‘What did he look like, the man you found in Bygdøy?’ she asked.
‘Dunno. Didn’t see much of him.’
Something was happening in the clearing. Everyone was running back and forming a large circle, staring at something or other. Amid all this we heard the natural science teacher’s agitated voice.
‘Let’s go and see,’ I said quickly.
‘You can have one of my flowers,’ Nina said, stretching out her hand.
I studied her hand. It was small and narrow. Holding a flower.
‘That’s very nice of you,’ I said, carefully taking the moist, green stem and counting four red petals which formed a large bud.
‘Poppy,’ Nina whispered.
And then we ran down to the clearing as fast as we could. Holst was standing in the centre of the group pointing to the ground. Where a snake lay coiled up.
‘Nature provides us with the most essential knowledge,’ he lectured. ‘Nature is the best book of all!’
We were as quiet as mice, staring in fear at the snake.
‘There is only one poisonous snake in Norway,’ Holst went on. ‘The adder. The grass snake, on the other hand, is harmless. And the slowworm is not really a worm. It belongs to the lizard family. This creature here is a grass snake and is therefore harmless.’
He looked around with an air of triumph. Lue stepped forward, braver now, but Inkie kept her distance, her breeches flapping like pennants.
‘Now I’ll show you something,’ Holst almost sang. ‘I’ll lift it up by its tail. It’s not dangerous because it’s a grass snake. And should it turn out to be an adder, which of course is not the case, it’s not dangerous to lift it up by the tail either, because an adder can’t raise its head and bite at air!’
The circle widened as Holst rolled up his shirtsleeves.
‘It looks like an adder,’ John said, standing right behind me.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s got to be an adder.’
‘Is it wise to hold an adder’s tail?’ John asked.
‘No,’ I said.
Holst bent down, grabbed the snake with lightning speed and showed it off with a beaming face. Then the snake twisted in the air, thrust back its head and bit him on the arm. Everyone screamed. Holst screamed, threw the snake away with a howl and the circle dispersed in all directions. The snake slithered into some tall scrub, Holst sank to the ground and Lue stood there, mystified, flapping his arms.
‘I’m dying,’ Holst rattled, white as sugar. ‘I’m dying.’
We carried him to Ringveien and flagged down a car, which took him to the casualty department. Holst survived. Afterwards Lue said that we reap our greatest knowledge through trial and error. He was certain that none of us would hold a snake by the tail in the future.
On the way home John stopped and pointed to my hand.
‘What’ve you got there?’ he asked.
‘A flower, can’t you see?’ I said.
‘What are you goin’ to do with it?’ George enquired with a grin.
‘Give it to my mum,’ I said. ‘Birthday.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said the others.
Nina was walking in front of us. I couldn’t take my eyes off her back and her tall, slim neck.
I gently squeezed the giant red tear in my hand.
And someone began to sing a familiar refrain about the local asylum:
‘There’s a hole in the fence at Gaustad, there’s a hole in the fence at Gaustad!’
We had seen death in Bygdøy. Now death was here in a different guise. Exams. Or perhaps it was the waiting time that felt like death, a kind of antechamber, white and soundless. That’s what it is, waiting is death. When what you have been waiting for arrives, it is already over, just like the DTP injection, the so-called fork-jab we dreaded for five years, the needle grew in insane proportions over time and in the end we imagined a pitch fork in our backs. However, standing in a line with bared chests in the doctor’s surgery and a nurse rubbing our shoulders with moist cotton wool, we were almost disappointed when the doctor jabbed and it didn’t hurt. It was as though we had been tricked. And that was how it was with the exams as well. Sitting in the sunlit classroom with the exam sheets in front of me, I felt it was over already, or something new had just begun. The silence was deafening, not even the school bells rang, right up until packed lunches were taken out and the windows were opened wide. Then summer hit us, with bird cries, cycle bells and a whole orchestra of smells. On the first day we had arithmetic and geometry, on the second it was English and finally essay writing. When we finished on the third day we charged down the steps and sprinted into town, to Studenten with fifteen kroner in our pockets and our mouths watering. We started with a chocolate milkshake and followed through with a banana split.
