My Struggle: Book One (22 page)

“Probably,” Grandma said, and fetched two plates from a cupboard, placed them before us, took cutlery from a drawer and put it beside the plates.

“I'll do it this way today,” she said, picking up Dad's plate and filling it with potatoes, creamed peas, rissoles, and gravy.

“That looks good,” Dad said as she put his plate down in front of him and took mine.

The only two people I knew who ate as fast as me were Yngve and Dad. Our plates had hardly been put in front of us before they were picked clean. Dad leaned back and lit another cigarette, Grandma poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him, I got up and went into the living room, looked across the town with all its glittering lights, the gray, almost black, snow piled up against the walls of the warehouses along the quay. The harbor lights rippled across the shiny, pitch-black surface of the water.

For a moment I was filled with the sensation of white snow against black water. The way the whiteness erases all the detail around a lake or a river in the forest so that the difference between land and water is absolute, and the water lies there as a deeply alien entity, a black hole in the world.

I turned. The second living room was two steps higher than the one I was in and separated by a sliding door. The door was half-open and I went up, not for any particular reason, I was simply restless. This was the fancy room, they used it only for special occasions, we had never been allowed in there alone.

A piano stood adjacent to one wall, above it hung two paintings with Old Testament motifs. On the piano were three graduation photographs of the sons. Dad, Erling, and Gunnar. It was always strange to see Dad without a beard. He was smiling with the black graduation cap perched jauntily at the back of his head. His eyes shone with pleasure.

In the middle of the floor there were two sofas, one on either side of a table. In the corner at the very back of the room, which was dominated by two black leather sofas and an antique rose-painted corner cabinet, there was a white fireplace.

“Karl Ove?” Dad shouted from the kitchen.

I quickly took the four paces to the everyday living room and answered.

“Are we going?”

“Yes.”

When I entered the kitchen he was already on his feet.

“Take care,” I said. “Bye.”

“You take care,” Grandad said. As always, Grandma came down with us.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Dad said when we were in the hall putting on our coats and scarves. “I've got something for you.”

He went out, opened and closed the car door, and then returned carrying a parcel which he passed to her.

“Many happy returns, Mother,” he said.

“Oh, you shouldn't have!” Grandma said. “Goodness me. You shouldn't buy presents for me, dear!”

“Yes, I should,” Dad said. “Come on. Open it!”

I didn't know where to look. There was something intimate about all this, which I had not witnessed before and had no idea existed.

Grandma stood with a tablecloth in her hand.

“My, how beautiful!” she exclaimed.

“I thought it would match the wallpaper upstairs,” Dad said. “Can you see that?”

“Lovely,” Grandma said.

“Well,” Dad said in a tone that precluded any further embellishments, “we'll be off now.”

We got into the car, Dad started the engine, and a cascade of light struck the garage door. Grandma waved goodbye from the steps as we reversed down the little slope. As always, she closed the door behind her when we were turning, and by the time we drove onto the main road she was gone.

In the next days I occasionally thought about the little episode in the hall, and my feeling was the same every time: I had seen something I shouldn't have seen. But it passed quickly; I wasn't exactly concerned with Dad and Grandma, so much else was happening during those weeks. In the first lesson of the new school year Siv handed out an invitation to everyone, she was going to have a class party the following Saturday, and this was good news, a class party was something I was entitled to attend, where no one could accuse me of trying to gate-crash, and where familiarity with the others could be extended into the wider world, which in class enabled me to come quite close to behaving in ways consistent with the person I really was. In short, I would be able to drink, dance, laugh, and perhaps pin someone against a wall somewhere. On the other hand, class parties had lower status precisely for that reason, it wasn't the kind of party you were invited to because of who you were but rather where you were, in this case class 1B. However, I didn't allow that to sour my pleasure. A party was not just a party, even if it was that too. The problem of acquiring alcohol was the same as before New Year's Eve, and I considered whether to call Tom again, but decided it was best to risk it myself. I may have been only sixteen but I looked older, and if I acted normally no one would even think of refusing me. If they did, it would be embarrassing, but that was all and I would still be able to ask Tom to organize it. So, on the Wednesday I went to the supermarket, put twelve lagers in my cart, with bread and tomatoes as alibis, queued up, put them on the conveyor belt, handed the checkout-girl the money, she took it without so much as a glance at me, and I hurried excitedly home with a clinking plastic bag in each hand.

When I came home from school on Friday afternoon, Dad had been in the flat. There was a message on the table.

Karl Ove,

I am at a seminar all this weekend. Coming home Sunday night. There are some fresh shrimp in the fridge and there's a loaf in the bread basket. Enjoy yourself!

Dad

On top there was a five-hundred-krone note.

Oh, this was just perfect!

Shrimp was what I loved most. I ate them in front of the television that evening, afterward I went for a walk through town, playing my Walkman, first “Lust for Life” by Iggy Pop and then one of the later Roxy Music albums, something to do with the distance between the inside and the outside worlds arose then, something that I liked so much; when I saw all the drunken faces of people who had gathered by the bars it was as if they existed in a different dimension from mine, the same applied to the cars driving by, to the drivers getting in and out of their cars at the gas stations, to the shop assistants standing behind counters with their weary smiles and mechanical movements, and to men out walking their dogs.

The next morning I dropped by my grandparents, ate fresh rolls with them, then went to town, bought three records and a big bag of sweets, a few music magazines and a paperback, Jean Genet,
Journal du Voleur
. Had two beers while watching a televised English soccer match, one more while showering and changing, another while smoking the last cigarette before going out.

