‘That’s not the same. I’ve always done that. It’s best for them.’
Always done that. My stomach gave a new lurch. Must have lied about many more before me, a whole bunch of them, I’m going to see Kåre, I’m going to see Kåre, and then she had gone somewhere else, to secret assignations, the back row in the cinema, in an out-of-the-way park on the other side of the town. I started to touch her, my hands ran wild, she pulled away with a laugh.
‘Yes,’ I said and had no idea why I was saying ‘yes’.
‘Are we friends again then?’ she asked, simple as that.
Friends.
‘Yes,’ I said again, leaning across her.
Afterwards I played her the new Beatles record. She listened without much interest, talked about a singer who was even better than Simon and Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen his name was. Had never heard of him. She could play a few chords on the guitar.
I played the record again. It was a run-of-the-mill letter I sent, nothing dangerous, like a postcard you sent to friends and family on holiday, to prove you were still alive, a weather report, wouldn’t cause a problem.
I calmed down.
‘Lady Madonna,’ I said.
‘What?’
I had my head in her lap.
‘Lady Madonna,’ I said. ‘You’re my Lady Madonna.’
Thought that sounded cool. But I’m not sure that she liked it.
She was quiet for a while, then looked down at my face.
Stroked my eyebrows.
‘You’re sweet,’ she said.
Not sure that I liked that.
‘Lady Madonna,’ I repeated.
Then she lowered her mouth and her hair fell over me like a thin, freshly washed curtain.
Spring arrived with a vengeance, worse than ever before. I bought twenty bottles of Export for Jensenius and he held a damned concert until late in the night when the cops had to come and restrain him. After that Jensenius was quiet. But the sun continued, ripped up the winter by the roots, and bikes and bands streamed into the streets like animals emerging from hibernation. Cecilie and I kept the pot boiling with clandestine, stolen trysts on misty, sultry evenings that were not as warm as you thought, which necessitated closeness and initiative. She visited me sometimes, out of the blue, without warning, and one evening I went to hers in Bygdøy.
Alexander the Great and wife were at the opening of an exhibition in the Trade Fair Hall and the palace was unoccupied. We sat in the hammock in the garden, swinging and drinking orange juice. I peered up at the roof, went weak at the knees, it was steeper than the landing section of the Holmenkollen ski jump. Otherwise the garden wasn’t bad, the grass had been manicured with nail scissors and the lawn was the size of a golf course. The apple trees stood on the horizon like white ghosts and my knees went weak again. Apples. Hadn’t heard anything from Nina after I had sent the letter, not so strange though, it was a pretty stupid letter. Cecilie told me about the gardener whose name was Carlsberg. He had green fingers, Cecilie said. Carlsberg is Danish beer, I said. I shouldn’t have said that, that’s obvious. Cecilie was offended and immediately got off the hammock. So I was forced to perform resuscitation, after half an hour everything was fine again as a rule. It was quite strange really because she wanted to hear about this Nina, as she called her, she would beg me to talk about her, she was curious and scared at one and the same time, and I did talk, but it didn’t do to tell too much, to warm to the topic, tricky area, a fine line, worse than walking on her roof. But this evening she didn’t want to hear about Nina. At first we had to do some homework together and afterwards we could play records. Quiet evening. We lay in the grass with our English and French books, testing each other on vocabulary.
‘What do you think of Victoria?’ she asked after some time.
‘Boring,’ I said.
She looked disappointed.
‘I think it’s beautiful,’ she said to the sky.
‘Would never have thought Sphinx would choose schmaltz like that,’ I persisted.
‘Would have liked to know the miller’s son,’ Cecilie sighed.
‘They make it more difficult than it needs to be, don’t they,’ I said, and caught myself feeling stupid. ‘Anyway, it’s only a book,’ I added.
Cecilie lay daydreaming, the spring murk was on its way, a light cloud scudded across the sky.
‘I’ll fetch the record player,’ she said, running in.
She brought her guitar as well. And Leonard Cohen. She couldn’t get enough of Leonard Cohen. And the whole time she was staring at the picture of this dark, tragic man with the spiritual resonance that girls would queue up for.
