My Struggle: Book Three

A dumping ground.

A garbage dump in the forest!

Some seagulls were flying over the far end. Screaming, they circled above the garbage as if it were the sea. The stench, sweet though still pungent, stung our nostrils. Then the shots rang out again. Not loud, the reports were crisp, like a kind of crackle. Slowly we made our way down to the edge of the dump, and there, a stone’s throw away, we saw two men, one standing by a wrecked car, the other lying on his stomach next to him. Both had guns pointing across the dump. They fired at intervals of a couple of seconds. The man on the ground stood up, and then they went into the dump, carrying their guns. We walked over to where they had been. Between the piles of waste, which rose and fell like hills and dales, ran a path that they followed. They were dressed like proper hunters with boots and gloves. They were grown-ups but not old. Around them I saw cars, fridges, freezers, TVs, wardrobes, and dressers. I saw sofas, chairs, tables, and lamps. I saw skis and bikes, fishing rods, chandeliers, car tires, cardboard boxes, wooden chests, Styrofoam containers, and heap upon heap of fat, bulging plastic bags. What lay before us was a whole landscape of abandoned goods. Most of it consisted of bags of food leftovers and packaging, things that all households carried to the trash can every day, but in the part where they were standing, and which the two men were crossing, perhaps a fifth of the total area, larger items had been deposited.

“They’re shooting rats,” Geir said. “Look!”

They had stopped walking. One held up a rat by the tail. The whole of one side was shot to pieces, or so it seemed. He swung it around a few times and let go, launching it through the air. It landed on some bags and slid down between them. They laughed. The second man kicked away another rat, putting the tip of his boot underneath the corpse and flicking it.

They returned. Their eyes squinting in the bright sun, they said hello to us. They could have been brothers.

“Are you out for a walk, fellas?” one asked. He had curly red hair beneath a blue peaked cap, a broad face, thick lips with a vigorous moustache above, also red.

We nodded.

“A walk to the garbage dump! Takes all kinds, eh,” the second man said. Apart from his hair color, which was blond, almost white, and his top lip, which was hairless, he was the spitting image of the first man. “Are you going to eat your packed lunches out there? On top of the piles of garbage?”

They laughed. We laughed a little, too.

“Do you want to watch us shoot some rats?” the first man said.

“Yes, love to,” Geir said.

“Then you’ll have to stand behind us. It’s important. OK? And stand very still so that you don’t distract us.”

We nodded.

This time both of them lay down. For a long time they didn’t move. I tried to see what they could see. But only when the shots rang out did I see the rat, which seemed to be hurled backward along the ground, as if caught by a sudden, violent gust of wind.

They got up.

“Do you want to come and see?” one said.

“There’s not a lot to see!” the second man said. “A dead rat!”

“I want to see it,” Geir said.

“Me, too,” I said.

But the rat wasn’t dead. It was writhing on the ground. The rear part was almost completely blown away. One of the men jabbed the stock of his gun into its head, there was a soft crunch, and it lay still. He studied the gunstock with a concerned expression.

“Oh, why did I do that?” he said.

“You probably wanted to look like a tough guy,” the second man said. “Come on. Let’s go. You can wipe it when we get to the car.”

They went “ashore” again, with us tagging behind.

“Do your parents know you’re here?” one said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “I suppose they said you mustn’t touch anything here? It’s full of bacteria and other shit, you know.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Great! See you, fellas.”

Some minutes later a car started down on the road, and we were alone. For a while we ran around looking at things, emptying bags, pushing over cupboards to see if there was anything behind them while shouting out what we had found. A bag of recent magazines, in good condition, was my biggest find. There was a stack of Tempo and Buster, a Tex Willer paperback, and then some of those small, rectangular cowboy magazines from the 1960s. Geir found a slim flashlight, a small deer embroidered on linen, and two stroller wheels. When we were looking, we sat down in the heather with our finds and ate our packed lunches.

Geir scrunched up the wax paper and threw it as far as he could. Thinking, probably, that it would end up in the middle of the garbage, more or less, but it was met by a gust of wind just as he released it, and it was so light that it didn’t even reach the edge and landed in the heather.

“Let’s go for a shit, eh?” he said.

“OK,” I said. “Where?”

“Dunno,” he said with a shrug.

We walked around in the forest for a while looking for an appropriate spot. Shitting in the garbage dump was, for some reason, inappropriate, there was something dirty about it, it seemed to me, and that was strange, because it was all waste, the whole lot of it. But garbage, that was shiny plastic bags and cardboard boxes, discarded electrical appliances and piles of newspapers. Anything soft and sticky was wrapped. So we had to go into the forest to do it.

“Look at that tree!” Geir said.

There was a tall pine tree on its side perhaps ten meters away. We clambered up on the trunk, pulled down our trousers, and stuck out our cheeks, each holding onto a branch. Geir swung his butt just as the shit came out so that it was flung to the side.

“Did you see that?” he laughed.

“Ha ha ha!” I laughed, trying a different ploy, dropping it like a bomb from a plane over a town. It was a wonderful feeling as it came further and further out, the moment when it was suspended in midair until it finally let go and plunged to the ground.

Sometimes I would hold it in for days so that I could have a really big one and also because it felt good in itself. When I really did have to shit, so much that I could barely stand upright but had to bend forward, I had such a fantastic feeling in my body if I didn’t let nature take its course, if I squeezed the muscles in my butt together as hard as I could and, as it were, forced the shit back to where it came from. But this was a dangerous game, because if you did it too many times the turd ultimately grew so big it was impossible to shit it out. Oh Christ, how it hurt when such an enormous turd had to come out! It was truly unbearable, I was convulsed with pain, it was as if my body were exploding with pain, AAAAAAGGGHHH!! I screamed, OOOOOHHH, and then, just as it was at its very worst, suddenly it was out.

Oh, how good that was!

What a wonderful feeling it was!

The pain was over.

The shit was in the pan.

Everything was peace and light throughout my body. Indeed, almost so peaceful that I didn’t feel like getting up and wiping my bum. I just wanted to sit there.

But was it worth it?

I could spend the whole day dreading one of those big shits. I didn’t want to go to the toilet because it hurt so much, but if I didn’t it would only hurt more and more.

So in the end there was no option but to go. Knowing full well that this would hurt like hell!

Once I was so terrified I tried to find another way to get the shit out. I half stood, and then I stuck my finger up my butt, as far as it would go. There! There was the shit. As hard as a rock! When I had located it I wriggled my finger to and fro in an attempt to widen the passage. At the same time I pressed a little, and in that way, bit by bit, I managed to maneuver the shit to the side. Oh, it still hurt to work the last bit free, but not so much.

What a method that was!

I didn’t mind so much that my finger was all brown; it was easy enough to wash it off. The smell was another matter, however, because although I scrubbed and scoured, a faint odor of shit hung around my finger all day and all night, even the next morning I could still smell it when I woke.

All these pros and cons had to be weighed up against one another.

When Geir and I had finished, we each wiped ourselves with a fern leaf, and then we went to see the result. Mine had a greenish glimmer to it and was so soft it had already spread across the ground. Geir’s was light brown with a black patch at one end, harder and more lump shaped.

“Isn’t it strange that mine smells good whereas yours stinks?” I said.

“It’s yours that stinks!” Geir said.

“It does not,” I said.

“Pooh, manohman!” he said, pinching his nose with his fingers as he poked around in my shit with a long stick.

Some flies buzzed above it. They too had a greenish glimmer.

“Right,” I said. “Shall we go? We can see what has happened to them next Saturday, maybe?”

“I’ll be away then,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“To Risør,” he said. “We’re going to look at a boat, I think.”

We ran up to fetch our things, and then we walked home, Geir with a stroller wheel in each hand, me with a plastic bag full of comics. I made him promise he wouldn’t say anything at home about where we had been because I had a suspicion they would ban us from going if they knew. I had prepared an explanation for the comics, I had borrowed them from someone called Jørn, who lived on the other estate, in case Dad found them and kicked up a fuss.

Once inside the porch, I stood still for a moment. I heard nothing unusual and bent down to untie my shoelaces.

Somewhere inside the house a door opened. I took off one shoe and put it next to the wall. The second door opened, and Dad was standing in front of me.

I put my other shoe in its place and stood up.

“Where have you been?” Dad asked.

“In the forest.”

I suddenly remembered my explanation, and added, looking at the floor, “And then on top of the hill.”

“What have you got in the bag?”

“Some comics.”

“Where did you get them?”

“I borrowed them from someone called Jørn. He lives up there.”

“Let me see,” Dad said.

I passed him the bag, he eyed the contents, and took out a Tex Willer paperback.

“I’ll have that,” he said, and went back to his study.

I went into the hall and was halfway up the stairs when he called me.

Had he sussed me? Perhaps it smelled of garbage?

I turned and went back down, so weak at the knees that they could hardly carry me.

He stood in the doorway.

“You haven’t had this week’s pocket money,” he said. “Yngve had his a while ago. Here you are.”

He put a five-krone coin in my hand.

“Oh, thank you!” I said.

“But B-Max is closed,” he said. “You’ll have to go to the Fina station if you want to buy candy.”

It was a long way to the Fina station. First of all, there was the long hill, then there was a long, flat stretch, then there was the long path through the forest, down to the gravel lane that came out by the main road, where the gas station was, which was both fantastic and bad. The hill and the flat stretch were no problem, there were lots of houses and cars and people on both sides. The path was more problematic because after only a few meters you disappeared into the trees where there were neither humans nor anything made by human hand to be seen. Just leaves, bushes, trunks, flowers, the odd bog, the odd pile of felled trees, the odd meadow. I used to sing when I walked there. Gikk jeg en tur på stien, I sang. Children’s songs: Fløy en liten blåfugl, Bjørnen sover, and Jeg gikk meg over over sjø og land. When I sang it was as if I wasn’t alone, even though I was. It was as if the singing was another boy. If I didn’t sing, I talked to myself. Wonder whether anyone lives on the other side, I said. Or wonder whether the forest continues into eternity. No, it can’t, we live on an island. So the sea is around us. Perhaps the ferry to Denmark is there now? I’d like a bag of Nox licorice, please, and a bag of Fox lemon candies. Fox and Nox, Nox and Fox. Fox and Nox, Nox and Fox.

On the right-hand side, a vast concourse opened beneath the crowns of the trees. They were deciduous, they were tall, and the tops formed such a dense canopy that the vegetation on the ground was sparse.

Straight afterward I came to the gravel lane, followed it past the old white house and the old red barn, heard the whoosh of the cars on the main road below, and when I reached that, fifty meters away stood the gas station in all its glory.

The four gas pumps holding their hands to their temples in their usual salute. The big white plastic sign with FINA in blue letters shone wanly at the top of the high pillar. A semi was parked there, with the driver hanging an arm out of the open window and talking to someone on the ground beneath him. Outside the kiosk there were three mopeds. A car stopped at one of the pumps, a man with a thick wallet in his back pocket got out, grabbed the nozzle, and stuck it in the tank. I stopped next to him. The pump began to burr; the numbers on what I thought of as the face sped around. It seemed to be blinking at an incredible speed. The man was looking another way while this was going on, and to me it seemed to be a gesture of nonchalance, not following what was happening. This was someone who knew what he was about.

I went to the kiosk and opened the door. My heart was beating fast, you never knew what was awaiting you in here. Would someone talk to you? Crack a joke and make all the others laugh?

“Ah, here’s Knausgård junior,” they might say. “What’s your father up to today? Is he at home grading papers?”

The customers who hung out went to the school where Dad taught. They wore denim, or even leather, jackets, often with brand labels sewn on. Pontiac, for example, or Ferrari or Mustang. Some of them wore scarves. All of them had their hair down over their eyes. And then they tossed their heads back when they wanted to see something. Outside they spat all the time and drank Coke. Some of them put peanuts into the bottle so they could drink and eat at the same time. Almost all of them smoked, even though it was forbidden. The youngest had bicycles, the oldest mopeds, now and then they were joined by even older boys who had cars.

This was where the bad side came in. Mopeds, long hair, smoking, malingering, playing the machines, everything that happened at the gas station was bad.

The laughter, which always met me when they realized that I was Knausgård junior, gave me nightmares. I had no answer, I had to lower my head and make a beeline for the counter and buy whatever I was there to buy.

“Knausgård junior is afraid!” they might shout, if they were in that mood, for they left me alone as often as they shouted at me. You never knew.

This time they left me in peace. Three of them stood around a one-arm bandit, four sat around a table drinking Coke, and then there were three girls wearing makeup and giggling at the table at the back.

I spent all my money on Fox and Nox, it wasn’t a small amount, the assistant put them in a transparent plastic bag for me, and I hurried out.

Up the gravel lane, where the air was chilly as the sun had stopped shining there, onto the path. It wasn’t so bad, I told myself, looking between all the tree trunks in the vast concourse beneath the branches to see if anything was moving. What should I do? I wondered. Eat the Fox and Nox alternately, or eat all the Fox candies first and then all the Nox?

To the right of me the bushes rustled.

I stopped and stared at them. Slowly retreated a couple of paces, for safety’s sake.

More rustling.

What could it be?

“Hello,” I said. “Is anyone there?”

Silence.

I bent down and picked up a stone. Hurled it into the bushes and then ran off as fast as my legs would carry me. When I stopped and saw no one was following me, I laughed.

“That taught you!” I said and walked on.

As for spirits of the dead, it was best not to think about them. Keep your mind on other things at all times. Because as soon as you started thinking about the dead, about them being around you, behind that spruce tree over there, for instance, all of a sudden it was impossible to think about anything else, and you just got more and more frightened. In the end, all you could do was run, with your heart hammering away and a sort of scream echoing throughout your body.

So even though everything had been fine this time, it was still with a sense of relief that I saw the path and the estate on the flat land open in front of me.

The air, which had been clear and bright when I set out, had turned a little gray as it hovered above the land between the houses along the road.

I ran a few steps.

Two girls were standing outside one of the houses. They watched me as I came across the grass. Then they started running toward me.

What did they want?

I watched them approaching but continued to walk.

They stopped in front of me.

One was the sister of Tom, one of the biggest boys on the estate, who had his own car, red and shiny. I had never seen the other girl before. They were at least ten years old.

“Where have you been?” one said.

“Fina,” I said.

“What were you doing there?” the other said.

“Nothing,” I said, moving off.

They stepped to the side so that I couldn’t get past.

“Get out of the way,” I said. “I’m going home.”

“What have you got in the bag?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh yes, you have. Fox and Nox. We can see.”

“And? I’ve bought them for my brother. He’s eleven.”

“Give them to us.”

“No-oo,” I said.

One of them, Tom’s sister, made a grab for the bag. I swung it to the side. The other girl pushed with both arms and sent me flying.

“Give us the bag,” she said.

“No,” I said, wrapping my arms round it while struggling to get to my feet.

She pushed me again. I fell headlong and started crying.

“They’re mine!” I shouted. “You can’t have them!”

“Thought they were supposed to be your brother’s,” one of them said, grabbing the bag and yanking it out of my hands. Then they ran across the grass as fast as they could to the road, laughing all the while.

“They’re mine!” I yelled after them. “They’re mine!”

I cried all the way home.

They had stolen my candy. How was that possible? How could they just come up to me and take them? They were mine! I had been given the money by Dad and walked all the way to the Fina station and back! And they just came and took them! Pushed me over! How could they do that?

Approaching my house, I wiped my face on my sweater sleeves, blinked a few times, and shook my head a bit so that no one would see I had been crying.

Once when I was five, Trond’s little sister, Wenche, threw a rock at me, right into my stomach. I burst into tears and ran over to our garden fence, where Dad was working. I was sure he would help me, but he wouldn’t, on the contrary, he said not only was Wenche a girl, she was also a year younger than me, it was nothing to snivel about. He said I embarrassed him and I should fight back, surely I understood that. But I didn’t. Everyone knew it was wrong to throw stones, didn’t they? And that fighting back was bad, a last resort?

Not Dad, though, no. He stood there with his stern gaze, and his folded arms, looking across the road to where all the children were playing, nodded his head, and said I should carry on playing and stop bothering him.

And since it was girls who had stolen my candy, there was no hope of any help from Dad.

I stood still in the hallway, listened, removed my shoes, put them by the wall, walked carefully upstairs, and into Yngve’s room while the thought of all the lost Foxes and Noxes hit me with renewed force, and again the tears began to roll down my cheeks.

Yngve was lying on his stomach on the bed reading a copy of Buster with his legs in the air. He had emptied a bag of candy.

“What are you crying about?” he said.

I told him what had happened.

“Couldn’t you just have run off?” he said.

“No, they were in my way.”

“They pushed you. Couldn’t you have pushed them?”

“No, they were much bigger and stronger than me,” I sobbed.

“Surely you don’t have to blub like that because of it,” Yngve said. “Would it help if I gave you some of mine?”

“Ye-e-s,” I hiccuped.

“Not a lot, though. But some. This one and this one and this one and this one, for example. And maybe this one. There you go. Is that better now?”

“Yes,” I said. “Can I sit here as well?”

“You can sit here until you’ve eaten these. Then you’ve got to go.”

“OK.”

After I had eaten the candy and washed my face in cold water it felt as if I was starting afresh. Mom was in the kitchen, I could hear, she was cooking, the fan was blowing. All the time I had been upstairs I hadn’t heard anything from Dad, so he must have been in his study.

I went into the kitchen and sat down on a chair.

“Did you buy some candy today?” Mom asked. She was standing by the stove and turning what was probably minced meat in the frying pan. It was sizzling and spitting. There was a pan on the other plate hissing away inaudibly, drowned by the noise of the fan.

“Yup,” I said.

“Did you go all the way down to the Fina station?” She always said, “the Fina station,” never just “Fina,” as we did.

“Yes,” I said. “What are we having?”

“Casserole with rice, I thought.”

“And pineapples?” She smiled.

“No, not pineapples. That’s a Mexican dish.”

“Oh, yes.”

There was a pause. Mom tore open a bag and poured the contents over the meat, then she measured some water in a jug and poured that on top. As soon as that was done, the water was bubbling in the pan and she poured in the rice. She sat down at the other side of the table, pressed her hands against her back, and stretched.

“What do you actually do in Kokkeplassen?” I said.

“Surely you know, don’t you? You’ve been there many times.”

“You take care of the people living there.”

“Yes, you could put it like that.”

“But why are they there, actually? Why don’t they live at home?”

She considered that question at length. Indeed, she thought for so long that my mind was on other things by the time she answered.

“Many of the people who live there suffer from anxiety. Do you know what that is?”

I shook my head.

“It’s when you’re afraid of something and you don’t know what it is.”

“Are they afraid all the time?”

She nodded.

“Yes, they are. And then I talk to them. Do a variety of activities with them to make them less afraid.”

“But …,” I said. “Aren’t they afraid of one thing in particular? Or are they just afraid?”

“Yes, that’s exactly how it is. They’re just afraid. But then it passes and then they move back home.”

There was another pause.

“Why did you ask about that? Is it something you’ve been wondering about?”

“Nope. It was Frøken. We had to tell her what our parents did. I said you worked at Kokkeplassen, and she asked what you did there. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure. But do you know what Geir said? He said his mother taught the people who were where she worked to tie their shoelaces!”

