It's Fine By Me (3 page)

I am seriously late now and pick up the pace and stop greeting people. The road narrows, the last houses are at the edge of Dumpa, where Condom Creek flows through, and on the other side, the ground rises in a steep arch up to the women’s prison at the top. Heavy and sombre, it faces Groruddalen valley and the ribbon of morning light that’s
stealing in over Furuset, and only a solitary lamp burns in the prison courtyard. It seems cold, the light, and I go cold myself, for the mere thought of so many women locked in behind those thick walls is painful, and I wonder what they recall when they wake up in the morning, what they speak about over dinner, what they think about when they go to bed at night. I picture people in chains, and know it’s not like that, but what do they see when they look out the windows?

Fru Karlsen is standing on the steps as I come round the corner to the very last house. She is smiling and I know she has been waiting for me. She often does. She is holding an envelope in her hand, and when I pass her the newspaper she puts the envelope in my jacket pocket and says: ‘I was away for your birthday, you know, but better late than never. Many happy returns.’

I didn’t know she had been away, but she has found out when my birthday is and made a point of remembering it and now she is giving me a present. It feels awkward. Only my mother gives me birthday presents and that’s the way it’s always been. And then this lady. She smells nice. She can’t be a day over forty, she’s good-looking, too. I feel my pulse racing, and the words I was going to say fall back into my mouth and are gone. But she smiles and has a good look at my checked trousers and my hair and smiles even more and then she strokes my cheek before she closes the door. My cheek burns and I am not able to say thank you, or anything else for that matter, just stand there looking at the door where it says
Karlsen
. I know she has a husband, but I have never seen him. He is probably an idiot. The heat from my face spreads down my neck to my chest.

I open the envelope and there is a hundred-kroner note inside. Hell, a hundred kroner, that’s too much. My legs start to itch, I have to get out of here. I dare not turn round. She might be standing behind the curtains watching, maybe expecting some sign from me.

Grevlingveien is a dead end street, but a footpath at the end leads up to Trondhjemsveien, alongside the Metro track. I leave the barrow and walk up far enough to be out of Fru Karlsen’s sight and lean against the wire mesh fence by the path, take the tobacco from my jacket, roll a cigarette and light it. Behind the fence the hill rises sharply, and there is a white house on the top where the prison governor lives, and the fields beneath have always had that smell of burnt withered grass in the spring. Now they smell of damp and mould. I shudder and take a deep drag and after a while I feel better. But a hundred kroner, that’s not good.

I finish my cigarette and kill it with my shoe on the gravel, shoot a glance up towards Trondhjemsveien before I have to go back down, and there he is. There are maybe thirty metres between us, and I have not seen him for five years. But I know him at once. The black hair, the snappy black suit he seems to have slept in, the nondescript grey shirt without a tie. His suntanned neck and grey stubble; the unnaturally blue eyes I can’t make out just now, but I know they’re looking at me without even blinking. I cannot move, and he is standing stock still. I try to think, but nothing comes to mind, and he takes two steps down the footpath, and then I shout:

‘STOP!’ He stops, grabs the straps of his rucksack and waits. He is so dark, and as slim as a blade and not like
anything else. Behind him, I can see the high-rises in Rødtvet and behind them just the forest and more forest and I know that’s where he has come from. Had I been standing close to him now, I would have caught the smell of bonfire and pine trees and tobacco, and something more that could only be him. But I’m not standing close, and he scratches his chin, shakes his head, and I realise he hasn’t recognised me until now. That’s no surprise. I am much taller than when I was thirteen, I wear different clothes and my hair is different. He raises his hand as if to salute me, like an Indian would, and walks on a few paces, and I’m almost certain he’s smiling.

‘NOT ONE MORE STEP!’ I shout. ‘WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE? GO AWAY!’ I raise my clenched fists, and my body tells me I am stronger than him. He stops, resting his hands on his hips and tips his head to the side in a pose I know so well, and it always unsettled me, which is what it’s supposed to do. I stand with my fists in the air, and maybe he too feels unsettled. At any rate he turns and heads back for the main road, and I stay there until I am certain he has gone, and only then do I hurry down, back to the houses. I’m just a few steps along the footpath when I hear his laughter, and it makes my blood run cold. I cannot restrain myself and break into a run.

