‘Hi,’ she says without taking her eyes from the TV. ‘You’re home early. I thought you were going to the youth club?’
‘It was boring.’
I’m about to go to my room, but I change my mind and plump down on the sofa. Fred Astaire is sitting in a telephone booth now, talking to Ginger Rogers. He has turned on the French accent, and she doesn’t know it’s him she is talking to. He gives her some good advice with heavy French ‘r’s. He pouts. I don’t see the point. I get up from the sofa and go over to the cabinet beside the TV and fetch a glass. On the wall above the cabinet is the signed photograph of Jussi Björling.
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ I say in a straight voice. Now she looks up.
‘Don’t you think we’ve had enough of that?’
‘You’re drinking.’
‘It’s Friday. I’ve earned it. Well, you’re eighteen. You have to find out things for yourself. But be careful. Have some water in it. Here,’ she says, pushing over a jug of water. I pour myself a fair amount of Upper Ten and add some water.
‘That’s Fred Astaire,’ she says. ‘He could dance with the phone book, and I would watch.’ She smiles. She likes having me there. When I am not out, I usually sit in my room listening to records or reading, and she watches TV or listens to an opera in the living room. If she has her music on loud, I turn up the volume as well. I lean back and take a sip. I have never tried whisky before. It doesn’t taste good, but it does warm you right down to your feet. I shiver a little. I could get used to this, I think, and then I watch the film. It’s completely without meaning, but Ginger Rogers is attractive. She looks intelligent, much more intelligent than the stupid part she is playing. The glass is empty. I am fine now, the shivering has gone. I carefully reach for the bottle and pour myself another one, and she just watches the film. I may as well tell her now.
‘I’m quitting school,’ I say.
‘What?’ She tears her eyes from the screen.
‘I’m stopping school.’
‘Over my dead body.’
‘There’s nothing to discuss. I have made up my mind.’ I take a large swig from the glass, there is not a lot of water in it this time, I swallow and it flows all through my body. I like it, I could sleep now, and Fred Astaire is singing. Ginger Rogers is looking at him, she is smiling, they will find each other in the end. That’s good.
I pull myself together.
‘We don’t have a lot of money, do we,’ I say, ‘but I can’t do both the paper round and school any more. If I start working full time, we’ll be a lot better off.’
‘You don’t understand. I get money so you can go to school.’
‘What sort of money?’
‘It’s a state allowance. It’s for helping bright children from disadvantaged homes. Or something like that. I don’t remember exactly what it’s called.’ She blushes.
‘What! And you’ve never told me! Why didn’t you?’
‘That’s my business,’ she says, glancing at the TV where the credits are rolling. She missed the end of the film.
‘I don’t care what it’s called,’ I say, ‘I’m going to stop anyway. What’s there for me at school? I’m not like the others.’
‘Rubbish! What others? Your best friend, Arvid, he’s in your class, isn’t he? Is he suddenly different from you?’
‘Hell, of course he is. Do you want to know what I’m like? Do you want to know what I’m really like?’ I get up from the sofa, the room is swaying, I hold on to the table and close my eyes.
‘But Audun, are you drunk? How much have you had?’ She takes the bottle and checks the contents. The whiskies I took must have been pretty stiff, because there is not much left.
‘Forget it,’ I say, and let go of the table and head for my room. I trip over the door sill and land on my knees, but that’s fine, I was going down there anyway. I pull the accordion out from under my bed and open the case and there it is: black and white with red stripes on the bellows. A Paolo Soprani. I hold it up, put my arms under the straps, loosen the catches on both sides and go back into the living room.
‘Goddamnit, now you’re going to hear what I’m like,’ I say and pull out the bellows and squeeze the keys and the buttons hard at the same time. The accordion sends out a howl that fills the room. I pull and squeeze again, and my mother covers her ears and shouts:
‘Audun, what is this? Where did you get that? Answer me!’
