Beatles (38 page)

And at that moment Uncle Hubert came in, stood in the middle of the floor squinting in all directions and nodded. He had been there before, no doubt about that.

‘Hate?’ I managed to get out before Hubert was upon us, his eyes softened by the sight of beer, his coat hanging around his shoulders like a tarpaulin.

‘Kim,’ he said. ‘What a surprise.’

He looked at Cecilie. He looked at me. I began to feel nervous.

‘This is my Uncle Hubert,’ I explained, sweat forming on my brow. ‘And this is Cecilie.’

I pointed in all directions.

‘I’ll take a seat here,’ Hubert said, sitting down. There was a short silence. Cecilie’s words were burning in my brain. Hate?

‘We’ve been to the cinema,’ I conversed. ‘Very nice.’

Cecilie smiled.

‘He didn’t like it at all. Kim hates going to the cinema.’

So she had known. I tried to laugh.

Hubert gave a kind of gurgle.

‘Say what you think, Kim. Don’t be afraid.’

‘The film was crap,’ I said. ‘All films are the same.’

Another silence. The glasses were empty. Hubert treated us. I had to go to the toilet, the pressure on my bladder was terrible, I couldn’t wait, but I was reluctant to leave Cecilie on her own with Hubert. What if he had a fit and started throwing beer over her? But I had to go to the toilet, wriggled my way out and while I was standing there having a sprinkle, another thought struck me: What if he started chatting about Nina? Panicked, gave it a last burst, it sprayed back, I scrambled through the banks of mist and there was Cecilie with her head thrown back, laughing with abandon, I wondered what Hubert had said or done to make her laugh like that.

Squeezed in and sat down.

‘I was talking about Granddad eating his earplugs,’ Hubert chuckled.

I drank and laughed. Everything was fine.

But still it rankled, the thought about Nina, suddenly remembering her like that, having a guilty conscience. But then hadn’t she been knocking about with Jesper Salami? Anyway, I had already forgotten her.

Hubert talked about Paris, about the restaurants and bars, about warm nights, colours, fruit, trees that caressed the river, green cardboard boxes and a woman called Henny. His shoulders twitched, but the spasms subsided. The memories had been so strong and clear, in his mind he was still there and was almost happy.

‘When is Henny coming back?’ I ventured to ask.

Hubert didn’t answer. He said, ‘When I have some money I’ll go there and settle.’

Hubert was dreaming.

‘Where will you get the money from?’ I enquired.

He looked sheepish.

‘I do the pools,’ he said. ‘And the lottery. Every month without fail. The draw’s tomorrow.’

‘Here’s to you winning,’ we toasted.

Cecilie looked at her watch and had to go.

Hubert sat with his bock beer, huge coat and red scarf, and a distant look that penetrated the wall and crossed Majorstuen and Europe.

‘Was
that
your uncle?’ Cecilie said as we waited for the bus.

I nodded.

‘I liked him,’ she said gently.

‘He’s an okay uncle,’ I said.

‘Is he like your father?’

‘They aren’t identical twins,’ I said.

I was reminded of what she had said.

‘Do you hate your parents?’ I asked in a hushed voice.

Cecilie looked at her watch.

‘He’ll be sitting there timing me,’ she answered.

That unsettled me.

‘Does he know you’re with me?’

Cecilie looked me in the eye.

‘I say I’m with Kåre,’ she said, straight out.

I was punctured.

‘Kåre? The editor!’

She nodded.

The bus drew up in front of us.

‘By the way, he wants to interview you for the school newspaper,’ she said quickly, jumping onto the footboard. The bus roared off towards Bygdøy, leaving me behind like a flat tyre jettisoned in the gutter.

But on the way home I found the repair kit. In fact, Kåre was the loser, Kåre with the straight parting down the middle and the round glasses, the class above me, the coat hanger shoulders, the
intellectual snob from Ullern, the spotty pseudo. He was the one left with egg on his face, he was the whipping boy for our clandestine meetings.

I felt on top of the world.