3

I CROSS TRONDHJEMSVEIEN,
walk past the church at Grorud and down the hills. I took the Metro today, I didn’t want to walk the whole way, I couldn’t do it. I sat all the way up looking straight ahead of me. My neck is aching, and still it’s a long walk. Something growing in my chest makes me short of breath, forcing me to swallow again and again, but it doesn’t help. I gaze into the cemetery where Egil is buried. It’s hard to walk past without stopping, but when I do, I don’t know what to think about him being dead. Like I always do, I stand there with my mind going blank and a wave of heat rushing up from my legs. I walk down the hill and it’s as if someone is staring at me from behind.

I have changed my checked flares for regular Wranglers. I didn’t have to, but still, it’s a relief.

I come down the hill on to the brow and the narrow valley opens up and branches off onto Østre Aker vei, and just ahead of me is the yellow school building right by Grorud railway station and Grorud ironware factory barely visible behind the hillock to the left. On the other side of the railway line, there are the star-shaped houses where many of my classmates live: May Brit, Bente and Bente and Henrik. Their fathers are train drivers, or something else to do with the railway, and they all know each other. The school is at the bottom of the valley, and, to the left, beneath
the cliff, the teachers live in their terraced houses, and a few writers too: Tor Obrestad, Einar Økland and Paal-Helge Haugen. Like birds on a wire, they sit in their windows looking up to the sky with the sun on their faces, holding on to the secret, and I envy them so furiously it makes my legs tremble. I have Haugen’s
Anne
in my rucksack. It’s like nothing else. So far, Gorky has been my hero,
My Childhood
the book above books, but Anne is lying there, in the book, seeing herself and the world through a haze of fever, and I can’t get her out of my head, it makes me think about when I was thirteen, in bed with yellow fever in a house I hated more than anything else.

There is a cold wind blowing through Groruddalen, a constant blast of air all the way from the sea right up to Gjelleråsen Ridge, sweeping along Trondhjemsveien, chilling Østre Aker vei, and even the toughest boy wears a cap in winter to keep his ears from freezing to glass. It’s still only October, but I am shivering where I stand looking almost right down into the schoolyard. The flag is flying though I can’t imagine why. A gust of wind comes and unfurls it and I laugh out loud because the flag is red and blue with a large yellow star in the centre, it’s a rebel flag, it gives me a jolt just to see it there, and from where I am standing it’s clear that the halyard has been cut. If they want the flag taken down, they’ll have to climb the pole first. I hurry down the last hill.

Down in the schoolyard, I see Arvid standing alone in the corner between the gymnasium and the slope Fru Haugen usually comes tripping down, her red hair on fire by the trees on the way to her music lessons. Arvid’s
leaning against the wall, smoking and looking at the flagpole and the NLF colours flying. It is beautiful and unsettling at the same time; he smiles, a little cautiously, it seems, stubs out the cigarette and comes up to me. We are both late for different reasons, almost everyone has gone in for the first lesson and there are no teachers around. Together we walk to the hall with our bags over our shoulders.

‘OK then,’ I say, ‘that’s what you had to do?’

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘and now I guess there will be trouble.’

‘Did you expect anything else?’

‘Hell, no.’

And trouble there is. We have history with Wollebæk. After half an hour Arvid and Bente have tangled him in a long debate about imperialism and India’s development after Gandhi and then there is a knock at the door and in comes the headmaster. He reads out two names. They get to their feet and go with him. The two are Arvid and Henrik. When the bell rings they still haven’t returned, but outside, on the steps, we see them standing by the flagpole arguing with the headmaster. He wants them to climb up the pole to bring down the flag. They refuse. Students come streaming out and stand around them in a circle. The yard is packed, the headmaster waving with his hands, he’s warning them. Arvid and Henrik turn their back on him. Many Young Conservatives shout
Boo!
And the Young Socialists shout
Victory To The NLF!
but everyone else is just waiting to see what will happen. The headmaster turns to the crowd and starts to speak about 1814 and the founding fathers at Eidsvoll and the WAR and those who fought in
it and what they would think if they saw foreign colours flying from a Norwegian flagpole. He waves his finger like a demagogue and stabs his points home, but his voice is unimpressive, it cracks on the high note, and those standing close to him, they grin and cover their mouths with their hands, and some at the back of the crowd jeer loudly, and Arvid turns and shouts:

‘But goddamnit, there is a difference, isn’t there! That flag,’ he shouts, pointing to the top of the pole, ‘is goddamnit the flag of an occupied country, just like we were! And the occupier is goddamnit the United States of America, that you’re so happy to have bossing the Norwegian foreign policy through NATO!’ The Young Conservatives howl as if possessed, they stamp their yachting shoes, jump up and down in their blue blazers and the headmaster’s face goes blotchy. I am still standing on the steps looking over the heads in front of me, and what I see is Simen Bjørnsen, the head of the school’s Young Conservatives, the Boy Scout, the great sportsman, on his way up the flagpole. He climbs like a monkey, he’s a
natural
, and before anyone has really taken it in, he is halfway up. The schoolyard explodes, it’s worse than on sports day, and as Simen slaps his hand on the top, unties the flag and lets it sail over the playground red and blue and yellow, and really, I don’t give a damn about this. I guess it’s all very important, but I am up to my neck in my own troubles, and it almost makes me throw up.

The crowd disperses and Arvid comes plodding after the headmaster towards his office. He looks defiant and lonely as he passes, and I pat him on the shoulder. He turns and looks into my eyes, but doesn’t see there what he is looking
for, for he doesn’t even try to smile, just walks behind the headmaster with Henrik at his heels, and I don’t see him again that day.

Neither do I see him the next day, and when I get home from school I give him a call, and his mother tells me he has been expelled for a week. Two days for the flag and three days for swearing at the headmaster. And also, his conduct grade has fallen a notch, and if he behaves like this again, they won’t allow him to take his final exams. His father is in a rage, his mother tells me, though she seems quite unconcerned herself.

‘Can I talk to him?’

‘He’s out walking.’

‘Oh, is he. Where, then?’

‘I have no idea. I guess it’s me who should be asking you. Where do you two usually go?’

I know, of course, but I’m not telling her.

‘Don’t ask. I’ll find him. Bye.’

I get dressed and go out and along the Sing-Sing balcony that runs along the third floor. What I really should have been doing is the afternoon round with
Aftenposten
, but I said I couldn’t do it any more. It was too much, I didn’t get my homework done. And, to tell the truth, I was fed up with it. At school I’m exhausted because I get up well before dawn, and so I sit there at my desk knowing I have to go out again as soon as I get home. It’s one thing delivering papers before people get up in the morning, another being on display when everybody’s outside doing whatever or
sitting by the window, watching me with some hilarious remark up their sleeve.

I walk past the Metro station, up along Veitvetveien to Trondhjemsveien and through the underpass and then zigzag up between the blocks in Slettaløkka. At the top, before the forest, is the fenced-off area of the Nike missile battalion with the tall lookout tower and the big iron gate and the sentry box. Today, the gate is open, but there is no guard. That’s fine with me, I didn’t plan to sneak in anyway.

The path into the forest starts just beyond the football pitch that the soldiers and local people share, and to the right are the cracked-up foundations of an old smallholding owned by the Linderud estate. The house was still standing when I moved here. I remember grey smoke from the chimney, snowflakes melting on the roof and a face in the shadows behind the window. She must be dead now. Below is the horse field. It slopes sharply down and rises again to the edge of the forest. Inside it is a clearing, and inside the clearing is a huge rock. It’s twenty metres long and ten metres wide and shaped like a fortress it’s easy to defend against enemy attacks, and then there are hollows where you can hide if there’s an invasion and several secret passages out if you need to escape. I just caught the last wars before I got too old for that kind of thing, but Arvid grew up among these rocks, and this is where he goes when he wants to be alone. I walk across the meadow, there is only one horse, it’s brown with white socks, it’s just a horse, nothing special. On my way up I see him on the top of the rock with a book in his hand and a cigarette between his lips. Even from a distance, I can see it clearly in the corner
of his mouth, and he takes it out and blows smoke above the book, and the smoke curls in the autumn air, and it seems odd, like something I have seen in a film, and he stands up and watches me as I walk across the field.