Some Rain Must Fall

~ ~ ~

In the evening I called Yngve and asked where he had been hiding recently. He said he had been working and he had been out the night the loan arrived and I had to get a phone so that he didn’t have to walk all the way up to my digs every time he wanted something from me. I said I’d got my loan now and I would think about buying a phone.

‘Did you have a good time?’ I persisted.

‘It was good. I came home with a girl.’

‘Who was she?’ I said.

‘No one you know,’ he said. ‘We’ve seen each other at Høyden, that’s all.’

‘Are you going out with her now?’

‘No, no, no. It’s not like that. What about you? How’s it going?’

‘Fine. But there’s quite a bit to read.’

‘Read? I thought you were supposed to be writing.’

‘Ha ha. I’ve just bought a Jon Fosse. Looks good.’

‘Oh yes,’ he said.

There was a silence.

‘But if you haven’t started writing yet, perhaps you can write some lyrics for me? Or preferably several. So that I can finish the songs.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘You do that.’

I sat over Yngve’s songs all evening and into the night, with music on my stereo, drinking coffee and smoking. When I went to bed at three, I had two semi-finished, well on the way, and one completely finished.

You Sway So Sweetly

Give me a smile

don’t be unfair

just want to undress you

layer by layer

Dance, dance, dance

In a mindless trance

Don’t ever stop

Keep on dancing

Until you drop

You sway so sweetly

You sway so sweetly

Give me a smile

don’t try to fight

just wanna love you

all day and night

Dance, dance, dance

In a mindless trance

Don’t ever stop

Keep on dancing

Until you drop

You sway so sweetly

You sway so sweetly

You sway so sweetly

You move so well

After lessons on Friday we went out. Hovland and Fosse took us on their obviously well-worn path to Wesselstuen. It was a great place, the tables were covered with white cloths, and as soon as we sat down a waiter in a white shirt and black apron came over to take our orders. I hadn’t experienced that before. Our mood was nice and relaxed, the week was over, I was happy, there were eight of us carefully selected students sitting round the table with Ragnar Hovland, already a legend in student circles, at least in Bergen, and Jon Fosse, one of the most important young postmodern writers in the country, who had also received good reviews in Sweden. I hadn’t spoken to them privately yet, but now I was sitting next to Hovland, and when the beer arrived, and I’d had a swig, I seized the opportunity.

‘I’ve heard you like the Cramps.’

‘Oh?’ he said. ‘Where have you heard such malicious gossip?’

‘A friend told me. Is it right? Are you interested in music?’

‘Yes, I am,’ he said. ‘And I do like the Cramps. So, yes … Say hi to your friend and tell him he’s right.’

He smiled, but there was no eye contact.

‘Did he mention any other bands I liked?’

‘No, just the Cramps.’

‘Do you like the Cramps then?’

‘Ye-es. They’re pretty good,’ I said. ‘But the music I listen to most at the moment is Prefab Sprout. Have you heard their latest? From Langley Park to Memphis?’

‘Certainly have, although Steve McQueen is still my favourite.’

Bjørg said something to him from across the table, and he leaned over to her with a polite expression on his face. Jon Fosse was sitting beside her and chatting to Knut. His texts had been the last ones we went through, and he was still full of it, I could see that. He wrote poems, and they were remarkably short, often only two or three lines, sometimes only two words beside each other. I didn’t grasp what they were about, but there was something brutal about them, and you wouldn’t believe that when you saw him sitting there smiling and laughing, his presence was almost as friendly as his poems were short. He was garrulous as well. So personality wasn’t the reason.

I put my empty beer glass down on the table in front of me and wanted another, but I didn’t dare beckon to the waiter, so I had to wait until someone else ordered.

Petra and Trude sat beside me chatting. It was as if they knew each other from before. Petra suddenly seemed very open while Trude had completely lost her stern concentrated demeanour, now she had a girlish air, as though a burden had been lifted from her shoulders.

Although I couldn’t really claim to know any of the other students, I had seen enough of them to form an impression of their characters, and even though these didn’t necessarily coincide with their texts, except in the case of Bjørg and Else Karin, who both wrote the way they looked, I felt pretty sure I knew who they were. The exception was Petra. She was a mystery. Sometimes she would sit quietly staring down at the desk, with no presence in the room at all, it was like she was gnawing at her insides, I thought then, for despite not moving and despite her eyes being fixed on the same point, there was still an aggression about her. She was gnawing at herself, that was the feeling I had. When she eventually looked up there was always an ironic smile playing on her lips. Her comments were usually ironic, and not infrequently merciless, though somehow correct, albeit exaggerated. When she was enthusiastic this could vanish, her laughter might then become heartfelt, childish even, and her eyes, which so often smouldered, sparkled. Her texts were like her, I thought, as she read them, just as spiky and grudging as she was herself, at times clumsy and inelegant, but always full of bite and force, invariably ironic, though not without passion even so.

Trude got up and walked across the room. Petra turned to me.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me what bands I like?’ she said with a smile, but the eyes she fixed on me were dark and mocking.

‘I can do,’ I said. ‘What bands do you like?’

‘Do you imagine I care about boys’ room banter?’ she said.

‘How should I know?’ I said.

‘Do I look like that type of girl?’

‘In fact, you do,’ I said. ‘The leather jacket and so on.’

She laughed.

‘Apart from the stupid names, and all the clichés, and the lack of psychological insight, I quite liked what you wrote,’ she said.

‘There’s nothing left to like,’ I said.

‘Yes, there is,’ she said. ‘Don’t let what others say upset you. It’s nothing, just words. Look at those two,’ she said, motioning towards our teachers. ‘They’re wallowing in our admiration. Look at Jon now. And look at Knut lapping it up.’

‘First of all, I’m not upset. Second of all, Jon Fosse is a good writer.’

‘Oh yes? Have you read any of his stuff?’

‘A bit. I bought his latest novel on Wednesday.’

‘Blood. The Stone is,’ she said in a deep Vestland voice, fixing me with her eyes. Then she laughed that heartfelt bubbling laugh of hers, which was abruptly cut short. ‘Ay yay yay, there’s so much posturing!’ she said.

‘But not in the stuff you write?’ I said.

‘I’ve come here to learn,’ she said. ‘I have to suck as much out of them as I can.’

The waiter came over to our table; I raised my finger. Petra did the same, at first I thought she was taking the mickey out of me, but then realised she wanted a beer too. Trude came back, Petra turned to her and I leaned across the table to catch Jon Fosse’s attention.

‘Do you know Jan Kjærstad?’ I said.

‘Yes, a bit. We’re colleagues.’

‘Do you consider yourself a postmodernist as well?’

‘No, I’m probably more of a modernist. At least compared with Jan.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He looked down at the table, seemed to discover his beer and took a long draught.

‘What do you think of the course so far?’ he said.

Was he asking me?

I flushed.

‘It’s been good,’ I said. ‘I feel I’ve learned a lot in a short time.’

‘Nice to hear,’ he said. ‘We haven’t done much teaching, Ragnar and I. It’s almost as new to us as it is to you.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

I knew I ought to say something, for I suddenly found myself at the beginning of a conversation, but I didn’t know what to say, and after the silence between us had lasted several seconds, he looked away, his attention was caught by someone else, whereupon I got up and went to the toilets, which were behind a door at the other end of the room. There was a man peeing in the urinal, I knew I wouldn’t be able to perform with him standing there, so waited for the cubicle to become vacant, which happened the very next moment. There was some toilet paper on the floor tiles, wet with urine or water. The smell was rank and I breathed through my nose as I peed. Outside the cubicle I heard water rush into the sinks. Immediately afterwards, the hand drier roared. I flushed and went out just as the two men left through the door, while another older man with a huge gut and a ruddy Bergen face came in. Although the toilet was a mess, with the floor wet and dirty and the smell vile, it still had the same solemnity as the restaurant outside with its white tablecloths and aproned waiters. No doubt it had something to do with its age: both the tiles and the urinals came from a different era. I rinsed my hands under the tap and looked at my reflection in the mirror, which bore no resemblance to the inferiority I felt inside. The man positioned himself, legs apart, by the urinal, I thrust my hands under the current of hot air, turned them over a few times and went back to the table, where there was another beer waiting for me.

When it was finished and I had started on the next, slowly my timidity began to ease, in its place came something soft and gentle and I no longer felt I was on the margins of the conversation, on the margins of the group, but in the centre, I sat chatting first with one person, then with another, and when I went to the loo now it was as though I took the whole table there with me, they existed in my head, a whirl of faces and voices, opinions and attitudes, laughter and giggles, and when some began to pack up and go home I didn’t notice at first, it happened on the extreme periphery and didn’t matter, the chatting and drinking carried on, but then Jon Fosse got up, followed by Ragnar Hovland, and it was terrible, we were nothing without them.

‘Have another one!’ I said. ‘It’s not so late. And it’s Saturday tomorrow.’

But they were adamant, they were going home, and after they had gone the urge to leave spread, and even though I asked each and every one of them to stay a bit longer the table was soon empty, apart from Petra and me.

‘You’re not going to go as well, are you?’ I said.

‘Soon,’ she said. ‘I live quite a way out of town, so I have to catch the bus.’

‘You can doss at my place,’ I said. ‘I live up in Sandviken. There’s a sofa you can sleep on.’

‘Are you that keen to keep drinking?’ she laughed. ‘Where shall we go then? We can’t stay here any longer.’

‘Café Opera?’ I suggested.

‘Sounds good,’ she said.

Outside, it was lighter than I had expected, the remnants of the summer night’s lustre had blanched the sky above us as we ascended the hill towards the theatre, past the row of taxis, the ochre glow from the street lamps as if drawn across the wet cobblestones, the rain pelting down. Petra was carrying her black leather bag and although I didn’t look at her I knew her expression was serious and dogged, her movements rigid and awkward. She was like a polecat: she bit the hands of those who helped her.

At Café Opera there were many vacant tables, we went up to the first floor, beside a window. I got us two beers, she drank almost half hers in one swig, wiped her lips with the back of her hand. I searched my brain for something to say, but found nothing, and drank almost half mine in one swig too.

Five minutes passed.

‘What did you actually do in northern Norway?’ she said out of the blue but in a matter-of-fact way as though we had been chatting for ages, while staring into the nearly empty beer glass she was nursing in front of her.

‘I was a teacher,’ I said.

‘I know that,’ she said. ‘But what made you decide to do that? What did you hope to achieve?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It just happened. The idea was to do some writing up there, I suppose.’

‘It’s a strange notion, looking for work in northern Norway so you can write.’

‘Yes, maybe it is.’

She went to get some beer. I looked around me; soon the place would be full. She had rested her elbow on the bar, held up a hundred-krone note, in front of her one of the barmen was pouring a beer. Her lips slid over her teeth as she knitted her brow. On one of the first days she told me she had changed her name. Her surname, I assumed, but no, she had changed her Christian name. It had been something like Anne or Hilde, one of the most common girl’s names, and I had thought a lot about Petra rejecting her first name because personally I was so attached to mine, changing it was inconceivable, in a way everything would change if I did. But she had done it.

Mum had changed her name, but that was to dad’s surname, it was a convention, and when she changed it again, it was back to her maiden name. Dad had also changed his name, that was more unusual, but he had changed his surname, not his Christian name, which was him.

She walked across the floor, half a litre in each hand, and sat down.

‘Who do you reckon will make it?’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘In class, at school.’

I didn’t care much for her choice of word — I preferred academy — but I said nothing.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘I said reckon. Of course you don’t know.’

‘I liked what you wrote.’

‘Flattery will get you nowhere.’

‘It’s true.’

‘Knut: nothing to say. Trude: posturing. Else Karin: housewife’s prose. Kjetil: childish. Bjørg: boring. Nina: good. She’s repressed, but she writes well.’

She laughed and slyly glanced up at me.

‘What about me?’ I said.

‘You,’ she snorted. ‘You understand nothing about yourself and you have no idea what you’re doing.’

‘Do you know what you’re doing?’

‘No, but at least I know I don’t know,’ she said and laughed again. ‘And you’re a bit of a jessie. But you’ve got big strong hands, so that makes up for it.’

I looked away, my insides on fire.

‘I’ve always had a wicked tongue on me,’ she said.

I took some long swigs of the beer and scanned the room.

‘You weren’t offended by that little gibe, were you?’ she said with a giggle. ‘I could say far worse things about you if I wanted.’

‘Please don’t,’ I said.

‘You take yourself too seriously as well. But that’s your age. It’s not your fault.’

And what about you then! I felt like saying. What makes you think you’re so bloody good? And if I’m a jessie, you’re butch. You look like a man when you walk!

I said nothing though, and slowly but surely the fire subsided, not least because I was beginning to get seriously drunk and approaching the point where nothing meant anything any longer, or to be more accurate, when everything meant the same.

A couple more beers and I would be there.

Into the room, between all the occupied tables, strode a familiar figure. It was Morten, wearing his red leather jacket and carrying a light brown rucksack on his back and a folded umbrella in his hand, the long one I had seen before. When he spotted me his face lit up and he rushed at full speed across to our table, tall and lanky, his hair spiky and glistening with gel.

‘Hi there!’ he grinned. ‘Out drinking, are you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘This is Petra. Petra, this is Morten.’

‘Hi,’ Morten said.

Petra gave him the once-over and nodded, then turned and looked the other way.

‘We’ve been out with the Academy,’ I said. ‘The others went home early.’

‘Thought writers were on the booze 24/7,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in the reading room until now. I don’t know how this is going to work out. I don’t understand a thing! Not a thing!’

He laughed and looked around.

‘Actually I’m on my way home. Just popped by to see if there was anyone I knew. But I’ll tell you one thing: I admire you writers-to-be.’

He looked at me seriously for a moment.

‘Well, I’m off,’ he said. ‘See you!’

When he had rounded the corner by the bar I told Petra he was my neighbour. She nodded casually, drank the rest of her beer and got up.

‘I’ll be off now,’ she said. ‘There’s a bus in fifteen minutes.’

She lifted her jacket from the back of the chair, clenched her fist and put it in the sleeve.

‘Weren’t you going to sleep at my place? It’s not a problem, you know.’

