I Curse the River of Time (3 page)

What I could manage were these drives through this landsape, Nittedal, Nannestad, Eidsvoll. There was something about the colours just before winter descended, or the lack of them, something about the lines along the forest’s edge and the bends in the road; I thought I might remember it all, when things were different. And there was the fact that I did not stand still, but on the contrary moved forward in my champagne-coloured Mazda, or as on this day, early in November 1989, in a silver-grey Volkswagen Passat that was not my own. There was something about the girls, as well, sitting in the back singing ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘When I’m Sixty-four’, which were also written by Paul McCartney. I had never heard those songs sung this way before, and I thought that, too, was something I must never forget.

We came up the last hill in third gear, the road was long and steep and almost scary in winter when the ice lay shining in the wide curve, and then we drove along on the top in a semicircle around the blocks of flats past the trees, and finally turned towards one of them and drove into the garage where the automatic door was already open because it was wrecked and had been so for weeks. I stopped almost at
the far end of the garage and backed into the space where the number of my flat was painted in yellow on the raw concrete wall where you could see the imprint of the rough boards right down to the annual rings, and the girls closed their eyes tight shut, sucked the air down with a sharp sound and held it there, because this was a tight fit. On one occasion it went really wrong, and then there was a big fuss with a neighbour, who had now moved out, I am glad to say. He lived in the flat above ours, and on some evenings I would hear his stereo blast at full volume and his wife shouting, Turn it down, for God’s sake.

This time it went without a hitch. I neatly slipped into my space with a good margin on both sides, and I praised my luck, as it was not my car, and we pulled ourselves out and slammed the doors hard, like we always did, to feel reckless, and the sound of it rolled down the long garage and came back again. I carefully checked that everything was according to regulations, the doors locked, the key in my pocket, before we walked up the stairs to the flat with me trailing reluctantly behind.

And then I entered the hall and walked into the kitchen, the living room, where everything was as it had been for almost ten years, the same posters on the walls, the same rugs on the floor, the same goddamn red armchairs, and yet not like that at all, not like it was in the beginning, when there were just the two of us against the world, just she and I, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand,
there is just you and me
, we said to each other,
just you and me
, we said. But something had happened, nothing hung together any more, all things had spaces, had distances between them, like
satellites, attracted to and pushed away at the same instant, and it would take immense willpower to cross those spaces, those distances, much more than I had available, much more than I had the courage to use. And nothing was like it had been inside the car either, driving through three or four districts in Romerike, in eastern Norway, east of Oslo. There the car was wrapped around me, but up here, in the flat, things fell out of focus and spun off to all sides. It was like a virus on the balance nerve. I closed my eyes to true up the world, and then I heard the bathroom door open and her footsteps across the floor. I would have known them anywhere on earth, on any surface, and she stopped right in front of me. I could hear her breath, but not close enough to feel it on my face. She waited. I waited. In one of the bedrooms the girls were laughing out loud. There was something about her breath. It was never like that before. I kept my eyes closed, I squeezed them tightly shut. And then I heard her sigh.

‘For Christ’s sake, Arvid,’ she said. ‘Please stop that. It’s so childish.’

But I did not want to open my eyes. It was all so clear to see. She did not like me any more. She did not want me.

‘Your brother called,’ she said. ‘I think it was important.’

She stood there for a moment, then she turned and went back into the bathroom. I slowly opened my eyes and watched her back disappear. I rubbed the top of my chest with my hand.

4

W
hen one of my brothers told me that my mother had gone straight to Denmark the moment she learned that she was ill, that they had not managed to speak to her in earnest before she left, to talk to her properly, to offer her the appropriate words of comfort, I made a quick decision and a quick telephone call, and precisely two days after her arrival, I, too, reached the North Jutland port early in the morning on the old and unfairly maligned ferry, the
Holger Danske
. I had overslept, I had missed breakfast in the cafeteria and a woman was standing outside banging the door to my cabin.

