My Struggle: Book One (8 page)

I doodled my way through lessons, smoked outside the doorway in breaks, and this was the rhythm for the whole day, as the sky and the countryside beneath slowly brightened, until the bell rang for the last time at half past two, and I could make my way home to my digs. It was the fifth of December, the day before my birthday, my sixteenth, and Mom was coming home from Bergen. I was looking forward to seeing her. In many ways it was fine being alone with Dad, in the sense that he kept as far away as possible, stayed at Sannes when I stayed in town and vice versa. When Mom came this would end, we would all be living together up there until well into the new year, so the disadvantage of meeting Dad every day was almost completely outweighed by Mom's presence. She was someone I could talk to. I could talk to her about everything. I couldn't say anything to Dad. Nothing beyond purely practical things such as where I was going and when I was coming home.

When I arrived at the flat his car was outside. I went in, the hall reeked of frying; from the kitchen I could hear clattering noises and the radio.

I poked my head in.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes, quite. What are you making?”

“Chops. Take a seat, they're ready.”

I went in and sat down at the round dining table. It was old, I assumed it had belonged to his grandmother.

Dad put two chops, three potatoes, and a small pile of fried onions on my plate. Sat down and heaped his plate.

“Well?” he said. “Anything new at school?”

I shook my head.

“You didn't learn anything today?”

“No.”

“No, of course not.”

We ate in silence.

I didn't want to hurt him, I didn't want him to think this was a failure, that he had a failed relationship with his son, so I sat wondering what I could say. But I couldn't come up with anything.

He wasn't in a bad mood. He wasn't angry. Just preoccupied.

“Have you been up to see Grandma and Grandad recently?” I asked.

He looked at me.

“Yes, I have,” he said. “Dropped in yesterday afternoon. Why do you ask?”

“No special reason,” I said, feeling my cheeks flushing. “Just wondered.”

I had cut off all the meat I could with the knife. Now I put the bone in my mouth and began to gnaw. Dad did the same. I put down the bone and drank the water.

“Thanks for making me a meal,” I said, and got up.

“Was the parents' evening at six, did you say?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Are you staying here?”

“Think so.”

“Then I'll come and get you afterward and we can drive up to Sannes. Is that alright?”

“Yeah, course.”

I was writing an essay about an advertisement for a sports drink when he came back. The door opening, the surge of sounds from the town, the thudding of footsteps on the hall floor. His voice.

“Karl Ove? Are you ready? Let's get going.”

I had packed everything I would need in my bag and satchel, they were at bursting point because I was staying for a month and didn't quite know what I might need.

He watched me as I came downstairs. He shook his head. But he wasn't angry. There was something else.

“How did it go?” I asked without meeting his eyes, even though that was one of his bugbears.

“How did it go? Well, I'll tell you how it went. I was given an earful by your math teacher. That's how it went. Vestby, isn't it?'

“Yes.”

“Why didn't you tell me? I had no idea. I was caught completely off-guard.”

“So what did he say?” I asked and started to get dressed, infinitely relieved that Dad had kept his temper.

“He said you sat with your feet on the table in lessons, and that you were obstreperous and smart-alecky, and talked in class and you didn't do class-work or your homework. If this continues he will fail you. That's what he said. Is it true?”

“Yes, I suppose it is in a way,” I said, straightening up, dressed and ready to go.

“He blamed me, you know. He went on at me for having such a lout as a son.”

I cringed.

“What did you say to him?”

“I gave him an earful. Your behavior at school is his responsibility. Not mine. But it wasn't exactly pleasant. As I'm sure you understand.”

“I do,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Fat lot of good that is. That's the last parents' evening I'll ever go to, that's for sure. Well then. Shall we go?”

We went out to the street, to the car. Dad got in, leaned over, and unlocked my side.

“Can you open up at the back as well?” I asked.

He didn't answer, just did it. I put the bag and the satchel in the trunk, closed the lid carefully so as not to rouse his ire, took a seat at the front, pulled the belt across my chest, and clicked the buckle into the locking mechanism.

“That was excruciatingly embarrassing, no two ways about it,” Dad said, starting the engine. The dashboard lit up. The car in front of us and a section of the slope down to the river as well. “But what's he like as a teacher, this Vestby?”

“Pretty bad. He's got discipline problems. No one respects him. And he can't teach either.”

“He got some of the top university grades ever recorded, did you know that?” Dad said.

“No, I didn't,” I said.

He reversed a few meters, swung out onto the road, turned, and began to head out of town. The heater roared, the tire studs bit into the tarmac with a regular high-pitched whirr. He drove fast as usual. One hand on the wheel, one resting on the seat beside the gear stick. My stomach quivered, tiny flashes of happiness shot into my body for this had never happened before. He had never taken my side. He had never chosen to overlook anything reprehensible in my behavior. Handing over my report before the summer and Christmas holiday was always something I had anticipated with dread during the previous weeks. The slightest critical remark and his fury washed over me. The same with parents' evenings. The tiniest comment about my talking too much or a lack of care was followed by a venting of anger. Not to mention
the few times I had been given a note to take home. That was Judgment Day. All hell broke loose.

Was it because I was becoming an adult that he treated me in this way?

Were we becoming equals?

I felt an urge to look at him as he sat there with his eyes fixed on the road as we raced along. But I could not, I would have to say something then, and I had nothing to say.