I had arranged to meet Bassen at the Østerveien intersection at seven o'clock. He stood there smiling as I lumbered up with the bag of beer in my hand. He had all his in a backpack, and the second I saw that I felt like smacking my forehead. Of course! That was the way to do it.

We walked along Kuholmsveien, past my grandparents' place, up the hill and into the residential district around the stadium, where Siv's house was.

After searching for a few minutes we found the right number and rang the doorbell. Siv opened and let out a loud squeal.

Even before I awoke I knew that something good had happened. It was like a hand stretching down to me where I lay at the bottom of consciousness, watching one image after another rushing past me. A hand I grabbed and let lift me slowly, I came closer and closer to myself until I thrust open my eyes.

Where was I?

Oh, yes, the downstairs living room in the flat. I was lying on the sofa, fully clothed.

I sat up, supported my throbbing head in my hands.

My shirt smelled of perfume.

A heavy, exotic fragrance.

I had been making out with Monica. We had danced, we had drifted to the side, stood under a staircase, I had kissed her. She had kissed me.

But that's not what it was!

I got up and went into the kitchen, poured water into a glass and gulped it down.

No, it wasn't that.

Something fantastic had happened, a light had been lit, but it wasn't Monica. There was something else.

But what?

All the alcohol had created an imbalance in my body. But it knew what I needed to redress the balance. Hamburger, fries, hot dog. Lots of Coke. That's what I needed. And I needed it now.

I went into the hall, glanced at myself in the mirror while running a hand through my hair. I didn't look too bad, only slightly bloodshot eyes; I could definitely show my face like this.

I laced my boots, grabbed my jacket and put it on.

But what was it?

A button?

With
Smile
on it?

Yes, that was it!

That was the good thing!

“No,” I said. “Not at all. I like being alone. And I'm up in Tveit a lot of the time.”

I put on my jacket, still adorned with the
Smile
button, a scarf, and boots.

“Just have to go to the bathroom, and we'll be off,” I said. Closed the bathroom door behind me. Heard her singing to herself in a low voice. The walls were thin in this house, perhaps she was trying to drown out what was going on here, perhaps she just wanted to sing.

I put the toilet lid up and tugged out the frankfurter.

All at once I realized it would be impossible to pee while she was outside. The walls were thin, the hall so small. She would even be able to hear that I hadn't done anything.

Oh hell.

I squeezed as hard as I could.

Not a drop.

She was singing and walking back and forth.

What must she be thinking?

After thirty seconds I gave up, turned on the tap, and let the water run for a few moments, so that at least something had happened in here, then turned it off, opened the door and went out, to meet her embarrassed, downcast eyes.

“Let's be off then,” I said.

The streets were dark, and the wind was blowing, as it did so often in Kristiansand in winter. We didn't say much on the way. Talked a bit about school, the people who went there, Bassen, Molle, Siv, Tone, Anne. For some reason she started talking about her father, he was so fantastic. He wasn't a Christian, she said. That surprised me. Had she become one on her own initiative? She said I would have liked her father. Would have? I wondered. Mm, I mumbled. He sounds nice. Laconic. What does laconic mean? she asked, her green eyes looking at me. Every time she did that I almost fell apart. I could smash all the windows around us, knock all the pedestrians to the ground and jump up and down on them until all signs of life were extinguished, so much energy did her eyes fill me with. I could also grab her
around the waist and waltz down the street, throw flowers at everyone we met and sing at the top of my voice. Laconic? I said. It's hard to describe. A bit dry and matter-of-fact, perhaps exaggeratedly matter-of-fact, I said. Sort of understated. But here it is, isn't it?

A venue in Dronningens gate, it had said. Yes, this was it, the posters were on the door.

We went in.

The meeting room was on the first floor, chairs, a speaker's platform at the top end, an overhead projector next to it. A handful of young people, maybe ten, maybe twelve.

Beneath the window there was a large thermos, beside it a small bowl of cookies and a tall stack of plastic cups.

“Would you like some coffee?” I asked.

She shook her head and smiled. “A cookie maybe?”

I poured myself some coffee, took a couple of cookies, and went back to her. We sat down in one of the rows at the very rear.

Five or six more people drifted in, and the meeting started. It was under the auspices of the AUF, the Young Socialists, a kind of recruitment drive. Anyway, the AUF policies were presented, and then there was some discussion of youth politics in general, why it was important to be committed, how much you could actually achieve, and as a little bonus, what you yourself could get out of it.

Had Hanne not been sitting beside me, one leg crossed over the other, so close that inside I was ablaze, I would have got up and left. Beforehand, I had imagined a more traditional arrangement, a packed hall, cigarette smoke, witty speakers, gales of laughter sweeping through the room, a kind of a tub-thumping Agnar Mykle–type event, with the same Mykle-like significance, young men and women who were keen and eager, who burned inside for socialism, this magical fifties word, but not this, boring boys in boring sweaters and hideous trousers talking to a small collection of boys and girls like themselves about boring and uninspiring things.

Who cares about politics when there are flames licking at your insides?

Who cares about politics if you are burning with desire for life? With desire for the living?

Not me at any rate.

After the three talks there was to be be a short interval and then a workshop and group discussions, we were informed. When the interval came I asked Hanne if we should go, sure, she said, and so we were out in the cold, dark night again. Inside, she had hung her jacket on the back of her chair, and the sweater that was revealed, thick and woolen, bulged in a way that had made me gulp a few times, she was so close to me, there was so little that separated us.