‘No, I’m going home. But I might take you up on your offer another time,’ she said. ‘Bye.’

So, with her hand round her bag and a steadfast gaze ahead she walked towards the staircase. I didn’t know anyone else there but sat for a little longer in case someone turned up, but then being on my own began to prey on my mind and I put on my raincoat, grabbed my bag and went out into the blustery night.

I woke up at around eleven to rattling and banging inside the wall. I sat up and looked around. What was that noise? Then I realised and slumped back down. The post boxes were on the other side of the wall, but so far I hadn’t slept long enough to know what it sounded like when the postman came.

Above me someone was walking around singing.

But the room, wasn’t it remarkably light?

I got up and lifted the curtain.

The sun was shining.

I got dressed, went over to the shop and bought some milk, rolls and the daily papers. When I returned I opened my post box. Apart from two bills that had been sent on to me there were two parcel-delivery cards. I hurried to the Post Office and was given two fat parcels, which I opened with the scissors in the kitchen. Shakespeare’s Collected Works, T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems and Plays, Oscar Wilde’s Collected Works and a book with photos of naked women.

I sat down on my bed to flick through it, trembling with excitement. No, they weren’t completely naked, many of them were wearing high heels and one had a blouse hanging open around her slim tanned upper body.

I put down the book and had breakfast while reading the three papers I had bought. The main news in Bergens Tidende was a murder that had taken place yesterday morning. There was a picture of the crime scene, which I thought I recognised, and I had my suspicions confirmed when I read the text underneath: the murder had been committed only a couple of blocks from where I was sitting now. And as if that wasn’t enough the suspected murderer was still at large. He was eighteen years old and attended Technical School, it said. For some reason, this made quite an impression on me. I pictured him at this moment in a basement bedsit, in my imagination, alone behind drawn curtains which every so often he parted to see what was going on in the street, he viewed it from ankle height, his heart pounding and despair tearing at his insides because of what he had done. He punched the wall, paced the room, considering whether to hand himself in or wait for a few days and then try to get away, on board one of the boats perhaps, to Denmark or England, and then hitchhike his way down through Europe. But he had no money and no possessions, only what he stood up in.

I peered out of the window to see if anything unusual was happening, uniformed officers gathering, for example, or some parked police cars, but everything was as normal — except for the sunshine, that is, which hung like a veil of light over everything.

I could talk to Ingvild about the murder, it was a good topic of conversation, his presence here, in my part of town, right now, while virtually the whole of the police force was out looking for him.

Perhaps I could write about that too? A boy who kills an old man and goes into hiding while the police slowly close in on him?

I would never ever be able to do that.

A wave of disappointment washed over me and I got up, took the plate and glass, put them in the kitchen sink, together with all the other dirty crockery I had used during the week. Petra was wrong about one thing, and that was that I didn’t understand myself, I thought, looking across the resplendent green park as a woman crossed with a child in each hand. Self-knowledge was the one quality I did have. I knew exactly who I was. Not many of my acquaintances knew as much about themselves.

I went back into the sitting room, was about to bend down to browse through my records when it was as if my eye was dragged towards the new book. A stab of joy and fear went through me. It might as well be now, I was alone, I had nothing in particular to do, there was no reason to defer it, I thought, and picked the book up, looked over my shoulder, how could I take it down to the toilet unnoticed? A plastic bag? No, who on earth takes a plastic bag with them to the toilet?

I opened the button of my jeans and unzipped, pushed the book down inside, covered it with my shirt, leaned forward as far as I could to see what it looked like, whether anyone would realise I had a book there.

Maybe.

What about taking a towel with me? If anyone came I could casually hold it over my stomach for the few seconds the encounter lasted. Then I could have a shower afterwards. Nothing suspicious about that surely, going to the toilet and then having a shower.

And that was what I did. With the book stuffed down my trousers and clasping the biggest towel I had I went out of the door, crossed the landing, down the stairs, along the corridor, into the toilet, where I locked the door, pulled out the book and began to leaf through.

Even though I had never masturbated before and wasn’t exactly sure how to do it, I still knew more or less, the expressions ‘jerk off’ and ‘beat the meat’ had been ever-present in all the wanking jokes I had ever heard over the years, not least in football changing rooms, and so with the blood throbbing in my member I took it out of the little pouch formed by my underpants, and as I ogled the long-legged red-lipped woman standing outside a kind of holiday bungalow in the Mediterranean somewhere, judging by the white walls and the gnarled trees, beneath a line of washing, with a plastic bowl in her hand, although otherwise completely naked, while I looked and looked and looked at her, all the beautiful erotic lines of her body, I wrapped my fingers around my dick and jerked it up and down. At first the whole shaft, but then after a few times only the tip, while still staring at the woman with the bowl, and then as a wave of pleasure rose in me, I thought I should look at another woman too, to make maximum use of the book, as it were, and turned over the page, and there was a woman sitting on a swing, wearing only red shoes with straps up her ankles, and then a spasm went through me and I tried to bend my dick down to ejaculate into the toilet, but I couldn’t, it was too stiff, so instead the first load of sperm hit the seat and slowly oozed down while later blobs were pumped out, further down, after I had the great idea of leaning forward to improve the angle.

Oh.

I had done it.

I had finally done it.

There was nothing mysterious about it after all. On the contrary, it was incredibly easy and quite remarkable that I hadn’t done it before.

I closed the book, wiped the seat, washed myself, stood stock still to hear if, contrary to expectation, anyone was outside, shoved the book back down my trousers, grabbed my towel and left.

It was only then that I wondered if I had done it right. Should you shoot into the toilet? Or maybe the sink? Or a wad of rolled-up toilet paper in your hand? Or did you usually do it in bed? On the other hand, this was an extremely secretive business, so it probably didn’t matter if my method deviated from the norm.

Just as I had put the book down on the desk, folded the unused towel and placed it in the cupboard there was a ring at the door.

I went out to answer it.

It was Yngve and Asbjørn. Both were wearing sunglasses, and as on the previous occasion there was something restless about them, something about Yngve’s thumb in his belt loop and Asbjørn’s fist in his trouser pocket or them both standing half-turned away until I opened the door. Or perhaps it was the sunglasses they didn’t take off.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Come in!’

They followed me into my room.

‘We were wondering if you fancied coming with us into town,’ Yngve said. ‘We’re going to some record shops.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘I’ve got nothing to do anyway. Right now?’

‘Yes,’ Yngve said, picking up the book with the naked women. ‘I see you’ve bought a photography book.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘It’s not hard to guess what you’re going to use that for.’ Yngve laughed. Asbjørn chuckled too, but in a way that suggested he wanted this aspect of the visit over as quickly as possible.

‘These are serious pictures, you know,’ I said as I put on my jacket, bent over and tied my shoes. ‘It’s a kind of art book.’

‘Oh yes,’ Yngve said, putting it down. ‘And the Lennon poster has gone?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Asbjørn lit a cigarette, turned to the window and looked out.

Ten minutes later, side by side, all wearing sunglasses, we were crossing Torget. The wind was blowing off the fjord, flags were fluttering and cracking on masts, and the sun, which was shining from a clear blue sky, glittered and shimmered on every surface. Cars tore down the street from Torgalmenningen like a pack of hounds whenever the traffic lights changed to green. The market was packed with people, and in the fish tanks in the middle, caught in their few cubic metres of greenish and probably freezing-cold water, cod swam around with their mouths agape, crabs crawled on top of one other and lobsters lay still, their claws bound with white elastic.

‘Shall we eat at Yang Tse Kiang afterwards?’ Yngve suggested.

‘Can do,’ Asbjørn said. ‘If you promise not to say Chinese food in China tastes quite different.’

Yngve didn’t answer, took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and stopped by the traffic crossing. I looked to the right where there was a vegetable stall. The sight of the orange carrots lying in bunches in a big heap made me think of the two seasons I had worked at the market gardener’s on Tromøya, when we pulled up the carrots, washed them and packed them, and I was always so near to the earth, rich and black, under the late August and early September evening sky, the darkness and the ground so close together, and the rustle of the bushes and trees at the end of the field sent small shivers of happiness through me. Why? I thought now. Why had I been so happy then?

The lights changed to green and we crossed the street surrounded by a crowd of people, passed a watchmaker’s shop, continued to a large square which opened up between the buildings like a clearing in a forest, I asked where we were going actually, Yngve said actually we were going to Apollon, and afterwards we were planning to visit some second-hand record shops.

Flicking through records in music shops was something I was good at, I knew most of the bands in the racks, I picked them up and looked to see who the producer was, who played what on the various tracks, which studio was used. I was a connoisseur, yet still I glanced over at Yngve and Asbjørn as we flicked through the LPs, and if either of them lifted a record out I tried to see what it was, what passed muster here, and in Asbjørn’s case I could see it was partly old stuff, and curiosities such as George Jones or Buck Owens. What particularly caught my eye was a Christmas record he held up to show Yngve, they laughed, Asbjørn said it was really over the top, and Yngve said yes, it was really camp. But he kept to the same categories that I liked, British post-punk, American indie rock, the odd Australian band perhaps and of course a couple of Norwegian bands, but nothing beyond that as far as I could see.

I bought twelve records, most by bands I already had and one on Yngve’s recommendation: Guadalcanal Diary. An hour later, sitting in a Chinese restaurant, they laughed at me for having bought so many records, but I sensed there was some respect in their laughter, it didn’t just say I was a new student who had never had so much money in his hands before but that I was dedicated. A huge dish of steaming rice was set on the table, it stuck to the big accompanying porcelain spoon, we dug in and each transferred a heap onto our plates, Yngve and Asbjørn poured the brown sauce onto the rice and I did the same. It almost completely disappeared between the grains, and what had been at first thick and black was brown the very next moment, and the grains of rice visible through it. It tasted a little sharp, I felt, but the next mouthful, of beef chop suey, more than compensated for that. Yngve ate with chopsticks, manipulating them with his fingers like a native. Afterwards we had fried banana with ice cream, and then we had a cup of coffee with a small After Eight mint in the saucer.

During the whole meal I had tried to suss out what exactly the chemistry was between two such good friends when they got together. How long they looked into each other’s eyes when they said anything before breaking off and looking down. What they talked about, how long for and why they had chosen that particular subject. Reminiscing: do you remember the time …? Other friends: did he say this or that? Music: have you heard this or that song, this or that record? Studies? Politics? Something that had just happened, yesterday, last week? When a new topic was broached was it linked to the previous one, did it peel off, so to speak, or was it just plucked out of the air?

But this didn’t mean that I sat silently observing them, I was actively involved throughout, I smiled and made comments, the only thing I didn’t do was embark on long monologues off my own bat, out of the blue, which both Yngve and Asbjørn did.

So what was going on? What was it all about?

First of all, they asked each other almost no questions, which I usually did. Secondly, to a large extent everything was connected, very little came up that was unrelated to what went before. Thirdly, most of it was aimed at making them laugh. Yngve told a story, they laughed at it, Asbjørn picked up the baton and moved the story into hypothetical mode, and if that worked, Yngve built on it until it became wilder and wilder. Their laughter ebbed away, a few seconds passed, Asbjørn recounted something that was closely related, also with the intention of making them laugh, and then it was more or less the same routine. Now and again they did touch on serious matters, in the same way, then they tossed a subject to and fro, sometimes in the form of a debate, all right, yes, but, you may say that, however, no, I’m not with you there, and there might be a pause, which made me fear there was bad blood between them, until a new story, anecdote or piece of banter emerged.

I was always especially vigilant with regard to Yngve, it was important for me that he didn’t say anything stupid or display any form of ignorance, thus appearing inferior to Asbjørn, but that wasn’t the case, they were on a level footing, and that pleased me.

Both replete and content, I walked uphill from the centre with a bag of records dangling from each hand, and it was only when I was almost home and saw a police car slowly driving past that I remembered the young murderer. If the police were still looking for him, well, he would be in hiding somewhere in the town. Imagine how frightened he must be. Imagine how insanely frightened he must be. And horrified by what he had done. He had killed another human being, stabbed a knife into another person’s body, who fell to the ground dead. For what? a voice must be shouting in his head. For what? For what? A wallet, a few hundred-krone notes, nothing. Oh, how terrible he must feel.

When I had got myself ready to meet Ingvild it was only a few minutes past five, and so to kill the remaining time I went down to Morten’s and knocked on his door.

‘Come in!’ he yelled from inside.

I opened the door. Dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, he turned down the stereo.

‘Hello, sir,’ he said.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Why of course, grab a seat.’

The white brick walls were high with two narrow rectangular almost opaque skylights as windows at the top. The room was spartanly furnished, if not bare: a box bed, also white, with a brown mattress upholstered in a kind of corduroy and large brown cushions made of the same material. A table in front and a chair on the other side, both the sort you find at flea markets and in second-hand shops, 1950s style. A stereo, some books, of which the fat red Norwegian Law was the most prominent.

He sat down on the bed with two of the large cushions behind him and appeared more relaxed than I had seen him before.

‘One week at bloody Høyden behind me,’ he said. ‘Out of how many? Three hundred and fifty?’

‘It’s better to count days in that case,’ I said. ‘Then you’ve already done five.’

‘Ha ha ha! That’s the daftest thing I’ve ever heard! In which case, there are two and a half thousand to go!’

‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘If you think in years, you’ve only got seven left. On the other hand, you haven’t done a thousandth yet.’

‘Or a millionth, as someone in my class once said,’ he said. ‘Sit down, monsieur! Are you going out tonight or what?’

‘How do you mean?’ I said, sitting down.

‘You look like you are. So well groomed, sort of.’

‘Yes, but I have to be. I’m meeting Ingvild. In fact, it’s the first time.’

‘First time. Did you find her in a lonely-heart ad, eh? Ha ha ha!’

‘I met her once this spring, in Førde, for half an hour or so. I was completely sold on her. Since then I’ve hardly thought about anything else. But we’ve been writing to each other.’

‘I see,’ he said, and leaned across the table, knocked a cigarette packet back towards him, opened it and tapped out a cigarette.

‘Want one?’

‘Why not? My tobacco’s upstairs. But you can have a roll-up from me some other time.’

