My Struggle: Book 3 (41 page)

I started undoing the boot with a sock in it.

He didn’t show any sign of wanting to leave.

I pulled the boot off and placed it by the wall.

Looked up at him.

“What is it?” he said.

“Nothing,” I said.

My heart was pounding in my ears. Getting up and walking with one boot on across the floor was obviously not an option. Standing still and waiting for him to leave was not an option, either, because he wasn’t going anywhere.

Slowly I began to untie my laces. While doing so I had a brainwave. I unwound my scarf, placed it beside my boot, and, after undoing the laces, I pulled it off, took the scarf, and casually tried to cover my naked foot.

Then, with the scarf half-covering my foot, I stood up.

“Where’s your sock?” Dad said.

I looked down at my foot. Glanced at him.

“I couldn’t find it,” I said, my eyes downcast again.

“Have you
lost
it?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

The next instant he was up close to me, grabbing my arms in an iron grip and pinning me to the wall.

“Have you LOST your sock?”

“Yes!” I shouted.

He shook me. Then let me go.

“How old are you now? And how much money do you think we’ve got? Do you think we can afford to lose items of clothing?”

“No,” I said to the floor, my eyes full of tears. He held my ear and twisted it.

“You little brat!” he said. “Keep an eye on your things!”

“OK,” I said.

“You can’t go to the swimming pool anymore. Is that understood?”

“Eh?”

“YOU CAN’T GO TO THE SWIMMING POOL ANYMORE!” he said.

“But …,” I sobbed.

“NO IFS OR BUTS!”

He let go of my ear and marched to the door. Turned to me.

“You’re not old enough. You’ve shown that tonight. You can’t go there again. This was the last time. Have you got that?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good. Go to your room. There’ll be no supper for you. You can go straight to bed.”

The following week I didn’t go swimming, but I missed it so much that the next week I acted as if nothing had happened, packed my things, and caught the bus with Geir and Dag Lothar. My fears trickled through at various points, but something inside me said I would be fine, and I was, on my return everything was as normal and so it stayed, he never said another word about my not being able to continue the class.

At the start of December, three days before my birthday and two days before Mom came home again, I was sitting on the toilet, taking a dump, when the familiar sound of Dad’s car turning and parking in the drive was not followed by the equally familiar sound of a door being opened and closed but by the door bell ringing.

What could this be?

I hurriedly wiped myself, pulled the chain, yanked up my trousers, opened the window above the bathtub, and poked my head out.

Dad was standing beneath me wearing a new anorak. On his legs he wore knee-length breeches and long, blue socks, and on his feet a pair of blue-and-white boots, all equally new.

“Come on!” he said. “We’re going skiing!”

I got dressed in a flash and went outside, where he was tying my skis and sticks to the roof rack beside a pair of brand new, long, wooden Splitkein skis.

“Did you buy some skis?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “Isn’t it great? So we can go skiing together.”

“OK,” I said. “So where are we going?”

“Let’s go to the west of the island,” he said. “To Hove.”

“Are there slopes there?”

“There? Oh yes!” he said. “They’ve got the best.”

I doubted it, but didn’t say anything, got in the car beside him, how unfamiliar he looked in his new clothes, and then we left for Hove. Not a word was said until he parked and we got out.

“Here we are!” he said.

He had driven through Hove Holiday Center, which consisted of a large number of red houses and huts originating from the last war, most probably built by the Germans, like the firing range, which, I had heard rumored, had been an airfield, like the concrete gun placements towering above the sea-smoothed rocks and the pebble beaches close to the edge of the forest, and the fascinating low bunkers among the trees, where we used to play on the roofs and in the rooms when we were here in the afternoon on 17th of May celebration days, he had driven past all this, along a narrow road into the forest, which came to an end by a small sand quarry, where he stopped and parked.

After taking the skis off the roof, he came over with a little case full of ski-waxing equipment he had also bought, and we waxed the skis with blue Swix, which, after reading the back of one of the tubes, he said had to be the best. Apparently unfamiliar with bindings, it took him a bit longer to put on his skis than it did me. Then he put his hands through the loops on the poles. But he didn’t do it from underneath so that the loop wouldn’t slip off even if he lost hold of the pole. No, he put his hands straight through.