‘Which one did you write about?’ I asked at last.
‘Describe something exciting you have experienced,’ John, George and Ringo answered.
Of course they had taken that one, too, and what else could we have written about apart from the man who drowned in Huk.
I swallowed the banana and looked at Ringo.
‘You didn’t write about us slingin’ the car badges in the sea, did you?’
‘Are you out of your m-m-mind! Couldn’t write about that, could I!’
We finished off with ice cream soda, apple juice and soft ice topped with crushed nuts. Then we strolled down the steps towards the palace feeling replete and tired, past Restaurant Pernille, which was packed to the rafters with crazy folk waving beer glasses. Two guardsmen came towards us, the girls whistled and waved to them, and they both went scarlet under their huge plumed hats. That was living.
And then we met Goose in Drammensveien. Walking with his mother, he was dressed up in a tie and blue jacket, fresh from the barber’s, neck looking like a whetstone. His mother was prodigiously tall. She stooped down and spoke to us with long drawn-out vowels.
‘You can stay here and have a chat. Catch me up later.’
She straightened and continued down Glitnebakken.
‘Where are you goin’?’ George asked.
‘Halvorsen’s Konditori,’ mumbled Goose.
‘How did it go?’ John asked.
‘All right,’ Goose answered, his eyes wandering.
‘Which essay title did you take?’
‘Number three,’ he said in a low voice.
‘What excitin’ experience have you had?’ George grinned.
Now Goose refused to look at any of us, made as if to run after his mother but didn’t quite seem to manage it.
‘I wrote about… I wrote about the man who drowned in Bygdøy.’
We couldn’t believe our ears.
‘You wrote… you wr-wr-wrote about what we experienced,’ Ringo stuttered.
Goose gave a series of quick nods. The tight shirt collar cut into his neck.
‘But f-for Pete’s sake you weren’t there!’ John spat. ‘Hell, it wasn’t you who had the experience!’
‘You can’t lie in the bloody exam,’ Ringo hissed.
Goose opened his dry lips and gazed at some point in the Palace Gardens.
‘It isn’t a lie,’ he said with solemnity. ‘It’s creative writing.’
Now John thought he was becoming seriously cheeky, he grabbed his shoulder and pushed his face down towards the soft tarmac.
‘Don’t you bloody know that you can’t write about what we experienced?! What the hell d’you think we wrote about, eh!’
Goose stood with his head bowed under the pressure of John’s hand.
‘Everyone in the class wrote about it,’ he whispered. ‘Everyone!’
John let go and looked at us.
‘Did everyone write about what happened in Bygdøy?’ I asked in astonishment.
‘Yes! Everyone! Except Dragon!’
Then Goose ran after his mother and we were left standing in Drammensveien feeling betrayed and cheated. But the people who marked the essays would probably realise that we were the ones wh
o had been there and the others had just heard the story from us. No question. We calmed down and strolled home, picked up our swimming togs and went to Frogner Lido.
‘You remember the bet, don’t you?’ George said as we stood at the diving end. I turned. The tower rose into the air, higher than the chimney in Gaustad. That was when I felt the tingle. I glowed, as though I were an electric eel.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course.’
I was on my own, atop the ten-metre platform. I could see the whole of Oslo. The heat haze quivered on the horizon. I walked out onto the board. It was a long way down, but it seemed further than it was because you could see through the water, right down to the green floor. John, George and Ringo looked up at me, and they were not alone, all the others down there were also watching. The lifeguard blew his whistle and cleared people away so that I had a free passage. All of a sudden it hit me: everyone is waiting for me. Now it was impossible to cop out. I was caught. There was no way back. That reassured me. I took a deep breath, felt the plunge inside me first, a hundred times ten metres in my head, then I closed my eyes, took off and hit the water at once.
