Beatles (22 page)

‘You silly bastard!’ he shouted.

Seb and Ola stared at us, unable to believe what they were seeing.

‘Sorry,’ Gunnar whispered all of a sudden.

I hugged him. His face was wet.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said, feeling the blood flow into my mouth.

I sat in my room swotting. Outside my window, evenings rolled past. I wanted to throw away the dry flower I had kept in the drawer. Poisonous. In the drawer there were a dozen Rubin Extra. Jensenius was singing above me, not so loud now for the spring had been a false alarm. It hailed on May 17. But we saw Wenche Myhre in a prommers’ truck roaring up Gyldenløvesgate. My temperature had
gone. Spring didn’t truly arrive until June. The trees became green machine guns. One such evening Gunnar dropped round. He had a long face. Slumped down on the sofabed.

‘It’s the end,’ he said.

‘What of?’ I asked.

He produced a letter from his pocket. Not perfumed this time, just a standard sheet of paper ripped out of an exercise book.

‘She’s found a Young Farmer from Vågå,’ Gunnar said, crumpling the letter into a tight ball and throwing it out of the window.

I closed my maths book and sat next to him.

‘You can’t trust girls,’ I said.

Gunnar folded his hands and wrapped them round his knee.

‘Best it finished as it did,’ he said. ‘Can’t trust a turnip like that.’

I rested my arm on his shoulder. Bitterness coursed through us.

‘They’re not worth the shoes they walk in,’ I said.

‘Wouldn’t touch her with a hayfork,’ Gunnar said.

‘Those Young Farmers probably stink of shit,’ I said.

‘You can’t trust girls,’ Gunnar said.

We sat in silence for a while. The street noise tormented us. I closed the window.

‘I’ll never go to Heidalen again,’ Gunnar said. ‘Never.’

‘Let’s nip over to Seb’s,’ I suggested.

Ola was sitting there with his head between his knees.

‘We were just on our way to see you,’ Seb said.

We sat down. Ola ratcheted himself up and stared vacantly into the universe.

‘Finished with Klara,’ he said. ‘She’s g-g-goin’ with Njård’s top scorer.’

What a day. What a spring.

‘Shit,’ Gunnar said and told the others about Unni and the Young Farmer.

‘Girls are a bunch of p-p-pricks,’ Ola said, punching his fist in the air.

‘Not worth the stockin’s they walk in,’ I said.

‘First you and Nina,’ Gunnar started counting. ‘And then Unni. And then Klara.’

‘And Guri,’ I added.

Seb averted his eyes.

‘And Guri,’ he whispered.

We sat without speaking for what must have been over an hour. Outside, the grey gloom settled between the houses and enshrouded the streets. Seb suddenly perked up and rummaged through his pile of records.

‘Got this from Dad today,’ he gasped.

‘Got what?’ we asked of one voice.

‘The latest Beatles record!’

We threw ourselves at him and put the record on the turntable. ‘Paperback Writer’. We played it ten times in a row. It had beat. The B-side was ‘Rain’. That was very appropriate.

‘What does “Paperback Writer” mean?’ Ola asked.

I explained to Ola.

Ola thought this over.

‘Could definitely have written a book about us, couldn’t they,’ he said. ‘A b-b-big book!’

One day at the end of June we finally had a book in our hands, green and published by Cappelen, written by Kerr’s Pink. But it was not really about us. I was given a C for behaviour and a D for woodwork. Seb got an A for singing and music. Gunnar had a B for behaviour while Ola had an E in German and maths. We couldn’t care less now, all we were thinking about was bait. We had to find some
earthworms
for the big fishing trip in Nordmarka.

We rushed out of the playground but were hooked by Goose standing in the middle of the road, obviously with something on his mind.

‘Hello,’ he muttered.

‘How many As did you get, Goose?’ Seb asked.

‘Why do you call me Goose?’

‘Eh?’

‘Why do you call me Goose?’ he repeated.

Tricky question to answer that was. Goose had been called Goose all the years I had known him.

‘That’s the way it is. Like Dragon’s called Dragon.’

‘The girls tease me,’ Goose said.

‘Stuff the g-g-girls,’ Ola said.

