It's Fine By Me (12 page)

I had plenty to read. All newspapers and magazines for the kiosks and the shops were dropped off at the news-stand beside the station, and at the crack of dawn I sneaked over and took the top copies out from under the string of the bound packs, and hoped that the number of copies was on the safe side. I read the left-wing
Arbeiderbladet
, the farmers’
Nationen
, and
Texas
and
Cowboy
, and
Travnytt
, for trotting news. I kept well away from
Romantikk
. When Kari read that magazine, she had a look on her face that made my toes curl.

But mostly I slept. My grandfather used to say you could sleep in your grave. It was something you had to earn, like a legacy, when it was all over. In that case I was taking out an advance on this legacy and withdrew as much as I could, but on the fifth day I woke up and felt good, on top form and all of a sudden very restless. I rolled up the sleeping bag and sneaked over to the tap behind the station, cleaned my teeth and washed my face. The air was chill, the sky overcast and breathing was easy. And yet, in my stomach there was a void that would not go away even after two
slices of bread with peanut butter. I took a sweater from my rucksack, put on my sunglasses and started to walk along the silent road by the shops and the railway line, round the long bend and up between the fields by the chapel to the place where our house was. The dew lay shining on everything in sight and made the landscape look moist and grey, and for the first time in a long while, the yellow burning feeling was gone. There was a new shade of green, but my sunglasses made that, and I was used to it.

Not far from home, I rounded a meadow, walked along a rusty barbed wire fence and approached the house from the back. You could take the usual path, but then they could see you from the kitchen window a hundred metres away. I took cover behind a birch tree on the opposite side of the road from our house and stood watching. It couldn’t have been later than six. My mother came out of the door with Egil in tow. He was tired and heavy and listless, but she gave him a firm push and closed the door. She didn’t lock it, though, so Kari must still have been at home. If I hadn’t been standing behind the tree, they would have spotted me; they might have done that anyway, because the birch was not a big birch, but they were in a hurry and just looked straight ahead and rushed down to the main road to catch the Gardermoen bus.

I didn’t move. The house looked different. It was still the same, but it was no longer my house, it seemed more distant, as if behind a wall of coloured glass, and I could not go there, because I was on a fishing holiday with Frank by Lake Aurtjern. If Kari hadn’t been at home, I could have walked over to the window and looked inside, and there
was a good chance that what I saw inside would have been something very different from what I remembered was there just a week ago. But really, it wasn’t easy to remember anything, my mind went blank at once, and suddenly my legs began to tremble. It felt as if they could not carry me any longer, so I put my arms around the tree. There was not a breath of wind, but the thin birch was shaking so much, the leaves above me were clattering, and I made up my mind, took a deep breath and set off towards the house on my trembling legs. Then there was the roar of an engine. I turned and looked towards the bus stop. A tractor turned off the main road. It swayed from side to side and slowly came towards me, and then I ran back and hid behind the tree. We were old friends, the tree and I, we were a team. I patted its trunk and stared at the tractor. There was something familiar about the man in the cabin. The left-hand door was missing, and when the tractor came close enough, I could see in, and there sat Kjell from Kløfta. He was one of my father’s drinking pals. He was steering with his left hand, in his right he held a green bottle, and after every mouthful he grinned and toasted the shovel that was as high up as it could go and was dangling there, bulky and mud-streaked. A hand stuck out from one side and a black-trousered leg from the other. The foot had no shoe, only the sock emerged, and from where I was standing, it was easy to see that it was not a clean sock. Besides, I had seen it before.

Kjell was almost level with the birch now, above the roar of the engine I could hear him singing Alf Prøysen’s
Tango for Two
, and then he turned in to the gate. It was closed,
but either he didn’t see it, or he couldn’t care less, and I heard how the thin, white boards were crushed under the wheels before he took another turn up to the house, lowered the shovel and emptied my father on to the flagstones by the steps.

