I go up to my room and change into normal clothes, hold up my checked trousers before I go for the Wranglers instead. Before I leave, I play Bob Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ to cleanse my mind. It’s unbeatable. It is so full of hatred it makes me want to lie down on the bench and pump iron, but it will take too long. I can’t be indoors now, not with Kirsten Flagstad and Maria Callas howling in the next room.
On my way out, I hit my foot against something sticking out from under the bed. It’s the accordion. I sneaked it indoors and up to my room when my mother wasn’t there and have hidden it. I have a KEEP OUT sign on my door to make her stay away. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone, only Arvid knows, and sometimes I feel an urge to take it out, hold it in my arms and play a few notes. But I am afraid it will make me remember too much. I push it back underneath with my foot.
I walk through the living room. Roberto is standing by the old record cabinet waving a new recording of Tosca, and he winks at me, and I pat my bum, and my mother says, ‘Well, put it on, then.’
The first notes come thundering down the stairs as I leave the building. She plays music louder than I do, and yet I am the one who gets a hard time. I guess I appreciate Jussi Björling more than she does Jimi Hendrix. The only singer for her after 1945 is Elvis. I couldn’t give a shit about him. But maybe Elvis reminds her of the days when the future was still open and she sat around in old American cars necking with my father, dreaming behind the dashboard with Kari in the back seat wrapped in nappies, and was about to marry this man that she wanted. What a kick in the teeth.
It’s raining outside. Heavy, gusting rain, and the concrete walls of the houses turn sticky and dark. It makes me feel so out of place, and suddenly I long for thatched houses and log walls and attics and birch trees right outside your window and meadowland where the wind and the rain sweep across the tall grass in one long, surging swell and make you think of films you have seen and of walking barefoot, and then it painfully passes and is squeezed into a funnel with only one narrow way out.
There is nothing to work out. We just have to wait and see what happens. But nothing happens. Soon two weeks have gone, and had I not been the person I am, I would have thought it was a ghost I had seen. I remember a time out in the country when almost everyone believed in ghosts. Someone had planted stories that spread all over the district like a nervous disease, and in the end Kari was so scared she joined something called Kløfta Parapsychological Association. Its members went off in droves to old abandoned farms and lay on the living room floors with tape recorders, keeping each other awake, rigid with fear, waiting for white ladies in lace frocks. But girls are girls, and what I believe is what I see when I see it. I have never seen any ghosts. The ones that haunt me do not glide around at night wearing lace frocks, howling with grief.
Perhaps I had got it wrong. But I had not, and then there is the accordion and what Leif said, although I don’t understand just why he went to Leif. Anyway, it was him. But what does he want? What is he waiting for?
I walk along Beverveien in the rain, turn up the collar of my reefer jacket and feel the rain running off my hair down my neck, and the sun breaks through, and even though it’s very low, it feels like spring, only colder. I could go into the woods now, take the paths from the top of Slettaløkka into the forest and on to Lake Alunsjøen and down around Lake Breisjøen to Ammerud. I often do that, it’s a fine route if you walk fast. I like walking fast. But that road is closed to me now.
Arvid is standing outside the Narvesen kiosk by the Metro station buying cigarettes. He has just got off the train after school and is still carrying his schoolbag. I lean against one of the columns under the bridge and wait until he has finished. After the long drive into the country, I have only seen him at school. We have barely spoken, which is quite unusual, and he smiles in a shy way as he turns and sees me standing there.
‘Hi,’ he says. ‘You weren’t at school today. Have you stopped coming?’
‘We were at the cemetery.’
He nods, and then I ask:
‘How did it go with the car door?’
‘Dad got all worked up, of course. But now it’s all sprayed and done.’
‘How much was it?’
‘A hundred kroner. But don’t worry. I said it was my fault, so Dad paid.’
‘No way. It was my fault.’ I pull my wallet out and take a hundred-kroner note. I’ve just been paid for the paper round. My mother will have to wait for her share. ‘Here,’ I say.
‘Bloody hell, Audun, you know you don’t have to pay.’