‘Couldn’t you call me Christian?’ he mumbled.

‘Sure, yes, of course we can,’ Gunnar said. ‘But we’ve got to run. Goin’ to dig up worms in Nesodden.’

We charged past him.

‘Have a nice summer, Christian!’ we yelled down the street.

He beamed all over his face and yelled back, ‘You have a nice summer!’

‘Funny,’ said Ola. ‘F-funny.’

‘You sure we’ll find earthworms here?’ Gunnar asked as we plodded up to the House.

‘You bet. Behind the outside loo.’

Gunnar stopped.

‘Outside loo, did you say?’

‘Correct.’

I fetched the spade from the shed and we walked over to the wonky loo with a heart on the door. A strong smell came from the fertile earth. At the top it was quite dry, but a spade’s depth down it was soft and moist. I turned a spit over and a worm poked its head out, wriggling and squirming.

‘What’s that?’ Gunnar asked, pointing.

‘A worm, you clod.’

‘Not that but
that
,’ Gunnar said.

I looked where he was pointing.

‘That. That’s just a bit of toilet paper.’

Gunnar went and sat down on a rock by the apple trees. Ola wasn’t exactly ecstatic, either.

‘So the fish is s’posed to eat the w-w-worm, is it, and then we eat the fish. Not b-b-bloody likely!’

‘You’ll have to use a net then, you wimp,’ Seb snorted and we were left to dig up the bait. We scooped some soil into the coffee tins and between us we found about a thousand worms. Then we made holes in the lids so that they wouldn’t die from suffocation. It was a pretty tight squeeze already.

‘Let’s go for a swim before goin’ home!’ I shouted.

I walked round the House to make sure everything was okay. There was a line of ants crossing the kitchen steps. I found an arrow I had lost last year. Then I looked in one of the windows and saw myself sitting inside, I recoiled, frightened by the distorted image in the pane, and ran after the others.

The beach was deserted. We undressed and the sun burned our pale grey bodies. Embarrassed, we scrutinised one other, threw ourselves off the springboard, dived in and emerged with a rock each. Afterwards we lay on the bare boulders and our stomachs went red, and as we walked past the old shed with its protruding boards, peeling white paint and smell of rotting seaweed, I was reminded
of Henny in Paris and I knew that what happened last year, last summer, would never happen again, would never happen again.

‘What’s the tent like?’ Seb asked on the ferry going back.

‘Stig says it’s great,’ Gunnar said.

‘Don’t need a tent if it’s good weather,’ I said. ‘We can lie outside in sleepin’ bags.’

Then we traipsed through the town each with a tin containing at least three hundred worms. Reaching the American embassy, we stopped and looked at the flag hanging from the pole.

‘My brother says there’s a huge trout inside,’ Gunnar said.

‘Trout? No kiddin’!’

‘It’s true. In the pool.’

We walked past the guard. He couldn’t be bothered to stop us, but then he didn’t know what we had in our tins. We entered a large hallway and in the middle of the floor there was a pool with a fountain and lights and so on. We peered down and could only see round pebbles on the bottom. The water was no more than twenty centimetres deep.

‘Ain’t no trout here,’ said Seb. ‘There might be an anchovy.’

We strolled round the edge. Then Ola shouted and almost dropped his tin.

‘L-l-look there, boys!’

A huge trout was swimming only a metre away from us. It was so big that its back was sticking out of the water. It swam slowly as if it was very old or bored. We followed it, crept after it as quietly as we could, but it was impossible not to make a noise in this tiled hall. The trout approached the edge and lay against it as if its shoulder itched. I bent down and touched it. It let me do that. It was cold and tough, motionless. Then it glided away beneath my fingers, to the slender fountain that perhaps reminded it of some waterfall or other, if it had ever swum towards a waterfall.

‘I feel sorry for it,’ Seb said.

‘Terrible to keep a big fish in such a crappy pool,’ Gunnar said.

I flipped off the tin lid and pulled out a nice fat earthworm and threw it to the trout. It couldn’t even be bothered to turn, it just swam in the opposite direction. But the guard woke up. He walked over with a gun in his belt and ejected us into Drammensveien.