Kjell put the tractor into neutral, the roar of the engine fell an octave, but it was still as fierce, and with the bottle in his hand he clambered down and went over to the black-clad bundle on the flagstones. He poked my father with his foot, but my father did not stir. Kjell grinned, shrugged, and then he stooped and lifted my father’s arm and wrapped it round the bottle so that the green neck stuck up by his cheek, like a baby’s feeding bottle. Then he climbed back in, reversed and missed the opening he had already made in the fence and took another chunk of it with him. I stayed where I was until I saw him enter the main road, then warily I set off towards the house.

I didn’t go straight there, but stopped by the fence first and looked up at the first floor window. Maybe the tractor had woken Kari. There was no one there, and no one came to open the door. I let go of the fence and circled the house, got closer and he was lying there quite still, no arm, no leg moving, not one black hair ruffled by the wind, and it was not possible to see if he was breathing or not. I was almost certain he was dead. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t knock on the door, couldn’t go to Gardermoen to tell my mother, because I wasn’t there. For a few moments I didn’t move, and I don’t think there was a thought in my head. Then I crouched down. His face was brown and thin, and there were furrows down his cheeks and the black fringe
hanging over his forehead, the way I had always seen him. Many said my father had style, but to me he looked mean, though not right now, because his fierce blue eyes were closed, and his brow was smooth. I stretched out and touched the lapels of his jacket, felt the rough cloth on my fingertips, and then it happened. He flung himself round and grabbed my wrist and yelled a word I did not understand, he yelled ‘MARANA!’ and I jerked back and pulled at my hand, but it was too late. He was holding it so hard his knuckles turned white and the skin turned white on his fingers. The bottle fell over, I heard the liquid gurgle and run out on the flagstones as I wrestled and tugged. Whatever it was that had spilled out, it smelt strong and evil, and then I tumbled backwards right into it. I felt sticky and scared, my stomach churned, I was a turtle on its back, and I shouted:

‘Let me go, let me go!’ I slung my legs in the air, took aim and kicked my heels against his arm with all my force. He groaned and had to let go, and I got to my feet and half stumbled, half ran towards the smashed gate, jumped over the debris. and when I looked back at the house, I saw Kari up in the window. She was still in her dressing gown, she raised her arm and her eyes met mine behind my sunglasses. I stopped. I was about to point and say something, but then instead I shouted:

‘KARI!’ But it was no good. My father was on his back now with his arms stretched out, his blue eyes gleaming, and I turned and kept running, down the road and all the way to the railway station.

12

I RAN AND
the sun came out as I ran and the clouds dispersed. The grey turned yellow and green, and suddenly it was hot and sweat was running down my back, in my armpits, in my groin and behind my sunglasses, and I thought, I will take them off. But I could not face the sun, I could not stop, I just ran, thinking it was better to run, that I liked running, that I could see everything clearer then and what was behind me would stay behind.

I didn’t want to stop, and yet soon I would have to, for I had run past all the fields, past the crossroads by the chapel I had never been in, and then down the entire stretch of the road and into the streets between the houses where people came out to watch me. I saw the railway station ahead of me and people waiting on the platform to go in to work in Oslo. I ran right through the crowd, instead of skirting round them, it would take too much time, and bumped into people without paying heed. One man was shouting after me, but I did not stop to listen to what he was saying or to see who the man was, so his words were left there, hanging in the air before they fell to the ground and were gone, and I ran on along the rails until no one could see me any more and through the bushes to my cardboard house. It was still there, and I had no idea why I thought it would be gone.

I collected my things. I found the torch and the books, stuffed the blanket and clothes into my rucksack and rolled the sleeping bag into a tight bundle before strapping it in its place under the flap, and carried the whole lot to one side. In a rucksack pocket I found some matches, a big box decorated with red felt on the top and small shiny baubles the way you do in kindergarten to make your parents happy. I had made it myself and no one had ever touched it, it had been buried under some junk in a kitchen drawer. Now I was the first one to use it. I walked over to the cardboard house. It had not rained for weeks, so the cardboard was bone dry, and when I struck a match and held it close, it caught fire at once.