I was pissed off.
‘Don’t you like Leonard, either?’ Cecilie asked with resignation in her voice.
On Christian name terms.
‘Schmaltz,’ I said. ‘The same old schmaltz all the time.’
She turned her back on me and played the B side. I couldn’t hear the difference.
‘You only like The Beatles, you do,’ she said.
‘True,’ I said.
I was in that mood.
We didn’t say any more. When the record had finished she took the guitar in her lap and strummed. I liked her better then, well, I liked her best of all then, when she tried to play the guitar, because she couldn’t, and that gave me a bit of a frisson, watching her do something at which she was completely hopeless.
She strummed with her nails, moved her left hand into contorted positions with her fingers sticking out in all directions and pressed the strings. However, as far as fingers are concerned, I can’t talk, my index finger stuck up in the air like a misshapen question mark, and I was glad Cecilie didn’t ask about that.
Then she began to sing in English.
It sounded forlorn.
Loved her at that moment.
After finishing, she stared vacantly into the distance as though listening to an echo.
I hugged her.
‘That was great,’ I said.
‘You’re lying,’ she said.
‘I mean it! It was great!’
‘You’re lying,’ she said, and continued to play and sing ‘Suzanne’, and I really liked the song when Cecilie sang it, ‘rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters’, it had something that stirred my heart.
Behind us stood the enormous palace, the garden stretched out in all directions, the sky moved slowly above us and there was the smell of freshly mown grass. Cecilie sat with her Levin guitar playing folk songs, and it was odd that Cecilie, uncompromising Cecilie, liked these songs so much. Not Bob Dylan but Donovan, not Barry McGuire but Cohen, not John Mayall but Simon and Garfunkel. She played her whole repertoire of five songs. ‘Donna Donna’, ‘Catch The Wind’, ‘Suzanne’, ‘April’ and ‘Yesterday’. When she had finished and it had actually turned a little cold, I snuggled up to her and took the place of the guitar. But then there was a buzz at the gate and footsteps crunched up the gravel path. Cecilie scratched me through to my shirt, she was so afraid, we sat there as quiet as mice, it was too late to escape anyway. But it was not her parents, it was an old man with a straw hat and wide trousers flapping in the gentle wind.
Cecilie breathed a sigh of relief.
‘It’s just Carlsberg,’ she whispered.
He caught sight of us and came across the lawn, walking with care, as though he might be hurting the grass.
‘Hello,’ Cecilie said.
He stopped, doffed the yellow straw hat and took a deep bow.
‘Good evening, frøken Almer,’ he said with quiet humility.
He gave me a brief nod. I could see that his fingers were not green, they were brown, thin, elegant, almost like a black man’s hands.
‘I must have left my pipe in the kitchen,’ he explained with some embarrassment.
Cecilie went in with him. They soon re-emerged, Carlsberg disappearing with another deep bow and meandering off almost without a sound.
‘That gave me quite a shock,’ sai
d Cecilie, sitting next to me.
I was speechless.
‘He won’t say anything,’ she continued. ‘Carlsberg’s loyal.’
She giggled. I didn’t think there was much to laugh about.
She gave me a fleeting kiss.
‘You’ll have to go now,’ she said.
Walked along Frogner Bay, heard jazz coming from Club 7, the water was rippling around the boats, a motor bike was revving up. Couldn’t get Carlsberg off my retina, humble, bowing, a metre’s distance: frøken Almer! It was almost spooky. I strained to remember the chords instead, especially her clumsy fingers which kept fumbling and missing. That was how I wanted to remember her.
Stig finished gymnas, had the red graduation cap pressed down over his mane, wrote Mao on the peak and on his prom card it said: Norway out of Vietnam. Not everyone understood that, we were given one each and we chuckled. It was obvious that Stig did not take the exams to have the cap put on his bonce, proms were middle class inanity for the sons and daughters of the Holmenkollen wealthy. Stig joined the prom celebrations to infiltrate the enemy. And on May 17 he and three other long-haired rebels from the Cathedral School were thrown head first out of the prom procession for unfurling a long banner in front of the American embassy: USA = STATE MURDERERS. Beer bottles rained down over them, furious fathers with graduation caps on their heads and a tassel attached to their padded shoulders clenched their fists and screamed and spat, but Stig was well pleased, a successful operation. The element of surprise had caught them out. The shock burned like a corrosive negative deep into the middle class’s wrinkled retina. We had an audience with him in his room, Bob Dylan crackling in the background, Stig sat in the lotus position on the divan while we lay scattered around the floor. Things are brewing, Stig said. Soon they will explode, Stig said. Before the summer is here, the world will no longer be as it was. Paris, Stig said. There, it wasn’t just slinging mud at embassies, but barricades, weapons, strategy and spontaneity! There, they didn’t only have Finn Gustavsen, they had Sartre and Cohn-Bendit. Workers and students stood shoulder to shoulder. De Gaulle could just go and dig a hole for himself in the ground like the corrupt mole he was. We sat listening in awe. It sounded heavy. It will spread, Stig said. Today Paris. Tomorrow Oslo. Or the day after. He looked a bit tired. But he was glad he was experiencing these times. Right, comrades? The fanfare announcing the evening news sounded in the sitting room and we piled in, just caught the off-kilter globe twirling round. Gunnar’s father was sitting on the sofa, head bowed, black bags under his eyes, grey thinning hair. He had great plans about expanding his shop, mounting some opposition, moving into the cellar, making a market in the yard, building upwards, no limits to his plans. But no banker would lend him the money when they heard his little shop was situated right next to where Bonus would be. Gunnar told me that one evening. And I thought about Dad. Dad could probably loan him money, so I asked him one day. Then Dad explained to me the whole business about profitability and security, staring reality in the face and not overstretching your means. I understood little to nothing, but I knew that something was crack-brained, seriously crack-brained. But now we were standing in front of the TV, our eyes widened in disbelief. The drama that was unfolding on the screen did not seem to concern Holt the greengrocer. We leaned forward and stared: Paris. Unsteady, jumpy images as if the camera man was running or being chased. It was taking place in a large square. Now and then we spotted a fountain in the background, some animals spouting water. People were running in all directions, there must have been a fire somewhere because there was a lot of smoke and most people were covering their faces with their handkerchiefs. The commentator was calmly reporting on the clashes between students and police. And workers! Stig shouted. Another vanful of cops was disgorged, armed with glass visors, big shields and long batons. They slashed around, hit out at anyone who came near them as if it were all some insane game, but this was not a game, this was the vile reality that materialised from the thousands of dots which form the TV screen: blood flowing from heads, people fainting, people screaming in blind terror, blood streaming down faces and batons raining down blows, and that was when I saw it: a blow to Henny’s head.
It was the sort of moment when you are suddenly and ineluctably drawn in as a participant, not as an observer, when the threads of chance weave you into a new reality, like taking a step to the side, like relinquishing a dream, like seeing yourself in the mirror without recognising the image. I saw Henny being beaten by clubs, she held up her arms to protect herself, but to no avail, they hammered away and in the end she just covered her ears and screamed, as though unable to stand the sound of her own piercing cries. Then she was lost from the screen, but the images kept rolling inside me.
I ran as fast as I could to Marienlyst. It had begun to rain, a vertical, quiet rain that made the hot tarmac steam and smell, and the lilac trees shone like polished domes. I raced through the peaceful rain, through the sleepy streets and found Hubert in a wretched state. He had also seen it, no doubt about it, it was Henny they had been attacking.
‘I have to go there!’ Hubert shouted. ‘I have to go!’
He paced up and down the floor, trod on picture frames, kicked at papers and canvases and magazines. His face was grey, his eyes were filled with horror, longing and indignation.
I tried to reassure him, felt at once so adult sitting and trying to ease my uncle’s mind.
‘You could try ringing,’ I said.
‘I have done!’ he shrieked. ‘Can’t get through. It’s impossible to call Paris. I’ve rung the embassy. I have to go there!’
He slumped into a chair, exhausted.
‘You saw it?’ he groaned.
‘Yes.’
He hid his face in his hands.
‘They smashed her! Her head. Her nose. Her mouth.’
He stood up, sat down, stood up.
‘Hubert,’ I said. ‘She must have lots of friends in Paris. She’ll get help. She’ll be taken to hospital.’
He sat down.
‘She’ll be fine,’ I continued. ‘I’m sure it looked worse than it was,’ I said, not believing myself for a moment.
Hubert just stared at me.
‘And when she’s better, she’ll ring you. It won’t help if you go there now.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Yes, it will.’
I fetched two bock beers from the kitchen.
We drank.
‘Thanks,’ Hubert said. ‘Thanks for coming, Kim.’
We sat for a while and felt the sweet, heavy taste of the beer seep through our bodies.
‘It’ll be alright,’ I said.
‘That’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen.’
‘Same here.’
I went for two more beers. Fear came in sharp stabbing pains, as if someone were throwing darts and I was the board.
‘How’s it going with Cecilie?’ Hubert asked.
‘Fine,’ I said, no longer sure whether I believed anything I said.
Exams were approaching and the world was beginning to fall back into place. Stig was exhausted after his exertions, things had turned rough and now he was lying with swollen eyelids, waiting for the military police. Naturally he had declared himself innocent. De Gaulle was gaining the upper hand in Paris and Cecilie and I were swotting together. We worked at my place or on a bench in Frogner Park when the weather was dependable. She wasn’t very interested in what had been going on in Paris, but she was good at French and taught me a few tricks. I didn’t tell her about Henny. Hubert still hadn’t heard anything from her. Cecilie was interested most of all in her guitar, she talked about the new chords she had taught herself, the diminished and the seventh, she was following a guitar course in a women’s magazine. She had bought an LP by the Young Norwegians. I chatted about the band we had thought about starting once, The Snafus. At school it was the same old stuff. Cecilie was distant and indifferent towards me, and Peder and Slippery Leif snooped around to see what was actually going on, but no
one was trying to revive Karlsen-on-the-roof or Skeleton-at-the-dance. I had my feet back on the ground.
One evening we were at my place poring over German, chewing bread and regurgitating subjunctives, datives and bloody rules. Cecilie tested me on prepositions and would not give up until I had them. It took quite a long time and there were so many other things I would rather have done. Outside, the rain kept falling, gentle, warm, just right for running around naked in, I thought, and my eyes locked onto Cecilie, I lost concentration, mixed up genders and couldn’t make anything agree. Cecilie became desperate, flicked through my pile of records, but couldn’t find anything that caught her interest. She liked the early Beatles, particularly Paul’s ballads, as she called them. In fact, ‘Yesterday’ was in her repertoire. But she didn’t like ‘I’m The Walrus’ or ‘Lucy In The Sky’. However much I tried. I was happy to settle for her folk songs, and that night she sang for me without the guitar. She sat on my sofa in a red blouse, concentrated, singing for me while tapping the beat on her French book. ‘The Sound of Silence’. I said I thought it was wonderful, but she didn’t believe me and sang it once again. That made me feel calm and happy. That was how life should be.
It was afterwards that it happened. A full house. I was going to walk her part of the way home, along the sea front, the rain was right for walking girls home in. I shot down the stairs ahead of her and opened the heavy door, Cecilie was standing in the dark hallway as I stepped onto the pavement and felt the first drops on my hair. At that precise moment Nina appeared. She raced towards me with that same long dress stuck to her lean body, her hair over her face and a big white smile. She held her arms open wide and threw herself on me and was everywhere.
‘Thanks for your letter!’ she sang in my ears and her voice had a Danish twang.
At that moment Cecilie came out of the door. Nina was hanging off me. Then Nina noticed Cecilie and her arms slowly released me. They looked at each other, sized each other up, without a word, yet without any misunderstandings. I didn’t even have a chance to think of something to say, I didn’t even raise a finger before each went her own way, and I was left standing in the cold torrential rain until I was drenched, unwell, mortally ill. Abandoned, I thought, the word sounded harsh and sickening. I tried to roll a cigarette, but the tobacco and the paper floated away. It just kept raining, I stood there and my heart turned inside out like an old, black umbrella.