Half an hour later we went up the last hill and entered the drive in front of our house. With the engine still running, Dad got out to open the garage door. I walked to the front door and unlocked it. Remembered our bags, went back as Dad switched off the engine and the red taillights died.

“Could you open the trunk?” I asked.

He nodded, inserted the key, and twisted. The lid rose like the tail of a whale, it seemed to me. Going into the house, I knew at once he had been cleaning. It smelled of green soap, the rooms were tidy, the floors shiny. And the dried-up cat shit on the sofa upstairs, that was gone.

Of course he had done it because my mother was coming home. But even though there was a specific reason and he had not done it simply because it had been so unbelievably filthy and disgusting there, it was a relief to me. Some order had been reestablished. Not that I had been worried or anything, it was more that I found it unsettling, especially as it had not been the only sign. Something about him had changed during the autumn. Presumably because of the way we lived, he and I together, barely that, it was palpable. He had never had any friends, never had people around at home, apart from the family. The only people he knew were colleagues and neighbors, when we were in Tromøya, I should add; here he didn't even know the neighbors. Although just a few weeks after Mom had moved to Bergen to study he had organized a gathering with a few work colleagues in the house at Sannes, they were going to have a little party, and he wondered whether I might perhaps spend that night in town? If I felt lonely I could always go up to my grandparents' if I wanted. But being alone was the last thing I feared, and
he dropped by in the morning with a frozen pizza, Coke, and chips for me, which I ate in front of the television.

The next morning I caught the bus to Jan Vidar's, stayed a few hours, and then bussed back up to our house. The door was locked. I opened the garage to check whether he had just gone for a walk, or taken the car. It was empty. I walked back to the house and let myself in. On the table in the living room there were a few empty bottles of wine, the ashtrays were full, but considering no one had cleaned up it didn't look too bad, and I thought it must have been a small party. The stereo set was usually in the barn, but he had put it on a table beside the radiator, and I knelt down in front of the limited selection of records partly stacked against a chair leg and partly scattered across the floor. They were the ones he had played for as long as I could remember. Pink Floyd. Joe Dassin. Arja Saijonmaa. Johnny Cash. Elvis Presley. Bach. Vivaldi. He must have played the last two before the party started, or perhaps it was this morning. But the rest of the music wasn't very party-like either. I stood up and went into the kitchen, where there were a few unwashed plates and glasses in the sink, opened the fridge, which apart from a couple of bottles of white wine and some beers was as good as empty, and continued up the stairs to the first floor. The door to Dad's bedroom was open. I went over and looked inside. The bed from Mom's room had been moved in and was next to Dad's in the middle of the floor. So it had got late, and since they had been drinking and the house was so far off the beaten track that a taxi to town, or Vennesla, where Dad worked, would have been much too expensive, someone had slept over. My room was untouched, I grabbed what I needed, and although I had planned to sleep there I went back to town. Something unfamiliar had descended over all the things in the house.

Another time I had gone up there without warning, it was evening, I was too tired to go back to town after soccer practice, and Tom from the team had driven me. In the light from the kitchen I could see Dad sitting with his head supported on one hand and a bottle of wine in front of him. That was new too, he had never drunk before, at least not while I had been around, and certainly not alone. I saw it now and didn't want to know, but I couldn't
go back, so I kicked the snow off my shoes as loudly and obviously as I could against the steps, jerked the door open, slammed it shut again, and so that he would be in no doubt as to where I was, I turned on both bath taps, sat on the toilet seat and waited for a few minutes. When I went into the kitchen no one was there. The glass was on the drainer, empty, the bottle in the cupboard under the sink, empty, Dad was in the flat beneath the hayloft. As if this were not mysterious enough I also saw him driving past the shop in Solsletta one early afternoon; I had skipped the last three classes and gone to Jan Vidar's before the evening training session in Kjevik sports hall. I was sitting on the bench outside the shop smoking when I saw Dad's snot-green Ascona, it was unmistakeable. I threw away the cigarette, but saw no reason to hide, and stared at the car as it passed, even raised my hand to wave. He didn't see me, he was talking to someone in the passenger seat. The next day he came by, I mentioned this to him, it had been a colleague, they were working together on a project and had spent a few hours after school at our house.

There was a great deal of contact with his colleagues during this period. One weekend he went to a seminar in Hovden with them, and he went to more parties than I can ever remember him going to before. No doubt because he was bored, or didn't like being on his own so much, and I was glad, at that time I had begun to see him with different eyes, no longer the eyes of a child, rather those of someone approaching adulthood, and from that point of view I preferred him to socialize with friends and colleagues, as other people did. At the same time I did not like the change, it made him unpredictable.

The fact that he had defended me at the parents' evening contributed to this view of him. Indeed, it was perhaps the most significant factor of them all.

I collected together the clothes in the room, replaced the cassettes one by one in the rack on the desk and stacked the schoolbooks in a neat pile. The house had been built in the mid-1800s, all the floors creaked, sounds permeated the walls, so I knew not only that Dad was in the living room below but also that he was sitting on the sofa. I had planned to finish
Dracula
but I didn't feel I could until the situation between us had been clarified. In other words, until he knew what I was planning to do and I knew what he was planning to do. Furthermore, I couldn't just go downstairs and say: “Hi, Dad, I'm upstairs reading.” “Why are you telling me that?” he would ask, or at least think. But the imbalance had to be rectified, so I went downstairs, took a detour through the kitchen, something to do with food maybe, before taking the final steps into the living room, where he was sitting with one of my old comics in his hand.