‘I have thick blood!’ I shout and laugh. ‘Do you want to hear a tango? Ho, ho! Here’s a tango!’ I pull and squeeze and stamp my foot, making the whole room shake, the glasses on the table and the glasses in the cupboard clink, and suddenly the picture of Jussi Björling falls off the wall and crashes to the floor. I stop playing and my mother hurries over to pick it up, and then I can see there is a baking recipe on the back and a photo of a loaf. The picture’s from a magazine, and the signature is printed on it. I laugh so much I can hardly stand.
III
11
THE SPRING AND the summer of the year I was thirteen were sunk in yellow haze. I was sweating all over my body for weeks and weeks and it was hard for me to see clearly. I walked up the gravel path to the house like a drunk, the air about me thick and quivering with a light that could explode at any moment it seemed, and sometimes I would aim for the door and miss. I sat hunched over my school books rubbing my eyes, but the yellow haze would not go away, and I kept going to the kitchen for something to drink. My throat felt so dry, I was constantly thirsty, and in the end I turned away from the school books. When I came home, I took them out of my satchel and the next morning I put them back, but I didn’t open them. And I didn’t read anything else. The Davy Crockett books were on the shelves, but there was an emptiness surrounding them that made me restless, an emptiness everywhere that made me gasp for air, and I felt sick. I lay in bed for a week gazing at the curtains. They were as sun-yellow as everything else that was on my mind, and outside my head the sticky silence hung thick and hot, and my temperature rose to thirty-nine degrees.
‘I have yellow fever,’ I said.
‘Yellow fever makes your skin go yellow,’ my mother said. ‘You’re poorly, no doubt about it, but if you ask me you look pretty pale.’
‘I’ve definitely got yellow fever,’ I said.
‘You may have, of course,’ she said and went to look it up in the family encyclopaedia, and the symptoms listed there were quite different, but if ever there was something called yellow fever, that’s what I had, and no one could tell me different.
After a week I was fed up lying in bed. I got up and put on a baseball cap and sunglasses.
The morning before the last day of school, I woke early, but stayed in bed, gazing at the ceiling, thinking about things. And when my thinking was done, I jumped out of bed and went down to the kitchen where my mother was standing with her forehead against the window looking out at the road.
‘Tomorrow I’m going off for a while,’ I said.
‘Fine,’ she said, and was relieved, for she didn’t really know what to do with me in the two months that lay ahead of us. She had to work all summer in the cafeteria at Gardermoen airport, and no one had seen my father for months. Kari would work at the newspaper kiosk, and my mother had enough on her plate looking after Egil.
‘Where are you going, then?’
‘Frank and I are going to the woods, we’ll set up camp by Lake Aurtjern. I’ll be away for about two weeks.’
‘You’ll need quite a bit of food then.’
‘Not that much. We’ll do some fishing. Have you got any money?’
‘You can have some. I haven’t got a lot,’ she said, turning her apron pockets inside out, so I could see for myself.
‘I’ll take whatever you can spare,’ I said and tossed the schoolbag over my shoulder, put my sunglasses on and set off for school. She didn’t ask which tent we were going to use. We had never owned one; neither had Frank. Besides, I hadn’t even spoken to him. We hadn’t been friends for a year.
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It was quite a trek to school. But that was not where I went. By the chapel, where the roads meet, I turned right towards the railway station. Even that was not a short walk. We lived on the outskirts of the village, and the school and the railway station were at opposite ends.
It was so hot. Not a single leaf stirred on the trees, and sweat ran from my eyebrows over my face, and whenever I moved my arms, my armpits felt raw. Although my schoolbag was half empty, it was painful to carry, so I jumped into a ditch and hid it under a bush. I could pick it up on my way home, or it could just stay there. I really didn’t care.
As I walked, my body eased up and gradually the stiffness disappeared, and by the time I reached the station building, I could have run the sixty metres in under nine dead. Perhaps there was something in the air that had changed, I don’t know, but still I kept my sunglasses on. I decided to wear them at all times, at least during the day. I liked the distance they created.