“That’s a good way of putting it. The ones she works with aren’t afraid. But they have difficulty doing the little chores we take for granted. Like cooking and washing. And getting dressed. So Martha goes there and helps them.”

She got up and stirred the pot.

“They’re loonies, aren’t they?” I said.

“Mentally handicapped is the expression,” she said, looking at me. “Loony is a very ugly word.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

A door opened on the floor below.

“I’m going to see Yngve,” I said, getting up.

“You do that,” Mom said.

I walked as fast as I could without running. If I set off as soon as I heard the first door I would reach Yngve’s room before Dad had come up the stairs and seen me. If I set off when I heard the second door he would see me.

Now I could hear the first footstep on the stairs as I closed the door behind me.

Yngve was still on his bed reading. He had a soccer magazine now.

“Food ready soon?” he said.

“I think so,” I said. “Can I borrow a comic?”

“Help yourself,” he said. “But be gentle with it.”

Dad walked past outside. I bent down over the pile of comic books on the shelf. He kept his comics in collections, so The Phantom was in a file, for example, while mine lay all strewn about. He was also a member of the Phantom Club.

“Can I take the whole file?” I said.

“Out of the question,” he said.

“The annual then?”

“You can have that,” he said. “But bring it back when you’ve finished!”

On Saturdays we had cold rice pudding in the morning and a hot meal in the evening, usually a casserole, always in the dining room, and not in the kitchen where we normally ate. There was a napkin by each place. Mom and Dad drank beer or wine with the food; we were given a soft drink. After eating we watched TV. More often than not there was some Broadway-style show from a studio in Oslo, with women dressed in net stockings, jackets, and hats and carrying canes, while men in dinner jackets, white scarves, and hats and carrying canes came down a white staircase singing some song or other. Frequently it was “New York, New York.” Sølvi Wang, whom Mom liked, usually was featured. Leif Juster, Arve Opsahl, and Dag Frøland were other regular contributors to Saturday night TV. Wenche Myhre used to perform a sketch playing a young girl in a nursery, or there was the Eurovision Song Contest, which, aside from the FA Cup Final, the European Cup Final, and Wimbledon, was the pinnacle of the year’s TV.

On this evening, a man dressed in rags sat on a roof singing and he had an incredibly deep voice. Oul Man Rivå, he sang. I was humming the song all evening. Oul Man Rivå, I sang as I was brushing my teeth, Oul Man Rivå, I sang as I was getting undressed, Oul Man Rivå, I sang lying in bed and going to sleep.

Mom and Dad had closed the sliding door and were in the living room sitting and chatting, smoking, listening to music, and finishing off the bottle of wine after dinner. Between the songs I could just hear Dad’s rumbling voice and was aware that Mom said something in the pauses, although I couldn’t hear her.

I fell asleep. When I awoke they were still there. Were they going to talk all night, or what? I thought and fell asleep again.

The warm, bright September days were summer’s last burst of energy before abruptly crumbling, and in its place came rain. T-shirts and shirts were exchanged for sweaters and long trousers, jackets were put on in the morning and, when the torrential autumn rain set in, rubber boots and raincoats. Streams swelled, gravel roads were covered in puddles, water poured down the gutters in the streets, bringing with it sand, small stones, and pine and spruce needles. Beach life stopped, people no longer went on trips in their boats on the weekends, and the traffic to and from the pontoons was all about fishing now. Dad also got out his fishing equipment, the rod, the reel, the lures, and the gaff, put on his dark-green oilskins, and chugged to the far side of the island, where some weekends he stood alone for hours, fishing for the big cod that were there during the winter season. It was very appropriate that the swimming class started at this time because there was something unnatural about the thought of swimming in an indoor pool when the sun was baking hot outside. It was every Tuesday evening all autumn, and everyone in the class had signed up. Since Mom left for work before I got up in the morning I reminded her about the course the night before, so that she would remember to buy me a swimming cap on her way home. We should have done it a long time ago, but for some reason or other it hadn’t happened. When I heard her car coming up the hill I ran down into the hall and waited. She came in wearing her coat, carrying a bag over her shoulder, and, on seeing me, smiled a weary smile. No plastic bag from a sports shop in evidence anywhere. Perhaps it was in her handbag? After all, a bathing cap occupied no space.

“Have you got the cap?” I said.

“Oh no, do you know what?” she said.

“You forgot it? You didn’t forget it, did you? The course is today!”

“I did. I was lost in my own world on the way back from work. But you know … when does it start?”

“At six,” I said.

She looked at her watch.

“It’s half past three now. The shops close at four. I can make it if I go now. I can do that. Tell Dad I’ll be back again in an hour, will you?”

I nodded.

“Hurry up then!” I said.

Dad was in the kitchen frying chops. A cloud of cooking fumes hovered in the air above the stove. The lid on the potatoes clanked against the side of the pan with the pressure from the steam. He had the radio on and stood with his back to it, one hand holding the spatula and the other resting against the edge of the counter.

“Dad?” I said.

He swivelled round.

“What?” he said. And when he saw me, “What do you want?”

“Mom’ll be back in an hour,” I said. “She told me to tell you.”

“Has she been here and gone off again?”

I nodded.

“Why? What for?”

“To buy a swim cap. I’ve got my swimming course today.”

The irritation in his eyes was unmistakable. But I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I couldn’t just turn on my heels and go.

Then he nodded in the direction of my room, and I went, glad to have got off so lightly.

Ten minutes later he called us. We slunk onto the landing from our rooms, warily pulled our chairs back from the table, sat down, waited until Dad had put the potatoes, a chop, a little pile of browned onions, and some boiled carrots on our plates before, sitting up straight and utterly still, apart from our forearms, mouths, and heads, we started to eat. No one said a word during the meal. When our plates were empty, except for the potato skins and the bones that had been gnawed clean, we thanked Dad and went back to our rooms. From the whistling I could hear I concluded that Dad was making coffee in the kitchen. After it had stopped, he went down to his study, probably with a cup of coffee in his hand. I lay on my bed reading with my ears tuned to the noises outside the house, the drone of cars passing, and I recognized the sound of Mom’s VW the moment it turned into the road further down, Beetles were unmistakable and, had I made a mistake, nonetheless, I was absolutely certain I was right a few seconds later when it entered Nordåsen Ringvei. I got up and went onto the landing above the staircase. As Dad was in his study, it was the best place to wait.

The door opened, I heard her taking off first her boots, then her jacket, which she hung on the hat stand in the corner, and her footsteps across the carpet in the hallway below, which, as they began to climb the stairs, seemed to merge into the sight of her.

“Have you got it?” I said.

“Yes, no problem,” she said.

“Can I see it?”

She passed me the white Intersport bag she was holding. I opened it and pulled out the bathing cap.

“But Mom, it’s got flowers on it!” I said. “I can’t wear a cap with flowers on it! That’s no good! It’s a woman’s! You bought a woman’s swimming cap!”

“Isn’t it lovely?” she said.

I looked down at the cap with tears in my eyes. It was white, and the flowers decorating it were not just printed on but small, raised plastic imitations of flowers.

“You’ll have to go and change it,” I said.

“Karl Ove, my love, the shops are closed. I can’t.”

She laid her hand on my head and looked at me.

“Is it really that bad?” she said.

“I can’t go to the class with this. I won’t go. I’ll stay at home.”

“But Karl Ove,” she said.

The tears were streaming down my cheeks now.

“You’ve been looking forward to the class so much,” she said. “Surely a few flowers don’t matter that much, do they? You can still go. Then we’ll buy you a new cap for next time. I can use this one. I need one. And I think the flowers look lovely, I really do.”

“You don’t understand anything, do you,” I said. “I can’t go. That’s a woman’s swimming cap!” I shouted.

“Now I think you’re being unreasonable,” Mom said.

At that moment Dad’s study door slammed. He could scent a scene like this from a range of several kilometers. Quick as a flash, I dried my eyes and put the cap back in the bag. But it was too late. He was already at the bottom of the stairs.

“Well?” he said.

“Karl Ove didn’t like the bathing cap I bought him,” Mom said. “So now he’s refusing to go to the swimming class.”

“What nonsense is this!” Dad said. He came up the last steps and lifted my chin with his hand.

“You’re going to the class with the cap your mother has bought you. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And don’t burst into tears over such trivialities. It’s pathetic.”

“Yes,” I said, wiping my eyes with my hand again.

“Go into your room and stay there until it’s time to leave. Now.”

I did as he said.

“Imagine going all the way back to town to buy it in the first place,” I heard him say as they went into the kitchen.

“But he’s been looking forward to this class for so long,” Mom said. “It was the least I could do. I had promised him. And then I went and forgot.”

An hour later Mom came in to get me. We went downstairs to the hall, I had decided not to talk to her, and said nothing, just put on my boots and anorak. In my hand I had a bag with my trunks, towel, and the swimming cap in it. Opening the door, I saw Geir and Leif Tore waiting outside, each holding a plastic bag. It was getting dark outside, and the air was heavy with drizzle. Their hair was wet; their jackets glistened in the light from the lamp above the door.

They said hello to Mom, Mom returned the greeting, and then she dashed across the gravel with us close behind. She opened the car door, pushed the seat forward, and we clambered onto the back seat.

She inserted the key into the ignition and started the engine.

“Is there something wrong with the exhaust?” Leif Tore asked.

“Yes, it’s an old car,” Mom said, putting the car into reverse and backing up the hill. The wipers dawdled to and fro across the windshield. The headlights lit up the black spruce trees across the road, which seemed to take a step toward us.

“Geir can swim,” I said. Then I remembered I wasn’t going to say anything.

“Very impressive!” Mom said. Flicked the turn-signal lever down and glanced through the right-hand window before turning onto the road and driving off to the next crossroads, where everything was repeated, just the other way around: now the lever was flicked up and she glanced through the left-hand window.

“And you, Leif Tore, can you already swim?” she said.

The roar of the engine rebounded off the blasted rock face on the other side of the road as we struggled up the hill to Tromøya Bridge. The lights at the top of the mast glowed red in the night. If you didn’t know any better you would probably think they were floating in the air, I thought.

Leif Tore shook his head.

“Just a bit,” he said.

The rain-filled gloom had begun to merge the sea and the uplands, I could see as we crossed the bridge. The difference could still be distinguished because the darkness of the land was a shade deeper and denser than that of the calm water, which had a kind of sheen to it. The lights, visible on both sides, seemed to hang in mid air in the far distance, almost like stars in the firmament, while those closest, whose illuminated surroundings could still be made out, were set in the landscape in quite a different way. Green and red lights shone from lanterns or small lighthouses here and there. We drove down to the intersection over the bridge, houses and gardens appeared on one side, industrial buildings on the other, yellow and empty in the light of the headlights, with the dripping tarpaulin of night hanging above. The wipers were racing across the windshield; the rain was heavier now. Leif Tore said Rolf had been in the same swimming class. The teacher was an older woman, in her forties, who, according to Rolf, was very strict. But Rolf said so many things. If he got a chance to pull a fast one on Leif Tore, or anyone else, he took it. I said I didn’t have any goggles with me, but I could see underwater, so it wasn’t a problem. Geir showed us his. They were Speedo goggles with blue glass and white elastic.

“What about your cap?” Leif Tore said.

“My dad’s. It’s a bit big!” Geir laughed.

“Does your dad have a swimming cap? Mine definitely doesn’t. Does yours?” Leif Tore asked, looking at me.

“I don’t think so. What’s the time, Mom? Will we make it?”

Mom raised her left arm and consulted her watch.

“Twenty-five to six. So we’re in good time.”

“Why do only women and children wear caps?” Leif Tore continued.

“They don’t,” I said. “Swimmers who take part in competitions wear them, too.”

“I’m going to get one of those white ones with a Norwegian flag on it the next time we have any money,” Geir said. “Dad promised me today. And then he said I could join a swimming club as soon as I can swim properly. In town.”

“But weren’t we going to join a soccer club?” I said.

“Ye-es. I can do both, can’t I?” Geir said.

Mom signaled to leave the main road, drove up a gravel road leading to an unilluminated school, and parked in front.

“I think it’s over there,” she said, pointing to a low building behind.

“It is,” Leif Tore said. “Because that’s Trond and Geir Håkon over there.”

“I’ll be back to pick you up in about an hour then,” Mom said. “Good luck!”

We piled out of the car with our bags and ran to the entrance as Mom’s green Beetle turned and drove back the way we had come.

The changing room was cold, the floor a greenish color, the walls white, the light in the ceiling shrill. A number of cream-colored wooden benches ran along three of the walls, with a line of hooks above. Five of the boys had come; they chatted and laughed as they undressed. They said hi to us.

“The water in the pool’s cold!” Sverre said.

“Freezing cold,” Geir B added.

“Have you been in?” Leif Tore said.

“Of course,” Sverre said.

I sat down on the bench and pulled my sweater over my head. Stood up and took off my trousers. The faint smell of chlorine filled me with happiness. I loved chlorine, I loved swimming pools, I loved swimming. Geir B, Sverre, and Dag Magne went into the shower naked. Trond and Geir Håkon followed. We had been told in the strictest of terms that we had to have a shower before we entered the pool. I watched them all as they stood at a distance from the shower, stretched out a hand to turn it on with as much caution as if they were dealing with an unpredictable animal, and checked the temperature of the water with the other. Once it was warm enough they stood underneath, all with their backs to the wall. Their hair stuck to their foreheads. I took off my underpants, left my clothes in a pile on the bench, and waited for Geir and Leif Tore to finish. The door opened, four new boys came in, among them John. There was something I didn’t like about being naked when the new arrivals were well wrapped up, so I took the soap and towel from my bag and went into the showers, to the one furthest away, which was one of three that were unoccupied. Geir and Leif Tore came straight after me, fortunately.

Oh, how wonderful it was to stand under the hot water as the room slowly filled with steam! I could have stood there forever. But my skin went so red whenever I showered, especially my bum, which after ten minutes of really hot water looked like the rear end of one of those monkeys with red rumps. It was impossible not to notice or make a comment on, so after a couple of minutes and a quick check of the color of my backside, I turned the shower off, dried, and went into the changing room to put on my trunks. It wasn’t only after a shower that it went red, it also stuck out quite a bit. Dad used to say I had a bulging bum. It was true, and it was important for me that no one noticed and made a comment. That kind of thing spread like wildfire.

I sat for a while on the bench, bent forward with my hands on my knees, watching the others coming out of the shower one by one, all with big heads, fair hair, darkened now by the water, pale skin where, after only a few weeks, the clear marks left by a T-shirt and swimming trunks were now disappearing, and skinny bodies, no one was fat in our class, not even Vemund, he was just a bit flabby and had round cheeks, but still he was called fat, the class fatty. Someone had to be. The skin on my arms was developing goose pimples in the cold air and I ran my hands over them quickly a few times. I tried to recapture the happiness the chlorine had filled me with, but now it was as if I couldn’t regain it, as if it had been used up or taken over by everything else that was happening.

Through the chink in the open door I saw that the lights in the swimming pool had been switched on.

“It’s starting!” someone shouted.

The few boys left in the showers hurried out. The rest put on their bathing trunks, goggles, and caps.

A whistle sounded from inside. I took the cap from my bag, crumpled it up in my hand, and went to the pool, after Geir, before John. The girls came out of their changing room opposite at exactly the same moment. The teacher stood by the edge of the pool beckoning to us. The whistle hung from a cord around her neck. She was holding a sheet of paper in a transparent plastic sleeve.

She blew the whistle again. The last boys came running out of the changing room, laughing.

“Don’t run!” she yelled. “We never run in here. It’s slippery and the floor’s hard.”

She adjusted her glasses.

“Hello and welcome to the class!” she said. “We’ll be meeting here six times this autumn, and our goal is to teach everyone to swim. As this is our first lesson today, we’ll take things slowly. First of all, we can play in the water for a bit, and then we’ll practice some strokes on the mats you can see over there.”

“On land?” Sverre said. “Are we going to learn to swim on land?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Now, there are some simple rules we have to follow. You always shower before getting into the pool. Is there anyone here who hasn’t had a shower?”

No one said anything.

“Good! And you must all wear caps. There is to be no running, not even when we have finished. There is to be no dunking! Not under any circumstances! There is to be no jumping into the pool. Always use one of the two ladders you can see.”

“Are we allowed to dive then?” John asked.

“Can you dive?” she asked.

“Yes, a bit,” John said.

“No, you are not allowed to dive,” she said. “Not even ‘a bit.’ So, no jumping, no diving, and no running. And whenever I blow this whistle you pay attention to me. Have you got that?”

“Yes.”

“Right, let’s start with the roll call. Answer me when I say your name.”

Anne Lisbet was the first to have her name called out, as usual. She was standing right at the back in a red swimsuit, smiling, laughing almost, as she answered. I felt a tingle go through me. At the same time I dreaded my name being read out, hated the way every name was sliced off like a piece of bread and put to one side, until it was my turn. Usually I looked forward to this, sitting in class with everyone’s attention drawn to me for a second, how loud and clear my voice was … but this was different.

“John!” she said.

“Yes, here,” John said, waving his raised hand.

She sent him a sharp glance before going on to the next.

“Karl Ove!” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

She looked at me.

“Where’s your bathing cap? Haven’t you got it with you?”

“Here,” I said, raising my hand with the cap so that she could see.

“Put it on then, young man!” she said.

“I’d prefer to wait until I’m in the water,” I said.

“There’s no ‘preferring’ here. On with it!”

I unfurled it, drew apart the sides, and wriggled it into position on my head. This did not go unnoticed.

“Look at Karl Ove!” someone said.

“He’s wearing a woman’s cap!”

“A cap with flowers on it! That’s for old biddies!”

“Now, now,” said the swimming teacher. “All caps are acceptable here. Marianne!”

“Yes,” Marianne said.

But I didn’t escape so lightly. All around me there were grins, nudges, and amused grimaces. The cap seemed to be burning on my head.

When the roll call was over everyone went as quickly as they could to the two ladders at the corners of the pool. The water was cold, it was best to submerge your body as fast as possible, and I crouched down, launched myself, and took as many strokes as I could manage along the bottom. I could swim underwater; the problem was on top. But what a feeling it was, with the bottom only a few centimeters beneath my body and all the water above me! As I broke the surface and stood up, I searched for Geir.

“Did you borrow your mom’s cap, or what?” Sverre said.

“No, I did not,” I said.

Geir and Leif Tore had both taken a kickboard, they lunged forward with it in their hands, and kicked as hard as they could. I went over to them.

“Want to go a bit further up and dive?” I said.

They nodded, and we waded off with the slow, heavy steps you take when you walk in water, until it was up under our arms.

“Is it true your eyes can be open underwater?” Leif Tore said.

“Yes,” I said. “All you have to do is keep them open.”

“But it’ll sting!” he said.

“It doesn’t sting mine,” I said, happy for the opportunity he had given me to shine. For a while we tried to dive the way divers did, swimming on the surface of the water and then bobbing down with their legs in the air. None of us could do it, but Geir was quite close. He was good at everything in water.

When the whistle sounded and we assembled by the thin blue mats to practice strokes, I had almost completely forgotten about the cap. But then Marianne came over to me.

“Why do you have a woman’s cap?” she said. “Did you think the flowers were so pretty, or what?”

