my bed and took the bucket and carried it to the stairs. She moved without a sound. I watched her through half-open eyes, pretending to be asleep. Then she came back, dipped her hand in her apron pocket and put something on a shelf by the bed.

‘What’s that?’ I said.

‘It’s your sunglasses. You were shouting and making such a terrible fuss about them that Leif went back to the river and found them where your clothes were.’

‘Did I shout?’

‘It can’t be denied.’

‘I don’t need them now. It’s so dark in here.’

‘That’s good. How are you?’

‘I feel heavy.’

She smiled. ‘I guess you do. Look here now,’ she said and bent over me and pulled the pillow out and shook it and put it back behind my head. Her breast brushed against my cheek. It was large and soft. She straightened up. I closed my eyes.

‘Go back to sleep,’ she said.

‘Right.’

She walked without a sound towards the staircase, took the bucket and started down the steps. I could see her face. It wasn’t that round, and soon she would be all gone.

‘Who’s Leif?’ I said. She turned and smiled. Only her head could be seen above the floor.

‘That’s my husband. Signe is my name.’

Signe white, Signe soft, blessed Signe, I thought. Bless the day, bless your feet on the path and the light on your brow.

‘Get some more sleep. It’s night now. You can sleep for as long as you want. It’s nobody’s business.’

‘Right.’

And then she was gone. Everything went quiet again, and when I looked out the window by the floor, the yellow barn had turned grey. I could sleep some more. I could sleep for ever. Just lie here under this skylight and sleep.

The sun shone through the skylight and woke me. Now the whole room was white. I felt listless, but the heaviness was gone. My clothes lay on a spindle-back chair by the bed, and carefully I swung myself out and started to put them on. They were clean and dry. How could anyone have had the time? I thought. The column of light from the ceiling made the duvet and the sheet shine; it looked like something from the Bible we used to read at school. It was fine to look at, but I couldn’t stay around, I was famished.

I went to the stairs and tried not to make those creaking sounds on my way down, but it couldn’t be done. I came out into a hall with working clothes on hooks in a row, and there was an open door, leading to a room that was filled with light. Inside there was someone humming. I sneaked up to have a look and saw Signe by the worktop holding three large jars. She did not turn, and yet she said:

‘Is that the young lad? Don’t stand outside freezing!’ She laughed with a surprisingly soft, dark chuckle. ‘Come in and get yourself something to eat. You must be hungry as a bear. I’ve just been to the pantry to fetch some jam.’ I entered the room and sat down at the long table. I looked at the jars. That was a lot of jam.

From the kitchen I looked out to the yard. A Volvo station wagon was parked close to the house. Dried mud came up to the windows. Behind it, there was another car. It had no wheels and was propped up on four piles of bricks.

The kitchen was spacious and light and full of stuff that didn’t work any more and was going to be repaired or maybe had just been forgotten. There was a new stove next to the worktop, and in a corner stood a black wood burner, and the kitchen was warm and outside it was sunny, and light was everywhere. It was all very fine, but I had put my sunglasses on, just in case, and Signe didn’t mention them when she served me four thick slices of home-made bread on a board and added butter and jam. I ate as if it were the last food in the world, and Signe said:

‘There’s more where that came from, so you just take it easy. Enjoy the food.’ So I took it easy, and when I was almost finished, I heard heavy, shuffling footsteps in the hall. I stopped eating and looked up at the door. A big man was leaning against the door frame. He grinned at me. He had a stick in one hand and the other he was running through his close-cropped hair, and his hands were as big as boulders, and his bulging chest looked rock-hard.

‘Well, there’s the boy with the white bum,’ he said. Slowly I stood up from the table, there was no other door into the room, and the window looked as if it hadn’t been opened for years, and then I edged round the table and started to run towards him. It was like running into a brick wall. He was rock-hard. He let go of the stick and grabbed me round one shoulder, held my hair and looked me straight in the eye. He didn’t blink, and his eyes were the brilliant blue of a child.

‘Hello there, you young billy goat,’ he smiled. ‘What I meant to say was that if it hadn’t been for your bum I would never have seen you. I was in the Volvo, and suddenly I saw something white by the river that wasn’t there before, so of course I had to stop. You didn’t look too clever, I can tell you.’ He let go of my hair and stroked my cheek, and his hand was huge and dry and rough as the rock it resembled, and I stood quite still, and then I couldn’t hold back, and I started to cry. The tears came from everywhere in floods, and he gently pushed me back into the kitchen.

‘Eat up,’ he said, ‘and then come out to the cowshed and we can have a chat. I could do with a hand. My legs are not what they used to be.’

I sat back down at the table and ate the last slice and cried into the jam and Signe stood humming with her back to me and bent down to put more wood into the black stove. The fire was rumbling, and finally I was both full and empty and bursting at the seams.

‘When you’ve finished, you go out and find Leif, if you feel like it,’ Signe said.