‘I moved here to get away from people who smoke rollies,’ he said, throwing me the packet.

‘Where are you from?’ I said.

‘Sigdal. A little dump in Østland. All forest and misery. That’s where they make the kitchens, you know. Sigdal Kitchens. We’re proud of that, we are.’

He lit up and ran his hand quickly through his hair.

‘Is it good or bad to look well groomed?’ I said.

‘It’s good, of course,’ he said. ‘You’re going on a date. You have to doll yourself up a bit.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And you’re from Sørland?’ he said.

‘Yes. I come from a little dump down there. Or rather a shithole.’

‘If you come from Shithole, I come from Shiteham.’

‘Shit and shite are quite alike, if you don’t like shit you won’t like shite,’ I said.

‘Ha ha! What was that again?’

‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘I just made it up.’

‘Oh yes, you’re a writer,’ he said as he leaned back against the cushions on the bed, put one foot on the mattress and blew smoke up to the ceiling.

‘What was your childhood like?’ he said.

‘My childhood?’

‘Yes, when you were a young boy. What was it like?’

I shrugged. ‘Don’t know. I howled a lot, I remember.’

‘Howled a lot?’ he said, and then had a fit of hysterics. It was contagious, I laughed too, although I didn’t really know what he was laughing at.

‘Ha ha ha! Howled?’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ I said. ‘I did.’

‘How?’ he said, sitting up. ‘OOOOOOUUUU! Like that, was it?’

‘No, howled as in blubbered. Or cried, if you want it in plain language.’

‘Oh, you cried a lot as a child! I thought you howled and yelled!’

‘Ha ha ha!’

‘Ha ha ha!’

After we had finished laughing there was a pause. I stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray, crossed my legs.

‘I went around on my own a lot when I was a kid,’ he said. ‘And I longed to get away from ungdomskole and gymnas. So it’s fantastic to be here, basically, in my own bedsit, even though it looks terrible.’

‘Right,’ I said.

‘But I’m nervous about studying law. I’m not sure it’s really up my street.’

‘You only started on Monday, didn’t you? Isn’t it a bit early to say?’

‘Maybe.’

A door slammed outside.

‘That’s Rune,’ Morten said. ‘He’s always taking showers. An unbelievably hygienic person, you have to say.’

He laughed again.

I got up.

‘I’m meeting her at seven,’ I said. ‘And I’ve got a few things to do first. Are you going out this evening?’

He shook his head.

‘I was going to read.’

‘Law?’ I said.

He nodded.

‘Good luck with Ingvild!’

‘Thanks,’ I said, and went back up to my place. Outside, the evening was exceptionally light; the sky in the west, which I could barely see from the window, rising from the trees and rooftops, had a reddish glow. Some black clouds hung like discs in the distance. I put on an old Big Country maxi single, ate a bread roll, put on my black suit jacket, moved my keys, lighter and coins from my trouser pocket to a jacket pocket to avoid the inelegant bulge on my thigh, put the tobacco pouch in an inside pocket and went out.

Ingvild didn’t see me at first when she entered Café Opera. She wandered around shyly, looking from side to side, dressed in a white pullover with blue stripes, a beige jacket and blue jeans. Her hair was longer than when I last saw her. My heart was pounding so much I could barely breathe.

Our eyes met, but hers didn’t light up as I had hoped. A little smile on her lips, that was all.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You’re here already, are you?’

‘Yes,’ I said, half-getting up. But we didn’t know each other, a hug was perhaps too much, yet I couldn’t just sit down again like some jack-in-the-box, so I followed through and offered my cheek, which luckily she brushed with hers.

‘I’d hoped I would arrive first,’ she said, hanging first her bag, then her coat over the back of the chair. ‘So that I would have home advantage.’

She smiled again and sat down.

‘Would you like a beer?’

‘Ah, good idea,’ she said. ‘We have to drink. Could you buy this round and I’ll buy the next?’

I nodded and went over to the bar. The room had begun to fill up, there were a couple of people ahead of me in the queue, and I studiously avoided looking straight at her, but from the corner of my eye I could see that she was staring out of the window. She had her hands in her lap. I was glad of the break, glad not to be sitting there, but then it was my turn, then I was given the two beers, then I had to go back.

‘How’s it going?’ I said.

‘With my driving? Or are we past that stage?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘There’s so much that’s new,’ she said. ‘New room, new subject, new books, new people. Well, not that I’ve studied any other subject before,’ she added with a giggle.

Our eyes met, and I recognised that happy-go-lucky expression in her eyes that I had fallen for the first time I saw it.

‘I said I’d be a bundle of nerves!’ she said.

‘I am too,’ I said.

‘Skål,’ she said, and we clinked glasses.

She leaned to the side and took a packet of cigarettes from her bag.

‘Well, how are we going to do this?’ she said. ‘Shall we start again? I come in, you’re sitting here, we give each other a hug, you ask how it’s going, I answer and then I ask you how it’s going. Much better start!’

‘I feel a bit the same,’ I said. ‘A lot of new things. Especially at the Academy. But my brother is studying here, so I’ve been hanging on his coat-tails.’

‘And your cheeky cousin’s?’

‘Jon Olav, yes!’

‘We’ve got a cabin where his grandparents live. There’s a 50 per cent chance they’re yours too.’

‘In Sørbøvåg?’

‘Yes, we’ve got a cabin on the other side of the water, at the foot of Lihesten.’

‘Have you? I’ve been there every summer since I was a kid.’

‘You’ll have to row over and visit me one day then.’

There was nothing I would rather do, I thought, a weekend alone with her in a cabin beneath the mighty Lihesten, what on this earth could be better than that?

‘That’d be fun,’ I said.

There was a pause.

I tried to keep my eyes off her but couldn’t stop myself, she was so beautiful sitting there looking down at the table with the lit cigarette in her hand.

She glanced up and met my gaze. We smiled.

The warmth in her eyes.

The light around her.

At the same time there was that slightly gauche insecurity that came over her when the moment was past and she watched her hand flicking the ash from her cigarette into the ashtray. I knew where the feeling came from, I recognised it in myself, she was wary of herself and the position she was in.

We stayed there for almost an hour, it was torture, neither of us managed to get a grip on the situation, it was as if it existed independently of us, something much bigger and heavier than we could handle. When I said anything it was tentative, and every time it was the tentativeness, not what was said, that prevailed. She kept looking out of the window, not wanting to be where she was, either. But, I sometimes thought, perhaps she too is struck by sudden intense waves of happiness at just sitting there with me, as I was at sitting with her. I couldn’t begin to guess, I didn’t know her, didn’t have a clue what she was like normally. But when I suggested leaving it was relief she felt, I could see that. The streets had grown dark, apart from the heavy rain clouds there was something summery about the dusk, it was more open, lighter, filled with promise.

We walked up a hill towards Høyden, along a road cut into the mountain, a high wall on one side, railings on the other, and a row of tall brick houses beneath. The rooms inside the lit windows looked like aquariums. People were out in the streets, footsteps resounded in front and behind us. We said nothing. All I thought about was that she was only a few centimetres from me. Her footsteps, her breathing.

When I woke up next morning it was raining, the steady precipitation that was so typical of this town, distinguishable neither by its force nor its ferocity but still dominating everything. Even though you wore waterproofs and wellies when you went out you were still wet when you got back home. The rain crept up your sleeves, soaked into your collar, and the clothes under your rain gear steamed with humidity, not to mention what the rain did to all the walls and roofs, all the lawns and trees, all the roads and gateways as it relentlessly bucketed down onto the town. Everything was wet, everything had a membrane of dampness over it, and if you walked along the quay it felt as though what was above water was closely related to what was below it, in this town the borders between the two worlds were fluid, not to say floating.

It even affected your mind. I stayed at home all Sunday, yet still the weather impacted on my thoughts and feelings, which were somehow enveloped in something grey and unvarying and vague, reinforced by the Sunday atmosphere — empty streets, everything closed — which compounded with all the countless other Sundays I had known.

Apathy.

After a late breakfast I went out and called Yngve. Fortunately he was in. I told him about my date with Ingvild, how I was unable to say anything or be myself, he said she probably felt exactly the same, that was his experience, they were just as nervous and self-critical. Ring her and thank her for the evening, he said, then suggest meeting again. Not perhaps for a whole evening but a coffee. Then I would know how the land lay. I said we had already arranged to meet again. He asked who suggested it. Ingvild, I said. Well, that’s all sorted then, he said. Of course she’s interested!

I was happy to hear he was so sure. If he was sure, I was too.

Before we rang off he told me he was going to have a party at his place on Saturday, I could come and bring someone with me. As I ran across the street in the rain, I wondered who it should be, who I could take with me.

Oh, Ingvild of course!

Back home again, I thought about Anne who had been the technician for me when I was working for local radio in Kristiansand, she was in Bergen and would no doubt like to come along. Jon Olav and his friends. And maybe Morten?

Three times during the following hours I went down to the basement with the book stuffed down my trousers. I spent the rest of the day writing, and when evening came I sat on the sofa with the collection of poetry and the text analysis book I had bought to prepare for the poetry course which began the next day.

The first poem was short.

Nowadays

Whatever you say, let

the roots follow, let them

dangle

With all the dirt

just to make it absolutely clear

where they came from

Make it absolutely clear where who came from?

I read it again, and then I realised it was referring to the roots of words. That is, you should display the roots of words and the dirt around them to make it clear to those listening where the words came from. So, talk coarsely, or at least don’t be frightened to.

Was that all there was to it?

No, surely it couldn’t be. The words were probably a symbol of something else. Perhaps of us. In other words, we mustn’t hide our origins. We mustn’t forget who we once were. Even if this was nothing to be proud of. The poem wasn’t at all difficult, you just had to read carefully and think about every word. But this didn’t work with all the poems, some of them I couldn’t crack however many times I read them and however much I thought about what they might mean. One poem in particular irritated me.

He who walks with a house on

his head is heaven he

who walks with a house

on his head is heaven he who walks

with a house on his head

This was pure surrealism. Was it the man who had the house on his head — and what did that mean by the way? — who was like a heaven or was it the house that was his heaven? OK, let’s say the house was a symbol of a head and his thoughts were various rooms in the house and this arrangement was heaven. So? Where was he going with this? And why repeat exactly the same words two and a half times? This was just pretension, he had nothing to say, he put a few words together and hoped for the best.

For the next two days we were bombarded with poems and names of poets, schools and movements. There were Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, Guillaume Apollinaire and Paul Eluard, Rainer Maria Rilke and Georg Trakl, Gottfried Benn and Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann and Nelly Sachs, Gunnar Ekelöf and Tor Ulven, there were poems about cannons and corpses, angels and whores, gatewomen and turtles, coachmen and soil, nights and days, all thrown together in incongruous assortments, it seemed to me as I sat there taking notes because, since I had never heard of any of these names before, apart from Charles Baudelaire and Tor Ulven, it was impossible to establish any kind of chronology in my mind, they all became part of the same morass, modern poems from modern Europe, which clearly wasn’t so modern after all, it was quite a long time since the First World War had raged, and I talked a bit about that in one of the breaks, the paradox of the poems being modernist while being so old-fashioned, at least as regards the content. Jon Fosse said that was an interesting point, but they were modern primarily as regards form and the radical thinking they expressed. This was still radical, he said. Paul Celan, no one had gone further than he had. And that made me realise that everything I didn’t understand, everything I couldn’t get my head round, everything in these poems that appeared closed or introspective to me, this was precisely what was radical about them and made them modern, also to us.

Jon Fosse read a poem by Paul Celan called ‘Death Fugue’, and it was dark and hypnotic and eerie, and I read it again at home in the evening, and heard in my inner ear the way Fosse had recited it, and I found it just as hypnotic and eerie then, surrounded by my own familiar things, which merely by virtue of these words going through my head lost their familiarity, they too were woven into the poem, and darkness swept through the poem, for the chair was only a chair, dead; the table was only a table, dead; and the street outside, it lay empty and still and dead in the darkness which emanated not only from the sky but also from the poem.

Although the poem touched a nerve in me, I didn’t understand how it did or why.

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown

we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night

we drink it and drink it

we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined

One thing was the fathomless darkness that existed in this poem, quite another was what it meant. What thoughts lay behind it? If I were ever to write like this I would have to know where it originated, be conversant with its starting point, the philosophy it expressed. I couldn’t just write something similar. I had to understand it.

What would I write if I were to write a poem now?

It would have to be about what was most important.

And what was most important?

Ingvild was.

So, love. Or falling in love. The lightness of spirit that flooded through me whenever she was on my mind, the surge of happiness at the thought that she existed, she was here now, in the same town and we would meet again.

That was what was most important.

What would a poem about that be like?

Immediately, after two lines, it would be traditional. There was no way I could rip it into pieces, so to speak, and fling it over the pages the way modernists did. And the images that came to mind when I was thinking about it were also traditional. A mountain stream, cold mountain water glittering in the sun, the high mountains with white glaciers down the sides of the valley. That was the only image of happiness I could conjure up. Her face maybe? Zoom in on her eyes, the iris, the pupil?

Why?

The way she smiled?

OK, that’s fine, but I was already light years away from the starting point, the dark hypnotic and bewitching allure of Paul Celan.

I got up from the bed and switched on the light, sat down at the desk and began to write. Half an hour later I had finished a poem.

Eye, I’m calling you, come

Face, my beloved, sorrow

And life that plays

a black melody

Eye, I’m calling you, come

That was the first decent poem I had written, and when I switched off the light and settled back in bed I had a better feeling about the Writing Academy than I’d had since I started. I had made huge progress.

The next day we were given our first written assignment, by Jon Fosse. Write a poem based on a picture, he said, any picture at all, and after lunch I was on my way to the art museum by Lille Lungegård Lake to look for a picture I could write about. The sun had come out in the morning, and there was a vibrancy about all the colours in town, everything was wet and gleamed with rare intensity, dazzling beneath the verdant mountain slopes and the azure sky.

Once inside, I took my notebook and a pen from my rucksack, then deposited it in a cloakroom, paid and went into the quiet, almost deserted gallery. The first picture that caught my eye was a simple landscape painting, depicting a village by a fjord, everything was clear and tangible, the sort of scene you could imagine seeing anywhere along the coast, yet there was something dreamlike about it, not in a fairy-tale way as with Theodor Kittelsen, this was a different dream, harder to grasp but even more compelling.

