Beatles (54 page)

The floor below was teeming with people. I looked for Seb, Ola and Gunnar, they weren’t there. But right at the back was Jørgen. A green-clad bastard came and led him away.

Then I was with the doctor again. It was never-ending. He stood with his back to me and read the psychologist’s letter. He swivelled round, folded the letter round his forefinger like a banknote.

‘Have you got bad guts?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said.

He nodded several times and glared at me. I held my hands over my stomach. Then he picked up the military service booklet and wrote – I could read it upside down: UF. UFCD. I asked what they meant. Unfit, it meant. Unfit for civil defence even. Unfit was my middle name thereafter. And still I wasn’t finished. I was given the military service booklet and my valet accompanied me back to see the general. I gave him the booklet, he slowly flicked through it, stood up, his eyes were sad, sad, and he came around the table.

‘Oh dear,’ he said. He said that. Oh dear.

Now fear washed through me like a tidal wave and slapped against the red cliffs of my heart. I almost fell to the floor. He held me up with a steely hand.

‘The nerves business is the worst,’ he said with sorrow in his voice. ‘We don’t really know what nerves are.’

He half-carried me to the door and opened it.

‘Good luck,’ I heard as I left. ‘Good luck, Kim Karlsen!’

I stood in the corridor. It smelt of chlorine. The second lieutenant came over to me with the gas mask, put it in my hand.

‘You can go now,’ he said and left.

It smelt of chlorine. So I toddled off. And in the sunshine, in mid-relief, a wild thought struck me: the letter. The letter the psychologist had written. What was in it? What was in it that made them drop me on the spot? I had only told them the truth. What was in the letter?

I walked home through the rotten town. Mum was all over me before I had taken out the key. The questions were stacked up in a queue. She ran a hand across my filthy hair and looked frightened.

‘Where have you been?’ she stammered.

‘Medical.’

‘Last night! This morning!’

Her hand was shaking.

‘At Seb’s,’ I said. ‘Left before you got up this morning.’

She followed me. Pym was singing in the sitting room.

‘When will you be called up?’ she asked.

‘They didn’t want me.’

I showed her my finger.

‘Do you think you can shoot with such a twisted finger?’

I dashed into my room and slept like a log.

I was woken up by Seb. All of a sudden he was standing there with the broadest grin of the year. My mother was keeping watch behind him. I closed the door and Seb was beside himself with excitement.

‘How did it go?’ he panted. ‘How did it go?’

‘Fine in the end,’ I said. ‘But it took a bloody long time.’

He threw himself down on the sofabed and punched the mattress.

‘Gunnar was declared fit for combat duties. And Ola’s joinin’ the navy!’

We grinned for a long time. Seb stretched out and flipped half a bottle of wine from out of his sleeve. Could do a stint at the circus with that one. We each took a swig.

‘How did
you
wangle it?’ I asked.

He laughed and tapped my forehead with a dark yellow finger.

‘Just followed your advice,’ he said. ‘About lyin’ and stickin’ to the truth. I said I was in fine fettle and was lookin’ forward like mad to joining the army. They didn’t bloody believe me. Was kicked out after five minutes. They didn’t bloody believe me!’

The Great Revolutionary Feat was slow in coming. I was a superfluous spoke in the Wheel of History. There was no use for me. It was as if Gunnar had forgotten the leaflets in my drawer, for the Wheel was rolling on regardless. It rolled through Norway in the spring of 1970 leaving ruts everywhere. The workers were on strike. The trams were silent. The workers at Norgas were on strike. The cops were beating up the pickets. The workers continued to strike. Gunnar was rattling a money box. I put two tenners in. That’s more like it, Gunnar said. On April 22, on the centenary of Lenin’s birth, the struggle was crowned with victory. The Wheel of History rolled towards the finishing line and I was no more than a rusty, superfluous spoke.