“That’s enough about the cap,” the teacher said. She had been standing right behind us. “OK?”

“OK,” Marianne said.

We lay on our stomachs on the mats, waving our arms and kicking our legs like pale overgrown frogs. The teacher walked around correcting our movements. Then we had to go into the pool again, take a kickboard, and practice our kicks. When we had been doing that for some time, the lesson was suddenly over. After a short get-together at the end of the pool, when she praised us, told us what we would be doing in the next lesson, and reminded us to have a shower, we went into the changing room. I sat down on the bench and was about to put the cap in my bag when Sverre bounded over and grabbed it out of my hand.

“Let me have a look!” he said.

“No,” I said. “Give it to me.”

I lunged at him, but he jumped back. He put on the cap and walked around wiggling his hips.

“Oh, what lovely flowers I have on my cap,” he said in a girl’s voice.

“Hand it over,” I said, getting up.

He took a couple more mincing steps.

“Karl Ove’s got a woman’s cap, Karl Ove’s got a girl’s cap,” he said. As I ran at him he removed the cap, dangled it in front of me, and took a couple of steps backward.

“Let me have it,” I said. “It’s mine!”

I made another lunge at it. Sverre threw it to John.

“Karl Ove’s got a girl’s cap,” he chanted. I turned to him and tried to grab it. He gripped my arm and squeezed while holding the cap in front of my face.

I started to cry.

“I want it!” I shouted. “Give it to me!”

My eyes were almost blind with tears.

John threw it back to Sverre.

He held it up in the air and gazed at it.

“Look! What nice flowers!” he said. “Oh, how pretty they are!”

“Give it to him,” someone said. “He’s crying.”

“Oh, the poor baby. Do you want this lovely cap back?” he said and threw it to where I had been sitting. I walked back, put it in my bag, took my towel, and went in for a shower, stood under the hot jet for a brief moment, dried, dressed, and was the first to leave the changing room, found my boots among all the others in the front hall, put them on, opened the glass door, and stepped out into the playground, where the large, shallow puddles, visible only because they were a little shinier than the surrounding tarmac, were lashed by rain. There wasn’t a soul around. I walked toward the school building, which was almost identical to ours, and saw the green Beetle parked exactly where Mom had dropped us just over an hour ago.

I opened the door and got into the back.

“Hi,” Mom said, turning to me. Her face was illuminated by the gleam of a lamp hanging over the edge of the school like a vulture.

“Hi,” I said.

“Did it all go well?”

“Fine.”

“Where are Geir and Leif Tore?”

“They’re coming.”

“Can you swim now?”

“Nearly,” I said. “But we swam mostly on land.”

“On land?”

“Yes, on some mats. To learn the strokes.”

“Oh, I see,” Mom said, turning back. The smoke from the cigarette she held in her hand hung under the sloping windshield, thick and gray. She took another drag, then pulled out the little metal ashtray and stubbed out the cigarette. From the swimming pool door swarmed a mass of kids. A car headlight swept across the tarmac, then another. The two cars drove almost right up to the entrance.

“Perhaps I’d better tell them you’re here,” I said, opening the door.

“Geir! Leif Tore!” I shouted. “Car’s over here!”

They both looked at me, but they didn’t come, they stayed with the kids collecting around the entrance.

“Geir! Leif Tore!” I shouted. “Come on!”

And then they came. Said something to the others first, then they set off, side by side, at a jog across the playground. White plastic bags hanging from their hands, the only things about them that reflected any light and they resembled heads.

“Hello, Fru Knausgård,” they said, getting onto the back seat.

“Hello,” Mom said. “Was it good?”

“Not bad,” they said. They looked at me.

“Yes, it was fun,” I said. “But the teacher was strict.”

“Was he?” Mom said, starting the car.

“It was a she,” I said.

“Oh,” Mom said.

When, four days later, I was walking up through the forest with Geir, Leif Tore, and Trond, after the brief and unsuccessful hunt for treasure at the end of the rainbow, the fantasy of being able to swim among the trees there made me pause to wonder whether I would ever be able to swim at all. Grandad couldn’t swim, and at one time he had even been a fisherman. I didn’t know if Grandma could, but I found it difficult to imagine her swimming.

Behind the swaying pine trees clouds scudded across the sky.

What was the time, I wondered.

“Do you have your watch on, Geir?” I said.

He shook his head.

“I do,” Trond said, thrusting his hand forward and up, making his sleeve glide back, so that his watch was visible.

“Twenty-five past one, no, past two,” he said.

“Twenty-five past two?” I said.

He nodded and my stomach churned. On Saturdays we had rice pudding at one.

Oh no, oh no.

I broke into a run, as if that would help.

“Got a rocket up your ass, or what?” said Leif Tore behind me. I craned my head.

“Lunch was supposed to be at one,” I said. “I’d better go.”

Up the soft fir-needle-strewn incline, over the little algae-green stream, past the tall spruce and up the slope to the road. Both Mom’s and Dad’s cars were there. But not Yngve’s bike. Had he been home, eaten, and cycled off again? Or he was he late as well?

The thought, unlikely though it was, kept a little hope burning within me.

Across the road, into the drive. Dad might be behind the house, might come round the corner at any second. Might be waiting for me in the hall, might be in his study, and tear the door open when he heard me. Might be standing at the kitchen window waiting for me to appear.

I closed the door gently behind me and stood still for a couple of seconds. Footsteps on the kitchen floor above me. Dad’s. I took off my boots, placed them by the wall, unbuttoned my waterproof jacket, pulled down my waterproof trousers, took them into the boiler room, and hung them on the line there. Stopped and glanced at myself in the mirror above the chest of drawers. My cheeks were red, my hair was a mess, there was some shiny snot under my nose. My teeth stuck out as always. Buckteeth, as people called them. I went upstairs and into the kitchen. Mom was doing the dishes; Dad was sitting at the table eating crab claws. Both looked at me. The pot of rice was on the stove, the orange plastic ladle protruding.

“I lost track of time,” I said. “Sorry. We were having a lot of fun.”

“Sit down,” Dad said. “You must be hungry, I imagine.”

Mom took a dish from the cupboard, filled it with rice pudding, and put a bowl of sugar, a packet of margarine, and a cinnamon shaker, which hadn’t been put away with the other spices, beside it.

“What have you been up to?” she said. “Oh, you need a spoon as well.”

“This and that,” I said.

“You and …?” Dad said, without looking at me. He folded the small white bits that stuck out from the end of the hairy orange claw to the side and put the claw to his mouth. Sucked at it with a short slurp. I could hear the meat being released and sliding into his mouth.

“Geir, Leif Tore, and Trond,” I said. He broke the empty claw at the joint and began to suck on the next. I put a knob of margarine on the rice, even though it wasn’t warm enough to melt, and sprinkled some cinnamon and sugar on it.

“I’ve cleaned the roof gutters,” he said. “You should have been here.”

“Oh, yes,” I said.

“But now I’m going to chop a bit of wood. As soon as you’ve eaten up, you can join me.”

I nodded and tried to look happy, but he could read my thoughts. “We’ll be finished in time for the match,” he said. “Who’s playing today?”

“Stoke and Norwich,” I said.

“Noritsch,” he said, correcting my pronunciation.

“Nowitsch,” I said.

I liked Norwich, I liked their yellow-and-green uniforms. I liked Stoke, too, with their red-and-white-striped shirts. But best of all I liked the Wolverhampton Wanderers, who played in gold and black and whose mascot was a wolf’s head. Wolves, that was my team.

I would have preferred to lie down and read until the match started, but I couldn’t say no to Dad, and bearing in mind what could have happened I had to count myself lucky.

The rice was so cold that I ate it in a couple of minutes.

“Are you full?” Dad said.

I nodded.

“Let’s go then,” he said.

He scooped the empty crab shells into the trash can, put the plates on the counter, and went out, with me hard on his heels. From Yngve’s room came the sound of music. I looked at the door, nonplussed. How could that be? His bike wasn’t there.

“Come on,” Dad said, already on the landing. I followed him. On with my jacket and boots, out onto the gravel, wait for him. He came a few minutes later with an ax in his hand and a playful glint in his eye. Follow him over the flagstones, then across the waterlogged lawn. We weren’t allowed to walk on the grass, but when I was with him, such edicts could be lifted.

Quite a long time ago he had chopped down a birch tree by the fence in the kitchen garden. All that remained of it was a pile of logs that he wanted to split now. I wasn’t supposed to do anything, just stand there and watch, to “keep him company,” as he called it.

He removed the tarpaulin, took a log, and placed it on the chopping block.

“Well?” he said, raising the ax above his shoulder, concentrating for a second, and letting fly. The blade bit into the white wood. “Everything going well at school?”

“Yes,” I said.

He lifted the log with the ax wedged in and hit it against the block a few times until it split into two. Held the parts and split them, placed them on the ground by the rock face, wiped his brow with his hand, and straightened up. I could see from his body that he was happy.

“And Frøken?” he said. “Torgersen was her name, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “She’s nice.”

“Nice?” he said, taking a new log and repeating the procedure.

“Yes,” I said.

“Is there anyone who isn’t nice?” he said.

I hesitated. He suspended his chopping activities for a moment.

“Well, since you say that she’s nice, there must be someone who isn’t nice. Otherwise the word loses all its meaning. Do you understand?”

He resumed his work.

“I think so,” I said.

There was a silence. I turned away and saw the water rising above the grass beyond the path.

“Myklebust, he’s not so nice,” I said, turning back.

“Myklebust!” Dad said. “I know him.”

“Do you?” I said.

“Sure. He comes to the meetings at the Teachers’ Association. Next time I see him, I’ll tell him you said he wasn’t nice to your class.”

“No, please don’t do that!” I said.

He smiled.

“Of course I won’t,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

Then there was another silence. Dad worked, I stood there with my arms hanging down by my sides, motionless, watching. My feet were beginning to get cold. I wasn’t wearing thick socks. And my fingers were beginning to get cold.

There was no one out. Apart from the occasional car that went past, there wasn’t a soul around. The lights in the houses were beginning to get brighter, apparently regulated and intensified by the nascent twilight, which, in contrast with the open sky, seemed to rise from the ground. As though beneath us there was a reservoir of darkness that seeped through thousands, no, millions of tiny holes in the ground every afternoon.

I watched Dad. Sweat was running down his forehead. I rubbed my palms against each other several times. He leaned forward. Just as he was grabbing the log and about to straighten up, he farted. Caught in the act.

“You said we should only fart in the toilet,” I said.

At first he didn’t answer.

“It’s different when you’re outside in the open air,” he said, without meeting my gaze. “Then you can, well, let your farts go free.”

He brought down the ax onto the log and split it in half at the first attempt. The sound of the blow rebounded off the house wall and the cliff above, the latter with a strange delay, as though there were a man up there swinging an ax exactly one second after Dad.

Dad swung again and threw the four pieces of wood on the pile. Took another log.

“Could you start piling them up, Karl Ove?” he said.

I nodded and went over to the small pile.

How should I do it? What did he have in mind? Alongside the rock or coming off it? A narrow pile or a wide one?

I looked at him again. He didn’t notice. I squatted and picked up a piece of wood. Placed it up against the rock, on end. Placed another piece next to it. When I had laid five in a row, I laid one crosswise on top of them. It was exactly the same length as the width of the five logs. So I laid four more on top, making two equally large squares. Now I could either make two squares next to it, identical, or start a new layer on top.

“What are you doing?” Dad said. “Are you completely stupid? You don’t stack wood like that!”

He bent down and scattered the logs with his big hands. I watched him with tears in my eyes.

“You lay them lengthwise!” he said. “Have you never seen a woodpile before?”

He looked at me.

“Don’t stand there weeping like a girl, Karl Ove. Can’t you do anything right?”

Then he went on chopping. I started stacking the logs the way he told me. Sobs shook me every so often. My hands and toes were freezing. At least it wasn’t difficult stacking them lengthwise. The only question was when to stop. When I had laid them all in a row I stood up with my hands down by my sides and watched him as I had done before. The glint in his expression was gone; I saw that as soon as he glanced at me from the corner of his eye. But that didn’t necessarily mean something would happen, as long as I didn’t say or do anything that might irritate him. At the same time the thought of the match on TV was gnawing at me. It must have started ages ago. He had forgotten about it, but I couldn’t remind him, not the way the situation was. My toes and fingers were hurting me more and more. Dad just kept chopping. He paused and occasionally flicked back his hair in a typical gesture of his, a kind of slow toss of his head along with his hand.

We had just been given a post office box in Pusnes, which meant we no longer received mail in our mailbox on the hill, only a newspaper, and Dad had to drive there to collect our mail. Last Saturday I had sat in the car with him, and he had combed his hair in the mirror, perhaps for a whole minute, patting his thick, shiny locks afterward, and then got out. I had never seen that before. And when he went in, a woman had turned to look at him. She was unaware that someone who knew him was sitting in the car watching what went on. But why had she turned? Did she know him? I had never seen her before. Perhaps she was the mother of someone in his class?

I put the new logs he threw over on top of the first row. Wriggled my toes backward and forward in my boots, not that it helped, they hurt, hurt, hurt.

I was about to say that I was freezing cold, took a deep breath, but then I paused. Turned again and looked at the shiny pool that shouldn’t have been there. Watched a large transparent bubble breaking the surface right above the rusty manhole cover. When I turned back, Steinar was walking along the road. He was carrying a guitar case over his back, with his head bent, his long black hair falling over his shoulders and swaying gently to and fro.

“Hello there, Knausgård!” he said as he passed.

Dad stood up and sent him a nod.

“Hi there,” he said.

“Doing a bit of wood chopping, I see!” Steinar said, without slowing down.

“I am,” Dad said.

He resumed work. I paced backward and forward, backward and forward.

“Stop doing that,” Dad said.

“OK, but I’m freezing cold!” I said.

He sent me an icy stare.

“Oh, you’re fweezing, are you?” he said.

My eyes filled with tears again.

“Stop parroting me,” I said.

“Oh, so I can’t pawwot you now?”

“NO!” I yelled.

He stiffened. Dropped the ax and came toward me. Grabbed my ear and twisted it round.

“Are you talking back to me?” he said.

“No,” I said, looking down at the ground.

He twisted harder.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

I raised my head.

“Do not talk back to me! Have you got that?”

“Yes,” I said.

He let go, turned, and put another log on the block. I was crying so much I could barely breathe. Dad ignored me and kept on chopping. There were only a couple of logs left now, then he was finished.

I walked back to the low stack of wood and added the new logs. Wriggled my toes in my boots. The tears receded, there was just the odd surreptitious aftershock in the form of an untimely and wholly uncontrollable sob. I dried my eyes on my sleeve, Dad tossed four logs over, I put them on the stack, when a thought fluttered in to lift me out of my misery. I wouldn’t watch the soccer. I would go straight to my room and let Yngve and him watch it without me.

Yes.

Yes.

“There we are,” he said, throwing over the last four. “That’s us finished.”

I followed him without a word, took off my boots and my coat and hung it up, went upstairs, gathered from the noise in the living room that Yngve was watching the match, and went into my room.

I sat down at my desk and pretended to read.

Just so that he got the message.

He did. A few minutes later he opened the door.

“The match has started,” he said. “Come on.”

“I don’t want to see it,” I said, without meeting his eyes.

“Are you being headstrong now?” he said.

He came into the room, grabbed my arm, and dragged me to my feet.

“Come on,” he said. He let go of my arm.

I stood still.

“I DON’T WANT TO SEE THE MATCH!” I said.

Without another word, he grabbed my arm again and dragged me crying out of my room, through the hall, and into the living room, where he hurled me onto the sofa next to Yngve.

“Now you sit there and watch the game with us,” he said. “Have you got that?”

I had thought of closing my eyes if he forced me into the living room, but now I didn’t dare.

He had bought a bag of glacier mints and a bag of English chocolate toffees. The toffees were my favorite, but the glacier mints were good as well. As usual, he had the bags next to him on the table. Now and then he threw one to me and Yngve. Today he did the same. But I wouldn’t eat them; I left them untouched in front of me. In the end, he reacted.

“Eat your candy,” he said.

“I don’t feel like them,” I said.

He stood up.

“Now you eat your candy,” he said.

“No,” I said, and started crying again. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to.”

“Now you EAT them!” he said. He grabbed my arm and squeezed.

“I-don’t-want-any … candy,” I gasped.

He seized the back of my head and pressed it forward, almost down to the table.

“There they are,” he said. “Can you see them? Eat them. Now.”

“OK,” I said, and he let go. Stood over me until I had unwrapped a chocolate-coated toffee and put it in my mouth.

The next day we were going to Kristiansand to visit my father’s parents. We often did that on the Sundays when IK Start was playing at home. First of all, we had dinner there, then Yngve, Dad, and Grandad went to the match, sometimes Mom did as well, while I stayed with Grandma because I was too small.

Both Mom and Dad had put on better clothes than usual. Dad wore a white shirt, a brown tweed jacket with brown patches on the elbows, and light-brown cotton slacks, Mom wore a blue dress. Yngve and I wore shirts and cords, Yngve’s were brown, mine were blue.

Outside, the sky was overcast, but the clouds were of the fluffy whitish-gray variety that, while they may have shut out the sky, did not carry rain. The road was dry and gray, the gravel dry and blue gray, and the trunks of the pines standing tall at the top of the estate dry and reddish.

Yngve and I got into the back, Mom and Dad the front. Dad lit a cigarette before starting the car. I was behind him, so he couldn’t see me unless I leaned to the side. As we reached the crossroads below the slope up to Tromøya Bridge I folded my hands and said to myself, “Dear God, please don’t let us crash today. Amen.”

I prayed like this whenever we went on longer trips because Dad drove so fast, he was always above the speed limit, always overtaking other cars. Mom said he was a good driver, and he was, but every time the car accelerated and we crossed the white line, a feeling of terror took me in its grip.

Speed and anger went hand in hand. Mom drove carefully, was considerate, never minded if the car in front was slow, she was patient and followed. That was how she was at home as well. She never got angry, always had time to help, didn’t mind if things got broken, accidents happened, she liked to chat with us, she was interested in what we said, she often served food that was not absolutely necessary, such as waffles, buns, cocoa, and bread fresh out of the oven, while Dad on the other hand tried to purge our lives of anything that had no direct relevance to the situation in which we found ourselves: we ate food because it was a necessity, and the time we spent eating had no value in itself; when we watched TV we watched TV and were not allowed to talk or do anything else; when we were in the garden we had to stay on the flagstones, they had been laid for precisely that purpose, while the lawn, big and inviting though it was, was not for walking, running, or lying on. Yngve and I had never celebrated a birthday at home, and that was rooted in the same logic, it was unnecessary, a cake with the family after dinner was sufficient. We weren’t allowed to have friends at home and that was also another aspect of the same logic, because why would we want to be indoors, where we only made a mess and created havoc, when the world outside existed? Our friends would have been able to tell their parents how we lived, and that may well have been a factor; actually the same logic applied here, too. Actually it explained everything. We weren’t allowed to touch any of Dad’s tools, not a hammer, not a screwdriver, not a saw or a pair of pliers, a snow shovel or broom, nor were we allowed to cook in the kitchen, nor even cut a slice of bread, nor switch on the TV or radio. If we had been allowed to do that, the house would have been turned upside down, whereas the way it was organized now everything was orderly, as it should be, and if anything was used, by him or Mom, it was done in a methodical, appropriate fashion. It was the same with driving: he wanted to progress as speedily as possible, with the fewest possible hold-ups, from one point to the next. In this case, from Tromøya to Kristiansand, the hometown of this thirty-year-old schoolteacher.

Time never goes as fast as in your childhood; an hour is never as short as it was then. Everything is open, you run here, you run there, do one thing, then another, and suddenly the sun has gone down and you find yourself standing in the twilight with time like a barrier that has suddenly gone down in front of you: Oh no, is it already nine o’clock? But time never goes as slowly as in your childhood either, an hour is never as long as it was then. If the openness is gone, if the opportunities to run here, there, and everywhere are gone, whether in your mind or in physical reality, every minute is like a barrier, time is a room in which you are trapped. Is there anything worse for a child than to sit in a car for a whole hour, on a journey he knows inside out, on the way to something he’s looking forward to? In a car full of cigarette smoke from two parents and with a father who hisses with irritation every time you shift position and happen to nudge his seat with your knee?

Oh, how slowly time went. Oh, how slow the landmarks were in appearing outside the window. Up the steep hill from the center of Arendal, through the residential district to Hisøy Bridge, along the whole length of the island coastline, past Kokkeplassen Sanatorium, where Mom worked, down the hill and past the shops there, over the bridge crossing the Nidelva River, and then the endless plains with houses and woods and fields to Nedenes. We weren’t even in Fevik yet! And from there it was still a long way to Grimstad, not to mention how far it was from Grimstad to Lillesand, and from Lillesand to Timenes, and from Timenes to Varodd Bridge, and from Varodd Bridge to Lund …

We sat at the back, silent, gazing out at the varied rolling countryside the road wound its way through. Past straits with islets and skerries, into the dense forests, past rivers and waterfalls, residential and industrial quarters, farms and fields, all so familiar that at any moment I knew what was coming next. Only when we drove past the zoo did we emerge from our torpor because who knew whether an animal or two might appear from behind the tall, long wire fences, free of charge! Then we were past it, and we sank back into our torpor. For an hour we sat in the back seat without moving, for an entire endless hour, before the town began to take shape around us, and the center of gravity shifted from the car journey to our imminent visit to our grandparents. Entering the town was like entering time, the clock started ticking again, there was the Oasen shop, further down our cousins, Jon Olav and Ann Kristin, the children of Mom’s sister, Kjellaug, and her husband, Magne; there were the chestnut trees along the road, the tall, dirty brick buildings behind them, there was the chemist, there was the kiosk they called Rundingen, there were the traffic lights, there was the music shop, there were the white timber houses, there was the narrow road, and then, all at once on the left-hand side, Grandma and Grandad’s yellow house.

Dad drove some way past the house, down the hill, and then reversed into the lane opposite. Only then could he drive up the short, steep drive.

Grandma’s face appeared in the kitchen window. When we had got out of the car, which was parked close to the wooden garage door with its black wrought-iron fittings, and were heading for the red-brick steps, she opened the door.

“There you are!” she said. “Come on in!” And when we were in the small hallway:

“Oh, how I’ve been looking forward to seeing you two boys!”

She gave Yngve a long hug and rocked him back and forth. He looked away, but he liked it. Then she gave me a long hug and rocked me back and forth. I also looked away, but I liked it, too. Her cheek was warm, and she smelled nice.

“We might have seen a wolf in the zoo!” I said as she let go of me.

“Did you?” she said, ruffling my hair.

“No, we didn’t,” Yngve said. “It was just in Karl Ove’s imagination.”

“Oh no?” she said, ruffling his hair. “Well, it’s good to see you boys anyway!”

We hung up our jackets inside, where there was an open built-in wardrobe, walked across the wall-to-wall carpet and up the staircase. On the first floor, the posh living room was on the right and the kitchen on the left. This living room was used only on Christmas Eve and other formal occasions. By the short wall there was a piano on which there stood three photos of the sons of the house wearing student caps, and above them hung two paintings. Against the long wall there were dark display cabinets, with some souvenirs from their travels arranged on top, among them a shining gondola and a golden-brown glass teapot with a very long spout, adorned with what I assumed were diamonds and rubies. At the back of the room there were two leather sofas, between them a corner cupboard decorated with painted roses and in front a low table. Through the large windows you had a view of the river and the town beyond. However, on a normal visit, which this was, we didn’t go in there, we took the door to the left, to the kitchen and the two living rooms below, the lowest of which was connected to the best room via a sliding door above a little staircase. Half of the long wall was taken up by a window, through which you saw first the garden, then the river stretching out to meet the sea and, furthest away, the white Grønningen Lighthouse, towering over the horizon.

It smelled good there, not only in the kitchen, where Grandma was making meatballs and gravy, which she did better than most, but everywhere there was a fragrance that underlay all the others and was constant, a vaguely fruity sweetness I associated with this house whenever I met it outside, for example when Grandma and Grandad were visiting us, because they brought the fragrance with them, it was in their clothes, I noticed it as soon as they stepped into our hall.

“Well,” Grandad said as we went into the kitchen. “Was there much traffic on the way here?”

He was sitting on his chair, legs slightly apart, wearing a gray cardigan over a blue shirt. His stomach hung over the waistband of the dark-gray trousers. His hair was black and combed back, apart from one lock, which had fallen over his forehead. A half-smoked, unlit cigarette hung from his mouth.

“No, went like clockwork,” Dad said.

“How did you do with the soccer pools yesterday?” Grandad said.

“Not too well,” Dad said. “Seven right was all I managed.”

“I got two tens,” Grandad said.

“That’s pretty good,” Dad said.

“I slipped up on numbers seven and eleven,” Grandad said. “The second one was annoying. The goal was scored after full-time!”

“Yes,” Dad said. “I didn’t get that one, either.”

“Did you hear what one student said to Erling the other day?” Grandma said from the stove.

“No. What?” Dad said.

“He came into class in the morning, and this student asked, ‘Have you won the pools or what?’ ‘No,’ Erling said. ‘Why do you ask?’ ‘You look so happy,’ the student said.”

She laughed. “You look so happy!” she repeated.

Dad smiled.

“Anyone for a cup of coffee?” Grandma asked.

“Yes, please. I’d love one,” Mom said.

“Let’s sit in the living room then,” Grandma said.

“Could we go upstairs and get some comics?” Yngve said.

“You can,” Grandad said. “But don’t make a mess!”

“Nope,” Yngve said.

Treading carefully, for this was not a house you could run in either, we went into the corridor and up the stairs to the second floor. Apart from Grandma and Grandad’s bedroom there was a big attic room there, and along the wall cardboard boxes containing old comics, going right back to when Dad was a child in the 1950s. There was a variety of other objects as well, among them an ancient mangle for wringing tablecloths and bed linen, an old sewing machine, a number of old games and toys, including a tin spinning top, and something that was meant to be a robot made of the same material.

But it was the comics that appealed to us. We weren’t allowed to take them home with us, we had to read them there, and we read plenty from the time we arrived to the time we left. Taking a pile each, we went downstairs and found a chair, and didn’t look up until food was on the table and Grandma called us to eat.

After the meal Grandma washed up while Mom stood next to her, drying. Grandad sat at the table reading a newspaper, Dad stood by the window in the living room looking out. Then Grandma came in and asked if he would like to join her in the garden, there was something she wanted to show him. Mom and Grandad sat at the table, they chatted a bit, but mostly they were silent. I got up to go to the bathroom. It was on the ground floor, I didn’t like it and I had held on for as long as I could, but now I was bursting. Out into the corridor, down the creaking wooden stairs, a quick dash across the carpeted hall surrounded, as it were, by three empty rooms behind closed doors, and into the bathroom. It was dark. In the seconds before the light came on I was shaking inside. But even with the light on, I was afraid. I peed down the side so that the splash of the pee hitting the water would not prevent me from hearing anything. I also washed my hands before flushing the toilet because the moment I pressed the lever at the side of the cistern I would have to rush out as fast as I could, as the noise was so loud and eerie that I couldn’t be in the same room. I stood at the ready, with my hand around the little black ball for a couple of seconds. Then I flushed, darted into the hall, also scary, because every slightest thing there silently “transmitted itself,” and set off up the stairs, not able to run, of course, with a sensation that something down below was following me, until I entered the kitchen and the presence of the others broke the spell.

Outside, in the lane, the stream of people on their way from town to the stadium had increased, and soon also Dad, Mom, and Yngve would be getting ready to go. Grandad always cycled there and left a little later than the others. He was wearing a gray coat, a rust-colored scarf, a grayish cloth cap, and black gloves, I could see him from the window, as he freewheeled down the hill. Grandma took out some rolls from the freezer, we were going to have them when the others returned home, and put them on the counter.

She sent me a mischievous look.

“I’ve got something for you,” she said.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Wait and see,” she said. “Cover your eyes!”

I covered my eyes, and heard her rummaging about in the drawers. She stopped in front of me.

“Now you can look!” she said.

It was a bar of chocolate. One of those triangular ones you don’t see often that are so good.

“Is it for me?” I said. “All of it?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What about Yngve?”

“No, not this time. He’s been allowed to see the match. You have to have a treat as well!”

“Thank you very much,” I said, tearing off the cardboard packaging to reveal the bar wrapped in silver paper.

“But don’t say anything to Yngve, OK?” she said with a wink. “It’s our secret.”

I munched the chocolate as she sat doing a crossword.

“We’re getting a telephone soon,” I said.

“Are you?” she said. “Then we can talk to each other.”

“Yes,” I said. “We’re actually at the end of the waiting list, but we’re getting it anyway because Dad’s in politics.”

She laughed.

“In politics, Karl Ove?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “He is, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is. He is indeed.”

“Are you enjoying school?” she said.

I nodded.

“Yes, very much.”

“What do you like best?”

“The breaks,” I said, knowing that would make her laugh, or at least smile.

When I had finished the chocolate and she was immersed in the crossword again, I went up to the loft and brought down some of the games.

After a while she looked at me and asked me if we shouldn’t go to the match as well. I wanted to go. We got dressed, she took her bike from the garage, I sat on the luggage rack, she sat on the saddle but kept one foot on the ground and turned to me.

“Ready?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Hold on tight, here we go!”

I wrapped my arms around her. She pushed off with her foot, put it on the pedal, and freewheeled down the little hill, turned right, and started pedaling.

“Are you OK?” she asked, and I nodded until I realized she couldn’t see me, and said, “Yes, I’m fine.”

And I was. It felt good holding her, and cycling with her was fun. Grandma was the only person who touched Yngve and me, the only person who gave us hugs and stroked our arms. She was also the only person who played with us. Dad might do it at Christmas, but we always did the things he wanted to do, like playing Mastermind or chess or Chinese checkers or Yahtzee or crazy eights or poker with matchsticks. Mom joined in when we played, but we did most things with her, either on the kitchen table at home or at the arts and crafts workshop in Kokkeplassen, and it was fun, but not like with Grandma, who didn’t mind doing what we were doing and followed with interest when Yngve showed her something from his chemistry set, for example, or helped me when I was doing a jigsaw puzzle.

The wheels went more and more slowly until they almost stopped completely and Grandma got off and pushed the bike to the crest of the hill.

“You just stay where you are, if you want,” she said.

I sat gazing over the town while Grandma pushed the bike, a trifle out of breath. Reaching the top, she got back on the saddle and it was a gentle downhill ride all the way to the stadium. A sudden huge groan erupted, as if from an enormous animal, and then there was clapping. Few sounds were so irresistible. Grandma cycled down to one end of the stadium, rested the bike against the wooden fence, and let me stand on the luggage rack for a few minutes while she held me so that I could see what was happening on the field. The players were a long way away, all the details eluded me, apart from the yellow-and-white shirts against the green of the turf and all the spectators standing around the field, a black surging mass, but I caught the mood, I inhaled it and in the days to come I would savor it in my mind.

Back home, she began to prepare the meal we would have before leaving, and not long afterward the door in the hall opened, it was Grandad, his expression was grim, and when Grandma saw it she said, “So they lost?”

He nodded, sat down on his chair, and she poured him some coffee. I never quite understood what the power relationship was between Grandma and Grandad. On the one hand, she always served him food, cooked all the meals, did all the washing up and the housework, as though she were his servant; on the other hand, she was often angry or irritated with him, and then she gave him a mouthful or made a fool of him, she was sharp and not infrequently sarcastic, while he said very little, preferring not to respond. Was it because he didn’t need to? Because nothing of what she said altered anything important? Or because he couldn’t? If Yngve and I were present during such sparring, Grandma would wink at us, as if to say this wasn’t serious, or use us in her sally against him by saying such things as “Grandad can’t even change a lightbulb properly,” while Grandad, for his part, would look at us, smile, and shake his head at Grandma’s antics. I never saw any form of intimacy between them, other than in their verbal exchanges or the closeness that was evident when she served him.

“They lost, I heard?” she said again when Mom, Dad, and Yngve came up the stairs ten minutes later.

“Yes, they did. Eternally owned is but what’s lost,” Dad quoted. “Or what do you reckon, Dad?”

Grandad growled something or other.

When we left in the evening we were given a bag of plums, a bag of pears, and a bag of bread rolls. Grandad, reluctant to leave his chair, said goodbye to us upstairs while Grandma came down with us, gave us each a long hug, stood on the front doorstep, and waved until she could no longer see us.

Strangely enough, the journey back always seemed much faster than the journey there. I loved traveling in a car at night, with the dashboard lit, the muted voices from the front seats, the gleam of street lamps as we passed beneath, washing over us like breakers or waves of light, the long, completely dark stretches that cropped up intermittently, where all you saw, all that existed, was the tarmac lit up by the headlights and the countryside they illuminated on the bends. Sudden treetops, sudden crags, sudden sea inlets. It was always a particular pleasure to arrive at the house in the night as well, to hear footsteps on the gravel and the sharp slam of car doors and the rattle of keys, to see the light in the hall come on, revealing the presence of all the familiar objects. The shoes with the grommets as eyes and the tongue as a forehead, the chilly gaze from the white two-holed electric sockets above the baseboard, the hat stand in the corner, with its back turned. And in my room: the pens and pencils assembled like a gang of schoolchildren in the pen stand, some insolently leaning against the edge, ready at any moment to discharge a gobbet of spit to prove they were not interested in anyone or anything. The duvet and the pillow that were either tidy and puffed up, looking like something that shouldn’t be touched, a coffin or a capsule in a spaceship, or else were molded in the shape of my last movements, happy to be rearranged, but with no real inclination in that direction. The fixed stare of the lamps. The mouth of the keyhole, the two screw eyes of the metal fitting, the long, oddly positioned nose of the handle.

I brushed my teeth, shouted goodnight to Mom and Dad, and got into bed to read for half an hour. I had two favorite books, which I tried to quarantine long enough to be able to read them again in the same way I had the first time, but it never worked, I picked them up again much too soon. One was Doctor Dolittle, which was about a doctor who could talk to animals and one day went on a long voyage with them, to Africa, where, after being hunted and captured by some Hottentots, he finally found what he was looking for, the rare sausage animal that had two heads, one at each end. The second book was Gangles, which was about a girl who would stand on fountains of water and allow herself to be hurled into the air, and who, after several misadventures, ended up balancing above the sea on a spout of water blown out by an enormous whale. Tonight, however, I chose another book from the pile, The Little Witch, which was about a witch who was too small to join the coven in Bloksberg, but who snuck in anyway. She did lots of things she wasn’t supposed to do, like witchcraft on Sundays, which was almost unbearable to read about, she shouldn’t have done it, she would be caught … and indeed she was, but everything turned out fine in the end. I read a few pages, but as I knew the story so well I looked at the pictures instead. After flicking through it, I turned off the light, rested my head on the pillow, and closed my eyes.

I had almost let go, perhaps I had even fallen asleep, because it was as though I had suddenly been brought back to my bed and my room, summoned by a ring at the front door.

Diing-dong.

Who on earth could that be? No one rang our doorbell, except guests we were expecting, which in nine out of ten cases were Grandma and Grandad, plus the occasional salesman, or one of Yngve’s friends. But none of them would ring so late at night.

I sat up in bed. Heard Mom padding along the landing and down the stairs. Muffled voices from below. Then she came back up, exchanged a few words with Dad, which I didn’t catch, went downstairs, and must have put on her coat there because straight afterward the front door was slammed shut, and straight after that her car started up.

What in the world? Where was she going now? It was nearly ten o’clock!

A few minutes later Dad went downstairs as well. But he didn’t go out, he went into his study. When I heard that I got up, carefully opened the door, and snuck along the landing into Yngve’s room.

He was lying on his bed reading. Still dressed. He smiled when he saw me and sat up.

“You’re only wearing your underpants,” Yngve said.

“Who was that at the door?”

“Fru Gustavsen, I think,” he said. “And all the kids.”

“Oh? Why? And why did Mom go? Where did she go?”

Yngve shrugged.

“I think she drove them to some relatives.”

“Why?”

“Gustavsen’s drunk. Didn’t you hear him shouting at them a while ago?”

I shook my head.

“I was asleep. But was Leif Tore with them? And Rolf?”

Yngve nodded.

“Jeez,” I said.

“Dad’ll be coming back up,” he said. “You’d better go to bed. I’ll turn out the lights too now.”

“OK. Good night.”

“Good night.”

In my room, I drew the curtains aside and looked across to Gustavsen’s house. I couldn’t see anything unusual. Outside, at least, everything was still.

Herr Gustavsen had been drunk before, he was well known for it. One night that spring a rumor had spread that he was drunk, and three or four of us crept into their garden and stood by the living-room window looking in. But there was nothing to see. He was sitting on the sofa gazing into the distance without moving. At other times we had heard him shouting and yelling, through the open windows and on the lawn. Leif Tore just laughed. But perhaps this was something different? Escaping from him, they’d never done that before.

When I next woke it was morning. Someone was in the bathroom, I could hear, probably Yngve, and from the road outside, along the three-meter-high wall surrounding Gustavsen’s property and supporting the level lawn, came the drone of Mom’s car. She had to go to work early today. Yngve closed the bathroom door, returned to his room, and then went downstairs.

The bike!

Where was his bike?

I had completely forgotten to ask him.

But that had to be the reason he was leaving so early; he couldn’t cycle, he had to walk to school.

I got up, took my clothes into the bathroom, washed in the water he had remembered to leave, today, too, dressed, and went to the kitchen where Dad had made three smørbrød and put them on a plate in my place, as well as a glass of milk. The milk carton, the bread, the cheese, sliced meat, and jams had been cleared away. He was sitting in the living room, listening to the radio and smoking.

Outside it was raining. A steady drizzle, broken by intermittent gusts of wind, pitter-pattering against the windows and sounding like tiny drumming fingers.

Monday was the only day no one was at home when I came back from school. So I had my own key, which I carried on a piece of string around my neck. But there was a problem with the key: I couldn’t get it to open the door. The first Monday it had been raining and I bounded across the gravel in rubber boots and rain gear, the key nestling in my hand, overjoyed at the imminent prospect and filled with pride. I managed to get the key into the lock, but not to turn it. It would not budge however much force I used. The key was unmovable. After ten minutes I started crying. My hands were red and cold, the rain was bucketing down, and all the other children had been at home for ages. At that moment one of the neighbors I didn’t know so well passed — she was old and lived with her husband in the house at the very top by the forest above the soccer field — on her way down the road, and when I saw her, I didn’t hesitate, because she had no connection with my parents, I dashed over and asked, with tears running down my cheeks, if she could help me with the lock. She could. And for her it was no problem at all! She fiddled with the key and it turned. And, hey presto, the door was open. I thanked her and went inside. Knowing there was nothing wrong with the key, there was something wrong with me. The next time this happened it wasn’t raining, so I left my satchel by the step and ran up to Geir’s. Dad made a comment about the satchel when he came home, I wasn’t to leave it lying around, so the following Monday, when the weather was also dry, I simply took it with me, under the pretext of having to do some homework with Geir and thus needing my satchel close at hand.

In the meantime, I had worked out a method I could use when the weather got worse during autumn and winter, like today. In the boiler room there was a little window, more like a hatch, but not so small that I couldn’t crawl through. It was positioned about half a meter above my head. I had worked out that if I opened the window in the morning, and there was no great risk involved because the window stayed close to the frame even when the two catches were undone, I could pull over the trash can when I got home, stand on it, wriggle through into the boiler room, open the door from the inside, put the trash can back, close the window, and be indoors without anyone realizing I couldn’t get the key to turn. The sole doubt in my mind was when to undo the catches. However, if it was raining, it would be the most natural thing in the world to go into the boiler room, because that was where my rain gear usually hung, and all I had to do was lift the catches, impossible to see unless you stood close to the door. And I wasn’t so stupid that I would touch anything with Dad around in the hall!

I ate the three smørbrød and drank the glass of milk. Brushed my teeth in the bathroom, collected my satchel from my room, went downstairs and into the hot, narrow room with the two water cylinders. I stood absolutely still for two seconds. As there was no sound of footsteps on the stairs, I stretched up and unhooked the catches. Then I donned my rain gear, slipped on my satchel, went into the hall where my boots were, a pair of blue-and-white Viking rubber boots that I had been given despite my wanting white ones, shouted goodbye to Dad, and ran out, up to Geir’s, he poked his head out of the window and called that he was still having breakfast but would be down soon.

I walked over to one of the gray puddles in Geir’s family’s drive and started throwing stones in it. Their drive wasn’t covered in gravel as most of the others were, nor brick paving like at Gustavsen’s, but compacted reddish earth full of small, round stones. This wasn’t all that was different about them. At the back of the house they didn’t have a lawn but a little patch where they had planted potatoes, carrots, swedes, radishes, and various other vegetables. On the forest side they didn’t have a wooden fence, as we did, or wire netting, as many others did, but a stone wall that Prestbakmo had built himself. Nor did they throw all their garbage in the trash can, as we did; they kept all their milk and egg cartons to use in a variety of ways and they put all their food remains on a compost heap by the stone wall.

I straightened up and glanced at the cement mixer. The round green drum was partially covered by a white tarpaulin and it looked like a headscarf. Her mouth was open, it was big and toothless; what was it she could see that surprised her so much?

Down the hill came Geir Håkon’s father in his green Ford Taunus. I waved; he lifted his hand from the steering wheel in a fleeting response.

I was suddenly reminded of Anne Lisbet. The thought soared from my stomach and spread like an explosion of joy in my chest.

She hadn’t been at school on Friday. Solveig had said she was ill. But today was Monday. She was bound to be better now.

Oh, please let her be better!

I was dying to go up to B-Max and see her.

Her black glittering eyes. Her happy voice.

“Geir! Come on!” I shouted.

I heard his muffled voice from behind the door. The next instant he tore it open.

“Want to take the path?” he said.

“Sure,” I said.

So we ran behind the house, scrambled over the stone wall, and joined the path. From being no more than a mass of tufts with small dried-up channels in between, the bog was now full of water, impossible to cross dry-shod, even in boots, because your foot would sink in a puddle to way above the boot top, but we tried anyway, balancing on the quivering tufts, jumping to the next, slipping, putting out a hand to save ourselves and feeling the ground give, the water seeming to creep up our sweaters under the sleeves of our jackets. We laughed and shouted, telling each other what had happened, crossed the now muddy and slippery soccer field, and went between the deciduous trees to the right, up the broad avenue that might once have been a cart track, it was broader than a path at any rate and covered with a carpet of leaves. Red, yellow, and brown, they lay there, with the occasional splash of green. At the top there was a tiny field, the grass was long here, a yellowish white, and lay flat, plastered to the ground. Above it a bare tor towered, on which there stood an old telegraph pole. The former cart track continued for a while, then disappeared, devoured by the new main road running past, maybe twenty meters from the field. Below lay the forest, mostly oak trees, between two of them there was an abandoned car, in much worse condition than the one where we normally played, perhaps a hundred meters lower down, but no less appealing for that, in fact the contrary: hardly anyone ever played here.

Oh, the smell of an abandoned car in a wet forest! The smell of the synthetic material on the torn seats, moldy and mildewed, but still sharp and fresh compared with the heavy, musty smell of rotting leaves emanating from the ground all around them. The black window seals that had come loose and hung from the roof like tentacles. All the glass that had been smashed to pieces and largely lost in the soil, although there were scattered fragments on the floor mats or in the door openings, like small matte diamonds. And, oh, the black floor mats! Shake them and a whole horde of creepy crawlies ran for cover. Spiders, daddy longlegs, and woodlice. The resistance of the three floor pedals, which you could hardly move. The raindrops that fell through a window onto your face whenever the wind forced them off track or shook them from the leaves of the swaying branches above.

Sometimes we found objects lying around and about near the car: a lot of bottles, some bags of car or porn magazines, empty cigarette packets, empty plastic bottles of windshield fluid, the odd condom, and once we found a pair of underpants still full of shit. We laughed about that for a good long time, about someone shitting themselves and then coming here to throw away their underpants.

But we used to have a shit in the forest when we were on our walks. We would climb up trees and shit from there, squat on top of a cliff and shit over the edge, or on the bank of a stream and shit in it. All to see what happened and how it felt. What color the turds were, whether they were black, green, brown, or light brown, how long and fat they were, and what happened when they lay there glistening on the forest floor, between heather and moss, whether there would be flies swarming around them or beetles climbing over them. Also the smell of shit was sharper, stronger, and more distinct in the forest. Now and then we revisited places where we’d had a shit, to see what had happened to it. Sometimes they had vanished, sometimes there were only dry remains, and at other times they lay flat as though they had melted in a pool.

But now we had to go to school and there was no time for such activities. Down the hill, across the playground, which consisted of little more than a rusty climbing frame, a rusty swing, and a rotting sandpit with next to no sand in it. Up the steep slope, over the high concrete barriers, across the road, and B-Max stood in front of us. The line of satchels in the queue was already long. Some girls were skipping despite the pouring rain; others stood under the overhanging roof in front of the shop. But where was Anne Lisbet? Wasn’t she here?

At that moment the bus came up the hill. Geir and I crossed the road and reached the bus stop as it turned into the tarmac shoulder outside the supermarket. We got on last and sat right at the front. The big windows misted up with the moisture we brought in with us. Many of the kids started drawing in the condensation. The driver closed the doors and set off toward the main road. I knelt on my seat and scanned the back of the bus. She wasn’t there, and it was as if all meaning had leaked from the world. Now I would have to go all day without seeing her and perhaps the following day as well. Solveig wasn’t there either, so it wouldn’t be possible to find out how ill she was or for how long.

Ten minutes later the bus stopped outside the school, we ran across the playground and into the wet-weather shelter, where we huddled with almost all the other pupils until the bell went and we lined up. I knew most of them by appearance now, some also by name and reputation. We had gymnastics with the parallel class, who had an advantage over us, as they came from this area and were on home ground. This was their school, the teachers were their teachers, to them we were just some kind of immigrant, without any rights. But they were also tougher than we were, that is, they had more fights, they caused more trouble and mouthed off more, at least some of them did, which only the toughest of us, viz Asgeir and John, stood up to. The rest of us were pushed around as they pleased. Any second you could feel an arm around your throat, and then a jerk and you were on the floor. Any second a fist could hit you in the shoulder, where it hurt most, as you lined up or were on the way to the classroom. Any second someone could stamp on your toes in a soccer game. But they quickly learned they couldn’t bully John or Asgeir because they retaliated and gave as good as they got. These boys, who lived on the east of the island, also dressed differently from us, at least some of them did. Their clothes were older and seemed more used, as though they only wore hand-me-downs, and not just from one brother but two or maybe even three … Geir’s and my greatest fear was that some of these boys would find us when we were in our secret place. But they didn’t represent much of a problem, you only had to be on your guard when you were out and everything was usually fine. Perhaps the most significant consequence was that we stuck together more and saw ourselves as a unit and the classroom as a bastion of security.

The bell rang, we lined up, and Frøken, tall and thin as ever, appeared at the top of the stairs with her slightly lopsided gait and nervous hand movements, and we marched down to the classroom, where, after hanging up our outdoor clothes on the pegs outside, we at once sat down in our places.

“Anne Lisbet’s sick today as well!” someone said.

“And Solveig.”

“And Vemund.”

“And Leif Tore,” Geir said.

Then I remembered what had happened the night before.

“Vemund’s sick in the head!” Eivind said.

“Ha ha ha!”

“No, no, no,” Frøken said. “We are not nasty to anyone in this class. And certainly not behind their backs!”

“Leif Tore’s father was drunk yesterday!” I said. “My mom had to drive them to a relative’s house. That’s why he isn’t here today!”

“Shhh,” Frøken said, looking at me, holding a finger to her lips and shaking her head. Then she wrote something in her book before scanning the class.

“Anyone else away? No? So, let’s get started, shall we?”

She stepped forward and perched on the edge of her desk. “This week we’re going to learn about farms. Has anyone ever been to a farm?”

Oh, I shot up my arm as high as I could, almost standing up, shouting, Me, me, me! I have!

I wasn’t the only person to have something to say about the topic. And it wasn’t my hand Frøken pointed to but Geir B’s.

“I’ve ridden a horse in Legoland,” he said.

“But that’s not a farm,” I screeched. “I’ve been to a farm lots of times. Grandma and Grandad —”

“Was it your turn, Karl Ove?” Frøken said.

“No,” I said, eyes downcast.

“It’s true that Legoland is not a farm,” she continued. “But horses are on farms, that’s true, Geir. Unni?”

Unni, who was that?

I turned. Ah, that’s the girl who was always giggling. Chubby with blonde hair.

“I live on a farm,” she said with flushed cheeks. “But we haven’t got any animals. We grow vegetables. And Dad sells them at the market in town.”

“But I’ve been to a farm with animals!” I said.

“Me too,” Sverre said.

“And me!” said Dag Magne.

“You’ll have to wait your turn,” Frøken said. “Everyone has to have a chance.”

She pointed to five other people before I was finally able to take my hand down and say what I had to say. Well, Grandma and Grandad had a farm, it was big, they had two cows and a calf, and they had hens. I had collected the eggs many times, and I had seen Grandma milking the cows in the morning. First she shoveled away the muck, and then she fed them, and then she milked them. Sometimes they lifted their tails and had a piss or a shit.

A wave of laughter rolled toward me. Emboldened by it, I continued. And once, I said, sitting there in class, my face crimson, one of the cows pissed on me!

I looked around and lapped up the ensuing laughter. Frøken said nothing, she pointed to someone else, but I could see from her face that she didn’t believe me.

When everyone who wanted to say something had had a turn, she read a passage from a book about Ola Ola Heia. She asked us questions about what she had read out, completely ignoring me until the bell rang, when she asked me to stay behind.

“Karl Ove,” she said. “Wait here. I need to have a word with you.”

I stood beside her desk while the others hurried out. When we were alone she perched on the edge of her desk and looked at me.

“We can’t tell everyone all the things we know about one another,” she said. “What you said about Leif Tore’s father, for example. Don’t you think Leif Tore would be upset about that?”

“Yes, he would,” I said.

“He wouldn’t want anyone else to know. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said, starting to cry.

“We all have private lives,” she said. “Do you know what that is?”

“No,” I said, sniffling.

“It’s everything that happens at home, in your home, my home, their homes, everyone’s home. If you see what happens in other people’s homes, it’s not always nice to tell others. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“Good, Karl Ove. Don’t be upset. You didn’t know. But now you do! So off you go.”

I scampered up the stairs, through the hall, and onto the playground. Cast an eye over the various groups standing there. Some girls were doing French skipping with elastic, some with a rope, some were playing tag. Down on the soccer field I saw a mass of players in front of the nearest goal. The center of the field was covered in a pool of yellowish mud. Geir, Geir Håkon, and Eivind were standing by the bench below the little rock with the flagpole on it, and I ran over to join them. They were playing with Geir Håkon’s boat cards.

“Have you been crying?” Eivind said.

I shook my head. “It’s the wind,” I said.

“What did Frøken say then?”

“Nothing much,” I said. “Can I have a card?”

“You’ve been crying,” Eivind said.

Along with Sverre and me, Eivind was the best in the class. He was the best at math, Sverre was next best, and I was third best. I was best at reading and writing, Eivind was next best, and Sverre third best. But Eivind was much faster than me, and of the boys in the class only Trond was faster than him. I was the sixth fastest. And he was stronger than me. I was the next weakest, only Vemund was weaker, and since he was the fattest and the dumbest boy in the class, it wasn’t a very good situation, no one took any notice of him. Even Trond, the smallest boy in the class, was stronger than me. I was the third tallest in the class, a bit taller than him. I was the fourth best at soccer; ahead of me were Asgeir, Trond, and John, while Eivind was fifth best. I was better at drawing than him, but not as good as Geir, who could draw everything as it really was, and Vemund. As for throwing a ball, I was next to last, again only Vemund was worse than me.

“The wind was in my eyes as I came down the steps,” I said. “I wasn’t crying. Can I have a card too?”

The first card I took was SS France, the world’s biggest passenger liner, which walloped everybody else in all categories.

In the next lesson we wrote letters of the alphabet in our notebooks: u as in kui, a as in lam, å as in gås. For homework we had to write the same letters in our notebooks. Frøken asked whether anyone lived near the students who were absent today and, if so, could they pass on the homework.

But I didn’t become aware of the opportunity that had presented itself until the next and final lesson, which was gymnastics, as I was running round and round the tiny gymnasium. I could walk up to Anne Lisbet’s and tell her what we had to do for homework! The thought made me flush with pleasure. As soon as we had dressed and left the changing room, on the way up to the place where we lined up to wait for the bus, I told Geir about my plan. He wrinkled his nose, go to Anne Lisbet’s, why? We had never been there, that was one thing. And Vemund lived there, that was another. Couldn’t Vemund take the homework? You don’t understand, I said. The whole point is that we do it!

He still hemmed and hawed, but after I had put a bit more pressure on him, he agreed to go with me.

Instead of making everyone get off at B-Max, this morning the bus went up through the estate and dropped us off on the way. It did that now and then, and it was a strange sight every time, because the enormous bus didn’t belong there, on the narrow roads, it towered over everything like a liner in a canal. We stood on the sidewalk watching it go up the hill, as it groaned with the effort and released clouds of greasy fumes in its wake.

“Shall I go up or will you come down?” I said.

“You come up,” Geir said.

“OK,” I said, walking in the drive, which as fortune would have it was clearly empty. It was no longer raining, but everything I saw was wet. On the dark-brown wall there were extensive patches of black damp, on the brick doorstep all the little hollows were full of water, on the spade leaning against the wall raindrops hung trembling from the handle. I unzipped my jacket and took out the key to see if I could perhaps get it to open the door today. But the same happened, the key went in, but the little drum that was supposed to rotate didn’t budge. I looked up the road. No one there. So I went to the garbage can by the fence, took out the black half-empty bag, and put it on the ground, grabbed the garbage can by the handles, and lifted it. It was heavier than I had anticipated, and I had to put it down several times on the way to the house. Still there was no one to be seen on the hill. A car came past, but it wasn’t anyone I knew, so I carried the can across the lawn and placed it under the window. Clambered on top, lifted the window, and pushed my head and shoulders through. The feeling of losing control, because I couldn’t see if anyone was watching me, all I saw was the empty room in front of me, dark and hot, filled me with panic. I twisted and turned, and when I had half my body in, I grabbed the metal pipe on the tank and pulled myself through.

Down to the floor, off with my boots — which I carried through the hall and put on again on the porch — open the door and out again. Hollow with fear and tension, I looked down the hill. No cars, nothing. As long as he stayed away for the next two minutes, and didn’t come home because he had forgotten something, or because he was ill, which never happened, Dad was never ill, everything would be fine.

A little gasp of joy escaped my lips. I hurried over to the garbage can, carried it to its place, put the garbage bag back in, folded it over the edge, and dashed back to the window. To my horror, I saw that the container had left marks in the grass. Quite deep marks, too. I ran my hand over the grass and tried to ruffle it to cover the patches where the edge had sunk in and formed a ridge in the muddy soil. Straightened up and regarded my handiwork.

You could still see it.

But if you had no idea it was there, perhaps it was more difficult to see?

Dad saw everything. He would see it.

I crouched down and ruffled the grass some more.

There.

That would have to do.

If he saw it I could always deny all knowledge. I doubted he would be able to imagine I had carried the garbage can onto the lawn and put it under the window to climb in. No, if he saw the mark it would be a mystery to him, utterly unfathomable, and so long as I denied all knowledge in a normal voice and with a normal expression he would have nothing else to go on.

I wiped my moist, dirty hands on my thighs and went up to my room with my satchel. Opened the wardrobe door and was about to put on my white shirt, warmed by the happy thought that Anne Lisbet would think it looked good, when I came to my senses and dropped the idea, in case Dad asked why I had changed clothes and I got myself into a tangle that he would be able to unravel.

Then I locked the front door, climbed up onto the hot water tank, turned around, stuck my feet through the window, gently lowered myself until I let go, and landed on the ground with a bump.

Picked myself up, down to the drive as fast as possible, acting as if nothing had happened.

There were no cars to be seen now. John Beck, Geir Håkon, Kent Arne, and Øyvind Sundt were standing at the crossroads. When they saw me they cycled over. I stood still, waiting for them.

“Have you heard?” Geir Håkon said, braking just in front of me.

“Heard what?”

“A workman on Vindholmen was cut in two by a steel cable early today.”

“Cut in two?”

“Yes,” John Beck said. “The wire snapped while towing. One end hit a man and cut him in two. Dad told me. Everyone was given the day off.”

I imagined a man on a tug being cut in two, the top half, the past with the head and arms, standing beside the bottom half, the part with the legs.

“You still have a puncture?” Kent Arne said.

I nodded.

“You can sit on the back of mine.”

“I’m off to see Geir,” I said. “Where are you going?”

Geir Håkon shrugged.

“Down to the boats maybe?”

“Where are you two going?” Kent Arne said.

“To see someone in the class about homework,” I said.

“Who, if I might ask?” Geir Håkon said.

“Vemund,” I said.

“Do you two hang out with him?”

“Nope,” I said. “Just today. I’ve got to get going.”

I ran up the hill and shouted for Geir, who came out right away with a slice of bread in his hand.

Twenty minutes later we walked past B-Max again, along a flat stretch that, after a bend, ascended to the highest point on the estate where the road began that led to where Anne Lisbet, Solveig, and Vemund lived. It was also possible to get to it by walking in the opposite direction from our house because the road that linked all the side roads and housing areas on the estate went in a circle, inside which was our own circular Ringvei. As if that wasn’t enough, the main road outside also went in a circle, around the whole island. So we lived inside a circle inside a circle inside a circle. A hundred meters past the supermarket the two outermost roads ran parallel, but you couldn’t see that because they were separated by a rock face, perhaps ten meters high, molded into a brick wall. Above this wall was a green wire fence, beyond that there was a rocky slope, and then came the road we were following. But even though we couldn’t see the cars whizzing past beneath us we could hear them. The sound of the cars was exciting, and we climbed down to the fence. At first we heard them as a faint drone as they came up the hill from the Fina station, then the volume rose and rose until they were racing past beneath us, the roar of their engines amplified by the rock face. We decided we would throw stones at them. As we couldn’t see the cars, the trick was to time the sounds exactly. We each took a stone in our hands and waited for the next car. The stones were big, bigger than our hands, but not so heavy that we couldn’t heave them over the fence, from where they fell vertically, ten meters down to the carriageway. Geir started. He threw as the car was beneath us, and missed, of course, we heard the faint, hollow clunk as it landed on the tarmac and rolled downward. When it was my turn, however, I threw much too soon; when the stone hit the road the car was probably fifty meters away.

A woman walked along the sidewalk carrying a bag in each hand. She stopped and spoke to us, even though we had never seen her before.

“What are you doing down there?” she said.

“Nothing much,” Geir said.

“Come on up,” she said. “It’s steep and dangerous there.”

She set off walking again, but kept an eye on us, so we did as she said and went up.

We balanced on the curb all the way up to Vemund’s house. Outside, his sister was on her knees playing in a sandpit. Her waterproof jacket and bottoms were yellow, the bucket blue, and the spade green.

“Want to go and see Vemund first?” Geir said.

“No, let’s not,” I said. “Let’s start with Anne Lisbet.”

The sound of her name was electric, thousands of crackling nerve channels opened inside me as I articulated the words in my mouth.

“What is it?” Geir said.

“What’s what?” I said.

“You went a bit funny.”

“Funny? No. I’m quite normal.”

After a few steps up the road, covered on one side by a film of water running downward, so thin that it quivered rather than ran, we could see the gable end of the house where Anne Lisbet lived. It was situated at the top of a hill, with a lawn at the front, trees below. A window on the top floor, there was a light on, was that her room perhaps? On the other side of the road was Myrvang’s house and the house where Solveig lived, below them the forest, green and dark and wet. We passed them, and the road ended in a gravel cul-de-sac on the edge of the forest. From there a drive led to Anne Lisbet’s house. A light shone above the front door.

“Will you ring?” I said when we were there.

Geir stretched up on his toes and pressed the doorbell. My heart was fluttering. A few seconds passed. Then her mother opened the door.

“Is Anne Lisbet in?” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“We’re from her class,” Geir said. “We’ve brought her homework.”

“How nice of you,” she said. “Would you like to come in?”

She had blonde hair and blue eyes, so completely different from Anne Lisbet, but she was good to look at as well.

“Anne Lisbet!” she called. “You’ve got visitors from your class!”

“Coming!” Anne Lisbet called from above.

“Isn’t she ill?” I said.

Her mother shook her head.

“Not anymore. We were just keeping her here for another day to be on the safe side.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Anne Lisbet appeared. She was holding a slice of bread in one hand and smiling at us with her mouth full.

“Hi!” she said.

“We thought you were ill,” I said.

“We’ve brought you the homework,” Geir said.

She was wearing a white sweater with a high neck and a red pattern, and blue trousers. The skin above her lips was as white as milk.

“Wouldn’t you like to go outside and play?” she said. “I’ve been indoors all day. And all day yesterday too!”

“Sure,” I said. “Is that all right, Geir?”

“Why not,” Geir said.

She put on her white boots and the red raincoat. Her mother went upstairs.

“See you, Mom!” she called and ran out. We ran after her.

“What should we do?” she said, stopping where the gravel finished and suddenly turning to us. “Want to go down to Solveig’s?”

We did. Solveig came out, Anne Lisbet suggested doing some skipping, so we stood there, Geir and I, with elastic around our legs while Solveig and Anne Lisbet hopped and skipped to and fro in accordance with the intricate patterns they mastered to such perfection. When it was my turn Anne Lisbet showed me what to do. She placed her hand on my shoulder and a quiver ran through me. Her dark eyes sparkled. She burst into laughter when I messed it up, and, oh, I smelled the fragrance of her hair as it flew past my face.

It was absolutely fantastic. Everything was absolutely fantastic. Above us the cloud thickened, the gray had taken on a tinge of bluish black, the sky was like a wall above the forest, soon afterward it began to rain. We put up the hoods on our rain jackets and continued to skip. The rain fell on our hoods and ran down our faces, the gravel crunched beneath our feet, the lamp on top of the pole at the end of the cul-de-sac suddenly came on. A little while later a car approached slowly.

“That’s Dad!” Anne Lisbet said.

The car, a Volvo Estate, stopped at the end of the drive, and a large, powerful man with a black beard stepped out. He waved to her, she ran over to him, he bent down and gave her a hug, then went in.

“We’re having dinner now,” she said. “What was for homework?”

I told her. She nodded, said bye, and was gone.

“I have to go, too,” Solveig said, standing there with her sad eyes and rolling up the elastic.

“Us, too,” I said.

When we reached the crossroads I suggested running all the way to the shop, which we did. There, Geir suggested we didn’t go home via Grevlingveien, nor through the forest, but take the main road down to Holtet. Which we did. A path led from there up through the heath to Ringveien, which we then followed home. But after we had gone a few meters along the road, something strange happened. The bus came down, instinctively I turned, and in the window, only a little way from me, at the same height, sat Yngve!

What on earth was he doing there? Was he going to Arendal? Now? What was he going to do there?

“That was Yngve,” I said. “He was on the bus.”

“Oh yes,” Geir said, not very interested. We crossed the lawn outside the house there and walked onto the road.

“That was really fun up there,” Geir said.

“Yes,” I said. “Shall we go up again later?”

“Yes,” Geir said. “But perhaps it’s best not to tell anyone? After all, they’re girls.”

“Well, there’s no reason why we should.”

From the top of the hill I could see that Dad’s car was parked outside our house. Geir’s father was home, too. They were teachers and finished work earlier than other fathers.

I recalled the garbage can I had used to get indoors.

“Shall we do something else?” I said. “Go somewhere else? Down to the tree swing?”

Geir shook his head.

“It’s raining. And I’m hungry. I’m going home.”

“OK,” I said. “Bye.”

“Bye,” Geir said, and ran to his house. He slammed the door so hard the glass rattled. I gazed across at Gustavsen’s house. There was a light on in the kitchen. Had they come back home or was it the father? They had a garage, so it was impossible to know whether the car was there or not.

I turned and looked up the hill. Marianne’s father took off the lid of the garbage can and threw in a scrunched-up plastic bag. He was wearing a woollen cardigan and was unshaven. He always looked angry, but I wasn’t sure if he was, I had never spoken to him or heard anything about him. He was a seaman and away for large parts of the year. When he was at home he was there all the time.

He closed the door without noticing me.

From the crossroads came an enormous yellow truck with rocks on the back. The ground vibrated as it passed. Thick smoke rose from an exhaust pipe at the front.

Yngve had once shown me a picture of the biggest vehicle in the world. It was in a book about the Apollo program he had borrowed from the library. Everything about it was the biggest in the world. It had been especially built to transport the rocket the few kilometers to the launch pad. But it was as slow as it was big and moved at a snail’s pace, Yngve said.

The most appealing part was the launch itself. I could look at photos of it any number of times. Once I had seen it on TV, too. You might expect the rocket to shoot off from the platform at an incredible speed, but that was not the case; on the contrary, for the first few meters it rose very slowly, the fire and the smoke it emitted formed a kind of cushion underneath, which it seemed to rest on for a brief instant before gently moving upward, almost waveringly, with a colossal roar that could be heard from a distance of several kilometers. And then it soared faster and faster until its speed was as mind-blowing as you had imagined, and it flew like an arrow or lightning into the crystal-blue sky.

Sometimes I imagined a rocket being launched from this forest. Hidden behind a mountain, it would be erected in secret and one day we would see it rise slowly, very slowly, above the trees just down there, pure and white against the green and gray, with a cloud of fire and smoke beneath it, and then it would be clear of them, almost hanging in the sky for a moment, before gaining speed and soaring faster and faster upward with the roar from the gigantic engines reverberating between our houses.

It was a good thought.

I jogged down to the house, crossed the gravel to the door, opened it, and was taking off my boots on the doormat when Dad came into the hall from his study.

I glanced up at him.

He didn’t look particularly angry.

“Where have you been?” he said.

“Playing with Geir,” I said.

“That wasn’t what I asked you,” he said. “Where have you been?”

“We were up at B-Max,” I said. “Behind it.”

“Oh,” he said. “What were you boys doing there?”

“Nothing much,” I said. “Playing.”

“You’ll have to go back,” he said. “We need some potatoes. Can you buy some, do you think?”

“Yes,” I said.

He took his wallet from his rear pocket and produced a banknote.

“Let me see your pockets,” he said.

I stood up and thrust forward my hips.

He passed me the note.

“Put this in your pocket,” he said. “And don’t hang around.”

“OK,” I said. He went back to the kitchen. I put my boots back on, closed the door gently behind me, and set off at a run.

Yngve came home shortly before we were to have dinner and just made it to his bedroom before Dad shouted that the food was ready. He had fried some chops and onions and boiled some cauliflower and potatoes. Mom informed us that we were going to have a cleaning woman, an old lady called Fru Hjellen, who would come once a week, and she would be popping by this afternoon. Mom had rung her from work, she said, she had seemed very nice. I knew Dad didn’t want a cleaning woman, he had mentioned it once, but now he was quiet, so I supposed he must have changed his mind.

I was looking forward to her coming. The few times we had visitors it was always fun, perhaps because when they came they filled the house with something new and different. And it was good because they always showed Yngve and me some attention. “So those are your boys, are they?” they would say, if they had never seen us before, or, “How tall they’ve grown,” if they had, and sometimes they even asked us questions, such as how school was going or about soccer.

After eating I slipped into Yngve’s room. He took a cassette from the rack, it was Status Quo, Piledriver, and put it in the recorder.

“I saw you on the bus,” I said. “Where were you going?”

“To town,” he said.

He lay on the bed and started reading a comic.

“What did you do there?”

“That’s enough questions,” he said. “I had to buy a part for my bike.”

“Is it broken?”

He nodded. Then he looked me in the eye.

“Don’t tell anyone. Not even Mom,” he said.

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” I said.

“It’s up at Frank’s. You know the part the handlebars are attached to, well, it broke. But his father promised he would fix it for me. I get it back tomorrow.”

“Imagine if Dad had seen you,” I said. “In Arendal. Or someone he knows had seen you.”

Yngve shrugged and continued reading. I went into my own room. After a while the doorbell rang. I waited until Mom was downstairs in the hall before leaving my room. Shortly afterward an elderly, somewhat plump or perhaps I should say broad, lady with gray hair and glasses came up the stairs.

“This is Karl Ove,” Mom said. “Our younger son.”

I nodded to her. She smiled.

“My name’s Fru Hjellen,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll become good friends.”

She patted my shoulder. I felt a warmth suffuse my whole body.

“Our elder son, Yngve, is in his room,” Mom said.

“Should I get him?” I said.

Mom shook her head. “No need.”

She started showing her around, and I went back to my room. Outside, dusk was falling. The rain was drumming softly on the roof and wall. The gutters were swirling and gurgling. Large raindrops hit the window and rolled down in patterns it was impossible to predict. The headlights from a car lit up the spruce tree above the mailbox stand. Jacobsen returning from work. The green boxes and the stand to which they were attached glinted silently in the glare. No, no, they said. Not the light, not the light. I lay down on my bed and thought about Anne Lisbet. Tomorrow we would go there again. But first of all I wanted to see her at school! And it was enough to see her. I needed no more than that for the pleasure to spread through every part of my body. One day I would ask her to go out with me. One day I would be in her room and she would be in mine. Even though I wasn’t allowed to have anyone in my room, she would be allowed to come here, I would fix that. Even if we had to climb in through the little window in the boiler room!

I sat down at my desk, took the books from my satchel, and did my homework. Fru Hjellen left, and then I heard Yngve going to the kitchen. It was Monday today, and every Monday he had started making scones or waffles in the evening. I would sit in the kitchen with Mom while he worked, it was warm there, the aroma of scones or waffles was good, and we talked about everything under the sun. After Yngve had finished we ate the scones with butter, which melted on them, and brown cheese, or waffles with butter and sugar, which also melted, and drank tea with milk. Now and then, but not often, Dad joined us. By and large, though, he went back down to his study pretty quickly.

I did my homework at breakneck speed. I could do the letters, of course, it was just a question of scribbling down enough of them, and then I went into the kitchen, too. A light shone from the empty oven. Yngve stood stirring a bowl on the counter with his sleeves rolled up and an apron on. Mom sat knitting.

“Haven’t you finished yet?” I said, sitting down at my place.

“Another day or two,” she said, pulling at the wool, as though she were in a boat and jig fishing. “It depends on how much I get done.”

“Geir and I were up at Anne Lisbet and Solveig’s today,” I said.

“Oh?” Mom said. “Who are they? Some girls in your class?”

I nodded.

“Have you started playing with girls now?” Yngve said.

“Yes. And?” I said.

“Are you in love or what?”

I glanced at Mom hesitantly, then at Yngve.

“I think so,” I said.

Yngve laughed.

“You’re only seven! You can’t be in love!”

“Don’t laugh at him, Yngve,” Mom said.

Yngve blushed and studied the bowl in front of him.

“Feelings are feelings whether you’re seven or seventy. It means the same, you know.”

There was a silence.

“But it can’t go anywhere!” Yngve said.

“You might be right about that,” Mom said. “But you can feel something for others despite that, can’t you?”

“You were in love with Anne,” I said.

“I was not,” he said.

“You said you were.”

“Well, never mind,” Mom said. “How’s the mix going? Will it be ready soon?”

“Think so,” Yngve said.

“May I have a look?” Mom said, putting her knitting in the basket at her feet and getting up.

“Will you grease the tray, Karl Ove?”

She took the little pan with the melting butter off the heat, passed me a brush, and took the baking tray from the drawer at the bottom of the stove. The butter was ready; you could see that by the color: there were several inlets and some large lagoons of light brown in the thin yellow liquid. If you heated it slowly the color became fuller and purer. I dipped the brush in the pan and swept it over the baking tray. Butter heated slowly could make the bristles stiffen, so you had to dab rather than stroke it on, whereas with a thin brown liquid it was easier to cover a surface. It took ten seconds and the tray was ready. I sat down again and Yngve started shaping the scones. Downstairs a door opened. Straight afterward came the sound of Dad’s heavy footsteps on the stairs. I straightened up in my chair. Mom sat down again, put her knitting on her lap, and looked up as Dad appeared in the doorway.

“Everything’s in full swing here, I can see,” he said, tucking his thumbs through the loops of his belt and pulling up his trousers. “Soon be something to eat, I presume.”

“In a quarter of an hour or so,” Mom said.

“Are those scones you’re making, Yngve?” he said.

Yngve just nodded without looking up.

“Good,” Dad said. He turned and went into the living room. The floor creaked lightly under his weight. He stopped by the television, switched it on, and ensconced himself in the brown leather chair.

I knew that voice. It was the man on the doctor program. A bit hoarse, it sounded rusty, it issued from a face that always leaned backward as though addressing itself to the ceiling while his eyes always looked down, as though to direct his voice to the right place.

I got up and went into the living room.

The screen showed an open wound with blood and skin and flesh surrounded by blue linen.

“Is that an operation?” I said.

“It is indeed,” Dad said.

“May I watch?”

“Yes, I don’t think there would be any harm in that.”

I perched on the edge of the sofa. You could see deep into the body. There was a kind of shaft into it, held open by several metal clips, revealing a layer of flesh that the blood appeared to have just left, and a glistening, membrane-like organ at the very bottom, also stained with blood, all illuminated by a sharp, almost white, light. A pair of rubber-gloved hands rummaged around, apparently at home in these surroundings. Occasionally you saw a fuller picture. Then it became clear the shaft had been opened in a patient lying on a table otherwise completely covered by a blue plastic-like material and that the hands belonged to a surgeon who constituted the focal point of a circle of five people, all dressed in green, the two in the center leaning over the body under a saurian lamp, the other three next to them with trays of instruments and all sorts of equipment I had never seen before.

Dad got up.

“No, I can’t watch this,” he said. “How can they show this on TV on a Monday night!”

“Can I watch it anyway?” I said.

“Yes, of course,” he said, heading for the staircase.

The membrane at the bottom was pulsating. Blood streamed over it, and it sent the blood back, then seemed to rise, until the blood washed across again and once more it had to send it back and once more it had to rise.

Suddenly I realized this was a heart I was watching.

How incredibly sad.

Not because the heart was beating and couldn’t escape, it wasn’t that. The point was that the heart should not be seen, it should be allowed to beat in secret, hidden from our sight, it was obvious, you understood that when you saw it, a little animal without eyes, it should pound and throb inside your chest unseen.

But I kept watching. Medical programs were my favorite on TV, and especially the few that showed operations. A long time ago I had decided I would be a surgeon when I grew up. Mom and Dad sometimes mentioned this to others, it was intended to be amusing because I’d said it when I was so small, but I really meant it, that was what I wanted to do when I grew up, cut up other people and perform operations on them. I often did drawings or paintings of operations with blood and knives and nurses and lamps, and Mom had asked me many times why I drew and painted so much blood, why couldn’t I choose something else, houses and grass and sun, for example, and that was fine by me, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. Divers, sailing ships, rockets, and operations, they were what I wanted to draw and paint, not houses and grass and sun.

When Yngve was very small and they lived in Oslo he had said he wanted to be a garbage collector when he grew up. Grandma laughed a lot about that and often mentioned it. In the same breath she said Dad had wanted to be an odd job man when he was small. She laughed just as much about that, sometimes so much tears rolled down her cheeks, even though she must have said it a hundred times. My wanting to become a surgeon wasn’t funny in the same way, it carried a different message, but then I was also a lot older than Yngve had been when he said he wanted to be a garbage collector.

Step by step all the clips and tubes were removed from the shaft in the body. Then the host of the show came on camera and talked about what we had just seen. I got up and went back into the kitchen, where the scones were cooling down on the tray on top of the stove, a pan of hot water for tea was steaming beside them, and Mom was setting the table with plates, cups, knives, and a variety of spreads.

The next day the temperature had fallen and the rain had stopped. My winter boots from last year were too small, and Mom found some woolen socks I could wear inside my rubber boots instead. The blue Puffa jacket still fit, so I wore that for the first time since last year. And then, as soon as I was out of the house, there was a blue bobble cap that I pulled down so far over my face that it formed a black ceiling to my vision. Anne Lisbet was wearing a light-blue Puffa jacket, in smooth, shiny material, unlike mine, which was coarse and matte, a white cap from which her black hair protruded, a white scarf, blue trousers, and a brand-new pair of red boots. She was standing with some girls and didn’t return my gaze when I looked at them.

The color of her jacket was just incredibly attractive.

I wanted one like it.

When we got to school and everyone had left their satchels in a line, I suggested to Geir that we steal their caps. He would take Solveig’s and I would take Anne Lisbet’s. She was standing with her back to us, and when I grabbed it, she whirled around with a scream. I waited until her eyes met mine, and then I ran off. I didn’t run so fast that she couldn’t catch me or so slowly that everyone would see I was waiting.

I could hear her footsteps on the tarmac behind me.

And then she wrapped her arms around me.

Oh! Oh! Oh!

Her wonderfully thick down jacket pressed against mine, she smiled, and shouted, Let me have it, let me have it, and I simply couldn’t drag the moment out any longer by holding the cap high above her head, the joy inside me was too strong, I just gave it to her and stood still and watched her put it on her head and walk away.

Then she turned and smiled at me!

And her eyes, oh, her eyes, so black and beautiful, they were gleaming! It was like entering a zone of shining light against which everything outside paled and lost meaning. The bell rang, we marched up the stairs, along the corridor, sat down at our desks, and took out our books. And I did what we were told, listened when we had to listen, chatted away as usual, drew my sunken wrecks and swimming frogmen, ate my packed lunch and drank my milk, played soccer at recess, sat beside Geir, and sang in the bus on the way home, ran through the flock of children with my satchel hanging off my back down the last hill, present in both body and soul, yet absent, because inside me there suddenly existed a new sky under whose vaults even the most familiar of thoughts and actions appeared new.

When we went to see Anne Lisbet that day she was standing in the middle of a crowd of kids on the cul-de-sac outside her house. Two of them were swinging a rope between them like a machine, it lashed the ground like a whip, and one after the other they slipped in, stood, and jumped up and down a few times, then slipped out, so that the next person could step in. She was wearing the same cap and the same scarf, and she smiled at us as we stopped in front of them.

“Join in, come on!” she said.

We got in line. I wanted to impress her so much, just slip into the spinning corridor the rope drew in the air, but I didn’t manage more than two jumps before it hit my calf and I was out. Strangely, Geir, whose motor control was not that great and whose arms and legs flapped about wildly, managed very well. Jump, jump, jump, jump, jump — and then he hurled himself out with such force and determination that he had to take a few extra steps to prevent himself from stumbling, not dissimilar to a runner throwing himself at the tape.

Now she would think that Geir was better than me.

The somberness of that thought was gone the very next moment because it was her turn. She ran in and danced inside the rope, an absolute virtuoso, her weight was first on one leg, then on the other while she stared straight ahead, as though her head had nothing to do with what her body was doing. But as she jumped out, no longer needing to concentrate, it was me she looked at and sent a smile to. Did you see that? her smile said. Did you see me just now?

The water covering the largest sunken areas of the cul-de-sac where we were standing was almost yellow. In the smaller puddles it was a greenish gray, like the surrounding gravel, only a shade lighter. And shinier, of course. From the forest below came the babbling of a stream. The drone of a machine was also audible. I had never been there before, and walked over to the edge to look down. From the house above me on the edge of the forest, a broad, rocky slope fell away sharply. Beneath it there was a yellow bog. Behind that, pines huddled together. Between the trunks I could see a green workmen’s shed and a yellow generator. That was what was making the noise.

Then some drilling started. I couldn’t see who was doing it, but the sound, such a monotonous rat-a-tat-tat, with that brittle, almost singing tone of metal on rock lying like a veil over it, was unmistakable. I knew it through and through.

I turned back and saw Geir nodding his head in time with the rope to adapt to the rhythm for his turn. But this time he didn’t do so well, his foot got tangled at once, and as the two rope swingers resumed their mechanical motions, he shuffled over toward me. Behind him Anne Lisbet slipped in. But as soon as she was in position the rope hit her on the arm. She seemed almost to have done it on purpose.

“Are you coming, Solveig?” she said.

Solveig nodded and left the line. Both of them came over to us.

“What do you want to do?” Anne Lisbet said.

“Maybe go and look for some bottles?” I said.

“Yes, let’s!” Geir said.

“Where, though? Where are there any bottles?” Anne Lisbet said.

“Along the main road,” Geir said. “And in the forest behind the play area. Around the sheds. Sometimes by the Rock. Never in the autumn, though.”

“At the bus stop,” I said. “And under the bridge.”

“Once we found a whole bag full,” Geir said. “In the ditch near the shop. We made four kroner on the deposits!”

Solveig and Anne Lisbet looked at him, impressed. Even though the bottle idea had been my suggestion! I had come up with it, not Geir!

Without thinking, we had started to walk. The sky was as gray as dry cement. Not a breath stirred the trees; everything was still, brooding, as if turned in on itself. Except for the pines, that is: they were as open and free and sky-embracing as ever. Standing more as though they were in repose. It was the spruces that were turned inward, swallowed up by their own darkness. The deciduous trees, with their thin trunks and splayed branches, were nervous and wary. The old oaks, of which there were quite a few on the slope beyond the road, where we were heading now, were not afraid but lonely. They could endure the loneliness, though; they had stood there for so many years and would stand there for so many more to come.

“There’s a pipe there that goes under the road,” Anne Lisbet said, pointing to the slope running down alongside the road. It was covered with black soil, laid recently, because no flowers had come up yet.

We walked down. And, sure enough, a pipe did go under the road, made of concrete, perhaps a little more than half a meter in diameter.

“Have you ever crawled through it?” I said.

They shook their heads.

“Why don’t we?” Geir said. He leaned over with one hand on the edge of the pipe and peered into the darkness.

“What if we get stuck inside?” Solveig said.

“We can do it,” I said. “So you can cross the road and wait for us.”

“Do you dare?” Anne Lisbet said.

“Of course,” Geir said. He glanced at me. “Who’ll go first?”

“You can,” I said.

“OK,” he said, bending down and squeezing into the pipe. It was too narrow to scramble through on all fours, I could see, but not so narrow that you couldn’t wriggle through. After a few seconds of twisting and turning his whole body had disappeared. I looked at Anne Lisbet, leaned forward and stuck my head in the pipe. A smell of something fusty, like mildew, filled my nostrils. I placed my elbows on the bottom and edged the rest of my body forward, moving like a grub. When all of my body was inside, I raised myself as far as was possible, and with my forearms, knees, and feet pushing against the cement wriggled into the gloom. For the first few meters I could see the shadowy figure of Geir in front of me, but then the darkness deepened and he was gone.

“Are you there?” I shouted.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Are you scared?”

“A little. And you?”

“Yes, a little.”

Suddenly everything vibrated. A car or a truck must have driven over us a long way up. What if the pipe broke? What if it caved in and we were stuck in it?

The tips of my fingers and toes began to tremble with a faint sense of panic. I knew this feeling, it could arise when I was climbing a mountain and then I would be paralyzed. Frightened out of my wits, I would stand perfectly still, incapable of ascending or descending, in full knowledge of the fact there was only one way to go, only my own movements could get me out of this. I couldn’t move, I had to move, but I couldn’t, had to, couldn’t, had to, couldn’t.

“Are you still scared?” I said.

“A little. Did you hear the car? Here comes another!”

Again the pipe vibrated around me.

I kept quite still. There was water lying in several places at the bottom of the pipe and it was advancing up my trousers.

“I can see light!” Geir said.

I thought of the enormous weight on the pipe. It was only a few centimeters thick. My heart was pounding. Suddenly I wanted to stand upright. The urge grew wildly inside me, but collided with the recognition that it was impossible, the concrete was wrapped around my body like a cocoon. I couldn’t move.

Sometimes Yngve would sit astride me while I was lying under the duvet. He would hold me so firmly that I couldn’t move at all. The duvet was tight across my chest, my hands were locked in his, and my legs were rendered useless under his weight and the taut duvet. He did it because he knew I absolutely hated it. He did it because he knew that after a few seconds of being held captive I would panic. That I would summon all my strength in an attempt to break free, and when I couldn’t, when he held me in his grip, I would begin to scream as loudly as I could. I screamed and screamed like a being possessed, and I was, I was possessed by terror, I couldn’t break free, I was stuck, completely and utterly stuck, and I screamed from the bottom of my lungs.

Now I could feel the same grip around my heart.

I couldn’t move.

Panic was growing.

I knew I mustn’t think about not being able to stand up, I should crawl forward patiently and everything would be fine. But I couldn’t. All I could think of was that I couldn’t move.

“Geir!” I shouted.

“I’m nearly out!” he shouted back. “Where are you?”

“I’m stuck!”

Silence for some seconds.

Then Geir shouted, “I can come and help you! I just have to get out and turn first!”

The panic attack was like an exhalation of breath, because it was out of me now. I moved my arms forward and dragged my knees after. The material of my jacket scraped against the pipe above. Only a few centimeters above that there were tons of rocks and earth. I stopped. My legs and arms had gone weak. I lay down flat.

What would Anne Lisbet and Solveig think about me now?

Oh no, oh no.

Then the panic returned. I couldn’t move. I was trapped. I couldn’t move! I was trapped! I couldn’t move!

Somewhere in the darkness in front of me something moved. Cloth scraped against cement. I heard Geir breathing, it was unmistakable: he would often breathe through his mouth.

Then I saw him, a white face in the blackness.

“Are you stuck?” he said.

“No,” I said.

He grabbed the sleeve of my jacket and pulled. I raised my back and moved first one arm forward, then the other, one leg, then the other. Geir wriggled backward without letting go of my sleeve, and even though he wasn’t pulling me, because of course I was scrabbling my way through, it felt like he was, and the sight of his white face, pointed like a fox’s and unusually concentrated, meant that my mind was no longer on the pipe and the darkness and not being able to move, and so I could move, little by little over the damp concrete, which became lighter and lighter until Geir’s feet were out of the hole, followed by his torso, and I could poke my head out into daylight.

Anne Lisbet and Solveig were standing close together by the opening and looking at me.

“Did you get stuck?” Anne Lisbet said.

“Yes,” I said. “For a while there, but Geir helped me.”

Geir brushed down his hands. Then he brushed the knees of his trousers. I straightened up. The space beneath the gray sky was vast. All the shapes were razor sharp.

“Why don’t we go down to Little Hawaii?” Geir said.

“Good idea,” I said.

It was wonderful to run on the forest floor. The surface of the water in the little lake was completely black. The trees rising from the two small islands were still. We jumped over to our respective islands. Anne Lisbet and I on one, Solveig and Geir on the other.

Anne Lisbet’s lips seemed so vital; they opened and smiled with such ease, now and then of their own accord when her eyes remained unmoved. They seemed to obey the slightest impulse of her mind. She thought of something, they spread across her hard white teeth, soft and red, occasionally followed by an exclamation or a glow of happiness in her eyes, occasionally unconnected with anything else.

“You’re sailors,” she said out of the blue. “And you come home to us. We haven’t seen each other for ages. Shall we play that?”

I nodded. Geir nodded, too.

The two girls jumped onto land and went a little way into the forest.

“You can come now!” Anne Lisbet shouted.

We moored, leaped ashore, and walked toward them. But we weren’t quick enough for them, Anne Lisbet was impatiently dancing from one foot to the other, she set off running, toward me, and when she reached me she threw her arms around me and hugged me and pressed her cheek against mine.

“I have missed you so much!” she said. “Oh, my darling husband!”

She took a step back.

“Again!”

I ran back to the lake, jumped onto the little island, waited until Geir was on the other one, then we repeated our actions with one difference, this time we ran as fast as we could to the girls.

Again she wrapped her arms around me.

My heart was racing, for I was not only standing on the ground in a forest with the sky far above me, I was also standing on the ground inside myself and looking up into something light and open and happy.

Her hair smelled of apples.

Through the material of her thick padded jacket I could feel her body. Her cold, smooth face against mine, almost glowing.

We did this three times. Then we delved further into the forest. After only a few meters it sloped down, and as the trees growing there were mostly deciduous, the ground was covered with red, yellow, and brown leaves, a floor to the bare walls of trunks. There was the sound of a rushing stream somewhere nearby. The forest tapered to a path running steeply down to the main road, which we couldn’t see until we came out a couple of meters above it.

On the other side, a field sloped down, beyond lay Tromøya Sound, as gray as clay, while the sky that opened above was a shade lighter.

The traffic was fast moving, and we kept to the ditch as we walked along. The bottles we usually found here were always new and shiny while those we found in the woods were often covered in grass and had leaves stuck to them, sometimes they were also full of little insects and lifting them up was like lifting up a bit of the field.

Today, however, there were no bottles to be seen. When we reached Larsen’s house — a dilapidated, shed-like construction that had once been part of a farm but was now squeezed into a corner between the forest and the road, whose owner was a teacher at the same school as Dad and according to rumors had turned up for work drunk several times — we crossed the road and followed the steep gravel road down to Gamle Tybakken. We looked for bottles on the way, but our efforts became more and more halfhearted. Soon we came to a built-up area. Old white houses set far back in well-established gardens full of fruit trees and fruit bushes. Where we were walking, the colors were so sharp, all the leaves were brilliant yellow and piercing red, and so matte in the sky’s pale, slightly frigid gray, it gave me a sense I was walking at the bottom of a tin can, with the sky the lid and the hills that rose all around me the sides. After a few hundred meters we walked past a large property with a lawn stretching up toward the forest above. The house at the top was surprisingly small, considering the size of the land. A narrow gravel track led up to it, and we stopped by the mailbox at the end because, outside the house, beside a large stream that plunged down from the forest, an old lady was pulling at a tree that had got wedged in it.

The tree was perhaps three times bigger than her, with a broad panoply of thin branches around it.

Somehow or other she noticed us standing there because the very next moment she straightened up and looked across at us. She waved. But not in greeting, she was pointing to herself, she was beckoning us to come over.

We ran as fast as we could up the gravel track, across the soft, wet lawn and stopped in front of her.

“You look strong,” she said. “Can you help an old lady, do you think? I need to get this tree out of the stream. It’s gotten stuck.”

Flattered, we got down to work. Geir waded into the water as far as he could and grabbed a branch, I did the same on the other side while Anne Lisbet and Solveig pulled the trunk. At first it wouldn’t budge, but then Geir began to shout, Heave-ho! Heave-ho! to make us pull in unison and bit by bit we managed to drag it out. When it was free the current caught the end and pushed it onto our side, but we held on and hauled it onto dry land.

“Oh, how wonderful!” the old lady said. “Many, many thanks! I would never have managed that on my own, you know. You are so strong! Well done. Wait here and I’ll give you a little something as a sign of gratitude.”

She scurried off to the house with her head bowed and disappeared through the front door.

“What do you think we’ll get?” I said.

“Few cookies maybe,” Geir said.

“Or a bag of bread rolls,” Anne Lisbet said. “Mom always keeps some handy.”

“I think apples,” Solveig said. And when she said that, I agreed wholeheartedly because beyond the gravel track there were lots of apple trees.

But when the old lady reappeared, with her head still bowed, she came toward us empty-handed. Hadn’t she found anything?

“Now look here,” she said. “This is for you with my thanks. Who’s going to take care of it? It’s for all of you.”

She held out a coin. It was five kroner.

Five kroner!

“I can look after it,” I said. “Thank you very much!”

“It’s me who should thank you,” the old lady said. “All the best now!”

Elated, we sprinted down the hill. Then without a second thought we walked back the way we had come, discussing what we would do with the money. Geir and I wanted to go to the shop straightaway and buy candy with it. Anne Lisbet and Solveig also wanted to buy candy, but they didn’t want to go to the shop now, it would soon be dinner and they had to go home. We decided to save the money for the day after and then buy candy.

Anne Lisbet and Solveig took the path home. Geir and I continued along the main road to the shop. Standing outside, we couldn’t wait as we had agreed, the five-krone coin was burning a hole in our pockets, it was all we could think about. Waiting to spend it was simply not an option, so we decided to buy the candy now and save it until the following day and surprise Anne Lisbet and Solveig with them.

And so we bought them.

However, after we had done so and started walking to the road, Geir’s father came along in their Beetle. He pulled over beside us, leaned over the seat, and opened the door.

“Hop in,” he said.

“Can Karl Ove come too?”

“No, not this time, we’re not going home. We’re going to town. Another time, Karl Ove!”

“OK,” Geir said. Turned to me and said in his dramatic whisper, “Don’t eat any of the candy!”

I shook my head and stood watching until Geir was in and the car had driven off. Then I ran to the concrete barriers, jumped over them, scampered down the slope and into the play area, past the wreck of a car, across the soccer field, through the forest, and along the edge past the bog. Just before I could be seen from our house I stopped and divvied up all the candy, which until then had been in one bag, and put them into the four pockets of my jacket. I threw the bag away and ran onto the road, down the side of the house — there was a light on in the living-room window — and into the drive. Dad’s car was there and, leaning against the wall in its usual place, Yngve’s bike!

The little metal part holding the handlebars in position had a very different, and much brighter, gleam than the metal around it. Surely Dad couldn’t help but notice?

I opened the door and went in. If Dad met me I would just hang up my jacket as normal. If he stayed in his study or in the living room, I would go upstairs wearing my jacket, hide the candy in my room, and then go back down with the empty jacket. If he met me then and asked why I was still wearing my jacket I would say I’d had to go to the toilet urgently.

The house was quiet.

There he was. Upstairs in the living room.

I carefully removed my shoes and walked through the hall, up the stairs, and into the bathroom. Opened my fly, wriggled out the wiener, and peed. Pulled the chain, washed my hands in cold water, dried them, and waited for the flush to stop before I opened the door. Cast a fleeting glance into the living room, nothing, went into my room, pulled the duvet aside, emptied my pockets of all the candy, covered them again, and went onto the landing.

“Karl Ove, is that you?” Dad said from the living room.

“Yes,” I said.

He came out.

“Where have you been?” he said.

“Gamle Tybakken with Geir,” I said.

“What were you doing there?”

His mouth was a straight line. His eyes were cold.

“Nothing much,” I said, so happy my voice held firm. “Walking around, that was all.”

“Why are you wearing your jacket?”

“I had to go to the bathroom. I’ll take it off now.”

I continued down the stairs. He went back to the living room. I hung up my jacket and quickly returned, unhappy at the thought that all that candy was lying there unprotected. Switched on the small, round metal lamp on the desk. The long, slim bulb filled the empty space it resided in with its yellow light. Sat down on the bed. Straightened the duvet over the candy.

What now?

Contrasting feelings coursed through me. One minute I was on the verge of tears, the next my chest was bursting with happiness.

I took out a book about space Dad had had as a child and which I had been allowed to borrow the previous time I was ill. It was crammed with drawings of how space travel would be in the future. Astronauts’ equipment, the shape of rockets, and the surfaces of planets.

Dad strode along the landing.

He opened the door and eyed me. Without making a move to come in or say anything.

I closed the book and sat up straight. Glanced in the direction of the candy.

It was impossible to see there was anything underneath the duvet.