Had I seen this landscape in real life I would never have dreamed of staying there. But when I saw it here, hanging in the white room, I wanted to go there, I longed to go there.

My eyes moistened. I liked the picture, which had been painted by someone called Lars Hertervig, it was so intense, and in a way it turned the whole situation on its head, I wasn’t just a Writing Academy student without a notion in his head about art who had to write a poem about a picture, a pretender, but rather someone who felt so passionate about it that it brought tears to his eyes.

Happy about this, I went on. The museum had a large collection of Astrup paintings, I knew, that was one of the reasons I had come here. Astrup came from Jølster, grandma’s home village, where his father had been the priest. During the whole of my childhood we’d had an Astrup painting on the wall above the staircase. It portrayed a meadow stretching up to an old farmyard, beneath some mighty, towering, though not unfriendly, mountains, and it was a midsummer night, the light floated gently across the meadow, which was full of buttercups. I had seen this picture so many times it was part of me. Outside the wall it hung on was the road and a housing estate, a quite different, sharper and more concrete world with manhole covers and bicycle handlebars, post boxes and caravans, home-made carts with pram wheels and kids with moonboots, nevertheless the nocturnal world in the picture was not a dream, not a fairy tale, it also existed in reality, near the farm grandma came from, where many of her siblings still lived and whom occasionally we visited in the summer. Grandma could remember Astrup, mum said, he was someone people talked about in the village, and at grandma and grandad’s house there was another picture he had painted, which I had also seen all my life. It depicted a birch forest, thick with black and white tree trunks and children walking between them picking something or other, the picture was eerie and almost completely without a sky, but it hung there in the midst of their everyday life, above their sideboard, and merged into the sense of security there.

By and large all the pictures by Astrup had motifs from Jølster, they portrayed places I knew in real life, and were recognisable, yet they weren’t. This duality, scenes that were both known and unknown, wasn’t something I thought about or reflected on, but I was still familiar with it in much the same way that I never reflected on the room I went into to read, although I was familiar with it: the way I left the reality surrounding me and went into another from one moment to the next, and invariably longed to be where I wasn’t.

The Astrup painting was part of me, and when Jon Fosse asked us to write a poem based on a picture that was the first one that occurred to me. I walked around the museum, keeping my senses open, if anything loomed up and inspired me I would write about it, but if not, I would write about an Astrup painting that was already in my head.

I wandered around for half an hour, stood taking notes in front of the picture by Lars Hertervig and the Astrup paintings, described the details so that I could remember them later, when I got home and had to write the poem. Afterwards I walked around the lake and into Marken, an area of town I had hardly ever been in before. It was packed, the sunshine had brought people outside. I had a coffee and wrote a few lines at Café Galleri, continued towards Torgalmenningen, and there, seeing the church towering over the town, it struck me that I could pop up and see whether Ingvild was in the reading room. The mere thought made me tremble. But there was nothing to fear, I told myself, she was only a human being like everyone else, the same age as me, what was more, and it wasn’t just me who had found it difficult to talk and behave naturally last time, she had probably felt the same, and the very idea that she might be full of trepidation but wanted this as much as me was such a good uplifting thought that I scampered up the steps to Høyden.

Besides, I thought, when I arrived at the top and started walking in the direction she had indicated, I did also have a reason to see her, I was going to invite her to Yngve’s party. If the meeting went well, I could wait until later, then I would have a reason to ring her again, but if it didn’t I could use the invitation as a trump card.

After the bright sunshine the entrance to the Psychology Building was so dark that at first I couldn’t read the letters on the sign there. And when they became clearer I was so distracted by nerves that for a few seconds I could hardly concentrate. My throat dry, my head burning, I finally managed to locate the reading room, and when I got there, so obviously flustered compared with the students I had met on the way, and scanned the rows of desks, there was someone standing at the far end and waving, it was her, she cleared her desk at a rate of knots, put on her denim jacket and came over to me with a smile on her lips.

‘Great to see you!’ she said. ‘Shall we go for a coffee?’

I nodded.

‘You’ll have to lead. I don’t know my way around here at all.’

There were lots of students outside today, on benches and kerbs and steps, and in the canteen at Sydneshaugen School, where we sat down with a cup of coffee, there was plenty of room between the tables. The atmosphere between us this time was much more relaxed, first we chatted a little about her studies and the people she shared her kitchen with in Fantoft, I told her about Morten, mentioned Yngve, how fantastic it had been to visit him in Bergen when I was at gymnas, she started to tell me about her childhood, she said she had been a typical tomboy playing football and scrumping apples, I commented there couldn’t be much left of that in her now, she laughed and said she hadn’t been planning to play football in Bergen, but that she would be going to the stadium the next time Sogndal came and she had also been thinking of taking in some of the home games at Fosshaugane. I talked a bit about IK Start and said that Yngve and I had been at the stadium when they beat Rosenborg 4–3 in the last match of the season in 1980 and became league champions, I described how we had stormed onto the pitch and stood outside the dressing room cheering the players, and how they had tossed their shirts out, and unbelievably I had caught Svein Mathisen’s, the most valuable of all, the number 9, but a man had ripped it out of my hands and gone off with it. I said it was great being able to talk with a girl like her about football, she said she might have a few more surprises up her sleeve. She started to talk about her sister again, and then about all her inferiority complexes, there wasn’t one thing she was good at, or so it seemed, but what she said was constantly contradicted by her laughter, and by her eyes, which not only belied her tale of wretchedness but also turned it onto its head. For some reason I told her about an incident in my childhood: I had got hold of some slalom goggles, I could only have been eight or nine, they were so cool, but there was one snag, they didn’t have any glass in. Despite that I put them on the next time we went mini-skiing on the slopes down from our house. It was snowing, the snow blew into my eyes making it almost impossible to see but I kept on going all the same, and everything was fine until some bigger boys turned up. They thought my goggles were as cool as I did, and said so, at which my chest burst with pride, and then of course they asked if they could borrow them, I said no, no way, but in the end I allowed myself to be persuaded, and one of them donned the goggles and was about to set off when he turned to me and said, there’s no glass in them! He didn’t make fun of me or anything, he was just genuinely surprised, why would anyone ski with slalom goggles if there was no glass in them?

We sat there for half an hour until I accompanied her back to the reading room. We stopped outside and continued chatting, then Morten came up the hill, it was impossible to mistake him, even at a distance, there weren’t many young men who wore red leather jackets, and of those only Morten could stride along the way he did, his limbs as rigid as a doll’s, yet energetic and full of power. But now his head wasn’t held high, as it had been the other times I had seen him, it was bowed, and as he approached and I waved a hand in greeting I could see his face was racked with anguish.

He stopped, I introduced Ingvild and Morten, he smiled fleetingly, then trained his eyes on mine. There were tears in them.

‘I’m so desperate,’ he said. ‘I’m so bloody desperate.’

He looked at Ingvild.

‘Excuse my language, fair maid.’

He turned back to me.

‘I don’t know what to do. I can’t stand it. I have to get hold of a psychiatrist. I have to talk to someone. I rang one, and do you know what they said? They only take acute cases, I said I was an acute case, I can’t stand it any longer, I said, and they asked whether I had suicidal thoughts. Of course I’ve got suicidal thoughts! I’ve got a broken heart and everything’s going to pot. But apparently that wasn’t acute enough.’

He fixed his eyes on me. I didn’t know what to say.

‘You study psychology, Ingvild, don’t you?’

She glanced at me before answering.

‘I started a week ago.’

‘Do you know where I can turn in such circumstances?’

She shook her head.

He looked at me again.

‘I may come up and see you tonight. Is that all right?’

‘Yes, of course, come whenever you like,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘See you,’ he said, and strode off again.

‘Is he a close friend?’ Ingvild said when he was out of earshot.

‘Can’t say he is, no,’ I said. ‘He’s the neighbour I was telling you about. I’ve only spoken to him three or four times. He wears his heart on his sleeve. Never seen anything like it.’

‘You can say that again,’ she said. ‘I’ll be off then. Can you call me?’

What a shock. For a brief moment, no more than a second or two, I was unable to breathe.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can.’

When, shortly afterwards, I stopped at the top of the hill and saw the town beneath me, my feeling of happiness was so ecstatic that I didn’t know how I would be able to make it home, sit there and write, eat or sleep. But the world is constructed in such a way that it meets you halfway in moments precisely like these, your inner joy seeks an outer counterpart and finds it, it always does, even in the bleakest regions of the world, for nothing is as relative as beauty. Had the world been different, in my opinion, without mountains and oceans, plains and seas, deserts and forests, and consisted of something quite different, inconceivable to us, as we don’t know anything other than this, we would also have found it beautiful. A world with gloes and raies, evanbillits and conulames, for example, or ibitera, proluffs and lopsits, whatever they might be, we would have sung their praises because that is the way we are, we extol the world and love it although this is not necessary, the world is the world, it is all we have.

So as I walked down the steps towards the town centre on this Wednesday at the end of August I had a place in my heart for everything I beheld. A slab of stone worn smooth in a flight of steps: fantastic. A sway-backed roof side by side with an austere perpendicular brick building: so beautiful. A limp hot-dog wrapper on a drain grille, which the wind lifts a couple of metres and then drops again, this time onto the pavement flecked with white trodden-in chewing gum: incredible. A lean old man hobbling along in a shabby suit carrying a bag bulging with bottles in one hand: what a sight.

The world proffered its hand, and I took it. All the way through the town centre and up the hills on the other side, straight into my bedsit, where I immediately sat down to write my poem.

At the beginning of the first lesson on the following day we handed in our pieces of work. As we sat chatting and drinking coffee they were being copied, we could hear the drone of the photocopier and, as the door was open, see the flashes in the room whenever the machine illuminated the sheet of paper. The pile was ready, Fosse distributed the poems, for the next few minutes we read in silence. Then he threw out his arm and checked his watch, time for the analysis.

There was already a routine: one student read, the others commented in turn, and when the round was over, the teacher gave his analysis. The latter carried the most weight, especially when the teacher was Fosse, because even though he was nervous and never seemed to be at ease, there was a gravitas and a conviction in what he said that made everyone listen whenever he spoke.

He spent a long time on each poem, went through them line by line, sometimes word by word, praised what was good, rejected what wasn’t, highlighted what was promising and could be developed in other directions, concentrated throughout, his gaze fixed on the text, hardly ever on us, making notes on what he said.

My poem, which was the last one we analysed, was about nature. I had tried to describe the beauty and openness of the countryside, and the poem closed with the grass whispering come, as though it were talking to the reader, and expressed the feeling I’d had when I saw the painting. As it was a landscape painting there was nothing modern about the poem, and I had sat over it for a while trying various techniques to make it feel more contemporary and had suddenly thought of a word, widescreen, which I put to use in widescreen-sky, it made the same kind of impression I had created in my prose, the boys’ reality was coloured by what they had seen on TV and read, but mostly TV. This produced the same effect, indirectly. It represented a break with the lyrical and poetic description of nature, I had thought, and when I read the poem aloud to the others it seemed to have that function.

Fosse, wearing a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves and blue jeans, stubble on his chin and dark bags under his eyes, didn’t study the poem immediately after I had read it out, as he had done with some of the others, but went straight to the point.

He said he liked Astrup, and I wasn’t the first to choose a painting by him, Olav H. Hauge had done so too. Then he started on the poem. The first line, he said, is a cliché, you can cross that out. The second line is also a cliché. And the third and fourth. The sole value of this poem, he said after rejecting every single line, is the word widescreen-sky. I’ve never seen that before. You can keep that. The rest you can scrub.

‘But then there’s nothing left of the poem,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But the description of nature and your enthusiasm for it are clichés. There’s nothing of Astrup’s mystique in your poem. You’ve completely trivialised it. But widecreen-sky. As I said, that’s not bad.’

He looked up.

‘That’s it then. Anyone want to come for a beer at Henrik’s?’

Everyone did. We walked together through the drizzle up to the café across the street from Café Opera. I was on the verge of tears and said nothing, knowing full well I could only get away with this while we were walking, you could be silent now but as soon as we sat down I would have to say something and seem happy, or at least interested, so that they wouldn’t realise how much Fosse’s words had hurt me.

However, I thought, as I slumped down on the sofa with a beer on the table in front of me, I mustn’t appear too enthusiastic either, then it would be obvious that I was fighting too hard to act nonchalant.

Petra sat down beside me.

‘Nice poem you wrote.’ She giggled.

I didn’t answer.

‘It’s what I told you, you take yourself too seriously. It’s just a poem,’ she said. ‘Come on now.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ I said.

She looked at me with those ironic eyes of hers and smiled her ironic smile.

Jon Fosse eyed me.

‘It’s difficult to write good poems,’ he said. ‘Not many people can. You found a great word there, and that’s good, you know.’

‘Yes. Yes, I know,’ I said.

He looked as if he wanted to say more, but instead he sat back and averted his gaze. His attempt to console me was even more humiliating than his analysis. It meant he perceived me as someone who needed consoling. He talked literature with the others, but he consoled me.

I couldn’t be the first to leave, everyone would think it was because I was upset and couldn’t take criticism. Nor the second, nor the third. They would think the same. If I was the fourth, though, no one would think that, at least not with any reasonable justification.

Fortunately this didn’t look as though it was going to be a long evening, we had come here for a beer following the day’s work, and after an hour I was able to get up and go without losing face. It was raining harder now, the wind was gusting through the streets, which in the centre were empty now that the shops were closed. I didn’t give a damn about the rain, I didn’t give a damn about people, I didn’t give a damn about all the rows of crooked wooden terraced houses on the sloping mountainside I was walking up as fast as I could. I just wanted to get home, lock the door and be on my own.

Once indoors, I took off my shoes, hung my dripping raincoat in the wardrobe and placed the bag with my texts and notebook on the top shelf because one glance at that and my mortification would return.

To my dismay, we had been given another writing assignment. Another poem had to be written this evening and read and assessed the following day. I wasn’t going to give a damn about that either, was I?

