The Seducer

Paradise Lost

Solhaug was a safe place for children, at any rate as long as you did not let the bigger lads trick you into lighting a bonfire in the tinder-dry grass on the edge of the woods, did not climb to the top of the majestic fir tree at Kvernstua and did not try to show off to the girls by teetering recklessly on the edge of the sheer drop at Egiltomta. As always, though, there was a serpent in paradise, and in this case it was actually snakelike in form: the sharp bend on Bergensveien.

For the mothers of Solhaug, Bergensveien was the real big bogey. ‘Don’t you go biking down Bergensveien’ was a refrain that all of the kids had to listen to ten times a day. Not without good reason, since in those days a constant stream of traffic, heavy traffic that is, used to rumble along Bergensveien, a relatively narrow road, on the way to and from the new stamp-mill at the top of Hukenveien. The mothers had staged a number of actions, when they had sat with their coffee and cake on the balcony closest to Bergensveien and, in-between the latest gossip about Five-Times Nilsen and Tango-Thorvaldsen and the useless new assistant down at the corner shop, counted the appalling number of trucks that thundered past in the course of a day. They then sent their findings, as both a complaint and plea to God only knows what office, and never heard a word in reply. There was no alternative, either, apart from closing the stampmill, so they just had to go on singing their refrain: ‘I’m telling you Petter, if I ever catch you on your bike out on Bergensveien, I’ll leather your backside so hard it’ll be weeks before you can sit on a bike again!’ I should perhaps add that this was in the days before smacking children was forbidden in Norway.

So much for the mothers’ point of view. The kids, the boys in particular, loved the trucks, introducing as they did an element of excitement into an otherwise pedestrian life, beaten only by the lavvy-lorry, a rat-coloured monster that rolled up every now and again to empty the outside toilet at the kindergarten, or one of the intermittent army convoys that would crawl along Trondheimsveien, with tanks towed on such objects of wonder as low-bed semi-trailers and everything. The trucks on Bergensveien may have been dangerous, but they were also camels passing through their day-to-day existence, laden not with gravel but with gold. Jonas and Nefertiti often sat at the roadside, marvelling at these great beasts, the ground shaking underneath them, and if they were lucky, they might even catch the sound of a spine-chilling ‘fart’ of compressed air as the driver released the brakes. For the most part they were Bedfords or Volvos, but there was nothing to compare with the Scania-Vabis trucks, the very name sounded like an adventure story, an epic such as Quo Vadis, or a prehistoric monster, a bit like Tyrannosaurus Rex. They dreamed of being given a ride in one, especially one of those with a fat little Michelin man fixed to the roof of the cab, the sort you could even get as a jigsaw puzzle, complete with indicator rods with knobs on the ends, jutting out like sceptres on either side of the bumper, and cardboard pictures of lightly-clad ladies stuck to the radiator, much the way vehicles in India are hung about with the most garish holy images.

But, as I say, there was one flaw. The bend. The bend in Bergensveien that ended right at the point where the safe road from Solhaug opened onto the main road, where paradise ran out, and market forces, as it were, took over, and you had to check the road twice and even three times, or rather, look up the road, towards the void ten metres farther up that marked the exit from the sharp bend and listen, too, like Red Indians putting their ears to the ground to catch the sound of buffalo, because the rise of the knoll completely blocked the view of any oncoming traffic — although that suited the kids just fine when it came to stretching fine lengths of string across the road on dark autumn evenings, almost killing more than one driver who slammed on the brakes at sight of this sudden obstacle, taking it, in the glare of the headlights, for a wire. When you came to this crossroads you just had to go for it, freewheeling — strictly forbidden, of course, but so gloriously thrilling — out onto the carriageway and down the hill to the kiosk and the sweet counter. The standard initiation rite for the lads of Solhaug was not, as in some rural communities in Europe, to lie down flat between the railway lines and stay there while a train ran over you — it involved taking both hands off the bars on Bergensveien, preferably with a Volvo truck thundering up behind you and a monstrous Scania-Vabis coming straight at you and not blinking an eye or turning a hair as both big beasts ‘farted’, eased up on the brakes and passed by.

Nonetheless, Jonas would spend his whole life wondering what Nefertiti was doing on Bergensveien on Midsummer’s Eve of all evenings, when absolutely no one would have thought of taking their bike out; and, even more to the point, what in heaven’s name a Scania-Vabis truck, one of the biggest models at that, should have been doing there at that time of day, so totally off course, like a rogue elephant, a murderous stray, a polar bear in Greenland in July.

Jonas Wergeland was ten years old, and Midsummer’s Eve was about to be celebrated by a representative slice of Norwegian society, sixty families all told, including, that is — as if to indicate the fringes of the nuclear family — one childless couple, one peevish elderly widow and a dreamy bachelor with a windowsill covered in models of jetfighters. Midsummer’s Eve at Solhaug was something quite unique, to be sure, but not, as Jonas Wergeland and the other residents would imagine, looking back on it later with nostalgia, because the families living in those six blocks were in any way out of the ordinary; the Solhaug of those days, like most other satellite communities, presented a pretty standard cross-section of the Norwegian lower middle class — people hailing from all over the country, employed by such bodies as Standard Telefon og Kabel, the Customs Department and Nordisk Aluminium, in the capacities of ‘bookkeeper’ or ‘typist’ and the like, with a sprinkling of less common job titles: ‘averager’, for example, or, most mysterious of all, ‘traveller’. Now and again the list might also include a dentist or an engineer, the odd lawyer or teacher.