But on May 1 I did not want to stand, cap in hand, on the sidelines. I turned out at Grønlands Torg ten minutes before the start and saw Gunnar waving a large placard in the wind. NO TO THE FIVE-DAY WEEK! He grinned on seeing me, asked me to hold the placard and disappeared into the crowd. There must have been
several thousand people present. I stood in the middle of Grønlands Torg, in a cauldron, swaying with the placard in the wind. Some began to sing the Internationale, elsewhere a chorus was chanting: USA OUT OF VIETNAM! Behind me there was the rattle of tins. In front of me stood a girl with a screaming infant in her arms. A megaphone crackled through the ether. The crowd began to move. I hung on tight to the placard and looked around for Gunnar. He had gone. I was in the middle of people moving forward slowly, purposefully, finding their positions. Gunnar had disappeared. I couldn’t see Seb, either. The wind almost sent me flying. A man with a red armband said I should pick my way over to the schools section. He pointed to the back of the procession. Obediently, I staggered that way. I could hear music. Hands clapping. A bruiser with a drooping moustache held up a large picture of Stalin. I struggled onwards. Those at the front had already started to move off. I was walking in the wrong direction. I was dragged into the ranks and found myself standing beside a man carrying a portrait of Mao on the beach.

Gunnar was not there, either. A girl asked me to stand still. And then it was our turn. Shouts from various sections mingled, formed themselves into a higher unity, into a shout that merged all the slogans and thoughts into one, the revolution’s Esperanto, just like the orchestras on May 17, Constitution Day. This sounded much better. I joined in the shouting, could not hear my own voice, I shouted with the others, as loud as I was able and still couldn’t hear my own voice.

Then something happened. Just as we were leaving the market square. The cops formed a chain and forced a scattered bunch of demonstrators onto the pavement. They were hollering and screaming and waving red and black flags. One of them broke through, ran across the street with a big poster above his head: STALIN=MURDERER. It was Stig. Stig at speed. Two stewards tackled him from behind, brought him down and tore the poster to pieces. Then the cops dragged away what was left of Stig. The mood was turning nasty. Red Front stewards closed ranks to keep out the anarchists. I saw Seb, too. Then we were past them. I understood nothing. I stuffed the pole of the placard into the hands of a man behind me, skipped out of the line and ran to the head of the
procession. I had to find Gunnar. I thought I caught a glimpse of Cecilie, but was not sure. I ran on, was soon at the front, by the flag-bearers. Crowds lined the pavements. Shouts resounded down Storgata, were cast to and fro between the house walls. I found Gunnar in the anti-imperialist section.

‘What the hell happened to you?’ I panted.

‘Had to take over here. What did you do with the placard?’

‘Gave to it some bloke. See what happened?’

‘No, what happened?’

‘The anarchists were chased away. The cops kicked them out. Along with the stewards. The cops workin’ with the stewards!’

‘No place for anarchists here!’

‘This was Stig, though! And Seb. Seb and your brother!’

Gunnar looked straight ahead. I was the seventh in the row and out of step.

‘The revolution’s no vicarage tea party,’ said Gunnar.

I stopped. The procession streamed towards me. Then someone pushed me to the side. I started walking back, I jogged, back again, headed down towards the square. Those at the end passed me and the square was empty. A red flag rested against a post, abandoned. The sand crunched beneath my feet. The square was deserted. Leaflets and hot dog wrappers fluttered in the wind. I stood in the middle of Grønlands Torg and looked all around me.

Four students were mown down at Kent University. I remember the picture of a girl in tears collapsing beside a bloodstained body. It has left a scar on my eyes. I remember Gunnar’s father, the runner, standing in the vegetables section at Bonus in his blue coat with a name tab on his chest. He had had to give up his grocery business. I remember him standing there the day I went to stock up on beer after the exams were over. I was unable to meet his eyes, did an abrupt about-turn and saw in the mirror over the meat counter a stooped, beaten man weighing lemons, potatoes and tomatoes. I hurried out with the crate of beer and got stuck into the mammoth booze-up I had been looking forward to for twelve years, for the exams were over and the sluice gates were open. Yes, I remember the exams too, a sweaty affair, a clammy funeral in the gym where
we sat dotted across the freshly polished floor. The teachers tiptoed around in black suits and ironed ties, and the superannuated invigilators who accompanied us into the toilets, they sat there with their creaking shoes and sweets individually wrapped in sandwich paper, I remember all that. I had to write about Nansen again, but this time I didn’t mix up Nansen and Schweitzer. I wrote about what Nansen had said about living in a town, and it was pretty wild. The exercise was entitled
People in Boxes,
and Nansen compared people with animals living in boxes, sleeping in boxes, eating in boxes, not sure if I quite caught the point. And he wrote about those societies where people just sit in big communal boxes and drink themselves stupid. ‘I understand they’re called parties,’ Nansen wrote, and I added that when we die we end up in another box, but to be frank I doubted whether the North Pole had anything better to offer, I wrote in
Nynorsk
and was reasonably satisfied with my effort. And I wrote in
Bokmål
about a poem by André Bjerke,
The Adults’ Party,
it made me think about opera on the radio, which I always listened to in years gone by, lying with the door ajar and my ears on stalks, and there was a world out there that became alive after I had gone to bed, something mysterious, something that was intended to be kept hidden from me. Now I knew it was just a bluff. And I wrote that. In English I guessed correctly. I had a miniature version of the Magna Carta under a Kvikklunsj wrapper, and the Magna Carta came up. In the history oral I was tested on the Napoleonic wars. I rounded it off with my line:
Napoleon’s coming
! and was awarded a solid B. Then I tore down to Bonus and ran into Gunnar’s father, pretended I hadn’t seen him and rushed out with a crate of beer feeling more or less like Armstrong when he landed on the green cheese.

I didn’t see much of Gunnar, met him on May 17 when he was handing out leaflets condemning prommers’ celebrations, he didn’t ask me if I wanted to give him a hand. Ola was doing double shifts to save up money for the navy. One night I dropped in at the hotel to have the last or the first beer of the day when I detected a gloomy expression on his rotund face.

‘I’ll try and take my final exams next year,’ he whispered, looking away.

‘How’s it goin’ with Vigdis?’ I wondered, idiot that I am.

He put a finger to his lips.

‘Not Vigdis.
Kirsten
.’

I nodded sagely.

‘You do know Vigdis lives in the same block as Seb, don’t you?’

An ugly twitch developed across his forehead.

‘Even if I did drop Nina’s name to Kåre the Creep that time, that doesn’t mean you have to exact your revenge now!’

‘Take it easy,’ I reassured him. ‘Take it easy. I have no idea who Vigdis is. I’ve never heard anythin’ about her.’

Ola unfurled a smile and slumped back on the camping bed behind the counter. I leaned across.

‘You alright?’ I whispered.

Ola gave a wry grin and we clinked bottles and drank.

‘What’s it like bein’ a prommer?’ he mumbled.

‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘Haven’t noticed much.’

Then Ola went to sleep at his post. I went out into the May night thinking about all the things that were in the past now.

Seb had his orals at the Experimental School and he flew through them on Buddha’s back, the time of miracles was not over. I lay in his room sweating my way through the hot days, drinking beer and tea and planning nothing. Mostly I thought about Nina and when I dreamt about her, I always dreamt she was somewhere in the world where it was winter now, and night-time when it was daytime here in Oslo, June, 1970.

One morning I asked Seb, ‘Are you sure you’re goin’ to sea?’

He tried to scratch away the sunlight that burst through the window and landed on his navel.

‘Yep. Just waitin’ for a letter from Dad. And where I should meet him.’

‘Alright if I use your room while you’re away?’

‘Course it is, man. Of course.’

He stretched out a hand and grabbed a half-full bottle of Export.

‘Got the feelin’,’ he mumbled. ‘Got the feelin’ somethin’s about to happen.’

And we shared the rest of the beer and a new day had started.

A few days before the results were announced I nipped home to put
some food in my system and report in. My mother was like a cat on hot bricks wondering where I was staying at the moment and Dad was in the sitting room with Pym on his shoulder. I went for a snooze in my room and was woken by the telephone. Jørgen was on the line. We agreed to meet for a beer at the Herregård in Frogner Park. So I was off again. Mum ran after me with a fresh shirt and trousers with a crease, but those days were gone. I went as I was. I had been doing that for three weeks.

Jørgen was sitting at the table with the most sun. He was leaning against the yellow wall with a foaming glass of lager in front of him, it was a world of orange light. But soon the sun would sink behind the ridge and turn into a red blood orange. Jørgen waved to me.

I took a beer too, we toasted, squinted at the prom blazers scattered around, the geese waddling down the lawn, heard the monotonous fall of water through the buzz of conversation, didn’t know quite what we should say, it was a long time since Jørgen and I had talked, there seemed to be a barrier.