For a couple of weeks I had been pestering the manager of the Co-op for his biggest cardboard boxes. Now I had three, and they were really big, I could almost stand upright inside one of them. I had kept them hidden behind a shed, and now I pulled them out and along the railway lines up to some big bushes. There I placed them one against the other, the largest in the middle and cut openings so I could move between all three. I had a hall, a lounge and a bedroom. There was not much space, but it felt right. Then I cut down some twigs from a nearby tree and laid them over the roof as camouflage. On this side of the railway lines there were just fields, so the chances of anyone stumbling upon me were small, and when I crossed the line to the road on the other side, my shack looked just like part of the scrub. I changed a few details and was home at the usual time. There was a large clock on the station building I could see from where I was camping.
I went home empty-handed; my bag was still where I left it, but my mother didn’t notice, or if she did, she didn’t mention it.
The next day, I packed my rucksack, sleeping bag, blanket for a groundsheet, torch, some extra clothes, fishing rod and the money my mother had given me. Egil stood in the doorway: he wanted to go with me, but she held him by the shoulders so he wouldn’t run off, and when I reached the gate I turned, and she looked so small and worn out, and I guessed it wasn’t such a bad idea to stay away for a while.
Everything went fine for a few days. The weather held, and that was a good thing, as I wasn’t sure at all how the house would cope with the rain. I slept and woke and felt the walls all around me. I could stretch my arms out and touch both ends of the box with my fingers and feel the smooth inside of the cardboard. The sleeping bag was snug and dry, and at night I heard noises that were new to me. There were cars coming and going on the road and the clunk of wheels from passing trains and the screech when a train braked and stopped at the station. I could hear voices, but I was never afraid; all these sounds belonged there, and I could go on sleeping, knowing that this was something I had chosen myself.
I had plenty to read. All newspapers and magazines for the kiosks and the shops were dropped off at the news-stand beside the station, and at the crack of dawn I sneaked over and took the top copies out from under the string of the bound packs, and hoped that the number of copies was on the safe side. I read the left-wing Arbeiderbladet, the farmers’ Nationen, and Texas and Cowboy, and Travnytt, for trotting news. I kept well away from Romantikk. When Kari read that magazine, she had a look on her face that made my toes curl.
But mostly I slept. My grandfather used to say you could sleep in your grave. It was something you had to earn, like a legacy, when it was all over. In that case I was taking out an advance on this legacy and withdrew as much as I could, but on the fifth day I woke up and felt good, on top form and all of a sudden very restless. I rolled up the sleeping bag and sneaked over to the tap behind the station, cleaned my teeth and washed my face. The air was chill, the sky overcast and breathing was easy. And yet, in my stomach there was a void that would not go away even after two slices of bread with peanut butter. I took a sweater from my rucksack, put on my sunglasses and started to walk along the silent road by the shops and the railway line, round the long bend and up between the fields by the chapel to the place where our house was. The dew lay shining on everything in sight and made the landscape look moist and grey, and for the first time in a long while, the yellow burning feeling was gone. There was a new shade of green, but my sunglasses made that, and I was used to it.
Not far from home, I rounded a meadow, walked along a rusty barbed wire fence and approached the house from the back. You could take the usual path, but then they could see you from the kitchen window a hundred metres away. I took cover behind a birch tree on the opposite side of the road from our house and stood watching. It couldn’t have been later than six. My mother came out of the door with Egil in tow. He was tired and heavy and listless, but she gave him a firm push and closed the door. She didn’t lock it, though, so Kari must still have been at home. If I hadn’t been standing behind the tree, they would have spotted me; they might have done that anyway, because the birch was not a big birch, but they were in a hurry and just looked straight ahead and rushed down to the main road to catch the Gardermoen bus.
