Cecilie was standing at the door when I arrived. Her hair hung in a loose knot behind her neck. That was enough for me. I forgot the slogans on the spot. I would eat grass if she asked me. I plodded towards her while keeping an eye open for Alexander the Great.
‘Hiya,’ said Cecilie, administering a hug.
‘Is it just us?’ I enquired.
‘Mummy and Daddy are waiting inside.’
‘Eh? Is this your idea?’
She just shrugged.
We ambled across the golf course, Cecilie holding my hand. I certainly needed it. Her mother appeared on the first floor balcony and waved down to us. The father made a surprise entrance from behind a sliding French door.
We walked towards him. He was standing with his hand at the ready. Cecilie let go of mine and I took his. He shook my hand warmly.
‘Nice that you could come, Kim Karlsen,’ he said.
I mumbled and stammered and then the mother came out too, wearing an elegant dress and jewellery on every patch of bare flesh, all that was missing was a regal coronet in her hair. She beamed a gleaming-white smile and took me away from her husband.
‘Here you are at last,’ she said.
I understood zilch. Sweat was flowing into my socks.
‘And now you young ones can go for a walk in the garden while Daddy gets changed,’ she said, nudging us onto the green expanse.
We strolled towards the apple trees. I lit a cigarette.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ I whispered.
Cecilie moved away. She didn’t answer.
I held her back.
‘Is there something wrong with their memories or what? Don’t they remember who I am?’
She just shook her head as if she understood just as little herself, and the knot behind her neck loosened and her hair cascaded over her shoulders like a river.
And at that precise moment I could have sworn I heard footsteps marching down Drammensveien and slogans being hurled in the air because it was half past three and time for the departure from Solli plass.
A bell rang at the palace. The meal was ready.
The table in the enormous dining room had been set. I was bewildered by all the glasses and knives and forks, and sent Cecilie a discreet glance to see where she would start. The father had put on a sailor’s blazer and a silk cravat. He clapped his hands and the double doors at the back of the room opened and two ladies in black entered with steaming dishes and green bottles of white wine. There was prawn cocktail and trout and bombe glacée. Were we getting married? Alexander the Great sat at the end of the table peering happily at his watch and when several clocks struck four, he raised his glass and said with a broad, sincere smile:
‘Well, now that one’s scuttled, skål!’
It was quite evident that he had gone mad. Cecilie’s father had gone mad.
A halting conversation spluttered into life. The mother wanted to hear a little about school and I gave laconic answers. Cecilie was not very helpful. My voice sounded hollow and resonated in the vast room. The serving lady stood behind me with another bottle at the ready. A fish bone got caught between two of my teeth, it stuck out at the corner of my mouth, I couldn’t loosen it, it was enormously annoying. I took a sip of wine and coughed into my napkin. Conversation across the table was extracted like teeth, the father shovelled down the trout and seemed almost bored by what was going on. The mother looked embarrassed and I praised the food and said the fish tasted better than the rainbow trout I had caught myself in Lille Åklungen a light year ago.
Cecilie’s father lit a big cigar and appeared to come to life.
‘Fly?’
I stared through the banks of fog rolling towards me.
‘Pardon?’
‘Fly?’ he repeated.
I had to be extremely cautious not to say anything that might irritate him. I deliberated, feverish, sweat bubbled on my scalp, my collar was wet around my neck.
‘Mosquito,’ I said. ‘There were loads of mosquitoes.’
He blew away the smoke hovering between us with one snort.
‘Fly!’ he roared with laughter. ‘Did you catch it with a fly?’
I flushed from my chest upwards. Cecilie giggled and received a kick from her mother under the table, I saw her, I hated all of them.
‘A spinner,’ I said.
The conversation over dessert died a death. The serving ladies went round as if they had been wound up mechanically and released onto the floor. I was frightened. I glimpsed Carlsberg through the double doors, his long, dark fingers. I was scared stiff.
‘What are you going to do after your final exams?’ the mother asked.
‘Not sure yet,’ I answered in a clear voice. ‘Maybe study languages.’
‘That’s what’s wrong with you young people,’ the father broke in, blowing out all the candles in one breath. ‘You can’t see ahead. You don’t have perspectives! I started off with two empty hands!’
He showed us them. The palms were sweaty and his life line stretched a long way down his forefinger. I was depressed.
‘Have you any hobbies?’ he continued, smacking his hands down on the table.
My head was like a swarm of bees. Answers flew in all directions. I caught the first to come to hand.
‘Stamps,’ I said.
He gave a nod of acknowledgement.
‘That’s good. That’s an investment!’
Then, suddenly, it was over. He rose to his feet. In a second we were on the terrace in the unusually cold evening wind blowing off the fjord. It was 1 May 1969. Cecilie and her mother had to go in and fetch more clothes. I remained with her father. He gave me a cigar and lit it. We each stood in our cloud of smoke without speaking. On the lawn Carlsberg was busy sticking hoops into the ground. He looked grouchy and offended.
And then we played croquet. I lost. Cecilie’s father saw to that. He pursued my ball and knocked me miles away every time he had the chance. I seemed to be stuck in a corner of the garden on my own smacking the ridiculous yellow ball with the idiotic mallet.
‘Conditions are the same for everyone!’ the father yelled to me as encouragement.
I thought I could hear shouts coming from Stortorget.
I took shot after shot and never hit the peg.
After I had lost five times in a row, the mother and father went in and Cecilie and I were left in the green, damp darkness.
I lit a cigarette as soon as they were behind locked doors.
‘Was it you who set this up?’ I asked without wasting any time.
Cecilie started to walk.
‘It was Daddy’s idea.’
‘But what’s the point?’ I would not let go. I didn’t understand.
‘Trying to be nice perhaps.’
I ran after her.
‘Didn’t you say once you hated your parents? Didn’t you say that?’
She just shrugged. I became annoyed.
‘And what did he mean by now that one’s scuttled? Has he gone nuts or something?’
Cecilie didn’t answer.
At that moment I saw it all, the whole context, I stopped and had to draw breath. He was not mad. He was cunning. He had led me up the garden path and back again. He had feared I would drag Cecilie along with me on the May 1 procession, her first. That was why he had got me out here. We were being supervised. Jesus, how could I be so utterly bovine!
I caught up with Cecilie, who was standing with her back to me. I said nothing. She would have to work it out for herself. I plaited her hair and was filled with a tenderness I had only known once before, when Fred died. Inside, I smarted, I was one big smarting graze throughout the length of my body. I placed my hands over her breasts. She gently pushed me away.
‘I have to go,’ I said.
She stood still.
I walked past Carlsberg, who was removing the hoops and smoothing down the grass with his black man’s hands.
I went to Gunnar’s place. Heavy scene there. Stig was sitting with o
ne gummed-up eye, swearing. Seb was on the sofa asleep. Gunnar tried to explain to me what had happened. The explanation came in fits and starts. I couldn’t make much sense of it. But they had definitely been to Somewhere To Go and then they must have occupied a house. The cops had come and run riot. Gunnar’s voice went into falsetto. A beer was put into my hand and I pointed to Seb.
‘Stoned,’ Gunnar said. ‘Can’t see land.’
There was a ring at the door and Ola walked in. He had his maths book under his arm and looked pale and worn. Stig held his hand over his black eye as he stared around wildly at us with the other.
‘Where the hell were you while we were fightin’ the police lackeys?’ he groaned.
‘Private lesson,’ Ola said meekly.
‘Alright, alright. And where were you?’
He was pointing at me.
‘Bygdøy,’ I said.
‘On May 1! Who the hell do you think you are?’
‘Infiltration,’ I said with a forced laugh.
Soon after Seb came to. He poked up his dishevelled head and then began to cry. He cried like a baby and the tears came in floods.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ Gunnar said and went into the kitchen.
I sat at the end of the sofa and Seb leaned against my shoulder sobbing.
‘It’ll be alright,’ I said, stroking his greasy hair. ‘It’ll be alright.’
Ola ran the bath, we steered him there, undressed him and put him in the hot water. He was still crying. I poured in bath salts. Seb brightened up and asked for a beer. Stig put on Dylan and Gunnar read aloud from all the leaflets he had been given.
Then we dressed Seb, and Ola and I took him home. His grandmother was waiting for him there and we were reminded of another time when Seb had been carried home with his head under his arm and his heart askew.
That was the spring. But there was something missing. Uncle Hubert. Jensenius. Birds. The promise of summer.
Dad walked around in his shadow world, silent, closed, buttoned up inside his suit. But sometimes I caught him when he thought no one was looking, standing there with clenched fists, a pain seared across his face that made me cover my eyes. He gasped for breath and crumpled up. I was terrified, backed silently into my room, it reminded me of Goose, when Goose freaked out. Mum became more and more tired, I could see the hysteria growing as she fussed over him as if he were a little child, when he came home from the bank, in the morning over the breakfast table, where he sat mute, not even reading the paper. Mum got wrinkles around her mouth, which she tried to conceal. All of a sudden she looked old. I longed for the times when Dad ranted and raved and nagged me about my hair and what I would do after I finished school or what I was going to do that evening. But Dad was sealed with seven seals and bore the shadow of a catastrophe on his brow.
Granddad lived in the home. He had let his beard grow.
Grandma bought another budgerigar. She embroidered another night cover for the cage and put the old one at the bottom of a drawer.
Cecilie and I studied for the exams and tested each other on vocabulary. She still hadn’t twigged that her father had led us up the garden path.
We didn’t talk about badgers any more.
Clouds billowed up. They came from all sides, floated up into the sky, the same way as the diaphragm on a camera lens closes. That’s the photograph of spring 1969: blurred, not enough light, sloppy development. Seb, Gunnar, Ola and I are sitting on the harbour front shivering, a bottle of beer in hand. The exams are over. Ola has failed. The rest of us passed by the skin of our teeth. Vestheim school is going to be closed and in the autumn we will be scattered to the winds. Ola can’t be bloody bothered to take the second year again and will try to find a job. Seb has been accepted for the final year at the Experimental School. Gunnar has applied to attend the Cathedral School and I was going to start at Frogner. We open another round of beers and have just enough feeling in our fingers to light cigarettes. There was a huge mouth behind us blowing gales against our backs.
The train roared past.
We chuntered on about the latest Beatles records ‘Get Back’ and ‘The Ballad Of John And Yoko’.
The Nesodden boat in the distance was specked with foam.
I visualised a summer with colds and unending days. The sightseeing boat chugged towards Bygdøy.
‘Goin’ to try to find digs for autumn,’ Seb whispered. ‘Not goin’ to bloody live with that fat fascist.’
Something had unravelled, the foundations had been torn away, as though someone was toying with us, a cold-blooded demon.
‘The whole capitalist system is rotten,’ Gunnar said in a loud voice. We were right behind him and opened another bottle.
‘Let’s try to get into Club 7,’ Seb suggested.
We just had to drink up our beers and have a piss.
Then we noticed. It was unbelievable. It was beginning to snow. In June. Large flakes fell and melted on the tarmac. We got up and stared into the sky, speechless. It was snowing.
‘It’s hailin’,’ Gunnar whispered.
‘It’s snowin’!’ Seb shouted. ‘It’s bloody snowin’!’
We cavorted around. The cars in Sjølystveien skidded into an enormous pile-up. The Drammen train derailed. The royal yacht went aground and planes crashed over Nesodden.
Then a spear of sunlight shone through and the air melted.
We shaded our eyes.
The storm passed, this time.
But a cold snap lay in the air that we could not escape: chaos, divorces, hysteria.
We didn’t even get into Club 7.
On the Sunday the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquillity, Mum and Dad were going to a bank party in town and they were not due to return until the day after. Dad had pulled himself together and the sun had coated his face with a golden tan, but his eyes were the same, they looked through everything, he kept himself to himself and his conversation was limited to ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Mum was more unrestrained. I found a half-full bottle of red wine in the cupboard when they had gone, drank the contents and strolled down to the quayside, sat on a bollard and lit a cigarette. The muffled sounds of summer could be heard around me: a motorboat in the middle of the fjord, a young lad fishing for whiting, the song of the fishing line. Some people jumping into the water, laughter. A gull circling high in the light blue sky and homing in on a shoal. I sat feeling loneliness wrap itself around my body like clinging seaweed. Then I made my decision, and I always marvel at how quickly you can decide, that it is so easy, like a landslide in your brain, as if time no longer works. So I made my decision and went to see Fritjof at Signalen, the Nesodden headland, and found him in the shed hammering a brand new lure into shape.
‘Rare visitor,’ he smiled.
I could concede that. Fritjof had taught me to cast a line with tin cans, swing it over your head keeping your thumb on the line like the trigger of a six-shooter. No one beat Fritjof. They could turn up with an open reel Abu, a glass-fibre rod and the best bait, it wouldn’t help if Fritjof came with his tins and lures. He cast furthest. And caught most.
He showed me the little marvel, a bent piece of iron painted silver with a red speed stripe.
Fritjof was pleased.
‘Have you lost your lures?’ he grinned.
‘Nope.’ Kicked at the gravel. ‘Could I use your phone?’
He showed me into the room, stood polishing and filing while I dialled the number.
Cecilie was at home.
Afterwards Fritjof stared at me with a mischievous smile on his tanned face.
‘Your parents went on the six o’clock ferry,’ he said. ‘Are they goin’ to be away long?’
‘Until tomorrow night.’
He punched his fist into my back.
‘Good luck, boy! I know nothin’. I’ve neither heard nor seen a thing!’
We emerged on the front step.
‘I owe you a krone,’ I said.
‘Forget it,’ Fritjof said.
I
sauntered back to the quayside, by the wire fence and the hedge, thinking of all the evenings I had played hide and seek here, thinking about Cecilie, thinking about all the underground passages, what was left of Signalen Hotel, thinking about Cecilie.
I heard Fritjof filing and singing.
I turned and waved.
Cecilie arrived three quarters of an hour later. She raced through the sounds of summer in a hundred horsepower boat and swerved into the quay.
‘Where can I moor?’ she shouted up to me.
I directed her to the hill face where the steps led down. She jumped ashore and made fast. We kissed and almost fell in the sea. Cecile was in a good mood, mmm, her hair smelt of saltwater and she had red nails.
‘Didn’t think you would be at home now,’ I whispered.
‘Mummy and Daddy are in Italy. They come home the day after tomorrow.’
My heart rejoiced under my T-shirt. We had a whole day to ourselves.
And the Eagle was on its way to the Sea of Tranquillity.
We walked hand in hand to the House. Summer was a springboard for many things. The air was full of birds, the bees buzzed in the rose hedge and the squirrels nibbled away in the trees.
Cecilie wanted to see everything. I followed her from room to room. We walked through the orchard and tasted the unripe apples and the acidic rhubarb, picked a handful of wild strawberries by the well and fed each other. And summer embraced us in friendly arms, a transparent, living darkness. Spray foamed around the bows of a ship.