At any rate I can’t be bothered with it now, I thought and lay down on my bed. The rain beat against the window above my head. There was a faint whoosh as the wind swept across the grass and pressed against the walls of the houses. The woodwork creaked. I was reminded of the wind outside the house where I grew up, its whoosh was so much stronger and more powerful because of the trees it moved. What a sound it had been. It soared into the air, moved off, disappeared, soared again, sigh after sigh went through the forest and the trees threw themselves forwards and backwards, as though trying to escape.

The trees I had liked best were the pines which stood on the vacant plots in the housing estate. They had been part of a forest, but then it had been cut down, the rocks had been blasted and lawns had been laid and houses built, which they stood beside. Tall and slim, many of them with branches only towards the top. Reddish, almost flame-like, when the sun shone on them. They resembled masts, I thought whenever I was standing by the window in my bedroom and looking up at the neighbouring plot, where they swayed to and fro and creaked, the plots of land were ships, the fences railings, the houses cabins, the estate an armada.

I got up and went into the kitchen. The night before I had put all the dirty crockery and cutlery in the sink, filled it with hot water, squirted a bit of washing-up liquid in it and left it to soak; now all I had to do was rinse everything in cold water and it would be spotlessly clean. I was pleased at having discovered this method, thereby avoiding all the hassle.

Once this was done, I sat down at my typewriter, switched it on, rolled in a sheet of paper and stared at it for a while. Then I began to write a new poem.

CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT. CUNT.

I took out the sheet of paper and looked at it.

The thought of reading this at the Academy filled me with glee, I purred with delight as I imagined what it would be like, how they would react, what they would say. The text consisted of nothing more than clichés and I would have to cross everything out, except for one word?

Ha ha ha!

I poured a cup of coffee and lit a cigarette. The delight was not undiluted, I would be taking a big risk if I read it aloud, it was a provocation, a slap in the face, and if there was one thing I didn’t want it was to fall out with anyone. My fear of this was so strong that it made the thought of doing it even more enticing. It was the attraction of the forbidden that I could feel, that I could actually do it, a dizzying sensation, like the fear of heights.

At around eight there was a ring at the door, I thought it would be Morten, but it was Jon Olav, he stood there in an open jacket and trainers in the rain, as though he had only crossed the yard, and in a way this was true, it wasn’t far from his bedsit to mine.

‘Are you working?’ he said.

‘No, I’ve finished,’ I said. ‘Come in!’

He flopped down on the sofa, I made two cups of coffee and sat on the bed.

‘How’s it going at the Academy?’ he said.

‘Well enough, I suppose,’ I said. ‘But it’s tough. They don’t mince their words when we discuss texts.’

‘Really?’ he said.

‘Now we’re writing poetry.’

‘Can you do that?’

‘I’ve never done it before. But that’s the whole point of being there. You have to try new things.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I haven’t really got going yet. And there’s so much to read that I already feel left behind. It’s not like arts subjects, where you can get by with what you already know or use your common sense … Well, of course you have to use your common sense as well.’ He laughed. ‘But there’s so much you have to know. There’s quite a different degree of precision involved. So the only thing that counts is reading. And everyone’s so disciplined. They’re in the reading room from the crack of dawn to late at night.’

‘But not you?’

‘I’ll have to at some point,’ he smiled. ‘I just haven’t started yet.’

‘I think the Writing Academy’s just as tough, only in a different way. We don’t have to know the way you do. You can’t read your way to becoming a writer.’

‘That’s clear,’ he said.

‘You’ve either got it in you or you haven’t, I reckon. But it’s important to read too, of course. But that’s not the decisive factor.’

‘No, right,’ he said, taking a sip and glancing at the desk and the meagre selection of books on the shelf.

‘I’ve been thinking of writing about ugliness and trying to find the beauty in it, if you see what I mean. It’s not true that a thing of beauty is exclusively beautiful or ugly things are only ugly. It’s a lot more relative than that. Have you heard the latest by Propaganda?’

I looked at him. He shook his head. I went over and put the record on the stereo.

‘This bit is nice and dark and beautiful, and then all of a sudden we’re in an atonal ugly bit and it destroys the beauty, but it’s still good, do you understand?’

He nodded.

‘Listen. This is where the ugly bit starts.’

We both sat listening in silence. Then it finished and I went over and turned down the volume.

‘What you said about ugliness was really good. But it wasn’t quite how I’d imagined it,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t that ugly.’

‘Perhaps not,’ I said. ‘But writing’s different anyway.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I wrote a poem last night. I’m going to read it out at the Academy tomorrow. Well, I’m not sure. It’s pretty radical. Do you want to see it?’

He nodded.

I went to the desk, picked up the poem and passed it to him.

He took it unsuspectingly, read with concentration, then I saw a pink flush spread across his cheeks and he suddenly turned round and burst into loud laughter.

‘You’re not going to read this, are you?’ he said.

‘Yes, I am,’ I said. ‘That was the idea.’

‘Don’t even think about it, Karl Ove. You’ll make a fool of yourself.’

‘It’s a provocation,’ I said.

He laughed again.

‘It certainly is,’ he said. ‘But don’t read it out. You said you weren’t sure. Don’t do it.’

‘I’ll see,’ I said, took the piece of paper he handed me and placed it on the desk. ‘Would you like some more coffee?’

‘I have to be getting back soon.’

‘By the way, Yngve’s having a party on Saturday. Do you fancy coming? He asked me to ask you.’

‘Yes, that would be fun.’

‘I was thinking of having pre-drinks here. Then we can take a taxi up there afterwards.’

‘Great!’

‘I’m sure you can bring along some friends if you like,’ I said.

He got up.

‘What time shall I come?’

‘I don’t know. Seven?’

‘See you then,’ he said, slipped his feet into his shoes, shrugged on his jacket and went out. I accompanied him to the steps. He turned to me.

‘Don’t read it out!’ he said. Then he disappeared round the corner into the darkness and rain.

Straight after I had gone to bed, at around two, I heard someone stop outside the front door, unlock it and then slam it shut. From the footsteps that went along the hall and down the stairs I guessed it was Morten. Some music was put on, louder than he had ever played it before, it lasted for maybe five minutes, then suddenly everything went quiet.

Waking up next day, I still hadn’t decided what to do and I took the poem with me so that I could make a last-minute decision. It wasn’t difficult. As I went into the seminar room and saw the others sitting in their places, relaxing with a cup of tea or coffee on the desk in front of them — a handbag, rucksack or plastic bag resting against the desk leg unless they were lying against the wall behind them with the wet umbrellas, which were sometimes left open on the floor in the photocopy room or between the table and the kitchenette, so that they could dry, ready for use again — as I saw all this and absorbed the friendly atmosphere this created, I realised I couldn’t read out the poem. It was full of hatred, it belonged in my room, where I was all alone, not here where I was with other people. Of course I could break down the partition between these two worlds, but there was something very strong holding them apart, which told me they shouldn’t be mixed.

Having to admit I hadn’t written a poem was humiliating. Everyone realised I hadn’t written one because of Fosse’s analysis the previous day, and that was tantamount to saying I had no spine, no stamina, was hypersensitive, a child, I lacked independence and strength of mind.

To rectify this impression I tried to appear attentive, interested and enthusiastic as the others’ poems were analysed. And it went quite well, I had already begun to grasp the technique of how to comment on poems, I knew what to look for, what was considered good or not good, and also succeeded in articulating this in a concise comprehensible manner, which not everyone could do. For people who were supposed to have language at their fingertips there was a conspicuous amount of fumbling and hesitation, around the table there were evasive looks and arguments that were retracted the moment they were presented, some almost unbearably flimsy and lame, and sometimes when I spoke up it was simply to bring clarity and order into the discussion.

On my way home I popped into Mekka and spent more than seven hundred kroner on food, I came out with six full carrier bags, and the prospect of schlepping them all the way home was so demoralising that I hailed a taxi, which pulled into the kerb and came to a halt, I put the bags into the boot and got into the back to be transported through the wet streets like royalty, elevated from the daily slog that was evident all around me, and even though it was expensive and I knew I was spending the money I had saved by shopping at Mekka it was worth it.

At home I put away my purchases, took a little trip down to the basement with the photography book, had lunch and tried to do some writing, not poems this time, I had finished with poems, I was a prose writer, and when I noticed that the sentences were coming as easily as before, all I had to do was write, I was relieved because somehow I had feared that Fosse’s analysis of the catastrophic poem would affect my confidence with regard to prose too, but such was not the case, everything flowed as before, and I wrote four pages without a pause before going to phone Ingvild.

This time I wasn’t so nervous, firstly she had asked me to ring, secondly I was only going to invite her to the party, and if she said no, it wasn’t the same as her saying no to me.

Under the little dome of transparent plastic I stood with the receiver pressed to my ear waiting for someone to pick up at the other end. Raindrops sailed across the plastic, gathered in large clusters beneath and let go at regular intervals and fell with little plops onto the tarmac. In the light from the street lamp above me the air was striped with rain.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, I’d like to talk to Ingvild …’

‘Hi, it’s me!’

‘Hi. How’s it going?’

‘Well, I think. Yes, it’s going pretty well. I’m sitting alone in my room reading.’

‘Sounds nice.’

‘Yes, and what about you?’

‘It’s going well. I was wondering whether you fancied going to a party on Saturday? Tomorrow, that is. My brother’s having a party at his place.’

‘Sounds like fun.’

‘I’m having a pre first. Then we’re taking a taxi. He lives in Solheimsviken. Would seven-ish be OK?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jon Olav’s coming anyway, so there’s someone you know.’

‘Is he everywhere, that cousin of yours?’

‘Yes, you could say that …’

She chuckled, and then there was a silence.

‘Shall we say that then?’ I said. ‘Seven tomorrow at my place?’

‘Yes. I’ll bring along my usual cheery good humour and positive approach to life!’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘See you then. Bye.’

‘Bye.’

The next morning I cleaned my room, changed the bedding, washed my clothes and hung them on the stand in the basement, I wanted everything to be perfect in case she came home with me after the party. Something had to happen anyway, that much was obvious. My passivity and awkwardness the first time were understandable but not crucial; our second meeting had been different, it took place in the middle of the day and was a chance for us to get to know each other better, but now, the third time we were meeting in Bergen I would have to make my intentions known, make a move, otherwise she would slip through my fingers. I couldn’t talk my way into a relationship with her, some action was required, a kiss, a hug, and then, perhaps later that night when we were walking in the streets outside Yngve’s flat, a question, would you like to come home with me?

It was an intimidating thought, but I had to, there was no way out, otherwise nothing would happen. And it wasn’t that I had to follow this plan slavishly, I would have to improvise as I went along, read the situation, try to see what she wanted, where she was, but I couldn’t not act, I had to act and then she could reject me if she wasn’t willing or felt it was too soon.

But if she wanted to come home with me I would have to tell her about my physical problem. I couldn’t go through the humiliation of trying to hide the fact that I came so quickly, as I had done so many times, I just had to tell her, treat it as a minor matter, no big deal, a manageable problem. The only time I had really made love to a girl, in a tent at Roskilde Festival that summer, it had got better and better the more times we did it, so at least I knew I could. I hadn’t liked her much though, not as a person, she didn’t mean anything to me beyond the sex, but Ingvild did, everything was at stake with her, I only wanted to be together with her, and I couldn’t allow myself to fail because of that.

I also knew it helped to drink, but I shouldn’t get too drunk, then she might think I was after only one thing with her. And I wasn’t! Nothing could be further from the truth.

Jon Olav and his two friends, Idar and Terje, were the first to arrive. I’d had three beers beforehand and was feeling confident in everything I said and did. I put out a dish of crisps and a bowl of peanuts, and told them about the Writing Academy. They had read books by Ragnar Hovland, knew about Jan Kjærstad and Kjartan Fløgstad, of course, and I suspected they were impressed when I told them they were going to come and teach us.

‘I imagine they’ll tell us a bit about their writing,’ I said. ‘But the main thing is they’re going to read our texts and talk about them. Do you like Kjærstad?’

At that moment the bell rang and I went to answer the door. It was Anne. She was dressed in black, had a little hat on her head and a long lock of hair hanging down over her face. I leaned forward to give her a hug, she placed a hand on my back, held it there for a moment after I had straightened up.

‘Great to see you,’ she said with a little laugh.

‘Great to see you too,’ I said. ‘Come in!’

She put down a small rucksack on the floor inside the door and said hello to the others as she took off her coat. Her bubbly personality had once struck me as incompatible with the black gothic element of her interests and approach to life. It was The Cult and The Cure, the Jesus and Mary Chain and the Belgian Crammed Discs bands, This Mortal Coil and the Cocteau Twins with Anne, fog and darkness and death romance, but with a smile on her lips and excited little jumps wherever she went. She was older than me, but when we had worked together, she behind the knobs and switches in the control room on the other side of the window, me behind the microphone, I once had the sense she might be interested in me, without being able to say for certain — such matters were impossible to know with certainty — anyway nothing happened, we were friends, both music fans, me slightly more interested in pop than her. Now she was a student, alone in Bergen like me, but she already had a host of friends as far as I could glean from what she said in the chair, reclining over the armrests, chatting with the others. No surprises there, she was outgoing and soon became the focal point of the little student gathering in my room that evening.

I drank steadily to reach a level where I no longer considered what I said or did, I just was, free and easy, so when the bell rang at a little before eight and I went out to open the door, I wasn’t in the slightest bit nervous or tense, just happy to see her, Ingvild, standing on the steps in the rain with a bag over her shoulder and a smile on her face.

I gave her a hug, she followed me in, said hello to the others, a touch shy, possibly also nervous, and took a bottle of wine from her bag. I hurried into the kitchen to fetch a corkscrew and a glass. She sat down between Jon Olav and Idar on the sofa, inserted the corkscrew, placed the bottle between her knees and pulled out the cork with a pop.

‘So this is where you live,’ she said, filling her glass with white wine.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve been cleaning all day ready for you all.’

‘I can imagine,’ she said.

Her eyes narrowed and seemed to fill with laughter.

‘Skål,’ she said.

‘Skål,’ said the others, and we clinked bottles and glasses.