I didn’t move. The house looked different. It was still the same, but it was no longer my house, it seemed more distant, as if behind a wall of coloured glass, and I could not go there, because I was on a fishing holiday with Frank by Lake Aurtjern. If Kari hadn’t been at home, I could have walked over to the window and looked inside, and there was a good chance that what I saw inside would have been something very different from what I remembered was there just a week ago. But really, it wasn’t easy to remember anything, my mind went blank at once, and suddenly my legs began to tremble. It felt as if they could not carry me any longer, so I put my arms around the tree. There was not a breath of wind, but the thin birch was shaking so much, the leaves above me were clattering, and I made up my mind, took a deep breath and set off towards the house on my trembling legs. Then there was the roar of an engine. I turned and looked towards the bus stop. A tractor turned off the main road. It swayed from side to side and slowly came towards me, and then I ran back and hid behind the tree. We were old friends, the tree and I, we were a team. I patted its trunk and stared at the tractor. There was something familiar about the man in the cabin. The left-hand door was missing, and when the tractor came close enough, I could see in, and there sat Kjell from Kløfta. He was one of my father’s drinking pals. He was steering with his left hand, in his right he held a green bottle, and after every mouthful he grinned and toasted the shovel that was as high up as it could go and was dangling there, bulky and mud-streaked. A hand stuck out from one side and a black-trousered leg from the other. The foot had no shoe, only the sock emerged, and from where I was standing, it was easy to see that it was not a clean sock. Besides, I had seen it before.
Kjell was almost level with the birch now, above the roar of the engine I could hear him singing Alf Prøysen’s Tango for Two, and then he turned in to the gate. It was closed, but either he didn’t see it, or he couldn’t care less, and I heard how the thin, white boards were crushed under the wheels before he took another turn up to the house, lowered the shovel and emptied my father on to the flagstones by the steps.
Kjell put the tractor into neutral, the roar of the engine fell an octave, but it was still as fierce, and with the bottle in his hand he clambered down and went over to the black-clad bundle on the flagstones. He poked my father with his foot, but my father did not stir. Kjell grinned, shrugged, and then he stooped and lifted my father’s arm and wrapped it round the bottle so that the green neck stuck up by his cheek, like a baby’s feeding bottle. Then he climbed back in, reversed and missed the opening he had already made in the fence and took another chunk of it with him. I stayed where I was until I saw him enter the main road, then warily I set off towards the house.
I didn’t go straight there, but stopped by the fence first and lo
oked up at the first floor window. Maybe the tractor had woken Kari. There was no one there, and no one came to open the door. I let go of the fence and circled the house, got closer and he was lying there quite still, no arm, no leg moving, not one black hair ruffled by the wind, and it was not possible to see if he was breathing or not. I was almost certain he was dead. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t knock on the door, couldn’t go to Gardermoen to tell my mother, because I wasn’t there. For a few moments I didn’t move, and I don’t think there was a thought in my head. Then I crouched down. His face was brown and thin, and there were furrows down his cheeks and the black fringe hanging over his forehead, the way I had always seen him. Many said my father had style, but to me he looked mean, though not right now, because his fierce blue eyes were closed, and his brow was smooth. I stretched out and touched the lapels of his jacket, felt the rough cloth on my fingertips, and then it happened. He flung himself round and grabbed my wrist and yelled a word I did not understand, he yelled ‘MARANA!’ and I jerked back and pulled at my hand, but it was too late. He was holding it so hard his knuckles turned white and the skin turned white on his fingers. The bottle fell over, I heard the liquid gurgle and run out on the flagstones as I wrestled and tugged. Whatever it was that had spilled out, it smelt strong and evil, and then I tumbled backwards right into it. I felt sticky and scared, my stomach churned, I was a turtle on its back, and I shouted:
‘Let me go, let me go!’ I slung my legs in the air, took aim and kicked my heels against his arm with all my force. He groaned and had to let go, and I got to my feet and half stumbled, half ran towards the smashed gate, jumped over the debris. and when I looked back at the house, I saw Kari up in the window. She was still in her dressing gown, she raised her arm and her eyes met mine behind my sunglasses. I stopped. I was about to point and say something, but then instead I shouted: