Beatles (16 page)

Nina was due to leave on the second Sunday of November.

But on Saturday there was the premiere of
Help
and I queued for three hours at the Eldorado to get two tickets at the end of row fourteen. And so there we sat, Nina and I, the auditorium was a cauldron of excitement, I was wondering whether Gunnar, Seb and Ola had managed to buy tickets, but I hadn’t seen them in the queue. I was all in, too much was going on at once. I wanted to be with them and I wanted to be with Nina, so there I sat, Nina’s hand in my lap, a sticky bar of chocolate in my pocket and a bewildered brain in my head, amid a bedlam of screaming, arm-waving, perfume and boot stamping, sitting there, not taking in one iota of what was happening on the screen.

And then we were on our way home. We didn’t say much, we didn’t say anything. Last evening. It was freezing, the cold bit into our faces. We approached Tidemandsgate. The house was empty now, the removal men had already taken two big loads. And as we got closer, we squeezed hands harder and harder, until Nina said ‘Ow’ and pulled her arm away.

‘That hurt,’ she said.

‘I didn’t mean it.’

‘I know!’

She poked me in the ribs and produced a big apple from her pocket, it gleamed and shone like a red moon. She sank her teeth in it and the aroma was released into the darkness. Then I took a bite, and we ate the apple, each from our own side, laughing and dribbling, right through to the pips, then we were mouth to mouth, the core fell to the ground, it was beautifully staged, and then we kissed for a long time, an apple kiss, it went on and on, eventually we let go, Nina’s face was very wet, and I didn’t know quite whether it was tears or apple or maybe just me.

‘I’ll write to you,’ she said.

‘Good.’

‘Will you promise to write?’

I nodded, fidgeted and cleared my throat.

‘Do you remember the flower?’ I said.

Nina peered up.

‘You gave it to me that time Holst was almost gobbled up by a snake.’

‘Yes.’

I kicked a stone down the pavement. It hit a hub cap and made a terrible noise.

‘Still got it,’ I said.

We kissed again, then she tore herself away and hurried down the gravel path, and in the large empty house the windows shone like electric voids in the night.

As I ran home it began to snow.

Mum woke me up to tell me the weather forecast. Forty centimetres of fresh snow in Tryvann. The blind went up with a bang and winter streamed in through the window. I lay in bed with my senses alert, sensed and sensed nothing. Then I leapt out of bed to go to the telephone and call Gunnar, but Gunnar was out, skiing with Seb and Ola. His brother answered.

‘I think they were goin’ to Kobberhaugen. The Americans are comin’.’

‘Eh?’

‘The Americans are comin’!’

I understood zilch.

‘Nordmarka is their first stop,’ Stig said.

‘Kobberhaug cabin,’ I said.

‘Exactly.’

I shot down to the cellar and collected my Bonna skis. The poles were a bit on the short side now. Then I went up to Frognerseteren and set off into the forest, stabbed and clambered my way up, steamed downhill without blinking, took Slaktern standing up, Kandahar bindings squeaking, raced across Lake Blankvann without a thought of whether the ice would hold, it creaked and groaned beneath my weight, someone shouted at me from the shore, but it held, of course it held, and now there were just the last steep paths up to the cabin in Kobberhaug and there they were, covered in sweat, by the fire with blackcurrant toddies and cigarettes.

I joined them and they mustered me from top to toe.

‘Who’s this?’ Gunnar asked.

‘Might live here,’ Seb suggested.

‘Think it’s Ole Ellefsæter’s b-b-brother,’ Ola said.

‘Pack it in,’ I said.

‘He speaks Norwegian,’ Gunnar established. ‘Wonder where I’ve seen ’im before.’

And so it went on for ages, but in the end they recognised me and Gunnar asked, ‘Where were you last night? We tried to get tickets for
Help
.’

‘I was at
Help
,’ I said under my breath.

They were on me at once, red-faced, yelling and carrying on. They made a terrible racket.

‘Were you? You’ve already been to see
Help
!’ Gunnar groaned.

‘With Nina,’ I said.

‘Without us! Why the hell didn’t you buy tickets for us, too, eh?’

‘There were only two left,’ I complained.

‘Try that one on those that live in the sticks!’

The table went quiet for a moment. I felt hollow inside. This was on a par with high treason. I would be shot on Appelsinhaug ridgetop, burned on the spot and my ashes would be sprinkled over Lake Bjørnsjøen.

Seb said to the others:

‘Last evening with his girl, so he can do what he likes. Right?’

Gunnar and Ola gave a reluctant nod, it went even quieter.

‘What was it like then?!’ Ola burst out. ‘What w-w-was it like?’

‘Dunno,’ I mumbled.

‘You don’t know!’ Gunnar was all over me. ‘What d’you mean by that?’

‘Don’t remember a thing. Word of honour.’

They exchanged glances, and began to laugh. There were no limits to my humiliation. They fell about and their anoraks shook. I made up my mind to leave, but I was restrained by force.