I walked out into the sunshine with my dark glasses on. I couldn’t see Leif anywhere, but there was an old man in overalls standing in the yard. He was thin as a rake and tall, the overalls hung off his shoulders like a flabby tent, and he was holding his hands against the small of his back, gazing up into the air, so I too looked up, but there was nothing there, just air. Then he was aware of me, and he turned on his heel, and we stood up straight staring at each other, and he shook his head and stroked his chin and made a friendly gesture. I did the same, and when he smiled his face split in two, and he was off across the yard and behind the barn.

‘That’s Bjørn, the farm boy,’ Signe said behind me. I turned and there she was, standing in the doorway with a swill bucket in her hand. ‘He helps round here, looks after the horse and mucks out the cowshed. It’s the last door on the right,’ she said, pointing. I walked that way. The hook was off and the door was ajar, and through the crack I could hear Leif swearing like a trooper.

‘Goddamnit, you’re tryin’ to teach your father to fuck?’ he yelled, and then I heard a bang. When I entered, it was half dark, but past the empty stalls I could make him out among a few calves. In each hand he had a shiny pail. The biggest calf had small horns already and was banging against the nearest pail, pulling and tugging at the tether and making a hell of a row. Leif leaned over to put the pail in the trough, and the calf jerked its head and hit him on the temple.

‘You bastard!’ he shouted and dropped the pail on the floor and smacked the calf between the eyes. It gave a jolt. It’s going to keel over, I thought, I was certain of it, for his hands were like sledgehammers. But it shook its head and beat a retreat. Leif turned, holding his forehead and grinned.

‘Rearing the young is a tricky business.’

‘Is that what you do to children?’ I said slowly, sensing the open door behind me, and I already knew his legs were bad. The place stank of cow muck and cow feed, and calf bodies were crashing about in the murk, and he looked at me with round eyes. Then he shook his head and said:

‘People are not animals, Audun.’ He bent over the calf and patted its flank. I had no idea how he knew my name. He pushed the pail over to the calf.

‘You halfwit, Ferdinand, now there’ll be less for you. It’s your own fault,’ and the calf slurped up what was left in the pail, and Leif gently rested his upper chest on Ferdinand’s back and stroked its flank, and the calf stood quite still and just slurped. Leif straightened up, holding on to the calf’s back, grabbed his stick and came over to me.

‘Ferdinand will be a good bull, but he’ll be big, and it’s just as well he learns who’s boss from the off. Soon it will be too late.’

We walked out into the sun. I felt fine now. Apart from one thing.

‘How did you know my name?’ I said.

He laughed. ‘It was written on the inside of your rucksack. Come on, let’s go and say hello to Toughie.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘The scourge of the chicken run.’

Toughie was a fox. He was tied up behind the barn and was almost tame, and wonderful to behold at close quarters. When Leif approached, Toughie jumped up on the leash and smiled as foxes do but he wasn’t that tame. Whenever he screamed there was chaos in the chicken run. But no one would let Toughie go. They had grown to love him, and they would either have to kill him or drive him miles away, and that was not an option.

‘A fox is a fox,’ Leif said, ‘and now that he knows his way around, it’s no good to have him running loose.’

We walked around, and Leif showed me the place. The stable, the sheep shed, the tractor that wouldn’t start just now, and the two baby goats he kept for entertainment.

‘We’ve got no TV here, Audun, and we have to have something to amuse ourselves with.’ And he pointed to the yellow barn and said: ‘Isn’t it fine,’ and I said it was, and then we crossed the yard, and Leif got in behind the wheel of the Volvo, and I got in on the other side.

‘I’ve a job for you,’ he said. ‘Let’s drive off now, and if you see something on the road I should brake for, anything living or breathing or whatever, you tell me in good time.’

‘Right,’ I said. I didn’t understand why, but we drove off, and for a minute there I was afraid we were going back the way I had come, but we didn’t. We were going to the shop and that was in the opposite direction. At one point I saw a tractor ahead of us on the road, and I told Leif in good time, and then he put his right hand under his right leg and lifted it off the accelerator and on to the brake, and we stopped just a metre from it.

‘Leg’s not what it used to be,’ Leif said.

I was there for a whole week. At night I slept in the room beneath the skylight, and in the morning I got up, and Signe served me her home-made bread in the kitchen. And then I worked most of the day on the jobs that Leif decided I could manage. There were more and more, and I could not get enough, and in the evening I swam in the river at a far better spot than the first one I found. At ten o’clock I was sent upstairs with a hug from Signe, and I was so greedy for it that I blushed. I tried to think as little as possible, I just drank it all in. On Wednesday one of their sons came up and fixed the tractor. They let me join him for a test drive, and then I drove it alone across the farmyard with everyone watching and cheering. The engine roared, and I sat up high, and I could steer it wherever I wanted to go.

On Saturday it was raining, and Leif said ‘Thank God, that’s not a day too soon’, and for the first time, I went out into the yard without my sunglasses on.

When I got up on the eighth day and went downstairs, my father was standing in the kitchen. He was smiling, and he was clean-shaven, but in his eyes I could see what was in store for me. Leif was sitting at the table looking down as I came in.

‘Sorry, Audun, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. We had to let them know. Anything else would be illegal.’