‘What’s right is right, or else everything would just be crap. Take the money, I’ll be all right, no problem.’ He takes the note folds it and puts it in his pocket.
‘So, you’re not quitting school then?’
‘That’s a whole other thing. Coming?’
‘Where to?’
‘Well, not the woods, that’s for sure. To town maybe, or Geir’s?’
‘Geir’s? I thought you hated the place.’
‘It’s early. None of the jokers are there yet. I feel like a beer. It has been one shitty day.’
Arvid giggles. ‘Why not?’ he says. ‘It is Friday and all.’
We walk into the shopping centre from the top level along the square towards the door to Geir’s. Arvid carries his rucksack in his hand. On his back, it would make him look like a schoolboy, and we open the door, walk in and sit down at a table right at the back.
‘I hate to tell you, I’m skint,’ he says, ‘but if I dig around I may have enough for one.’
‘Hell, it’s on me.’ I order two beers. There are some things with alcohol you must never do. You must never drink alone, never drink on Sundays, never drink before seven o’clock and if you do, it has to be on a Saturday. If you’re hung-over, you go for a walk in the forest, and you must never drink the hair of the dog. Do that, and you are an alcoholic, it’s common knowledge. If you are an alcoholic you’re out of control. If you have no control, you are finished. Then you spend the rest of your days walking through the valley of the shadow of death. You are the problem no one wants to solve. They give you a wide berth in the street, scurry behind the canned food when you’re in the shop to buy beer. The woman at the cash desk is in a hurry. And then you die and no one gives a shit.
It’s not Saturday, and it’s well before seven o’clock, but apart from that, we’re in the clear, and after the first sip I feel good. Arvid smiles and wipes the froth off his top lip.
‘That was good,’ he says. ‘We ought to do this more often. It’s a shame we don’t have money, then we could have a few more.’
‘You’ve got the hundred kroner,’ I say.
‘But of course I do,’ he says and grins.
7
I WAKE UP. I have been dreaming about Egil for the first time since the accident. In the dream we are standing on a log by the bank of the river Glomma, fishing with our new spinning rods. We got them for Christmas and haven’t tried them out yet. It’s Easter, perhaps. The silver reels glisten in the sun, and Egil looks the way he did last year. I know he is dead, but it doesn’t matter. It is absolutely still by the river. Straight ahead the water’s swirling and further up are the rapids, and yet we do not hear a sound. It is wonderful. Egil smiles and casts a long line, he is happy, and I smile back at him. I can’t remember ever seeing him so calm, his face so soft and smooth. He’s relaxed because he knows he is no longer alive, and there will be no more trouble. That calms me, too.
The rods are a joy to cast. The spinner flies out towards the middle of the river. I have never cast so far, it just glides of its own accord. I close my eyes and let the sun warm my skin. Suddenly Egil is shouting, his voice is thin. There is something on his hook, and there is fear in his eyes. The old scowl is back. I run over to help him: his rod is bent to breaking point, and I hold him from behind. But when I touch him his body is not the body of a fifteen-year-old boy. He is plump and warm: how strange, I think, and he is winding the reel
like a madman. I grab the rod and wind with him. Then he shrivels and fades away, and winding alone is hard work. Suddenly it’s as if the river is boiling, and I see the bumper of the Volvo Amazon break the surface, and then the bonnet, and the car pitches like a huge fish with its belly in the air and then I see the windscreen and start to cry.
When I wake up it’s dark, and I am still crying. I feel a little sick, and heavy as I roll over and have look at the alarm clock. In half an hour I have to be up and on my newspaper round. I roll back, I want to sleep longer, but when I close my eyes, the car is back, it’s in my pillow, it’s on the wall, and I can’t escape it.