‘Don’t remember a thing?’ gasped Gunnar.

‘Zero.’

‘But then we’ll bloody well go tonight. All of us!’

Too right! A warm flow of blood coursed through me. We piled our money onto the table, enough for tickets and a packet of twenty, and then we jumped on our skis and set new PBs to Lake Sognsvann even though Ola had to lean on his sticks, but we shoved him up slopes and downhill took care of itself, no problem there.

We got front row tickets at the Eldo, sat in line with our medals
on our chests and full fringes. The screams from behind were like squalls against the back of our necks and there was a hail of sweet papers and pastilles from the gallery. We sat in the front seats and were no further from the screen than it would take to stand up and touch them.

Snow glinted in the streets as we emerged. We stood admiring the photos showing scenes from the film and were drained, tired and happy.

‘One thing is definite,’ Gunnar said. ‘At least we’re better skiers than The Beatles!’

‘We’ll have to get ourselves some of those t-t-trunks for the summer,’ Ola said. ‘With s-s-stripes!’

‘Do you know what we could do in the summer?’ Gunnar suggested. ‘Go on a fishing trip in Nordmarka. With tents and all the gear.’

Then we headed home. Talking about all the things we were going to do. About The Snafus. About how famous we would be. About summer, even though winter had barely begun. About all the summers of our lives. We talked about when we would begin at the
gymnas
and when we would finish school for ever. We became effusive and beautiful birds flew out of our mouths. We had a sneak preview of the future and it looked damn good.

The snow lay for three days, then it melted away and all was bare and mild for a week. Then another batch arrived and the snow stuck. It piled up into banks, you had to walk round the whole block before you could find an opening, the mercury quivered on minus twenty, ice covered the fjord allowing us to skate to Nesodden and to jig cod by Dyna lighthouse. And the snow lay deep in the playground. Ola was sure it would happen now, but nothing happened, the
gymnas
students didn’t stick our heads in the snow, they walked past us, we were air, nothing, nihil, we sighed with relief, our breath froze around our heads like bands of fog, but deep down we felt a bit cheated, just like with the fork jab. The bike had to be stored in the cellar, now I delivered flowers on foot, with an inclement weather supplement of fifty øre per packet, or I caught the tram, but there was always some fool who had parked on the lines, because you
couldn’t see them for all the snow, and there was a lot of bell-ringing and shouting and brouhaha, for those were the days when Oslo had real winters.

On just such a day I had delivered a packet of flowers to the plastic surgery clinic in Wergelandsveien, I left, sweaty and nauseous, couldn’t stand the sight of all the mangled faces there, faces without noses and chins, without mouths and eyes and ears, it was like being in a field hospital in a Vietnamese jungle. I stood swaying in Wergelandsveien and pumping air into my system when I heard someone shout my name. I followed the sound and saw a figure standing outside Kunsternes Hus waving to me, it was Henny, Henny in a big coat with a hat down over her forehead. I trotted over to her. She was on her way to the National Gallery and asked if I fancied joining her, and I did, because there were no more flowers that day anyway. We strolled past Aars og Foss school and Henny chatted about pictures, about Munch, whether I had been to the Munch museum, I hadn’t, I should go, we ought to view the Munch Room at least, now we were there. We wandered up to the first floor, past glistening black bodies, it reminded me of summer, and I dutifully followed her across the creaking floor, feeling weak at the knees. Then we arrived. Horses leapt off the wall. Girls stood on the bridge. Henny pointed:

‘Can you see that green face?’ she said. Now a face isn’t green, is it. Nevertheless it seems to me that exactly that face
has
to be green.

She looked at me. Had I understood?

‘Yes,’ I said, going green in the face.

‘Can you see the
angst
?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, seeing the angst.

Then all of a sudden I
heard
a picture. It is true. I did hear it. I swivelled round and looked straight at an insane figure standing on a bridge holding her ears and screaming with all her might. In the background the countryside was burning and blood coursed across the sky. I heard it. It’s true. I stood rooted to the spot in front of the picture,
Skrik
it said on the frame, my insides froze, the scream grated in my ears and she was not the only one to scream, the mountain ridges behind her did, too, and the sky and the water and the bridge on which she was standing, the whole world was one big scream, it had to be the little Vietnamese girl’s mother. A huge yell was building up
inside me, it rose like a pillar in my throat, I swallowed and restrained myself, I could not scream here, in a museum, that would not do, I turned away and ran over to Henny, chilled to the marrow.

‘I fancy some cocoa,’ she said on a sudden whim. ‘Do you?’

We schlepped out again and found a narrow window table in the Ritz. Henny bought vanilla slices. We ate with small teaspoons and drank from dainty blue cups.

‘Have you seen any paintings like that before?’ she asked.

‘I saw a painting this summer,’ I told her, breathless. ‘In front of Stortinget. About Vietnam.’

‘What did you think of it?’

‘I don’t know. It was… it was ugly. Ugly and beautiful at the same time.’