I was pulled up over the side. I brought up chlorine but was otherwise in good shape, just a reddish forehead and a new centre parting.
‘You flew through the air like an eagle!’ George said, giving me the packet of cigarettes he had obviously bought in advance.
On arriving home, I stuck my sore head out of the window, smelt the sea air from Frogner Bay, and then I heard a few strange noises above me. I looked up and thought I had discovered a new planet, pink with three craters and a big mountain. It was Jensenius.
‘Hello,’ he said.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Would you do me a favour?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Buy me some beer.’
I nipped up to his flat and he was already standing in the doorway, a whale, an airship, he had to walk sideways to get through the door.
‘Fifteen Export,’ he whispered, giving me a handful of coins.
I went to Jacobsen’s on the corner for the beer, they knew me there, paid the Clark Gable lookalike at the counter and lugged the weight down to Svolder. Jensenius was waiting for me and let me in through the door. He took the shopping net and marched into the sitting room. Once there, he sank into a large leather chair and opened the first bottle. He drank half, licked the foam around his mouth and slowly turned to me, standing still by the door.
‘Keep the change,’ he said. ‘You’re a good lad, you are.’
The walls were covered with photographs, they had to be from the time Jensenius was young and world famous. There was a bad smell and mildew on the windows.
‘Can you teach me to sing?’ I asked.
Jensenius contemplated me at his leisure, the bottle close to his mouth. Then he put it down and reached out his hand, a huge smile cutting through the fat like a blunt knife.
‘Can I teach you to sing?’ he whined.
‘Yes.’
I went over to him.
‘Why do you want to learn to sing, young man?’
‘I want to become a singer,’ I said with sincerity.
He pointed me to a chair, opened five bottles one after the other and I sat there for two hours listening to Jensenius talking about singing, about beauty and singing.
‘Singing is about letting yourself go,’ he concluded. ‘Letting yourself go and having control at the same time. You must have control! But don’t be afraid of your voice. Everyone has a big voice inside them. Here!’ He thumped his chest. The dust rose from the faded shirt. ‘Let it go! Scream!’ he squeaked.
The last day at school was a big deal. Lue was wearing a dark suit with shiny knees and elbows. He seemed excited, high almost. At first I thought he must have been ecstatic because he was getting rid of us, but then I realised he was just sad and was trying to hide it with wild gesticulations and smiles. He gave a speech, which was not short, and afterwards Goose waddled up to the desk with a somewhat unstable present that made a lot of noise. Lue removed the paper and found himself holding a bowl of water in which a goldfish was furiously swimming around. It was all too much for Lue. He had to go into the corridor where, through loud sobs, he gasped for breath and blew his nose.
Then we clattered down to the film room where the rest of the muttheads were sitting and quaking, the mothers perched along the walls, sporting summer dresses and perms, winking and waving, three-metre long handkerchiefs in their laps. My mother was sitting right by the door and staring at me, burning a scorch mark into my back, and Nina was sitting two rows in front. She turned towards me and showed me a row of white teeth. I was caught in the crossfire and blenched.
Nina leaned towards me.
‘You can dive from the ten-metre board, can you?’ she whispered.
‘Why d’you say that?’ I flushed to my roots.
‘Saw you.’
The senior teacher’s voice boomed out, and he said the same as Lue, and along the walls there were the sounds of sniffling and tutting. These were words we should take to heart, from now on life would be a serious matter, from now on the demands on us would grow, from now on, from now on, bloody hell, on a lighter note he wished us a good summer, if we didn’t have a nervous breakdown before Midsummer’s Day, that is. And then it was full pelt back to the classroom and Lue distributing certificates and shaking our hands. The goldfish was swimming round and round and gawping at everyone who approached. I got a B in English and a C in maths. And a C in Norwegian. John had the same as me, but a B in maths. George also had a C in Norwegian while Ringo was cursing over a big fat E.
‘E,’ he hissed. ‘I got an E f-f-for essay writin’!’