The bad news was that something came of the interview. The following Friday Kåre the Editor swanned over to me in the last minute of the break and asked if I would mind doing a pupil-of-the-week feature for the school newspaper. Of course I didn’t mind. I turned up in the newspaper office after school, on the top floor, slanting ceiling, cramped, empty bottles, typewriter and papers everywhere. The beanpole Gunnar had argued with at the dance sat on a box squinting, the layout manager, fidgeting with Letraset; the photographer was in the top class, he smiled and kept pulling lengths of pink bubble gum out of his gob. The editor sat behind the only table with a pencil behind his ear and a cap over his skull. They had all rolled up their sleeves. This was the editorial team of
The Wild West
.

They gave me a Coke, drew up a chair and lit a cigarette for me, this was heavy, print run of 600.

‘Let’s get down to business,’ Kåre said, whetting his pen.

‘Fire away,’ I said.

‘Born when and where?’

‘51 Josefinesgate.’

He looked me up and down.

‘Special characteristics? Club foot or hunched back?’

‘One arm has a limp,’ I riposted.

Kåre wrote.

‘Hobbies?’

‘Collectin’ elephants.’

‘Which subject do you like best?’

‘Needlework.’

The photographer grinned.

‘The man’s a wit.’

‘Which dancing school did you go to?’ Kåre continued.

I smelt a rat.

‘No comment,’ I said diplomatically.

‘Shall we ring for a solicitor?’ Beanpole grinned.

The photographer snapped away.

‘Favourite writer?’

‘John Lennon, Jim Morrison and Snorri Sturluson.’

‘What would you do if you were headmaster for a day?’

‘Sack all the teachers.’

‘Dream woman?’

Kåre removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

‘Hasn’t stepped out of my dreams yet,’ I said.

‘Ooooh,’ the photographer intoned. ‘The man’s on the ball.’

Kåre replaced his glasses.

‘Do you support the USA in Vietnam?’

‘No.’

‘Explain.’

‘Imperialism,’ I said. ‘A nation must be allowed to determine its own fate without outside interference.’

Heavy.

Beanpole stood up, almost hitting his head on the ceiling.

‘Can we print that lie, boss?’

Kåre peered up.

‘This is a democratic newspaper in a democratic country. Everyone has a right to express their opinion.’

The others nodded. The photographer zoomed in.

‘Do you support NATO?’

‘Not as long as NATO supports the USA in Vietnam.’

Wow. Logic.

‘Favourite group?’

‘Beatles.’

‘There are persistent rumours that you climbed onto the roof of a certain house in Bygdøy. Any comment?’

‘No comment.’

‘Solicitor’s on the way,’ Beanpole smiled, opening a Coke.

‘Do you think long hair’s attractive?’

‘Especially under the arms.’

‘Why do you wear the ugliest jacket in the school?’

‘Disapprove of the question.’

‘Wow,’ said the photographer. ‘He’s a pro.’

That was all there was to it, well, apart from having a few more
pictures taken, and the photographer persuaded me to strip off, just the chest. Everyone was photographed like that when they were interviewed in
The Wild West
. Except the girls, of course, raucous laughter. I leaned against the wall, tensed my biceps and the camera flash swept across me, from the front, then the back.

‘I’d like to check through the interview first,’ I said to Kåre.

‘Impossible,’ he said. ‘It goes to press this evening. You can trust us.’

He stared at me and even though he was quite friendly and jocular, I think he hated me somewhere, and I think I would have done too if I had been him. I had a nasty feeling that he was up to something sneaky, but I couldn’t work out what. And anyway, I was pretty high after being interviewed with photos and so on. I raced down the steps and met Cecilie at Dagmar Café. We had enough for a vanilla slice and I told her everything I had said. Then she had to go. Alexander the Great was waiting for her return, on pain of death, I have a feeling spring’s on the way, I told Cecilie.