‘We’ve docked,’ she shouted, ‘we’ve docked already! Get yourself up!’ she shouted, and banged the door, and for a moment I wondered if she was one of those women I had made friends with in the bar the night before.

The small bar had been jam-packed when yesterday evening was slowly sliding into damp night, and most of them were men in that bar, but a few women were there too, though not so many as there would have been today, and I had talked at length with several of them. I thought they were pretty.

It was a tight squeeze for anyone wanting to drink.
Those of us who badly wanted to were crammed together as we carefully held our cigarettes between the fingers of one hand while holding a beer or a double whisky tight to our chest with the other, manoeuvring the glass very slowly up past the shirt collar and chin to swallow every precious drop.

There was a man there I did not like. I did not like his face when he looked at me. It was as if he knew something about my person that I myself was not aware of, which for him was clear as day, as if I were standing there naked, with no control over what he saw, nor could I see in his eyes what he saw in mine. But what he saw and what he
knew
made him feel superior to me and, in some strange way, I felt he had a right to. It could not be true, I had never seen him before, I was certain of that, he didn’t know anything about my life. But his gaze seemed all-knowing and patronising each time he turned in my direction and he often did. It made me uneasy, I could not concentrate, and once when he shoved past me on his way to the gents or perhaps down to his cabin to fetch something he might have left down there, he barged into my shoulder in a way I found provocative. Some of the beer in my glass sloshed over the shirt I had bought only days before and considered pretty smart. I was convinced he had bumped into me on purpose and it made me feel threatened. In fact I feared for my life, I don’t know why, but I got scared. I put down my beer on the bar and left.

First I made for the deck to clear my head, and it was dark there along the railing when I pushed open the heavy door and stepped outside. Lifeboats were hanging like
Zeppelins above me in the vanishing light from the corridor I had left, and behind me the door slammed shut with an ominous bang. I could hear the sound of the sea and the wind sweeping along the ferry as she made her way through the waves. They were not tall, but nor was it calm; it was November and cold. The
Holger Danske
listed gently from side to side in the black night, where only the white spume on the crests of the waves near to the ship could be seen and the glow of my cigarette. It tasted vile. I thought maybe I was going to throw up, but the power of the sea was not stronger than my body could handle so I flicked the cigarette across the railing, out into the wind, and it hit the hull, and burst into sparks before it was lost in the dark. I stepped carefully back until I felt the cold wall touch my shoulder and I leaned against it and stood there staring until my eyes got used to the dark. I felt better. We had passed Færder Lighthouse, there was open sea to both sides, and the sea, it was like an old friend, and then it suddenly struck me that the man from the bar might come out here, and if he did, I was done for. He was bigger than me and could easily have thrown me overboard if he felt like it and then I would be gone for ever and no one would know exactly where. The thought grew so powerful I had to leave the deck though many times I have stood like that in the night, looking out over the sea: there is a calm there to be found which at times I have badly needed.

With some effort I managed to open the heavy door that the wind pushed hard against its frame, and I walked along the corridor and down the stairs to my cabin.

I had barely sat down on the bed to take off my shoes
when there was a loud knock on the door. For a moment there, I literally froze with fear. I slowly stood up. I didn’t know what to do. I stood listening and there was a second knock, a sharp, dry sound, and then I suddenly knew exactly what to do. I clenched my right fist hard and walked the few steps to the door, tore it open and lashed out. The corridor was dim, and I could not see his face, in fact I could not see a damn thing, but I hit him on the jaw, right below the ear, I could feel it on my hand and he crashed into the opposite wall. More from the shock than the force of my blow, I guessed. But as I slammed the door shut and quickly double-locked it, I felt a stinging pain in my knuckles. I stood there, listening, holding my breath, but there was no sound from the corridor, and I stood there a bit longer, but it was still quiet, and I lay down on my bed and kept listening until I could not stay awake any longer and I fell asleep and in the early morning a woman was banging on my door:

‘We’ve docked, we’ve docked already! Get yourself up!’ And it seemed as if what had happened only a few hours earlier had taken place in a dream I was already starting to forget. But my hand was still sore and I could barely open it or clench it.