Henny studied me over her cup, with serious eyes.

‘That’s what I think, too. That’s the point. You can’t paint a nice picture of something so awful, can you.’

‘US bombers drop napalm,’ I said in a low voice.

She nodded slowly.

Staring into the empty cup, I ruminated.

‘There was an old man there who hacked the painting to pieces. Why did he do that?’

‘Because he disagreed with it.’

I didn’t understand.

‘Disagreed with the picture?’

‘Yes, he supported the Americans in Vietnam.’

‘But isn’t the napalm stuff true?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘But how…?’

Henny interrupted me.

‘Because he’s a reactionary, a fascist. He would kill all the communists if he had his way.’

I scraped the plate clean and licked the teaspoon. The clock over the door showed that I was too late for lunch. And we had piles of homework and the deadline was approaching, and this evening there was a meeting at Gunnar’s place where we would discuss the repertoire for The Snafus. But I wouldn’t have gone, even if she had sat there for a week.

‘I’m going to Paris the day after tomorrow,’ she said suddenly. ‘I’m going to an art school there.’

‘For how long?’

‘Two years. But I’ll be back for the summer.’

That was why Hubert was so out of sorts when I took him the apples. And I suddenly felt very flat. I also had a girl abroad, to whom I had promised I would write and whom I would visit in the spring.

‘It’ll be great,’ I murmured. ‘Paris. Long way.’

She caught sight of the clock too and jumped up, almost knocking over the table.

‘I have to be off,’ she laughed. ‘Had to be somewhere half an hour ago.’

I got a big, wet kiss on the cheek and she made for the door in her huge coat. I sat there dazed, heard someone laughing at another table, stared after her, but she was long gone. Only now did I realise that Christmas decorations had been put up in the streets. It was snowing.

Christmas Eve at home, that was how I had always experienced Christmas Eve, there were no other Christmases to my knowledge. It was us three plus Uncle Hubert, and then there was Mum’s mother and Dad’s father, because Mum’s father was dead and so was Dad’s mother, I just remember them hanging over a pram like large trees in which there were lots of birds and sounds, and occasionally a fir-cone fell on top of me. Now they had been dead for a long time, but the others were more than enough. Grandma was a small woman with long, red nails, thin blue hair and a green budgie in a cage. She could breathe with the most tragic sighs I had ever heard and she always held her knife and fork as if they were infected. Granddad was of a rougher hew, Grandma never held his hand after he broke three of her nails on Christmas Eve 1962. He was an old railwayman, laying sleepers at the age of eighteen, a sedentary job in the office when he was fifty, now he sat in the chair by the window in an old folks home in Alexander Kiellands plass flicking through the railway timetable. His ears twitched whenever he heard a train, and he didn’t hear it until long afterwards because he was hard of hearing and a bit senile, but it must have been like a song to him, at
some point, long after the sound and the train had passed, the song of rails, points, rhythm and journeys.

‘That was the express,’ he always said. ‘It won’t be long before they come to fetch me, too.’

It was when we opened the presents that things always went awry for Uncle Hubert. After removing all the paper he would wrap his present again. And he would do that twenty-one times, I counted, unwrapping and wrapping the present. Grandma would have to go into another room and Granddad would slap his thigh, guffaw and say out loud, ‘Well, isn’t that just like Hubert! Now he’s forgotten to wrap the presents again!’

I received mostly soft packages, shirts, sweaters, new hiking trousers. And a couple of hard ones, an old book from Grandma, a Hamsun, a fishing reel from Hubert, an open reel Abu, bullseye. And an ice hockey stick from Dad; as I was opening it my heart was racing, of course I thought it was a microphone stand, because that was at the top of my wish list, but it was an ice hockey stick, and Dad stood there beaming, so I had to swallow hard, shake his hand and look happy, too.

Right at the end it was my turn to tense with excitement. There was nothing left under the tree and Mum gave me the last present, square and flat, there was no mistaking it, an LP. I jumped into the chair and tore off the paper.

‘Read who it’s from,’ said Mum.

I looked at the card and at last Christmas reached my face, too. I couldn’t believe my eyes. From Nina.

‘Who’s it from?’ Hubert shouted.

My voice deserted me.

‘It’s from Kim’s girlfriend,’ my mother kindly explained. ‘She sent it from Copenhagen.’

I was pretty taken aback, but in my confusion there was a solid pillar of pleasure. It was the new Beatles LP.
Rubber Soul
. I held it up in front of me. And then the pillar of pleasure was smashed. The temple it supported was a ruin. I didn’t know the reason, yes, I did know, but I didn’t understand it. I hardly recognised the four faces bent down towards me, yes, they were standing over me and looking down on me, four hostile, alien faces on the record cover.

Later that evening I stood in my room staring blindly at the
record. I didn’t dare play it. I didn’t dare play it without Gunnar, Seb and Ola being there. Then Uncle Hubert came in puffing on a cigarette, he had bags under his eyes, his face was blue and sad.