“What have you got there?” Dad said.

“Where?” I said. “What do you mean? I haven’t got anything.”

“Under the duvet,” Dad said.

“I haven’t got anything under the duvet!”

He eyed me again.

Then he walked over to the bed and tore the duvet aside.

“You’re lying to me!” he said. “Are you lying to your own father?”

He grabbed my ear and twisted it round.

“I didn’t mean to!” I said.

“Where did you get the candy? Where did you get the money to buy them?”

“An old lady gave it to me!” I said, starting to cry. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“An old lady?” Dad said. He twisted harder. “Why would an old lady give you money?”

“Ow! Ow!” I yelled.

“Be quiet!” he said. “You lied to me, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but I didn’t mean to!”

“Look at me when I’m talking to you. Did you lie?”

I raised my head and looked at him. His eyes were smoldering with anger.

“Yes,” I said.

“So now you tell me where you got the money from. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I got it from an old lady! We did her a favor!”

“Who?”

“Geir and I and A —”

“You and Geir and who?”

“No one. Just me and Geir.”

“You little liar. Just you come here.”

He twisted my ear around again while pulling my hand and forcing me to stand up. I gasped and sobbed and my insides went hollow.

“Down to my study,” he said, without letting go of my ear.

“I … haven’t … done … anything … wrong,” I said. “We … were … given … the money.”

He pushed open the first door so hard that it slammed against the wall. Dragged me in through the second and onto the floor. Then he let go.

“How did you get the money?” he said. “And don’t you tell me any lies!”

“We helped … an old lady.”

“To do what?”

“There was … a tree. A tree … stuck in a stream. We pulled … it out.”

“And she gave you money for that?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Five kroner.”

“You’re lying, Karl Ove. Where did you get the money from?”

“I AM NOT LYING!” I yelled.

His hand shot out and slapped me on the cheek.

“Do not shout!” he hissed.

He stood up.

“But there is a way to find out,” he said. “I’ll ring the old lady and ask her if it’s true.”

He looked me in the eye as he said it.

“Where does she live?”

“In … Gamle Ty … bakken,” I said.

Dad went to the telephone on his desk, lifted the receiver, and dialed a number. Held the receiver to his ear.

“Oh, hello,” he said. “My name’s Knausgård. I’m ringing about my son. He says you gave him five kroner today. Is that correct?”

There was a pause.

“You didn’t? You didn’t have two boys helping you today? You didn’t give them five kroner? Oh yes, I see. I apologize for the intrusion. Thank you very much. Goodbye.”

He cradled the receiver.

I couldn’t believe my own ears.

He looked at me.

“She hasn’t seen any boys. And she definitely didn’t give anyone five kroner.”

“But it’s true. We were given five kroner.”

He shook his head.

“That’s not what she said. So. That’s enough lying. Where did you get the money from?”

Another deluge of tears swept through me.

“From … the … old … lady!” I sobbed.

Dad stared at me.

“We’re not going to get any further with this,” he said. “Now you go and throw the candy in the bin. And you stay in your room for the rest of the evening. Then I’ll have a chat with Prestbakmo in a bit.”

“But they’re not mine!” I said.

“They’re not yours? You’ve told me you were given five kroner? Wasn’t it your money after all?”

“It’s Geir’s as well,” I said. “I can’t throw the candy away.”

Dad stared at me with his mouth agape and a furious glare.

“You do as I say,” he said at length. “Now I don’t want to hear a single word more from you. Have you got that? You steal, you lie, and on top of all that you talk back! So. Get up there.”

With him right behind me, I gathered up all the candy in my hands, threw them in the kitchen trash can, and went back to my room.

That autumn and winter we went up to see Anne Lisbet and Solveig as often as we could. We stumbled around playing in the darkness, our rain gear glistening with rain in the gleam of our flashlights, which shone narrow tunnels of light into the forest below their houses, we sat in one of their bedrooms drawing and listening to music, we went to the boat factory and the big quay there, up the hill behind, where none of us had been before, and we went down into the forest below the bridge next to the immense concrete foundations.

One Saturday we wandered down to the secret dumping ground. They were just as eager as we had been, and Geir and I dragged four chairs and a table, a lamp, and a chest of drawers into the trees, we arranged them as if we were in a living room, and it was absolutely fantastic because we were outside in the forest, in the sunlight, yet inside a living room, and we were there with Solveig and Anne Lisbet.

The tingle of excitement I felt when I looked at her never waned, she was so beautiful it hurt. Her thick, light-blue jacket with the shiny material. The white cap. The rim of wool around the top of her boots. Her face when for some reason she sent us a fierce look. Her smile, as radiant as a billion diamonds.

When the snow began to fall we wandered around searching for suitable places to jump from, slide down, or dig holes in. Her hot, red cheeks then, the gentle but distinct smell of snow that changed so much according to the temperature, but that was everywhere around us nevertheless; all the possibilities that existed. Once the mist hung between the trees, the air was thick with drizzle and we were wearing waterproof clothing that was so frictionless on the snow we could slide down it like seals. We climbed to the top of the slope, I lay on my front, Anne Lisbet sat astride me, Solveig astride Geir, and we slid down on our stomachs all the way to the bottom. It was the best day I had ever experienced. We did it again and again. The feeling of her legs clamped round my back, the way she held my shoulders, the howls of delight she gave when we picked up speed, the fantastic somersaults when we reached the bottom, rolling around with our legs and arms entwined. All while the mist hung motionless amid the wet, dark green spruce trees, and the drizzle in the air lay like a thin film of skin on our faces.

We discovered lots of new places that winter, such as the deciduous forest below the road, which surrounded the whole estate and the area above the Fina station, two places that had been totally separate in our consciousness but that were now suddenly connected. The old gravel lane that led down there, the last part of which we had joined when we were going to the Fina station, also had a top end, where the children we had never seen lived, they also had a soccer field in the forest, small, it was true, but with decent goals. Or the road below Anne Lisbet and Solveig’s, where the houses highest up were only a stone’s throw away from theirs. Dag Magne, who was in our class, turned out to be Solveig’s neighbor. It came as a surprise that their houses were so close to one another, they belonged to two different worlds and there was a belt of forest between them. Presumably it was the forest that had deceived us. It was no more than twenty, perhaps thirty meters wide, but it represented so much more than houses that, emotionally, the distance felt like several hundred meters. This was the same across the whole estate, and not only there, it was like that by the dumping ground, too, for if you took the road from Færvik and continued straight on, which very few people did, instead of turning right onto the road to Hove, you were there. And if you bore right at the end of the long, flat stretch, on the road east toward the school, it was only a couple hundred meters before the dumping ground revealed itself in all its glory between the trees. Areas that had previously been isolated, in their own worlds, so to speak, were suddenly connected. How many people knew that Lake Tjenna was actually located right by Lake Gjerstad? Lake Gjerstad, which you could walk to from Sandum, on the other side of the island! Or reach via a shortcut off the road to school!

Another surprise was that Fru Hjellen, our houskeeper, lived with her husband in the house next to Anne Lisbet’s. They had no children, she was always happy to receive visitors, and I went there both on my own and with the other three. When she cleaned our house I told her all sorts of things, even things I didn’t tell Mom and Dad. She taught me how to open the front door with the key I had been given — the trick was to pull it out a tiny bit after fully inserting it and then turn.

And so it was Fru Hjellen I confided in when one of the rocks we regularly dropped on cars from the road below us finally hit one. I was the one who dropped it. We were standing by the green fence, Geir had just missed his car, when I picked up a stone and waited for another car to come. The stone was bigger than my hand and so heavy that I pushed it rather than dropping it. There, a car was coming round the bend. Racing across the flat stretch. Now!

The stone flew through the air. The instant it left my hand I knew it was going to hit. However, I had not anticipated the bang on the car roof would be so loud. Nor that the very next second there would be a squeal of brakes and locked tires screaming across the tarmac.

Geir looked at me with terrified eyes.

“Let’s scram!” he said.

He crawled up the rocks, dashed across the road, climbed up the little knoll, and was gone.

Absolutely paralyzed, I didn’t move. I simply couldn’t move a muscle. I was too frightened. Even when I heard a car door slamming below, the engine starting, and the car heading for where I was standing. I didn’t move.

Thirty seconds later the car came up the road. With tears running down my cheeks and my legs trembling so much I could barely stand, I watched it stop on the road three meters above me. The driver didn’t open the door and get out; he hurled it open and leaped out, his face red with fury.

“Did you throw that rock?” he yelled, already on his way down the slope.

I nodded.

He grabbed both my arms and shook me.

“You could have killed me, do you understand? If the rock had hit the windshield! Do you understand! And whatever happens, the car’s a WRITE — OFF! Do you know how much it costs to repair a roof? Oh, this is going to cost you a bundle!”

He let go of me.

I was crying so much I couldn’t see.

“What’s your name?” he said.

“Karl Ove,” I said.

“Surname?”

“Knausgård.”

“Do you live here?”

“No.”

“Where do you live then?”

“Nordåsen Ringvei,” I said.

He straightened up.

“You’ll be hearing from me,” he said. “Or your father will be hearing from me, I should say.”

He took the slope in one stride with his long legs, got into his car, slammed the door hard, and drove off with a jerk.

I sat down on the ground sobbing. All hope was gone.

A moment later Geir called from the terrain above. He came sprinting down, bursting with questions about what had happened and what had been said. I knew he was glad it was me who had thrown the rock and that I had given my name. But what he wanted to know most was why I hadn’t run. After all, we’d had plenty of time to get away. If I’d run he would never have caught me and never known it was me who had dropped the stone.

“I don’t know,” I said, drying my tears. “But I couldn’t. Suddenly I couldn’t move.”

“Are you going to tell your mom and dad?” Geir said. “That’d be best. If you tell them the truth they’ll be angry, but it’ll be over and done with quickly. If you don’t say anything and he rings, it’ll be worse.”

“I don’t dare,” I said. “I can’t tell them.”

“Did you tell him your father’s name?”

“No, just mine.”

“But your name’s not in the phone book!” he said. “And he’ll have to ring your dad. But you didn’t tell him his name!”

“No,” I said, with a flicker of hope.

“In that case, definitely don’t tell them anything,” Geir said. “Perhaps nothing will come of it!”

When I got home, Fru Hjellen was there. She could see I had been crying and asked me what was wrong. I asked her not to say a word to anyone. She promised. Then I told her. She stroked my cheek and said it would be best if I told my parents. But I didn’t dare, I told her, and so we left it at that. Whenever the phone rang in the following days, I froze in a fear that was greater than any I had ever experienced. An immense darkness hung over those days. But it was never him on the phone, it was always someone else, and I was beginning to believe that everything would pass and disappear of its own accord.

Then he called.

The phone rang, Dad picked it up downstairs, perhaps three minutes went by before the handset upstairs clicked, which meant he had rung off. He came upstairs, his footsteps firm and laden with determination. On his way to see Mom. The voices from the kitchen were loud. I sat in bed crying. A few minutes later my bedroom door opened. Both of them came in. That never happened. Their faces were grave and somber.

“A man has just called me, Karl Ove,” Dad said. “He told me you dropped a big stone on his car and destroyed the roof. Is that true?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How could you do such a thing?” he said. “What’s wrong with you? You could have killed him! Don’t you understand? Don’t you understand how serious this is, Karl Ove?”

“Yes,” I said.

“If the stone had gone through the windshield,” Mom said, “he could have driven off the road or collided with another car. He could have died.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Now I have to pay for the repairs. Which will run into several thousand kroner. And that’s money we don’t have!” Dad said. “Where do you think that’s going to come from, eh?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Oh, you accursed boy!” he said, turning away.

“And then you didn’t say a word,” Mom said. “It’s more than a week since it happened. You have to tell us when this kind of thing happens. Do you understand? Promise me you will.”

“Yes,” I said. “But I told Fru Hjellen.”

“Fru Hjellen?” Dad said. “And not us?”

“Yes.”

He looked at me with those cold, angry eyes of his.

“Why did you do it?” Mom said. “How could you even think of dropping stones on cars? You must have known it was dangerous?”

“We didn’t think we would hit anything,” I said.

“We?” Dad said. “Were there more of you?”

“Geir was with me,” I said. “But I dropped the stone that hit the car.”

“Looks like I’ll have to have a chat with Prestbakmo as well,” Dad said, glancing at Mom. Then he turned to me.

“You’re grounded today and for two more days. No pocket money for this week or the following one. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Then they went out.

It had all passed. This too. It had been the darkness between the act and the revelation, when everything appeared normal but wasn’t, which had been so terrible. When everything trembled behind the static facade of everyday normality. Once, about a year earlier, a similar situation had made me run away. Then it had been not a rock but a knife that had led to the misfortune. All the other children had been given scout knives, except me. I was too small and too irresponsible. But then one day, in an act that bore some resemblance to a ceremony, Dad presented me with a knife. They trusted me, he said. I hid my disappointment that it was a girl’s knife he had bought and that the scout in the picture on the sheath wore a skirt, not trousers, these were details you could not expect an adult to understand, and I allowed my pleasure at receiving the knife to predominate because now I could cut and carve and chop and throw with the others. All I needed to do was keep the sheath out of their sight. That day I carved a sword with Leif Tore. A long piece of wood I sharpened at the end like a bradawl and a short piece nailed on as a handle. Swords in hand, we roamed the estate. Finding two girls, each with a doll’s stroller, we snuck after them for a while before we launched an attack, imagining we were pirates and they were ships, and again and again we ran our swords through the leather hoods of the strollers. The girls shouted and screamed, we retreated, they said they would tell on us, we began to worry about what we had done, and kept a wary eye on them. First of all, they went home, then they came out, and started to walk toward Gustavsen’s house and ours. Terrified of the consequences, we decided to run away. We climbed the mountain, went into the forest at the top, and walked as far as we could, that is, to the cliff above Lake Tjenna. Neither Leif Tore nor I had been there before. It was a long way from home and I thought we could sleep there and leave the following morning. We sat on the edge looking over. The sun hung low in the sky behind us; the countryside that spread out around us was golden in the sunshine. We sat there for half an hour perhaps. Then Leif Tore wanted to go home. He was hungry, he said. I tried to persuade him, we had run away after all, we couldn’t go back, but he stuck to his guns, he didn’t want to sleep outdoors under any circumstances, so I went back with him. Dad was waiting for me in the garden when I arrived home. He grabbed my arm in an iron grip, dragged me to my room, and told me I was grounded. The knife was confiscated, even though that wasn’t what I had used but a sword. They didn’t understand the difference. Stabbing with a knife was unthinkable. The sword was made of wood, it was what we had used for the attack, and they should have confiscated that. But they took the knife. I heard them talking about it. “Look,” Dad had said. “Look at the sheath. It’s completely ruined.” He was referring to all the holes I had made to hide the fact that the scout was wearing a skirt and not trousers, but he interpreted it as a sign that I was careless and immature. Sitting there in my room, grounded for that night and the following one, I watched Leif Tore playing outside. He had been given a slap and that was that. Slaps didn’t bother him.

But it passed. Everything passed. The girls got new strollers, the motorist got a new roof, the grounding came to an end, pocket money was reinstated, the road outside the house was packed with children in the evening, and the forest below was always open, day and night, winter and spring. Anne Lisbet and Solveig didn’t come down to us, we always went up to them, and in that way we had two worlds: one outside our houses, where we joined the gatherings of kids every evening, kicking a soccer ball, playing in the road, building dens in the forest below, running round and poking our noses in every nook and cranny of the estate, and when the cold came and the water froze, skating on Tjenna, with the wonderful sound of steel blades on ice, resounding against the low hills bordering the lake, and every day was filled with such intense pleasure — and another world up there with them, where everything appeared to resemble what we had at home because here too children were throwing themselves into everything you could throw yourself into, here too they kicked a soccer ball in the road, played games in the dark, here too they skipped, here too they skated when the water froze and skied when snow fell, yet it was different. The pleasure was somehow elsewhere, not in what we did but in who we did it with. So intense was the pleasure that it was often there even when they weren’t. One evening we played table tennis in Dag Lothar’s garage, one evening we snuck around a couple of workmen’s sheds by a new road in the forest, one evening we sat in Geir’s bedroom playing Chinese checkers, one evening I would be getting undressed by my bed and the thought of Anne Lisbet and her whole being could suddenly strike me with such force that I was left reeling with happiness and longing. Furthermore, it was not just her in those feelings, there was also her beautiful mother and her broad-shouldered father, who was a diver and had a couple of yellow oxygen bottles in the cellar bathroom, her little sister and brother, all the rooms in their house, and the pleasant fragrance that filled them. There were all the things she had in her room, so different from those that occupied mine, lots of dolls, dolls’ clothes, a lot of pink and frills. And there was what we did together, which her joy and enthusiasm heightened and added gloss to. Especially at school, where we kept to ourselves until a particular situation brought us together, it might be in a circle when we played Ta den ring og la den vandre and it was me she gave the ring to, or when it was me she caught while singing the last line of “Bro bro brille” and clasped her arms around or when I chased her in tag and she deliberately slowed down so that I could catch her. Oh, had it been up to me I could have run after Anne Lisbet all my life as long as I was allowed to wrap my arms around her at the end.

Did I know that it couldn’t last?

No, I didn’t. I thought it would just go on and on forever. Spring came, and with it a lightness: one day I put on my new sneakers, and running in them after months of trudging around in various kinds of boots was like flying. Puffa pants and jackets, which made all movement so awkward and clumsy, were replaced by light trousers and light jackets. Gloves, scarves, and caps were packed away. Skis and skates and sleighs and sleds were put into sheds and garages; bikes and soccer balls were taken out, and the sun, which for so long had hung low in the sky and whose rays had been for the eyes only, rose higher and higher with every day that passed and was soon so hot that the jackets we put on in the morning were stuffed in our satchels when we returned from school at midday. But during these weeks the most telling sign of spring was the reek of burning garden refuse wafting across the estate. The cool evenings, the bluish darkness, the cold emanating from ditches still littered with the remains of snowdrifts, as hard as ice and studded with grit, the constant buzz of children’s voices outside, children running after a soccer ball in the road, others cycling up and down ditches or doing wheelies on the sidewalk, everything bubbled with life and lightness, you had to run, you had to cycle, you had to shout, you had to laugh, all with the pungent yet rich smell of burning spring grass that was suddenly everywhere in your nostrils. Now and then we ran up and watched: the low, dense flames like little orange waves, damp almost with the intensity of color brought out by the evening gloom, tended by a proud mother or father, often with a rake over their shoulder and gloves on their hands, like some kind of lower-middle-class knight. Now and then there were real bonfires they kept watch over, when all the trash they had collected in the garden during the winter was burned.

What was it about fire?

It was so alien here, it was so profoundly archaic that nothing about it could be associated with its surroundings: what was fire doing side by side with Gustavsen’s trailer? What was fire doing side by side with Anne Lene’s toy shovel? What was fire doing side by side with Kanestrøm’s sodden and faded garden furniture?

In all its various hues of yellow and red it stretched up to the sky, consuming crackling spruce twigs, melting hissing plastic, switching this way, switching that, in totally unpredictable patterns, as beautiful as they were unbelievable, but what were they doing here among us ordinary Norwegians on ordinary evenings in the 1970s?