It was not. I knew that now. Kåre the Editor was out to cause trouble and he got it too, but he created more of a stir than he had bargained for. Needless to say I was the last to see the school newspaper, came back from the gym lesson, sweaty and sore, and from the moment I entered the classroom I knew that something was brewing, something big. Everyone stood with their noses in their copy of
The Wild West
. There was stamping and clapping when I arrived. I grabbed a copy and flicked through. Kåre the Editor had really gone to town. There was a picture of me from the rear and the front, and one where Beanpole, the layout manager, had mounted a model propeller on my back. Very smart. And that was not all. They had incorporated a skeleton too and written underneath:
Kim Karlsen’s girlfriend in Copenhagen
. What the hell! I caught sight of Cecilie. She was standing by the blackboard, a white, ice-cold silhouette. I read. The interview was fine. But in the lead-in Kåre from Ullern had disassociated himself from my demagogic opinions. I was confused rather than corrupt, he wrote. My addled brain was due, he presumed, to the fact that I had been in a long-term relationship with a girl from Copenhagen, and Copenhagen was the axis of evil and immorality
in the world, as everyone knew, at least in Scandinavia. I looked at Cecilie. Black board. White face. Sphinx had written something on the board that had not been cleaned off:
I think, therefore I am
. I headed for the door and found Ola wandering round with a maths book. I swung him round.

‘Ola,’ I said, keeping my composure. ‘What the bloody hell did you say to that creep Kåre?’

He was engrossed in an equation.

‘Say what to wh-wh-whom?’

‘Have you seen the school newspaper?’

He shook his head.

I showed him the page. It began to dawn on him.

‘He just wanted some p-p-personal information,’ Ola stuttered.

‘Right, yes, and so you told him about Nina?’

‘Was that so b-b-bad?’

The bell rang. It was a hard path to tread. Seb met me outside the door.

‘I would advise against suin’ for defamation,’ he whispered. ‘Let the editors drown in their own shite!’

Cecilie’s face was granite, her eyes ground me to sand and a small, insignificant snort blew me onto the mountain plains, abandoned for ever.

Slippery Leif and Peder proffered their sincere congratulations, Peder not without
Schadenfreude
.

And, God help me, I had to roll up my sleeves yet again to prove that I didn’t have a propeller.

Cecile turned away in disgust.

It was French with Madame Mysen, Madame Squint, a thin Parisian baguette with blue nails and an aquiline nose. She translated Sphinx’s words:
Je pense, donc je suis
.

After precisely ten minutes I was hauled before the headmaster. Kåre was there, too. His glasses had steamed up. He didn’t grace me with a glance.

Sandpaper sat behind the desk, leafing energetically through
The Wild West
. I wondered whether he had combed his moustache. Or whether it just grew like that. I ran my finger under my nose. Soft down. Fluff.

Sandpaper peered up.

‘As editor of the school newspaper you should know about press ethics,’ he rasped, making the room vibrate.

Perspiration was dripping off Kåre.

‘And you, Kim Karlsen, you should have kept the skeleton business quiet! I thought you had understood that!’

Kåre spoke up.

‘This is my fault, sir. Karlsen knew nothing about it.’

Honest. Kåre was an idealist. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

Sandpaper flicked through the pages, shaking his head. The stakes had been too high for Kåre. It ended with him having to resign in disgrace as editor and the student council had to appoint a new one. I was disgraced, too, I lost Cecilie, but no one appointed someone new for me.

I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting close to her, she slipped away again, shut her eyes to me, but saw me nevertheless. I could just enjoy myself with my girlfriend in Copenhagen. I tried to use Seb as a go-between, but he didn’t know the password, either. Gunnar thought Kåre was the slimiest bastard that had ever walked the earth. What about if we ran an anti-Kåre sticker campaign and hung him out to dry once and for all. Ola was unhappy and said that he would never speak to the press again, that was for sure. Peder and Slippery Leif went back on the offensive, but Cecilie seemed impregnable to one and all, like a bunker.

Seb and I stuck together, both despondent, again and again we told each other how unhappy we were and tortured ourselves even further. We sat at my house playing The Doors. We sat at Seb’s playing Bob Dylan and The Mothers of Invention.
Freak Out
. Seb took out some sheets of paper with lyrics on them. He reckoned he was well on the way with a great blues number, because this was the time for blues.

He read the first, and hitherto only, verse while coughing into the harmonica from time to time.

‘Your mother doesn’t scrub the steps,’ I said. ‘And your father’s at sea!’

Seb studied me for a long time, then shook his head.