‘Cruelty to animals,’ Ola said.

‘We should’ve taken it with us to Skillingen and let it out there,’ Gunnar said.

‘And c-c-caught it afterwards,’ Ola laughed.

In the evening we gathered at Seb’s and went through our equipment. Gunnar’s father saw to provisions: a whole cardboard box full of wholegrain bread, biscuits, caviar, dried milk, tea, coffee, fruit, cans and ‘Dead Man in a Tin’ that he had left over from an army exercise in 1956. Ola had a gas stove and a frying pan. We borrowed a tent and compass from Stig. Then we made the final adjustments to the fishing reels. I had been given a rod by Mum and Dad for passing my exams. Gunnar had bought 400 metres of 0.30mm fishing line. Seb had three spinners, two floats and six corks. My mother had got hold of four fine-mesh bags we could put over our heads and use as mosquito nets.

But Seb had something better. He produced a pipe. A corn cob pipe.

‘Midges and mosquitoes can’t stand tobacco,’ he explained. ‘Just puff away and they’ll be off.’

We laughed at that for a bit, then we unfolded the map and traced the route with a finger and submerged ourselves into the countryside, lost ourselves in dreams.

‘We’re not takin’ watches,’ Seb exclaimed.

‘Eh?’

‘We’re not takin’ watches. Like Indians.’

We deliberated. We knew the sun rose in the east and set in the west.

‘W-w-what about if it’s cloudy?’ Ola said.

‘We’ll know when it’s dark,’ Seb said. ‘Stuff watches.’

‘Moss grows towards the west,’ Gunnar said.

‘And anthills to the east,’ I added.

‘What about an alarm c-c-clock?’ Ola ventured.

The doorbell rang. Seb went to answer the door and returned with Fred. He had cut his fringe and sandpapered his ears. And he was wearing new trousers, no doubt about it, new jeans, with turnups reaching his knees and a large belt with a luminous buckle. Zorro.

‘Take a pew!’ we shouted.

He sat down and looked around. Seb fetched a Coke and cigarettes.

‘Are you goin’ fishin’?’ Fred asked.

We showed him our route on the map. He studied our gear, tried the reels and weighed the spinners in his hand.

‘They’re light,’ he said.

‘Eight grams,’ Gunnar elaborated. ‘Almost a fly.’

Seb opened the window and the summer evening flooded into the room. Some girls were laughing up the street, we stuck our heads out but said nothing.

‘What are you doin’ this summer?’ I asked.

Fred’s eyes went vacant.

‘Holiday camp,’ he said. ‘Hudøy.’

‘Want to listen to some records?’ Seb asked quickly.

And so we played Beatles music for the rest of the evening, right up to ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Rain’. Fred didn’t utter a word, just sat listening with his ears on stalks, his ears were large red flowers and from time to time he looked at us, smiled, almost laughed.

Outside, the sky was drinking blood, the girls had gone home and dogs were barking.

Fred checked his watch.

‘Gotta go,’ he said.

All of us accompanied him to Solli.

‘Have a good summer,’ Fred said with a slight blush.

‘See you in the autumn,’ we said, nudging each other and laughing.

Fred wished us well,
Tvi tvi
, he said, as we Norwegians do, and we all spat on the pavement.

He set off down Drammensveien, Fred Hansen, turned, fell on his face, got to his feet, continued at full speed, and we stood watching him long after he was gone.

There was quite a lot of disagreement about how late it was when we arrived in Skillingen. Gunnar thought it was getting on for six while Seb and I were sure it was only five because the train had definitely been in Stryken at three.

‘But the train was late, wasn’t it!’ Gunnar shouted.

We peered up at the sun. It wasn’t there. There were just clouds.
The water lay before us, shiny and still, and warm air caressed our bodies. We could hear a cuckoo in the forest and a river was cascading somewhere we couldn’t see.

‘It’s half past f-f-five,’ Ola determined.

‘How d’you know?’

‘L-l-look at the moss.’

To the south we found a good place to set up camp, there were the remains of a previous fire. The tent had seen better days, but after a couple of hours’ hard graft it stood upright. Then we grabbed our fishing tackle, screwed together the rods, took a big handful of worms and headed off. We sat by the water’s edge watching the floats. They stayed upright, like eggs, without moving.