I get out of bed and dress and go down to the kitchen. It’s dark down the stairs, and the kitchen is dark and cold, and my body too is cold. My mother is asleep. I leave the light off and go to the stove and lift the lid of the hotplate. We still have it. The plate is set to three, and in the dark the element has a faint glow, you can light your cigarette on it. I turn and lean against the edge and let the heat drift all the way up to my neck. I turn back and give my stomach the same treatment. When we were just kids in the country, Egil always raced to be first down the stairs to the kitchen in the morning. He would pull over a stool and get up on it with his back to the stove and his bum out, and he had such a greedy look on his face. I remember how I didn’t like that face, it made me feel embarrassed, and I never tried to fight him for the stool, even though I too was cold in the morning. Now it’s only me, and I can stand here for as long as I like.
I fill the kettle and put it on and stand waiting. Outside it’s dark, but I can just make out the low-rises in Linderud. Some windows are lit. It used to be just fields out that way. Arvid flew kites there in the autumn, and horses from the Linderud estate were grazing as far down as Østre Aker vei. Now the Siemens building towers above the road. At the top, close by the large white manor house, is the EPA shopping centre. It looks like shit. There is not a farm worth the name in the valley now. I can’t see the forest from the window, our house is too far down in the dip, but I can sense that it’s there.
The water is boiling. I take a handful of coffee from the brown tin and drop it in, wait for it to sink, cut two slices of bread and see from the clock above the stove that I have plenty of time. I grab the handle of the kettle and lift it and let the kettle fall a few times to get it going. I try a cup, but it’s not there yet. I fetch milk from the fridge, pour a glass and sit down and eat, and by the time I have finished, the coffee is ready. It flows nice and thick from the spout. I hear sounds from my mother’s room, she goes to the toilet, and I stand in the dark not moving, afraid she will get dressed and come out. But it goes quiet again. I stay in the dark, roll a cigarette and sit at the table and smoke and drink coffee and look out of the window.
I keep my barrow just behind the stairs at the bottom of the tower. Everybody knows it’s mine, I have put my foot down, so the kids don’t fool around with it. I pull it out on to the footpath and walk up Beverveien towards the shopping centre. This morning I am the first one there. The newspapers are piled outside the depot, and I load the two packages on to the barrow and cut the strings. I see Fru Johansen coming down the road, but I don’t hang around for a chat. I set off along Grevlingveien and at the same time keep an eye peeled for the Vilden family, who are usually the first to arrive, sleepy and dutiful, but today I cannot see them. That makes me feel uneasy, and I know why. It is stupid, but all the same I look back over my shoulder towards the shopping centre as I move down Veitvetsvingen. After the first house where Pål, who used to be in my class, lives I walk on down the hill, and at the end of the road she is standing by the garage, as if she has been waiting for me. Her hair is untidy, she has been crying, and her face is wet and strained.
‘It’s Tommy,’ she says, ‘he didn’t come home last night. We’ve been looking for him everywhere.’
I can hear her words, but I am so captivated by her voice, that at first I don’t get what she is really saying. She suddenly looks completely resigned, her shoulders sinking, and she wipes her nose with the back of her hand.
‘It’s Tommy. We can’t find him. He’s been gone since yesterday.’ She’s in despair and bursts into tears, and I just look at her. Her hair is dark and curly, flowing everywhere, I want to run my fingers through it, and I raise my hand and stop by the sleeve of her grey duffle coat, and then I suddenly remember that red spot under Tommy’s nose. How come I never thought about that before.
‘Perhaps he hasn’t got such a bad cold after all,’ I mumble.
‘What did you say?’ Her words come out too loud. She senses it herself and scans the deserted street.
‘Come on,’ I say, ‘I don’t think you know where to look.’
I leave the barrow and take her with me up the hill I just came down. Halfway up, I look back down the road to the house where Arvid lives. He is leaning out of the window; it gives me a start, but I keep on going and do not call to him. It’s as if everyone is waiting for me. I hurry up the hill with the girl in tow, and I still don’t know her name.
We walk past the shopping centre. Konrad comes chugging by with his cap pulled down on his ears, and he waves, and I don’t wave back, just march towards the Metro station and round it and into Hubroveien and along the wire fence by the rails towards the next station at Rødtvet.