What was special, of course, were the times. Most of these families had moved in just as the post-war rebuilding of Norway was completed, and the amazing process of economic growth was about to begin; years when almost everyone slowly, but surely began to find themselves better off, in material terms at least, a fact illustrated by a peek into these flats: three rooms and kitchen, already packed with all sorts of modern aids, including such items as Elektra cookers with thinking hotplates, plastic sliding doors and ornate radiograms, those battleships of living-room furnishing, while the most trend-conscious already had Formica-topped tables and wallpaper patterned with fruit in their kitchens and Danish designer Bo Bøgesen’s teak monkeys swinging from their lamp cables. There was only one way to go and that was up, and most important of all, everyone had a job to go to, there was no unemployment; even the political parties were in agreement on most things, at any rate on the home front, which meant that all of them, even the Conservatives, were really social democrats. Those were the days when the Norwegian Labour Party, the socialist DNA, equalled the scientific DNA, when politics and life went hand in hand, when socialism and democracy were as harmoniously entwined as the double helix of the DNA molecule.

The celebrations had been well under way before noon, with a parade in which the younger children, many of them wheeled in their prams, were dressed up in costumes painstakingly sewn by their mothers, who had worked and planned for this day as zealously as the residents of Rio preparing for their grand carnival, and continued in the afternoon with, it has to be said, a splendid show, stage-managed by a domestic-science mistress who also acted as Master of Ceremonies for the proceedings, clad, appropriately enough, in her white cookery-class overall, as if the entire show were a good and nutritious dish which she had composed and was now serving up to the proud parents sitting on the grass in the natural amphitheatre outside of Number One, watching and listening to the estate children singing through a blaring PA system, reading poetry, doing conjuring tricks, playing the trumpet and performing the most incomprehensible sketches, which everybody laughed at anyway, because they knew that the kids were endeavouring to make up for all the devilment they had got up to during the rest of the year. The children were always worried that it might rain, but I am here to tell you: it never rained at Solhaug on Midsummer’s Eve when Jonas was a boy. So the parents could lounge on the grass, keeping half an ear on the concert while they soaked up the sun, with a few of the fathers whispering to one another that they’d be blowed if little Susan hadn’t shot up during the spring, going about in high heels and a summer frock that really didn’t leave an awful lot to the imagination, by Christ it didn’t.

After the show there was a little break in the festivities, during which the kids went off to inspect the bonfire on the big green behind Blocks Three and Four, bigger than ever, always bigger than ever, on the point down by the stream where they were in the habit of hiding when they fastened a length of thread to Jens Ovesen’s window. The trick was to rub the thread with rosin, creating the most excruciating, irritating noise. Ovesen, known as Jesse Owens because he was so brown in the summertime and because he was the fastest man in Grourd and hence represented the biggest challenge of a prankster’s career, had in his time been a legendary right-back with one of the top Oslo teams, even made it onto the national team, and was famed for being the first back to go into the attack. To be chased by Ovesen was one of the most terrifying and gleeful high points of boyish pranking, and Ovesen himself did not seem to mind it either, as could be seen by the way he vaulted over the rail of the balcony, like any competitive sportsman. Whenever he caught one of them he would slap them on the back and say: ‘You’re too slow, lad!’ and let the culprit go, a humiliation greater than being dealt the expected clip round the ear.

But it was Midsummer’s Eve, the weather was warm, perfect, and as the day wore on into evening, the grown-ups drifted out, the Mums looking so nice they were almost unrecognizable and the Dads smelling of Wella hair-cream and an extra dab of Floid aftershave, all except Haakon Hansen, who had splashed out with a few drops of an Italian brand and was hoping that Fru Jakobsen, at least, would notice.

Now, let me tell you about this particular Midsummer’s Eve. Oh, I know I am starting to wax all lyrical, but I cannot help but become carried away, because this is so beautiful, this is the absolute highlight of Norwegian history: it was party time at Solhaug, a community get-together on the green behind Block Four, a green that the caretaker kept as immaculate as a golf course, with little saplings planted on the slope leading down to the stream, supported, in true textbook fashion by canes: a job carried out ‘på dugnad’, a phrase that is the very watchword of the Norwegian social democrats: as a communal effort, that is, with everyone pitching in to help. Jonas would always remember, not least at more isolated, egocentric points in his life, those evenings when people were out with their shovels, gripping little trees with their roots packed in bags and the chairman of the residents association rolled up in his Trabant — that’s right, a Trabant! — with a crate of Solo orangeade on the back seat, and everyone had this — how can I put it? — look of pioneering zeal on their faces. And now there they were, setting the table — one long table — again with everyone doing their bit, spirits are high, they are on the verge of the breakthrough to utopia; all that is lacking is for the streets to be paved with gold. It is the longest, lightest day of the year, and although this may be going a bit far, the Solhaug of that time was, to the people who lived there at any rate, what Ancient Greece had been in its day: a high point in the history of civilization and democracy.

Much as I would prefer not to, I feel duty bound to say that, at some point, historians will come along who will take a cool objective look at this era and doubtless interpret it quite differently. It should also be said that a great many people, regardless of the age in which they live, recall the years when they were setting up house and starting a family as a rich and meaningful time — not to mention their childhood years — but even I, able as I am to view the whole thing impartially and objectively, cannot help but be captivated by the golden glow that surrounds this period in the history of Norway’s little land.

But where was Nefertiti?

As people began to gravitate towards the green, Jonas went looking for her. Not that he was actually concerned, although it did suddenly cross his mind that she had been acting strangely earlier in the day. At one point she had stood with her forehead pressed against the flagpole from which the white and blue Solhaug pennon dangled limply, and right after that she had sat for a while, as if in a trance, on their favourite ledge in the little cliff at Egiltomta, having managed to play ‘Cotton Tail’, that impossible Ellington number, all the way through on the mouth organ for the first time. And, strangest of all: why, a couple of days earlier, had she pulled out her little crystal prism and given it to him, just like that — that prism which was her most treasured possession? ‘Here, take this,’ she had said, ‘and learn how to use it.’

Jonas had the feeling that maybe he ought to have been keeping an eye on her, but it was the longest, lightest day of the year, and it was party time, so Jonas wandered about, doing his best to take it all in, aware that he had to remember this, conscious of the feathery frisson running up his spine that told him he was looking at a great work of art, a picture of Soria Moria Castle, so he could only hunt for Nefertiti with half an eye, because there was Fru Agdestein wearing red nail-polish and carrying a huge tray of smørbrød, prepared according to the book, which in those days meant, for example, such toppings as boiled egg and rollmop herring or liver pâté with pickled gherkins, the extravagance of two ingredients on the same slice of bread almost unheard-of, but it was a party; and there went Herr Madsen, carrying a crate of beer, Madsen who had just bought a new car, a Citroën, with a chassis that could be raised or lowered by pulling a lever, a trick that had had to be demonstrated to the entire estate not once, but twice; what a wonder, a quantum leap beyond the general boring run of cars that lined the kerbsides round the blocks of flats, rather like ordering snails in garlic butter when everyone else was having meat patties with onions. Jonas nipped in and out among the busy grown-ups, eyeing Fru Jakobsen with a shudder. Today she had surpassed herself, Solhaug’s exotic flower, picked and brought back by Herr Jakobsen from his time at a technical college in Rome, a sensation, going about bare-legged almost all winter long; she could tick them off in a way that made their jaws drop, introduced an entirely new body language and temperament and was, of course, the object of many a man’s latent erotic desires.

Jonas wandered about, searching for Nefertiti, a little more concerned now, but then along came six men carrying a piano belonging to Halvorsen who lived, thank heavens, on the ground floor, and so once more Jonas’s attention was distracted, because he had to see them set the piano up on a makeshift platform made out of planks, then see Teigen coming over, lugging his doublebass, and then the other, normally pretty boring dads trooping up, armed with trombones and trumpets and clarinets, the whole ensemble topped off by Joffen, who played the drums in the school band but who had also mastered the flick of the wrist necessary for that circular swish of brushes on the snare-drum, and it really swung, a kind of Dixieland music; swung so hot that even Herr Carlsen, a rather sedate gentleman in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, was on his feet right away with his daughter Eva, who had just started at university and, hence, represented an explosion in learning and the expansion of the Norwegian further education system; represented a whole decade in which the student body increased several fold, and all those children who would never again see such a community so modestly content with its lot, certainly not from the inside.

But as I mentioned earlier, a serpent was about to make its way into this paradise, not only into Norway, where a more minor but no less upsetting affair such as the Schnitler case in Bergen and the far greater calamity of the King’s Bay mining disaster on Spitzbergen were leaving the first scratches in that rosy picture, but also towards the blocks of flats alongside Bergensveien in Grorud; not far from the swinging amateur orchestra, parked at the top of Hukenveien, sat a motorized serpent, a Scania-Vabis truck, and one of the very biggest at that, with a driver who was just about to set out for home.

It took a while for it to dawn on Jonas that Nefertiti was not there, that something really was wrong, and that he was going to have to get out his bike to go look for her. It dawned on him as he dragged his eyes away from the undoubted hit of the evening: four housewives dancing barefoot on the grass in identical dresses which they had run up at their sewing bee to a pretty avant-garde pattern found in a fashion magazine: dancing gaily, uninhibitedly, in an ironic protest against the idea that women should not be able to dress alike and to celebrate their own liberation, now that their children would soon be grown and they could go back to work, maybe even take a course of some sort. And even I, while trying my best to remain objective, am inclined to agree with those who felt that Norwegian women, housewives and mothers — possibly due to sheer, unadulterated optimism — were never lovelier than they were on that Midsummer’s Eve on a housing estate alongside Bergensveien in Grorud, dancing barefoot on the grass in identical dresses.