He turned on Goose who was grinning to himself.
‘What did you get for essay writin’?’ he shouted.
‘B,’ Goose answered.
Ringo, nonplussed, was about to go for Goose. We had to stop him.
‘How can that be?’ Ringo babbled. ‘It ain’t r-right!’
We were all quite angry, and wondered if we should set upon Lue for a last time, but in the end we didn’t care and followed the pack leaving the classroom, and the last we saw of Lue he was standing with his hands round the glass bowl, looking rather confused and bewildered, probably wondering how he was going to get it home.
The mothers were waiting by Harelabben, so we sneaked out into Holtegata and left the school behind us. We celebrated the occasion by buying nineteen rum balls between us at the bakery, the most we had polished off in one go since the dentist died three years ago.
‘Got an E in religion,’ John munched.
‘And I got an E in woodwork,’ I said.
And so we compared our grades and discovered that things were not that bad after all. I had only one more E, in handwriting, and a C for behaviour, the same as George.
It was only when I arrived home that I realised that this was going to be a watershed in my life. From now on, my ears rang. Mum had set the table in the sitting room although this was only a weekday, and Dad shook my hand as though we had never seen each other before.
‘Congratulations, son,’ he said. ‘Let me see your grades. And wash your hands.’
I went into the bathroom and upon my return Dad’s face was tense and ashen. His index finger hovered over my behaviour grade. ‘What does this mean?’ he said. ‘A C for behaviour!’
‘I don’t know,’ I said meekly.
‘Don’t you know? You must know what you’ve done, lad!’
I pondered. A was extra good, B was very good, C was good. Wasn’t that good enough? I thought.
‘Gunnar and I were whisperin’ a bit,’ I said. ‘He sits behind me.’
‘Whispering,’ Dad corrected. ‘He got a C too then, did he?’ And then I went all stupid and honest.
‘No. He got a B.’
Dad looked at me with big staring eyes, his mouth agape, but Mum finally brought in the food, and when she had seen the grades she hugged m
e and smelt of perfume and lemon.
‘B in English. That’s just wonderful!’
She looked at Dad, Dad nodded and a cautious smile pulled at the edges of his mouth and then he laid a stern hand on my shoulder and rocked me to and fro, and that was when I knew that something really was changing, that from now on it was going to be from now on.
Steamed trout, and Mum and Dad drank white wine, which made their faces go a little shiny. I was even allowed to have a mouthful from Mum’s green glass. It fizzed on my tongue like effervescent sodium bicarbonate, but I swallowed it without a grimace. And I wasn’t very hungry after all the rum balls. I sat thinking about Lue and the goldfish and how he managed to carry it through the streets. It was a funny thought and I suppose my eyes had a faraway look as I sat there picking fish bones out of my teeth.
‘Who was the girl?’ Mum asked apropos of nothing.
‘The girl?’ I spluttered.
‘The one sitting in front of you in the film room.’
‘In the film room?’
In the nick of time the doorbell rang. I jumped up and opened the door. It was Gunnar.
‘They’ve arrived!’ he panted, waving his arms around. ‘They’ve arrived!’
I did an about-turn and ran back into the sitting room.
‘They’ve arrived!’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go!’
Dad could not believe his own ears.
‘Who’s arrived?’
‘The Rolling Stones!’
The plates were full of fish bones and skin, glasses were half full, there was a slice of cucumber under my chair, the napkins looked like crumpled flowers, marsh marigolds, and I had dirtied the tablecloth.
‘You’d better go then,’ Dad smiled, and by then I had gone. We picked up Ola and Seb and caught the Goldfish into town.
‘They landed in Fornebu an hour ago,’ Gunnar panted. ‘My brother said. Stayin’ at the Vikin’.’
‘Thought they were comin’ tomorrow,’ Seb said.
‘To avoid hassle,’ Gunnar explained. ‘Hardly anybody knows they’ve just arrived, you know.’