‘Hey, not so fast,’ she says behind me, ‘where are we going?’ But I do not answer, just keep up the same speed along the fence until the path narrows where the slope comes down from Trondhjemsveien towards the Metro line. There is a little dip at the path’s end. On the other side of the rails is Fru Karlsen’s house. There is no one standing on the step waiting, but I know she is there behind the curtains, and right in front of me in the grassy dip is Tommy, his head resting against the fence. This is where they hang out. I used to look here for Egil. I stop short, and the girl bumps into me from behind, I can feel her against my back.
‘Tommy!’ she shouts. I bend down and smell the fumes of Lynol: sweet and strong and nauseous, and I almost throw up the way I always did when we had woodwork at Veitvet School and I had to go into the paint room.
‘You little shit,’ I say. ‘You little swine, what the hell are you doing?’ I feel the anger inside me, but when she thumps me in the back with her fists, I stop. I grab him under his arms and legs, the yellow-striped jacket is covered in muck. I hold him tight and walk as fast as I can on the path alongside the rails. He is so small, he is as light as anything and thin and cold as ice, and I start to worry and put my ear to his face to listen for his breathing and then he turns his head with eyes closed and rests his cheek against my chest.
‘Papa,’ he whispers.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ I say, and she hits me again.
They live in Rådyrveien at the lower part of Veitvet. The long apartment block is identical to the one that I live in, and it stands at an angle to the road below where Låke used to have his grocery store. It’s closed now, the windows are lined with cardboard and you can see your reflection as you pass. The fields rise up to the left, towards Bredtvet farm and the prison, where the rebel Hans Nielsen Hauge’s statue is standing. The Sunday school is there in the hollow by Condom Creek, and a few years ago there was a ski jump behind a hill near Østre Aker vei. I jumped eighteen metres there once and landed face first. Five stitches.
The father stands waiting by the door to the tower, tall and thin, searching the street, and when he sees us coming, he breaks into a run. His eyes are red from lack of sleep, and I pass Tommy to him, and he lifts the boy and holds him in his arms, and says, ‘Oh, Jesus.’ And he doesn’t even look at me, just hurries back down. He staggers on, his long legs teeter, he looks like a stork with a giant baby in his beak and Tommy’s feet are dangling down by his hips.
‘Maybe you should call an ambulance,’ I say to his sister, ‘he’s not in great shape.’ She nods, and suddenly I feel naked without Tommy in my arms. I turn and look up the street.
‘I guess I ha
ve to be off. The people waiting for their papers will be pissed off.’
‘I know,’ she says with a little smile and puts her arms around me and gives me a kiss on the cheek. ‘Thank you,’ she says. My hands hang down by my side, there is no room for them anywhere, and then she lets go and runs down the road after her father.
When I am almost up to my barrow, old Abrahamsen is standing there, shifting his weight from foot to foot, peering left to right, and then he spots me hurrying up the hill by the Veitvet waterfall and calls from a distance:
‘Can I have one?!’
‘Sure!’ I shout back, even though I am quite close now, and there is no other sound.
‘Damn,’ he says, ‘I won’t make it to the bus.’ He is really pissed off, but still he doesn’t move. I don’t know what he wants, and all of a sudden I feel weary.
‘Well, run off then, or read Arbeiderbladet instead, hell, I don’t know, but I just can’t stay here.’ I take the barrow and set off and then, damn me, if he doesn’t go all friendly.
‘Look, Audun,’ he says, and I turn and he says: ‘Well Audun, I’ve watched you walking this round for several years, and I was wondering. How are you really doing?’ He blushes, the old man, and I blush, too, I don’t know how to answer a question like that, so I shrug and wait. He scratches his chin, and there is a rasping sound.
‘Well, if there is ever anything, you know where I live.’ He is relieved; he has said what he wanted to say. He opens the newspaper, and now suddenly he has all the time in the world, and he strolls up the hill past the red telephone booth, and I think to myself, I really don’t get this man. He reads while he is walking, he must have radar or sonar navigation, like a bat at night, because he moves between the posts and the bushes by the kerb without once looking up.