That was how little kids who didn’t know any better held them.

It hurt me to watch, but I couldn’t say anything. Instead I took my hands out and then threaded them through again so that, if he was paying attention, he could see how it was done.

But he wasn’t watching me; he was looking up at the little ridge of hills above the sand quarry.

“Let’s get going then!” he said.

Although I had never seen him ski before, I could never have dreamed in my wildest imagination that he couldn’t ski. But he couldn’t. He didn’t glide with the skis, he walked as he normally walked, without skis, taking short, plodding steps, which on top of everything else were unsteady, which meant that every so often he had to stop and poke his poles into the snow so as not to topple over.

I thought perhaps this was just the beginning and soon he would find his rhythm and glide as he should glide along the piste. But when we reached the ridge, where the sea was visible between the trees, gray with frothy white-flecked waves, and started to follow the ski tracks he was still walking in the same way.

Occasionally he would turn and smile at me.

I felt so sorry for him I could have shouted out aloud as I skied.

Poor Dad. Poor, poor Dad.

At the same time I was embarrassed, my own father couldn’t ski, and I stayed some distance behind him so that potential passers-by wouldn’t associate me with him. He was just someone out ahead, a tourist, I was on my own, this was where I came from, I knew how to ski.

The piste wound back into the forest, but if the view of the sea was gone its sounds lingered between the trees, rising and falling, and the aroma of salt water and rotten seaweed was everywhere, it blended with the forest’s other faintly wintry smells, of which the snow’s curious mixture of raw and gentle was perhaps the most obvious.

He stopped and hung on his ski poles. I came alongside him. A ship was moving on the horizon. The sky above us was light gray. A pale, grayish-yellow glow above the two lighthouses on Torungen revealed where the sun was.

He looked at me.

“Skis running well?” he said.

“Pretty well,” I said. “How about you?”

“Yes,” he said. “Let’s go on, shall we? It’ll soon be time to head home. We have to make dinner as well. So, away you go!”

“Don’t you want to go first?”

“No, you head off. I’ll follow.”

The new arrangement turned everything in my head upside down. If he was behind me he would see how I, someone who knew how to ski, skied and realize how clumsy his own style was. I saw every single pole plant through his eyes. They cut through my consciousness like knives. After very few meters I slowed down, I began to ski in a slower, more staccato style, not unlike his, just not as clumsy, so that he would understand what I was doing, and that was even worse. Beneath us, the white, frothy breakers washed lazily onto the pebble beach. On the rocks, in some places, the wind whirled snow into the air. A seagull floated past, its wings unmoving. We were approaching the car, and on the last little slope I had an idea, I changed the tempo, and went as fast as I could for a few meters, then pretended to lose balance and threw myself into the snow beside the piste. I got up as quickly as possible and was brushing my trousers down as he whistled past.

“It’s all about staying on your feet,” he said.

We drove home in silence, and I was relieved when we finally turned into our drive and the skiing trip was definitively over.

Standing in the hall and taking off our skiing gear, we didn’t say anything, either. But then, as he opened the door to the staircase, he turned to me.

“Come and keep me company while I’m cooking,” he said.

I nodded and followed him up.

In the living room he stopped and looked at the wall.

“What on earth …,” he said. “Have you noticed this before?”

I had forgotten all about the streak of orange juice. My surprise as I shook my head must have had a dash of authenticity about it because his attention wandered as he bent down and ran his finger over the thin line of orange. Even his imagination would hardly stretch far enough to guess it was caused by my flinging an orange at the floor just there, on the landing outside the kitchen.

He straightened up and walked into the kitchen, I sat down on the stool as usual, he took a packet of pollock from the fridge, placed it on the counter, fetched flour, salt, and pepper from the cupboard, sprinkled them on a plate, and began to turn the soft, slippery fillets in the mixture.

“Tomorrow after school we’ll go to Arendal and buy you a birthday present,” he said without looking at me.