‘S’posed to be fish here,’ Seb said after a while.

‘Be better in the evenin’,’ Gunnar said.

‘Must be eight by now,’ Seb said, looking around.

The forest on the other side grew murky. The darkness emerged from between the trees behind us.

‘H-h-half past eight,’ Ola said. ‘Can feel it in the air.’

We reeled in and changed bait.

‘Beginnin’ to feel peckish,’ I said.

‘If we haven’t caught anythin’ by nine, let’s open a can,’ Gunnar said.

All at once it became lighter as though a big lamp had been switched on above us. We looked up. The clouds drifted away even though there was no wind at all. The sky turned deep blue. And right above the trees, at the back of the bay facing west, the sun hung like a bloodstained plum, tinting the water red and yellow. We stared ourselves blind and moaned with pleasure. Gunnar fetched his camera and clicked away.

Then we caught sight of a duck in the middle of the water. It was gliding leisurely along in a strip of sunshine, as if bewitched by the light.

‘I’ll snap it!’ Gunnar shouted, moving the viewfinder.

Then something happened. The duck became restless. It flapped its wings but couldn’t get into the air. It screamed wildly and began to sink.

‘Jeez,’ Seb said. ‘It’s sprung a leak.’

The duck flapped and flapped, beating the water into froth, but nothing helped. It was caught. Then a huge mouth appeared, straight out of the water, closed over the duck and dragged it down.

A few feathers swirled in the air.

That was the last we saw of the bird.

‘I’ve got it!’ Gunnar shrieked. ‘Oh, shit.’

Ola was ashen. He started to reel in.

‘Are there sh-sh-sharks here, too?’ he mumbled.

‘Pike!’ Seb yelled. ‘Biggest pike I’ve ever seen. Wild!’

‘That’s why we’re not catchin’ anythin’,’ Gunnar said. ‘Pikes eat perch and trout.’

We all reeled in. Seb started jumping. He had caught something. The line was zigzagging through the water.

‘It’s big!’ he panted. ‘Pulls like a locomotive!’

We stood ready to bring it in. Seb coaxed and pulled. There wasn’t much bend in the rod, but it must have been a crafty fish. Sweat was pouring down Seb’s nose and he applied the brake harder so that the spool would not slip. Then it came into sight. A perch, maximum fifty grams. But it looked angry.

‘There must have been a bigger fish hooked first,’ Seb said after we got the beast on land. ‘It was pullin’ me along!’

Quite possible, but a perch was a perch. The first fish. We collected kindling for the fire, cleaned the littl’un, stuck a skewer through its mouth and fried the body over the flames. It didn’t taste bad, there was just a bit too much bone and very little meat. Gunnar fetched a can of baked beans which we heated and feasted on. Then we boiled up some coffee and Seb prepared the corn cob pipe.

‘What kind of tobacco is it?’ Gunnar wondered.

‘Karva Blad,’ Seb said, taking a puff.

‘Is it s-s-strong?’

‘Pretty,’ said Seb.

He inhaled deeply, his eyes disappeared inside his head and his hair stood on end. Then he passed round the pipe. We lay on our backs for an hour or two gasping for air. Gradually we recovered and sat closer to the fire.

‘Helps digestion,’ Seb coughed, and that reminded us of what we dreaded most. Gunnar was the first to have to go. He took the toilet
roll and was gone for some time. We waited with keen anticipation. He returned with heather in his hair.

‘Loads of animals in there,’ he complained, sitting down with care.

We stared into the forest, blinded by the light of the fire. Soon, however, our eyes became used to the dark and trees loomed, uprooted trunks came closer, sinister bushes and anthills and gigantic toadstools as big as pavilions, too. We heard rustling and cracking sounds. Overhead a bird screamed. We started. A cuckoo called. There was something crawling down by the water.

‘Let’s call it a day,’ Seb said.

We peed on the fire and crept into the tent. Gunnar switched off the torch.

And before we knew it, the sun was shining through the canvas. We rose, disorientated, and shook the sleep out of our hair.