Now I was walking across the quay, shivering a little in the wind. I felt sick. I felt dizzy. I had my old reefer jacket on and a bag, that looked like a sailor’s bag, slung over my shoulder and I walked up the winding Lodsgade, with all its memories, past Bar Sinatra, which was called the Ferry Inn when I was little.

I stopped outside the window of a small off-licence right next to what used to be the Palace Theatre on the long Danmarksgade. I often went to the Palace when I was a boy, my mother and I watched
Mutiny on the Bounty
there, with Marlon Brando starring as Fletcher Christian. She was a big fan of Brando, his sulky acting style, inarticulate and yet so clear, and she also loved the young Paul Newman in
The Hustler
, they both had something extra, some explosive quality, she said, whereas James Dean was all right. She did not really like James Dean, he was too whiny, too immature, he was spineless, she thought, and would quickly be forgotten. Montgomery Clift was undeniably the greatest; in
From Here to Eternity
, in
The Misfits:
his vulnerability, his eyes, his dignity.

The off-licence had not opened yet and I really had no need for the goods on its shelves, not after my night on the ferry, but I glanced at it anyway and then the sight of three bottles on display in the window made me stop, three different bottles containing the French spirit, Calvados, of three different qualities then, I assumed, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had never tasted Calvados. I decided that I could afford to buy the middle one, which would be good enough for me, if I
walked
to the summer house rather than take a taxi as I had intended to. I did have a car of my own, but just now it was in a garage in Norway with a broken drive shaft, and for all I knew it had already been repaired, but I had not got around to picking it up yet. So, at home, I walked or took the bus whenever I needed to go somewhere. That suited me well, for I could sleep on the bus, and I did. A lot. I slept as much as I could. There was
nothing I liked better. But I was here now, and I really wanted one of those bottles of Calvados, and then I would have to walk. That’s the way I am.

I did not feel like walking, I was tired, I could not remember the last time I was that tired, I was so tired it almost felt good and I weighed up the pros and cons and waited ten minutes for the shop to open its door, and went inside to buy the bottle in the middle and it was handed to me in a brown paper bag. A bit like they do in the movies, I thought, because I am Norwegian and in Norway we never get our liquor in brown paper bags and I liked the feeling of being in a film. I could be a man in a film. The walk to the summer house would be easier, if I was a man in a film.

Years before we had talked at length about Calvados, my mother and I, when she had urged me to read
Arch of Triumph
by Erich Maria Remarque.

‘It’s a good book,’ she said, ‘a bit sentimental perhaps, but you’re the right age for it,’ she said, and I was still not twenty and did not even take offence because I was not entirely sure what sentimental meant, not really, and did not realise that perhaps it was a slighting remark to make; that something was sentimental yet at the same time right for a young man not yet twenty. But that was not what she meant at all, it was not how she thought of me, she was merely stating the fact that I might benefit from reading it, and I did, too, benefit from that book, it was bull’s eye, young as I was. We said to each other, my mother and I,
wouldn’t it be great one day to taste this liquor; a liquid that for me turned into the true magic potion, a golden nectar flowing through Remarque’s novel and on in multiple streams, acquiring a strange, powerful significance and that, of course, because it was unobtainable, because they only sold one single brand at the state monopoly and it was way beyond my means. But in
Arch of Triumph
they were forever ordering Calvados, Boris and Ravic, the two friends in the book who were refugees from Stalin and Hitler respectively, in Paris in the years before the German occupation, and it was Armageddon then, on all fronts, both back and forth in time, and the conversations they had about life left the same bitter taste in my mouth as singing the hymn, which goes:
Thank you for memories, thank you for hope, thank you Oh Lord for the bitter gift of pain
, which in fact I did at a funeral not long ago. Sing that hymn.