“Shall I go with you? Isn’t it supposed to be a secret?” I said.

“Well, you know what you want, don’t you?” he said. “Soccer uniform, right?”

“Yes.”

“You can try it on and then we’ll know if it fits,” he said, pushing a knob of butter from the knife into the frying pan with his finger.

What I wanted was Liverpool colors. But when we went to the Intersport shop they didn’t have Liverpool uniforms on the stand.

“Can’t we ask one of the people working here? Perhaps they’ve got some in stock?”

“If it’s not hanging up, they haven’t got it,” Dad said. “Take one of the others.”

“But I support Liverpool.”

“Take Everton then,” he said. “It’s the same town.”

I looked at the Everton shirt. Blue with white shorts. Umbro.

I looked at Dad. He seemed impatient, his eyes were wandering.

I put on the shirt over my sweater and held the shorts in front of me.

“Well, it looks good,” I said.

“Let’s take it then,” Dad said, grabbing the shirt and shorts and going to pay. They wrapped them up while he counted the notes in his fat wallet, combed his hair back with his hand, and looked into the street outside, which was crowded with shoppers, now, three weeks before Christmas.

On my birthday I woke up very early. The parcel containing the soccer uniform was in my wardrobe. I couldn’t wait to try it on. Tore off the paper, took out the outfit, pressed it against my nose, was there any better smell than new clothes? I put on the glistening shorts, then the shirt, which was rougher, a bit uneven against your skin, and the white socks. Then I went into the bathroom to look at myself.

Turned from side to side.

It looked good.

It wasn’t Liverpool, but it looked good, and they were from the same city.

Suddenly Dad swung open the bathroom door.

“What are you up to, boy?” he said.

He eyed me.

“Have you opened your present?” he shouted. “On your own?”

He grabbed my arm and hauled me into my bedroom.

“Now you wrap it up again!” he said. “NOW!”

I cried and took off the uniform, tried to fold it as well as I could, placed it in the paper, and stuck it together with a bit of the tape that was still sticky.

Dad oversaw everything. As soon as I had finished, he snatched the parcel out of my hands and left.

“Actually I should have taken it from you,” he said. “But now I’ll keep it until we give you the rest of your presents. It is your birthday, after all.”

As I knew what I was getting and I had even tried the uniform on in the shop, I had been sure it was the
day
that was important and that on the
day
I could wear it. I hadn’t seen it as one of the presents I would be given when we ate the birthday cake in the afternoon. It was impossible to make him understand. But I was right, he wasn’t. The uniform was mine when all was said and done! On that day it became mine!

I lay in bed crying until the others got up. Mom was in high spirits and wished me a happy birthday when I went into the kitchen, she had baked fresh rolls the evening before, which she was warming up in the oven, and she was boiling some eggs, but I didn’t care, my hatred for Dad cast a cloud over everything.

In the afternoon we ate cake and drank pop. I had never been allowed to invite friends on my birthday, and nor was I on this one. I was sullen and surly, I ate the cake without a word, and when Dad put the presents in front of me, with a smile that showed no insight into what had happened that morning, as though it
were
possible to start afresh, I looked down and unwrapped the Everton uniform without showing any sign of pleasure.

“How nice,” Mom said. “Are you going to try it on?”

“No,” I said. “I tried it on in the shop. Fits perfectly.”

“Put it on,” Dad said. “So Mom and Yngve can see.”

“No,” I said.

He eyed me.

I took the uniform to the bathroom, changed, and went back in.

“Excellent,” Dad said. “I bet you’ll be the coolest on the field this winter.”

“Can I take it off now?” I said.

“Wait till we’ve finished with the presents,” Dad said. “Here’s one from me.”

He passed me a small, square packet that
had
to be a cassette.

I opened it.

It was the new Wings cassette.
Back to the Egg.

I looked at him. He looked out of the window.

“Do you like it?” he said.

“Oh yes,” I said. “It’s the new Wings cassette! I’ll play it now!”

“Hang on a moment,” he said. “You’ve got a couple of presents left.”