‘What are you writing at the moment?’ Idar said.

‘A novel,’ I said. ‘A contemporary novel. I’m trying to make it entertaining but profound too. It’s not so easy. I’m fascinated by paradoxes. By whatever is both ugly and beautiful, both high and low. A bit like Fløgstad actually.’

I glanced at Ingvild, who looked at me. I couldn’t show the others how ridiculously in love I was, that all I really wanted to do was sit and stare at her, and I couldn’t show her either, so I tried to pay her as little attention as possible.

‘But now I want to be published,’ I said. ‘I don’t want what I write to be read by only a few people. There’s no point in that. I might just as well do something else. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ Idar said.

‘Did you read out your poem then?’ Jon Olav laughed.

‘No,’ I said, glaring at him. I didn’t like him laughing. It was as though he was trying to tell the others something.

‘What kind of poem?’ Anne said.

‘It was just something I wrote for the Academy. A practice activity,’ I said and got up, went over to the record player and put on The Joshua Tree.

‘It wouldn’t be hard to recite from memory,’ Jon Olav said, and laughed again.

I spun round.

‘If you want to play tough, that’s fine by me,’ I said.

He stopped laughing, as I thought he would, and at first looked surprised.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said.

‘I’m serious about what I do,’ I said and sat down.

‘Skål!’ Jon Olav said.

We skål-ed, the brief flash of ill will was gone, the conversation flowed again. Ingvild didn’t say much, interjected with the odd ironic comment, livened up when the conversation turned to sport, and I liked that so much, while at the same time it struck me that I didn’t know her at all, so how could I have fallen so much in love with her, I wondered, sitting on the stool across the table from her, a bottle of cold Hansa beer held to my mouth and a lit cigarette in my hand, but I knew the answer with the whole of my being, there was no arguing with feelings, and nor should you, they always knew best. I saw her, she was here, and what she radiated, which was her, lived its life irrespective of what she said or didn’t say.

Now and then I was struck by the enriching thought that here I was, in my bedsit, surrounded by my friends and, only a metre away, was the girl I loved more than all else.

Life can’t get better than that.

‘Anyone want another beer?’ I asked, rising to my feet. Idar and Terje and Anne nodded, I fetched four beers from the fridge, handed them round, saw there was a space between Jon Olav and Ingvild on the sofa if they budged up, and sat down there. When I opened the beer it foamed over, I held it away from me, the froth landed on the table, oh shit, I said, put down the bottle, went for a cloth from the kitchen and wiped it up. On the wall between the windows, just behind the sofa, there was a nail, and for some reason I hung the cloth there.

‘A wet cloth has come between us,’ I said to Ingvild, and plumped down on the sofa. She looked at me in bemusement, and I guffawed from the pit of my stomach, haw, haw, haw.

I rang for two taxis from the telephone box opposite. The others stood on the steps drinking and chatting. I watched them, thinking once again, they’ve come for a pre to my place. The rain had eased, but the sky was still overcast. A pale darkness hovered in the streets, through which we passed shortly afterwards, it suddenly became lighter as we emerged by Puddefjorden and the high open sky there, then it became darker again as we climbed the hills in Solheimsviken between the rows of workers’ houses.

It was already half past nine. We were more than slightly late. Yngve had said eight or half past when I asked him when we should turn up, however this was worse for us, not for them, not for all Yngve’s friends and acquaintances, our presence didn’t mean anything to them.

I paid one taxi driver, Jon Olav paid the other, and then I walked up the short drive with the others close on my heels, and rang the bell.

Yngve opened the door. He was wearing a white shirt with grey stripes and black trousers, his hair was combed back except for a strand hanging over one side of his forehead.

‘We’re a bit late,’ I said. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘The party’s a flop anyway. No one’s turned up.’

I looked at him. What did he mean?

He said hi to the others, didn’t make any fuss about Ingvild, fortunately, I didn’t want her to realise how much I had talked about her to Yngve. We took off our shoes and coats in the entrance hall and went into the sitting room. It was empty apart from Ola, who was watching TV.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

‘Are you watching TV?’ I said.

‘Yes? No point starting a party if there are no people.’

‘Where are they then?’

Yngve shrugged and forced a weak smile.

‘I didn’t give much advance warning. But there are lots of you!’

‘Yes,’ I said, sitting down on the sofa under the Once Upon a Time in America poster. I was shaken, this was a bolt out of the blue, I had imagined the rooms would be packed with people, sophisticated young men and women, a buzz of conversation, laughter, the air dense with smoke, and then this! Yngve and Ola watching the Saturday film on NRK? And it would have to be when I brought Ingvild! I wanted her to see Yngve and his friends, students who had been here several years and knew the town, knew the university, knew the world, so that I could share the limelight with them, he was my brother, I was invited to his parties. But what did she see? Two guys watching TV, no guests, they hadn’t come, they had other, better, things to do on a Saturday evening than go to a party at Yngve’s.

Was he a loser? Was Yngve a sad loser?

He switched off the TV, moved the two chairs to the table with Ola, fetched some beers and sat down, started talking to the others, a bit of polite small talk to make them feel at home, Anne and Ingvild and Idar and Terje, what they studied, where they lived, and the atmosphere, which at first had been somewhat hesitant, despite the fact that we had been drinking together for more than two hours, soon began to lift. The conversation went from involving the whole table to breaking up into smaller groups, I chatted with Anne, she was unstoppable, suddenly there was so much she had to tell me, I felt claustrophobic and said I had to go to the toilet. From there I went into the kitchen, where Terje was chatting to Ingvild, smiled at them, went over to Ola and Yngve, there was a ring at the door, Asbjørn walked in, followed closely by Arvid, and now the flat was full, there were people everywhere, or so it felt, faces and voices and bodies in motion everywhere, and I mingled among them, to and fro, drank and chatted, chatted and drank, getting drunker and drunker. The sense of time vanished, everything was open, I was no longer inhibited by my own shortcomings, I walked around happy and free without a thought for anything except the moment and Ingvild, whom I loved. I kept my distance, if there was one thing I knew about girls it was that they didn’t want someone who was easy to get, someone who followed them round, slack-jawed, so instead I chatted with the others, who, in intoxication’s shining light, were drawn from the darkness as if by a torch. Everyone was interesting, everyone had something to say that I could listen to and be moved by until I left and they were reclaimed by the darkness.

I sat between Ola and Asbjørn on the sofa. On the other side of the table sat Anne, she asked if she could bum a fag off me, I nodded, the next moment her head was down and she was concentrating on making a roll-up.

‘I th-thought of something,’ Ola said. ‘George V. Higgins, have you r-read anything by him?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘You sh-should do. It’s good. Really good. Almost only dialogue. Very Am-m-merican. Hard-boiled. The Friends of Eddie Coyle.’

‘Then there’s Bret Easton Ellis,’ Asbjørn said. ‘Less Than Zero. Have you read that one?’

I shook my head.

‘An American in his twenties. It’s about a gang of kids in Los Angeles. They’ve got rich parents and do what they like. It’s all boozing and dope and parties. But everything’s utterly cold and stripped back. It’s a very good novel. Kind of hyper-realistic.’

‘That sounds good,’ I said. ‘What was his name again?’

‘Bret Easton Ellis. Remember you heard it here first!’

He laughed and looked away. I glanced at Yngve, who was talking to Jon Olav and Ingvild, he had that excited flush he sometimes had when he was trying to make a point.

‘And the latest John Irving is also very good,’ Asbjørn said.

‘Are you kidding?’ I said. ‘John Irving’s a bloody pulp fiction author.’

‘He can still be good,’ Asbjørn said.

‘Can he hell,’ I said.

‘But you haven’t read it!’

‘No, but I know it’s poor.’

‘Ha ha ha! You can’t say that.’

‘I write myself, for Christ’s sake. And I’ve read John Irving. His latest novel is poor, I know it is.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Karl Ove,’ Asbjørn said.

‘Imagine us sitting here, Anne!’ I said. ‘So far from shitty Kristiansand!’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know what I’m doing here. You know what you’re doing. You’re going to be a writer. But there’s nothing I want to be.’

‘I am a writer,’ I said.

‘Know what?’ she said.

‘No?’ I said.

‘The only thing I want to be is a legend. A real legend. I’ve always thought that. And I’ve never doubted that that’s how it will be.’

Asbjørn and Ola exchanged glances and laughed.

‘Do you understand? I’ve always been sure of it.’

‘What kind of legend?’ Asbjørn said.

‘Any kind,’ Anne said.

‘What can you do then? Sing? Write?’

‘No,’ she said. Tears began to run down her cheeks. I looked at her at a loss to understand. Was she crying?

‘I’m never going to be a legend!’ she wailed.

Everyone was staring at her now.

‘It’s too late!’ she exclaimed, and put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook. Ola and Asbjørn burst into laughter, Yngve and Jon Olav and Ingvild sent us enquiring looks.

‘I’m never going to be a legend,’ she repeated. ‘I’m never going to be anything!’

‘You’re only twenty,’ I said. ‘It’s not too late.’

‘Yes, it is!’ Anne said.

‘So?’ Jon Olav said. ‘What do you want to be a legend for? What’s the point?’

She got up and went towards the front door.

‘Where are you going?’ Yngve said. ‘You’re not going, are you?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Come on, stay a bit longer,’ he said. ‘You definitely won’t be a legend if you leave at midnight. Come on. I’ve got a whole demijohn of wine. Would you like a glass? It’s a legendary vintage.’

She smiled.

‘Perhaps one glass then,’ she said.

Yngve got her one and the party continued. Ingvild stood by the wall with a glass in her hand, a tingle ran through me, she was so beautiful. I must go and talk to her, I thought, and went over.

‘Proper student party, eh!’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Have you read anything by Ragnar Hovland by the way? He writes a lot about this sort of thing, I believe.’

She shook her head.

‘He’s one of the teachers at the Academy. From Vestland, like you. In fact, I’ve got a bit of Vestland in me too. I mean, my mum comes from Sørbøvåg after all. So I’m half a Vestlander anyway!’

She looked at me and smiled. I clinked glasses with her.

‘Skål,’ I said.

‘Skål,’ she said.

From the sofa I met Anne’s eyes. I raised my glass to her too, and she raised hers. Jon Olav stood in the middle of the floor swaying to and fro, searching with his hand for something to lean on, found nothing and staggered a few steps to the side.

‘He can’t take his drink!’ I laughed.

He regained his balance and, with a rigid expressionless face, walked through the room and into the adjacent bedroom.

Where were Idar and Terje?

I went for a walk to find out. They were sitting in the kitchen and chatting, their heads bowed over the table and their hands wrapped around a bottle of beer. When I returned, Ingvild was sitting beside Anne on the sofa. Anne’s eyes were glazed and somehow completely disconnected with her smile.

She turned to Ingvild and said something. Ingvild took a deep breath and sat up straight, from which I concluded that what Anne had said shocked her. She replied, Anne just laughed and shook her head. I went over to them.

‘I know your sort,’ Anne said, getting up.

‘I’m not standing for that,’ Ingvild said. ‘You don’t know me.’

‘Yes, I do,’ Anne said.

Ingvild laughed scornfully. Anne walked past me, I sat down where she had been sitting.

‘What did she say?’ I asked.

‘She said I was the sort who took other women’s men.’

‘Did she say that?’

‘Did you two ever go out together?’ she asked.

‘Us? No. Are you crazy?’

‘I’m not standing for that,’ Ingvild repeated and got up.

‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘But please don’t go because of Anne. It’s not very late! And it is a good party, isn’t it?’

She smiled.

‘I’m not going,’ she said. ‘Only to the loo.’

I went into the bedroom. Jon Olav was lying on the bed, on his stomach with his head burrowed into the blanket and one hand hanging limply over the side. He was snoring. Arvid stood in the hall doorway.

‘Hi, Knausgård Junior,’ he said.

‘Are you going?’ I said, suddenly afraid, I wanted everyone to stay and the party never to end.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I’m going for a little walk to clear my head.’

‘Good!’ I said, and went back into the sitting room. Ingvild wasn’t there. Had she gone after all? Or was she still in the toilet?

‘Won’t be long now before Yngve puts on Queen,’ Asbjørn said to me, getting up from the stereo. ‘This moment always comes. When he’s so drunk that the evening is as good as over. At least for him.’

‘I like Queen too,’ I said.

‘What is it with you two?’ he said with a laugh. ‘Is it genetic or was there something in the air on Tromøya? Queen! Why not Genesis? Pink Floyd? Or Rush!’

‘Rush are quite good,’ Yngve said from behind us. ‘In fact, I’ve got a record by them.’

‘What about Bob Dylan then? He’s got such good lyrics! Ha ha ha! Yes, how he didn’t get the Nobel Prize is a scandal.’

‘The only thing Rush and Dylan have in common is that you don’t like them,’ Yngve said. ‘Rush are good in lots of ways. The guitar playing, for example. But you can’t hear that.’

‘Now you disappoint me, Yngve,’ Asbjørn said. ‘Falling so low that you defend Rush. I’d come to terms with you liking Queen, but Rush … What about ELO? Jeff Lynne? Nice arrangements, eh?’

‘Ha ha,’ Yngve said.

I went into the kitchen. Ingvild was sitting with Idar and Terje. Darkness hung over the valley below. The rain was illuminated in the light from the street lamps. She looked up at me and smiled, a touch quizzically, what now?

I smiled back, but had nothing to say, and she turned to the other two. In the sitting room the music was taken off and the murmur of voices rose for some seconds until the scratch of the stylus on a new record came through the speakers. It was the first notes of a-ha’s Scoundrel Days. I liked the record, it was full of memories, and I went into the sitting room.

At that moment Asbjørn came out of the adjacent room. He strode determinedly across the floor towards the stereo, leaned over, lifted the stylus and took off the record. Clearly, his movements were for show, almost didactic.

He held up the record and started to bend it.

The room went quiet.

Slowly he bent the record further and further until at last it cracked.

Arvid laughed out loud.

Yngve had been watching Asbjørn. Now Yngve turned to Arvid, poured his wine onto his hair and walked out.

‘What the f …?’ Arvid said, getting up. ‘I didn’t do anything, did I.’

‘Aren’t you g-going to b-burn some b-books too?’ Ola said to Asbjørn. ‘Make a l-little b-bonfire?’

‘Why did you do that?’ I said.

‘Jesus,’ Asbjørn said. ‘You boys don’t have to make such a fuss. I was just doing him a favour. Yngve knows me. He knows I’ll buy him a new record. Perhaps not by a-ha, but a new record anyway. He’s playing to the gallery.’

‘It might not be the material value of the record on his mind,’ Anne said. ‘You might have hurt his feelings.’

‘Feelings? Feelings?’ Asbjørn laughed. ‘He’s playing to the gallery!’

He sat down on the sofa and lit up. He acted as if nothing had happened, or was so drunk he didn’t care, yet at the same time something came over him, either his facial expression or body language, which suggested a guilty conscience, and then it took over, then it was obvious to everyone that he was sorry for what he had done. The music came back on, the party continued; after half an hour Yngve returned, Asbjørn said he would replace the record and soon everything was fine between them again.

After the beer ran out I had started necking wine. It was like fruit juice, and the source was inexhaustible. Now it wasn’t only time that was dislocated, it was also place, I no longer knew where I was, it was as though darkness had descended between the various faces I spoke to. And how they shone. I was very close to my emotions in that I talked completely without inhibitions, said things I never usually said and didn’t know I had even thought, such as when I joined Yngve and Asbjørn and said I was so happy they were such good friends or when I went over to Ola and tried to explain how I had felt about his stammer the first time I had heard it, all while the wave which was connected with the thought of Ingvild rose within me more and more often. It was like a feeling of triumph, and while I was in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, washing my hands and moistening my hair to make it stand up, smiling all the time, my thoughts coming in short jerky phrases, fucking great, this, oh fucking bliss on earth, oh so bloody brilliant, so bloody brilliant! I decided to make a move on her, kiss her, seduce her. I wasn’t planning to invite her back to my place any more, no, there was a room upstairs on the second floor I had discovered, an old maidservant’s room, no one was sleeping there now, it was probably used as a guest room, it was perfect.

I went into the sitting room, she was standing and talking to Ola, the music was loud, on the verge of distortion, around them some people were dancing, I watched them until she looked at me. Then I smiled, and she smiled back.

‘Can I talk to you?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘The music’s so loud here,’ I said. ‘Shall we go into the hall or something?’

She nodded. We went into the hall.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ I said.

‘Was that what you wanted to say?’ She laughed.

‘There’s a room upstairs, on the second floor. Shall we go up there? It’s an old servant’s room, I think.’

I set off up the stairs and a moment later heard her following me. I waited on the first floor, took her hand and led her up to the room, which was exactly as I remembered it.

I put my arms around her and kissed her. She stepped back and sat down on the edge of the bed.

‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ I said. ‘I’m … well, a kind of monster when it comes to sex. It’s a bit difficult to explain, but … oh, to hell with it, it doesn’t matter.’

I sat down beside her, put my arm around her and kissed her and laid her down and kissed her again, she was bashful and reserved, I kissed her neck, caressed her hair, slowly pulled up her jumper, kissed one breast, and she sat up and pulled down her jumper and looked at me.

‘This doesn’t feel right, Karl Ove,’ she said. ‘You’re moving too fast.’

‘Yes,’ I said, and sat up as well. ‘You’re right. I apologise.’

‘Don’t apologise,’ she said. ‘Never apologise. There’s nothing I hate more.’

She got up.

‘Are we still friends?’ she said. ‘I like you very much, you see.’

‘And I like you,’ I said. ‘Shall we join the others downstairs?’

We joined the others, and perhaps because her rejection had sobered me up I suddenly saw everything very clearly.

There were very few people there. Eight, apart from us — that was the extent of the party. What for several hours had appeared to be a grand decadent human spectacle, the great student party with quarrels and friendship, love and confidences, dancing and drinking, all borne aloft on a wave of happiness, collapsed in an instant and revealed itself for what it was: Idar, Terje, Jon Olav, Anne, Asbjørn, Ola, Arvid and Yngve. All with small glazed eyes and ungainly movements.

I wanted the party back, I wanted to be in the centre again so I poured some wine and drank two glasses quickly, one after the other, and then one more, and that helped: slowly the thought of the meagre turnout relaxed its grip and I sat down beside Asbjørn on the sofa.

Jon Olav came in from the bedroom. He stopped in the doorway. People clapped.

‘Wahey!’ Ola shouted. ‘Back from the dead!’

Jon Olav smiled and sat down on the chair beside me. I continued talking with Asbjørn, trying to explain to him that I also wrote about young people who drank and took dope in as cold and stripped-back a style as that American writer Asbjørn had mentioned earlier. Jon Olav looked at us and grabbed one of the half-full bottles of beer on the table.

‘Skål to Karl Ove and the Writing Academy!’ he shouted. Then he laughed and took a swig of the beer. I was so angry that I stood up and leaned towards him.

‘What the FUCK do you mean?’ I yelled. ‘What the FUCK do you know about anything? I’m SERIOUS about what I do, do you understand? Do you know what that is? Don’t you bloody come here and be ironic with me! You think you’re so damned clever! But you study law! Remember that! Law!’

He looked up at me, surprised and maybe a bit frightened too.

‘Don’t you bloody come here!’ I yelled and left the room, put on my shoes, opened the door and went outside. My heart was beating fast, my legs were shaking. I lit a cigarette and sat down on the wet brick step. The rain was percolating down through the darkness above and landing in the small front garden with a quiet pitter-patter.

If only Ingvild would come now.

I inhaled deeply in order to do something at a slow deliberate pace. I let the smoke settle deep into my lungs before gently exhaling it again. I felt an urge to smash something. To take one of the kerbstones and hurl it through the window in the door. That would give them something to think about. Bloody twats. Fucking shitheads.

Why didn’t she come?

Come on, Ingvild, come on!

Getting steadily wetter in the rain, I finally decided to stand up, threw the cigarette end into the garden and went to join the others. Ingvild was in the doorway talking to Yngve, they didn’t see me and I stopped and tried to catch what they were saying, perhaps she was asking him questions about me, but no, they were talking about the best way home. Yngve said he would call a taxi for her if she wanted, she did, and when he turned down the music and lifted the receiver I went into the bedroom to keep out of her way, mostly so as not to remind her of what had happened. She started to put on her coat and hat, I went into the sitting room and sat down on the sofa, and waved to her when she poked her head round to say goodbye. And that was fine, I was one of them, and not the person who had tried to sleep with her in the loft.

Shortly afterwards Yngve ordered two more taxis, and then there were only Ola, Asbjørn, Yngve and me left. We played records and chatted about them, stared for long spells into the air until someone made a move and put on another good song. In the end, Ola got up, he was going to take a taxi, Asbjørn went with him, and I asked Yngve if it was OK if I slept on his sofa, and it was, of course.

On waking, my first thought was the scene in the maidservant’s room on the second floor.

Was it real? Had I dragged her there, pushed her down on the bed and pulled her jumper up over her breasts?

Ingvild? Who was so fragile and apprehensive and shy? Whom I loved with all of my heart?

How could I have done that? What was I thinking?

What a stupid idiot I was.

I had ruined everything.

Everything.

I sat up, pulled the blanket to the side, ran my hand through my hair.

Jesus Christ.

For once none of the details of the night’s events had disappeared, I remembered everything, and not only that, the images of Ingvild, the way she looked at me, which I hadn’t taken in at the time, but which I grasped the full significance of now, were ever-present, they quivered in my consciousness, especially when I pulled up her jumper, the look she gave me, because she didn’t want it, yet she let me do it anyway, it was only when I closed my lips around her nipples that she sat up and said no.

What must she have thought? I don’t want this, but he wants it so much, shall I let him?

I got up and went to the window. Yngve must have been asleep, at any rate it was silent in the flat. My head was heavy, but it wasn’t bad considering how much I had drunk. What was it again? Beer on wine, not so fine. Wine on beer, never fear? I had drunk beer first, then wine, that was why.

Oh hell!

Hell, hell, hell.

What a bloody fool I was.

She was so lovely and so alive.

I went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water. The clouds over the town were dense and greyish-white, the light between the houses was like milk.

From the bedroom came the sound of footsteps. I turned, Yngve appeared in just his underpants, he went into the bathroom without looking at me. He looked pale and groggy. I brewed coffee, found some ham and cheese and salad, sliced the loaf and listened to him showering.

‘So,’ he said as he emerged, wearing a light blue shirt and jeans. ‘Was it a good party?’

‘It was,’ I said. ‘But I made a terrible blunder with Ingvild, that was the only downside.’

‘Really?’ he said. ‘I didn’t notice. What happened?’

He poured coffee into a cup, added a drop of milk and sat down. I blushed and looked out of the window.

‘I took her up to the room on the second floor and tried it on with her.’

‘And?’

‘She didn’t want it.’

‘That can happen,’ he said, stretched for another slice of bread and buttered it. ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Except that she didn’t want it then. You were probably a lot drunker than she was, that could be the reason. It could have been too early. You don’t know each other that well, do you?’

‘No.’

‘If she’s serious, and by that I mean really serious, she might not want it to happen like that, at a party.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘All I know is that I made a big, big blunder. Now I’ve scared her off. I’m sure of that.’

Yngve placed a piece of ham on the bread, sliced a bit of cucumber and raised the sandwich to his mouth. I poured coffee into a cup and took some sips.

‘What are you going to do about it then?’

I shrugged. ‘There’s nothing I can do.’

‘What’s done is dung and cannot be undung,’ he said. ‘Yes, a poor one, I’ll admit that. Sorry. But I had a good one this summer, we ordered some shrimps, they came in a bowl and went in a flash.’

‘Ha ha,’ I said.

‘You have to meet her again, as soon as possible, and then you have to apologise to her, it’s as simple as that. You’re sorry and it wasn’t like you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Can’t you invite her down here? Ola and Kjersti are coming at two. I’m going to make waffles. That would be the perfect setting.’

‘Do you think she’d come here again after last night? I don’t think so.’

‘We can drive up and collect her. You knock on the door and invite her, say I’m waiting in the car outside. If she says no, well, that’s not the end of the world.’

‘Are you up for it?’

‘Absolutely.’

An hour later we got into the car and drove downhill to Danmarksplass, turned right at the crossing and headed for Fantoft. It was a Sunday, the traffic was minimal, there were already little patches of yellow in the green mountains on both sides of the valley. Autumn was here, I thought, tapping my fingers on my thigh to the music.

‘I’ve written some lyrics for you, by the way,’ I said.

‘Oh, fantastic!’

‘Yes, but I don’t think the lyrics are that fantastic. That’s why I haven’t shown them to you. I wrote them more than a week ago.’

‘What’s the title?’

‘ “You Sway So Sweetly.” ’

He laughed.

‘Sounds like good pop lyrics, if you ask me.’

‘Mm, maybe,’ I said. ‘And now I’ve told you they’re done, you’ll have to see them too.’

‘If they’re no good you’ll have to write some more, won’t you.’

‘Easier said than done.’

‘Are you a writer or aren’t you? I only need a few verses and a chorus, then I can finish the songs. Easy enough for a man like you.’

‘I’ll do it then.’

He indicated left, we entered a large square in front of some high-rise buildings.

‘Is it here?’ I said.

‘Haven’t you been here before?’

‘No.’

‘Dad lived here for a year, did you know that?’

‘Yes, I did. Leave the car here and I’ll pop up to her place.’

I knew the address off by heart, so after a bit of confusion I found the right block, took the lift up to her floor, went down the corridor until I saw the right number on the door, concentrated for a few seconds, then rang the bell.

I heard her footsteps inside. She opened the door, and when she saw me she almost jumped backwards with the shock.

‘You?’ she said.

‘I’d like to apologise for last night,’ I said. ‘I don’t usually behave like that. I’m really sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise,’ she said, and suddenly I remembered that was exactly what she had said the previous night.

‘Would you like to come with me to Yngve’s? He’s going to make waffles. Ola and Kjersti, they were at the party last night, do you remember, they’ll be there too.’

‘I don’t know …’ she said.

‘Come on. It’ll be nice. Yngve’s outside now. He’ll drive you back afterwards as well.’

She looked at me.

‘OK then,’ she said. ‘I’ll just change into something more suitable. Hang on a minute.’

Yngve was waiting outside, leaning against his car smoking.

‘Nice to see you again,’ he said with a smile.

‘You too,’ she said.

‘I’ll sit in the back,’ I said. ‘You go in front.’

She did, pulled the safety belt across her chest, clicked the buckle into place, I looked at her hands, they were so attractive.

Not much was said on the way to town. Yngve asked Ingvild about her studies and about Kaupanger, she answered, asked him about his studies and about Arendal, I slumped back against the seat, glad to avoid responsibility for the conversation.

Every Tuesday evening, right through our childhood, Yngve or I made waffles. It was something we were good at, it was in our blood, so for me that afternoon, eating waffles in the sitting room and drinking coffee, was not as strange and un-studenty as it was for the others, quite the contrary, the waffle iron was one of the few objects I had brought with me from home when I moved a year ago.

As in the car, I let the conversation flow without me. Sitting at the table with Yngve, Ola, Kjersti and Ingvild, after what had happened the night before, I had everything to lose. The other three were more experienced; if I said anything it might be stupid and my inexperience would appear in flashing lights before Ingvild’s eyes. No, I said as little as possible, mumbled I agree once or twice, nodded now and then, and I smiled. I interspersed the conversation with the odd question to Ingvild, mostly just to show I was thinking about her and it was important to me that she was there.

‘Put on a record, will you?’ Yngve said. ‘And I’ll make some more waffles.’

I nodded, and while he went into the kitchen I knelt down by his record collection. I saw it as a test, it was decisive which music I chose, and in the end I plumped for R.E.M.’s Document. By mistake I put on the second side and realised what a terrible mistake I had made just as I sat down, next to Ingvild.

Oh, no, what was that he sang, to the one he loved?

I blushed.

She would think I had chosen this song to tell her. Face to face. This is for the girl I love.

She must think I’m an absolute prat, I thought, looking out of the window so that she couldn’t see how red-faced I was.

And on it went, to the one he’s left behind.

No, no, no. Oh, how embarrassing!

I glanced at her, to see whether she had noticed.

She hadn’t, but if she had and thought I was sending her a secret message, would she show it in any obvious way?

No.

I took a sip of coffee, wiped up the small dark seeds of the raspberry jam with the last piece of waffle on the plate, put it in my mouth, chewed and swallowed.

‘Excellent waffles,’ I said to Yngve, who had come into the room at that very moment.

‘Yes, I used lots of eggs this time.’

‘The way you t-talk!’ Ola said. ‘Anyone would think you were a c-couple of old b-biddies.’

I got up and went to the bathroom, rinsed my face with cold water, avoided looking at myself, dried my hands and face on the towel hanging there, which smelled faintly of Yngve.

When I went back in, the song had finished. We sat for another half an hour, and when Ola and Kjersti were about to go I said that maybe it wouldn’t a bad idea if we went too, in fact I had a lot on tomorrow, and Ingvild said, yes, she had too, and five minutes later we were in Yngve’s car again, heading at full speed for Fantoft.

Ingvild got out, waved to us, Yngve turned the car and started to drive back to town.

‘That went well, didn’t it,’ he said.

‘Do you think so?’ I said. ‘Did she enjoy herself?’

‘Ye-es. I’m sure she did.’

‘The waffles were good anyway.’

‘Yes, they were.’

Not a lot more was said before he dropped me outside my bedsit. I jumped out, thanked him for the lift, closed the door and ran up the three steps to the door as he drove round the corner.

I had imagined it would be good to get home, but the smell of the freshly cleaned floor and bed linen, which still hung in the air, reminded me of the plans I’d had before the evening started, imagining I would wake up here with Ingvild this morning, and a new wave of despair and anger at myself washed over me, as well as all my feelings about the Academy, which launched themselves at me from all sides. The typewriter, the books, the plastic bag with my notebook, the pens, yes, even the sight of the clothes I had worn there depressed me and filled me with a sense of hopelessness.

Bonfire of books, Ola had said, and I understood the need for it very well, just chuck everything you don’t like and don’t want, all life’s detritus, on the flames and start afresh.

What a fantastic thought. Lug all my clothes, all my books and all my records into the park, pile them up on the grass, plus my bed and desk, typewriter, diaries and all the damned letters I had received, in fact everything that carried the tiniest hint of a memory: onto the fire with it! Oh, the flames licking up at the dark night sky, all the neighbours flocking to their windows, what’s going on, well, it’s just our young neighbour purging his life, he wants to make a new start, and he’s right, I’d like to do that too.

And then all of a sudden bonfire after bonfire, the whole of Bergen aflame at night, helicopters with TV cameras hovering above, reporters in dramatic mode, saying Bergen is ablaze tonight, what is happening, they appear to be setting light to the fires themselves.

I sat down on the chair by my desk, the sofa and the bed were too soft and giving, I wanted something harder. I rolled a cigarette and lit it, but the roll-up was too crooked and saggy, I stubbed it out after a few puffs, there was a packet of cigarettes in my jacket pocket, wasn’t there, yes, much better, and then, staring down at the table I tried to do a reality check, look at the situation as rationally and objectively as I could. The Writing Academy, it had been a defeat, but first of all was it such a problem that I couldn’t write poems? No. Secondly, was this always going to be the case? Couldn’t I teach myself, couldn’t I develop over the year? Yes, of course. And if I was going to develop I would have to be open and, importantly, unafraid to make mistakes. Ingvild, with her I had made a fool of myself, once by being boring and reticent, once by coming on to her much too quickly and with force. In other words, I had been insensitive. I hadn’t taken her wishes into account sufficiently. That was the point. I hadn’t considered her feelings, only my own. But, firstly, I had been drunk, that did happen now and then, it happened to everyone. And, secondly, if she had any feelings for me, surely that wouldn’t ruin everything? If she had any feelings for me surely she would be able to put herself in my shoes too and understand how things turned out the way they had? Fortunately, we had two previous meetings to build on, one in Førde, when everything had gone like a dream, and the other in the canteen, when at least we had chatted normally. Furthermore, there were the letters. They were funny, I knew that, or at least they weren’t boring. Moreover, I was attending the Writing Academy, so I wasn’t like all the other students, I was going to be a writer, people found that interesting and exciting, perhaps Ingvild did too, although she hadn’t said as much. And then there was the waffle session at Yngve’s that we’d just had — that did a little to remedy the impression I had made the previous night — now at any rate she could see how nice Yngve was, and as we were brothers, the notion that I was nice as well might not be too distant.

At around seven I went down and rang the bell at Jon Olav’s.

‘Good to see you!’ he said with a smile. ‘Come in. We’ve got a little debriefing to do.’

‘Good to see you too,’ I said, and followed him in. He brewed some tea and we sat down.

‘I’m sorry I shouted at you,’ I said. ‘But I don’t want to apologise.’

He laughed.

‘Why not? Are you too proud?’

‘I was angry when you said what you said. I can’t apologise for that.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I went too far there. But you were too much. You were almost manic.’

‘I was just drunk.’

‘I was also drunk.’

‘No hard feelings?’ I said.

‘No hard feelings. But did you mean what you said? That law is nothing?’

‘Of course not. I had to say something.’

‘I don’t have much time for the legal milieu myself,’ he said. ‘I see law primarily as a tool.’

He looked at me.

‘Now you have to say that you see writing as a tool!’

‘Are you at it again?’ I said.

He laughed.

When I returned I lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. I could still be friends with Jon Olav. That was no problem. But not with Ingvild, that was quite a different matter and much more complicated. The question was basically what to do. What had happened had happened and couldn’t be undone. For the future, though, what could I do? What would be best?

I had taken the initiative twice now, invited her out today and yesterday. If she was interested she would contact me, drop by — she knew where I lived — or write a letter. It was up to her. I couldn’t invite her out again, that would be, firstly, too pushy and, secondly, I had no idea if she was really interested in me, and I needed a sign.

The sign would be her coming here.

That was how it would have to be.

I didn’t expect any move on the Monday after Yngve’s party, it was too early, Ingvild wouldn’t contact me that evening, I knew that, yet still I sat waiting and hoping; whenever I heard footsteps in the street I leaned forward and peeped out of the window. If someone stopped on the steps, I froze. But of course it wasn’t her, I went to bed, another day dawned, more rain and mist, another evening spent waiting and hoping. Tuesday was a more realistic bet, she would have had time to think, distanced herself from what had happened and her real feelings would have had time to develop. Someone walking in the street: over to the window. Someone on the steps: I froze. But no, it was too early, tomorrow maybe?

No.

Thursday then?

No.

Friday, would she come with a bottle of wine we could share?

No.

On Saturday I wrote her a letter, even though I knew I wouldn’t post it, she was the one who had to take the initiative, she was the one who had to make an approach.

In the evening I heard music coming from Morten’s room in the basement, we hadn’t spoken since the last time at Høyden when he was so desperate, I thought I could join him for a little while, I hadn’t spoken to a living soul all day and was hungry for company. I went downstairs and knocked on his door, no one answered, but I knew he was there, so I opened it.

Morten was kneeling on the floor, his hands folded and outstretched in supplication. On a chair in front of him sat a girl. She was leaning back with her legs crossed. Morten turned to me, his eyes crazed, I closed the door and hurried back to my room.

He came up next morning, said he had made a last-ditch attempt, but it had led nowhere, it had failed, she didn’t want him. Nevertheless he was in fine fettle, it shone through his stiff body language and formality of expression, what radiated from him was not despair but warmth.

To me he was like a character from one of the many Stompa books I had read when I was smaller, a young Norwegian boy at a boarding school in the 1950s.

I told him about Ingvild, he advised me to go and see her, sit down with her and tell her everything.

‘Tell it as it is!’ he said. ‘What have you got to lose? If she loves you she’ll obviously be happy to hear it.’

‘But I have done,’ I said.

‘When you were drunk, yes! Do it now you’re sober. It requires courage, my boy. And that’ll impress her.’

‘The blind leading the blind,’ I said. ‘I saw you in action downstairs, didn’t I.’

He laughed.

‘But I’m not you. What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another. I think we two should pay a visit to Christian one evening. We can take Rune along. All of us boys. What do you say?’

‘I haven’t got a phone,’ I said. ‘So if Ingvild wants to get hold of me she would have to walk up here. And I would have to be at home.’

Morten got up.

‘Naturally. But I don’t think staying on the premises is the be-all and end-all.’

‘I don’t either. But I’d like to be here anyway.’

‘OK, we’ll wait then. Goodnight, my son.’

‘Goodnight.’

I went out and rang Yngve, he wasn’t at home, I remembered it was Sunday and he was probably working at the hotel. I rang mum. We first went through the events in my life, that is, at the Academy, then through the events in hers. She was looking for somewhere new to live, and she was working hard on plans to introduce an FE course at her school.

‘We must try to meet soon,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you and Yngve could come to Sørbøvåg one weekend? It’s a long time since you’ve been there. We could all meet up.’

‘Good idea,’ I said.

‘I’m busy next weekend. What about the weekend after?’

‘I’ll see what I can do. Yngve has to be free too.’

‘Let’s start there then. And we’ll see what happens.’

It really was a good idea. Grandma and grandad’s smallholding was a completely different world because it was rife with childhood memories, untouched somehow, as I was there so seldom and because of its location, on a little hill with a view of the fjord and the mountain behind, so close to the sea, far away from everything. It would be wonderful to spend a few days there, where no one cared about what I was or what I wasn’t, I had always been enough for them.

This week we were going through short prose at the Academy. The pointillist novel was all the rage, a form whose Norwegian history began with Paal-Helge Haugen’s Anne, from what we were told, this and other pointillist novels were situated somewhere between prose — the line, that is — and poetry — the point. I read it, and it was fantastic, permeated with darkness much like Paul Celan’s Death Fugue, but I couldn’t write like that, there was no chance, I didn’t know what created this permeation of darkness. Even though I went through it sentence by sentence, it was impossible to say, it wasn’t in any defined place, wasn’t conjured up by any particular words, it was immanent everywhere in the same way that a mood is immanent in a mind. Mood isn’t in a particular thought or a particular part of the brain, nor in a particular part of the body, such as a foot or an ear, it is everywhere, but nothing in itself, more like a colour in which thoughts are thought, a colour through which the world is seen. There was no such colour in what I wrote, no such hypnotic or evocative mood, in fact there was no mood at all, and that was the heart of the problem, I assumed, the very reason I wrote so badly and immaturely. The question was whether you could acquire such a colour or mood. Whether I could fight my way there or whether it was something you either had or you didn’t have. At home, writing, I thought what I did was good, and then came the round of critique at the Academy, where the same was said every time, a bit of polite praise for appearance’s sake, such as, there is a lively narrative style, before they weighed in with clichéd, stereotyped, perhaps even tedious. But what hurt me most was that my writing was immature. When the prose course began we were given a simple task, we had to write about one day or the start of a day, and I wrote about a young man waking up in his bedsit to the sound of the post, he slept on the other side of the wall to the post box, and it made a racket. After breakfast he went out, on the way he saw a girl, whom I described, and whom he decided to follow. When I read this out the atmosphere became rather uncomfortable. They came up with the usual vague praise, said it was good, said it was easy to visualise, suggested I deleted this and that … It was only when it came to Trude’s turn that what I had sensed in the air was articulated. It’s so immature! she protested. Listen: ‘… he looked at her well-formed 501 bottom’. I mean, honestly, a well-formed 501 bottom?! She’s just an object, and, not only that, he follows her as well! Had this been an exploration of immaturity and the objectivisation of women I wouldn’t have said anything, but there’s nothing in the text that suggests it is. In short, it’s a bit creepy to read, she concluded. I tried to defend myself, conceded she had made some good points, but insisted my text dealt with exactly what she had said and there was a distance in the writing. I could of course have added a meta-level in the text, I said, as Kundera does, but I didn’t want to, I tried to stay on the same level as the character.

‘That isn’t apparent from what I read anyway,’ Trude said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Maybe it isn’t visible enough.’

‘I thought it was fun!’ said Petra, who for some reason often defended me during these critique sessions. Presumably because she also wrote prose. Whenever we discussed our texts feelings became heated and more and more often the group tended to divide into two camps: on the one side were those of us who wrote mainly prose and, on the other, those who wrote poetry, with Nina, who wrote equally brilliantly in both genres, in the middle. Not that she said that much, she was perhaps the one student who found it hardest to formulate her views orally, it was almost impossible to grasp what her opinion was, if she had an opinion at all, that is. Judging by what she said, it didn’t seem so, it was all vague, completely directionless, she might just as well have been presenting arguments about coats as about literature, but what she wrote was crystal clear, not in the sense that her opinions became coherent there, no, it was the language, her sentences, they were as clear and exquisite as glass. She was the best, Trude was the next best, Knut the third best. Petra, whose sentences resembled beetles at the bottom of a bucket, wasn’t in the competition, I reckoned, she wasn’t the finished article in the way that the other three were, but one day she would utterly outshine them, her talent was so obvious and it lay in her unpredictability: anything could happen in her texts, it was impossible to predict from the person she was or what she wrote, with the others you often could, but not with Petra, something unusual or unexpected was always on the cards. I was at the bottom, with Kjetil. The last two students, Else Karin and Bjørg, were above us, they had both had novels published, in a way they were fully fledged writers, and what they handed in during the course was also always accomplished and reliable. But sparks never flew in their writing in the way that they did in Nina’s and Petra’s, they were more like two horses hauling logs through the forest in the winter, it was heavy work, they made slow progress, their eyes were firmly set on the path ahead.

If I was at the bottom I had to rise. If I accepted that I belonged down there, in the terrible abyss of immaturity and ineptitude, I had failed. I couldn’t fail. After a stint at the Academy I often weakened and told myself it was right, I wasn’t a writer, I had no business being there, but never for long, maximum one evening, then my mind rose in opposition, it wasn’t right, I might not be a writer now, but this was a temporary state that had to be, and would be, overcome, and when I woke in the morning, showered and packed my things to go to the Academy it was with a newfound self-confidence.