In the evening a bonfire can be nice and bright in the darkness, but during the day it is different. Whoosh it went, and within a few minutes the whole house was ablaze. The heat was intense, and I stepped back. When the bushes also caught fire my first thought was to run to the station and get water from the tap at the back, but there were people all around, and I had nothing to say to them. So instead I stood still watching the flames. They rose higher and higher as they spread to the bushes, and I guess they could be seen from a long way away, if anyone cared to look.

‘Kiss my arse,’ I said, and swung the rucksack on to my back. I set off, giving the station as wide a berth as possible. I waded through knee-high grass wet with dew along a path only we kids knew about, and then I was back on the main road. At the crossroads by the chapel, I didn’t go straight on as I usually would have. Instead I turned left on to a gravel road that at first was winding its way between the
green fields of barley and then through a cluster of trees and on to places I had never been to before.

I walked for most of the morning. As the hours passed by, the landscape turned hilly and rolling, and all the hollows that cut across the path I was taking never ran in the same direction. Downhill it was easy to walk, but my rucksack felt heavy as lead against the small of my back on the way up again, and I didn’t dare stop and take it off until I was certain that what I saw round about was all new to me. And yet I kept seeing familiar things: a crag, a red house, a fence that had collapsed into disrepair. The straps were gnawing the flesh off my shoulders, and I put my thumbs under them to relieve the pressure, and that worked fine for a mile or so, but then that too became painful.

The sun rose and stayed high in the sky. The air was dry in my mouth, and with each step the dust came whirling up from the gravel road. On the track behind me, I could see my footprints like two straight lines in the thick dust, and if I didn’t keep my mouth closed, the dust would crunch between my teeth. At the top of a rise I finally stopped. I really needed a drink.

I didn’t have the strength to walk one step more. I looked around me. Across the little valley ahead, on the next peak, I could just make out a yellow barn behind a grove of birch trees. It stood out, the yellow was shrill and very unusual. I had never seen a yellow barn in my life, and I thought
maybe I could get some water there. I had never been here before, so I guessed it was safe.

Briskly I set off downhill. The road curved down the slope, and I heard the river before I saw it. I walked faster even though the soles of my feet were burning as if someone had rubbed them with a grater, but I didn’t care. At the very bottom and around the bend, the river came flowing out of the green shadows between the trees and then into rapids, and the boulders whipped the water into a froth that curved under a bridge, and then the river spread, and there was a deep pool where the water gently whirled before shooting off again over wet, shiny boulders that looked like huge marbles.

That pool looked good.

To get there I had to leave the road, clamber down an incline and over a barbed wire fence. I slid down, took off my rucksack and threw it over the fence. I took a running jump, I was flying, and then I was over. I picked up the rucksack and held it in my arms the last few paces, underneath the bridge on the warm rocks and over to the still water and put it down, avoiding the cowpats. I scouted around. All I could see was a few cows. Not a soul in sight. I took off my sunglasses and all my clothes and stacked them in a pile and went naked over to the pool. I didn’t wait, I didn’t count, I just jumped in.

It was cold as hell.

Suddenly, and just like in the books, I felt a claw around my chest. I sank, I couldn’t move, the water was deep, and I felt my body starting to spin. This can’t be true, it’s too short a life, I thought, I am only thirteen, for Christ’s sake, and then I kicked for all I was worth, but the current was
strong and I was pulled into it, my body spinning like a log. I couldn’t hold my breath for much longer, and then my hand hit a rock. I took hold and crouched round what air I had left and put my feet against the rock and kicked off and suddenly there was sun and dazzling yellow foam, and I drifted on to the next rock, and it was towering above me, and I clung to it and took breath after deep breath and gazed towards the bank. I was halfway out in the river, but the bank was not that far. I could make it. The cows lay chewing and watching me, their eyes large and round like vacant mirrors. I was nothing to them. OK, I thought, and then I jumped, and again it was cold, and there was a roar in my ears, I held my head high and swam with all my might, staring at the cows that glided past all too quickly.