My Struggle: Book 3 (42 page)

“Here’s a tiny one from me,” Mom said.

It was big but light. What could it be?

“Just something for your room,” she said.

I unwrapped it. It was a stool. Four wooden legs and a kind of net seat between them.

“What a great stool,” Yngve said.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said. “It’ll be good for when I read!”

“And here’s one from me,” Yngve said.

“Really?” I said. “I wonder what you’ve come up with this time?”

It was a book on how to play the guitar.

I looked at him with moist eyes.

“Thank you very much,” I said.

“It’s got scales, solos, everything,” he said. “Very simple. There’s a black dot for where you have to press. Even you can follow that.”

For the rest of the day I listened to
Back to the Egg.

Yngve came in and said that John Bonham, the drummer in Led Zeppelin, was on one of the songs. And he had read in the newspaper that a Norwegian priest spoke at the beginning of one of the songs. It had to be at the start of the LP, we figured out, “Reception,” where there was a recording off the radio.

“There!” Yngve said. “Play it again!”

And then I heard it, too.

“
Men la oss nå prøve et øyeblikk å se i dette lys av Det nye testamentet
,” a faint, grating old man’s voice said.

The thought that neither Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney, Denny Laine, Steve Holly, nor Laurence Juber had a clue what was being said there, but that Yngve and I did, as we were Norwegian, sent my senses into free fall.

As always, Dad was kind all Christmas, even in the morning. As New Year’s Eve approached and the shops finally opened for a few hours, Mom drove to Arendal to buy some food and fireworks. She must have intimated that perhaps it wasn’t necessary to spend hundreds of kroner on rockets, as Dad always did, at any rate, it was she who had the responsibility for buying fireworks while Dad kept well in the background.

It wasn’t a great success.

Dad usually showed us the rockets he had bought and said, well, this year we were going to knock Gustavsen into a cocked hat, for instance, or there were going to be a few really big bangs this year! When New Year’s Eve came we would see him standing outside on the shimmering snow astutely and meticulously arranging the launch site. With a strand of hair hanging down over his face, which his beard almost blotted out in the darkness, he would set up the clothesline in the snow and line the biggest rockets up against it, and place the others in a whole battery of bottles and hollow objects. Once the preparations had been made, he would wait until half past eleven. Then he would call us outside and the New Year was brought in with several salvoes. He started small, with a few little firecrackers or sparklers that Yngve and I were allocated, and then he gradually stepped up the power until the biggest rocket was launched at twelve. Afterward he would declare that there had been lots of wonderful rockets this year but we, as usual, had had the best. That, of course, was open to debate because we were not the only ones to invest money in fireworks, Gustavsen and Karlsen did, too.

But this New Year’s Eve Dad, the King of Fireworks, had abdicated.

I pondered quite a bit on the cause. Whatever it was, I suspected that the consequences would be of major significance. No, it wasn’t a suspicion, I
knew.

When it was a few minutes after half past eleven and Mom said perhaps it was time to go out and light the rocket, my jaw dropped.

“
The
rocket?” I said. “Do we only have one? One rocket?”

“Yes,” Mom said. “Surely that’s enough? It’s a big one. They said in the shop it was the biggest and best they had.”

Dad smirked to himself. He went out after Yngve and me, stood beside us on the terrace at the back of the house where the launch was to take place.

The rocket really was big, she was right about that.

She put it in a bottle, but the bottle was too small, and both the bottle and rocket tipped over. She stood it up and looked around. Her light-colored leather coat was open, the zippers in her high boots were undone, making them seem as if they were unfolding as she moved, like two exotic plants. Around her neck she had wound her thick, rust-brown scarf.

“We could use something bigger to put this rocket in,” she said.

Dad said nothing.

“Dad normally uses the clothes horse,” Yngve said.

“That’s true!” Mom said.

The clothes horse, which was only used in the summer, was made of wood and leaned against the wall. Mom fetched it and set it up in the snow. She crouched down and positioned the rocket against it, but, seeing at once that it wouldn’t work, she stood up with the rocket in her hand. Around us fireworks were going off everywhere. The sky was lit with explosions, which we sensed rather than saw because it was overcast and misty, so of the showers of stars and all the colors and patterns not much more than flashes of light were to be seen.

“What about if you lay it on its side,” Yngve said. “Dad usually does that.”

Mom did as he suggested.

“It’s twelve o’clock now,” Dad said. “Aren’t you going to light our rocket soon?”

“Yes,” Mom said. She took a lighter from her pocket, crouched down, shielded the tiny flame with her hand, and averted her whole body, ready to run. The second the fuse was lit she dashed toward us.

“Happy New Year!” she said.

“Happy New Year,” Yngve said.

I said nothing because the rocket, which the burning fuse had reached now, sounded as if it was going to fizzle out. Then the flame died and the hiss stopped.

“Oh no,” I said. “It didn’t work! It was a dud! And we’ve only got one. Why did you buy only one? How could you do that?”

“That was New Year’s Eve then,” Dad said. “Perhaps I should be in charge of the fireworks next year?”

I had never felt so sorry for Mom as I did then, when we left the rocket and went into the warm, surrounded by neighbors’ exultant shouts and explosions. What hurt most was that she had done the best she could. She couldn’t do any better.

One afternoon two weeks later I was down by Lake Tjenna and my legs were absolutely freezing.
Framlaget,
the Socialist Party’s children’s organization, which I and almost all the other kids on the estate were in, had arranged a ski race. There were numbers on chests and medals for everyone, but above all else it was numbingly cold standing there and waiting your turn. And when my turn did come, my skis were slippery, I could never really get a decent speed going, and I finished way down the results list. As soon as I had passed the line and received my medal I set course for home. The darkness hung between the branches, the cold chafed at my toes, the skis kept slipping and sliding, I couldn’t even manage the steepest hill using the herringbone technique and had to ascend sideways. But at last the road was there with its illuminated street lamps like a luminous ribbon in the dusk, and our house was on the other side. I staggered across and into the drive, undid my skis and leaned them against the house, opened the door, and stopped.

What was that smell?

Grandma?

Was
Grandma
here?

No, out of the question, that was impossible.

Perhaps Dad had been to Kristiansand and had brought the fragrance back with him?

No, for Pete’s sake, there was someone talking in the kitchen!

I had my boots off in a flash, registered that my socks were wet, so I couldn’t walk in them, they would leave marks, and I jogged through the hall into the boiler room, where there was a fresh pair hanging from a line, put them on, strode up the stairs as fast as I dared, stopped.

The fragrance was stronger here. There was no doubt: Grandma was here.

“Is that you, champ?” Dad said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Come in here a moment!” he said.

I went into the kitchen.

There was Grandma!

I ran over and hugged her.

She laughed and ruffled my hair.

“How big you’ve grown!” she said.

“What are you doing here?” I said. “Where’s the car? Where’s Grandad?”

“I caught the bus,” she said.

“The bus?” I said.

“Yes. My son is alone with his children, I thought, so I can go and give him a bit of a hand. I’ve already made some dinner for you, as you can see.”

“How long are you staying?”

She laughed.

“Well, I’m catching the bus back tomorrow, I think. Someone has to look after Grandad as well. I can’t leave him alone for too long.”

“No,” I said, hugging her again.

“All right,” Dad said. “You go to your room for a while and I’ll call you when the food’s ready.”

“But he must have his present first,” Grandma said.

“Thank you for my Christmas present, by the way,” I said. “It was great.”

Grandma leaned forward, lifted her bag, and took out a little packet, which she passed to me.

I tore off the paper.

It was an IK Start mug.

It was white, with the Kristiansand club logo on one side and a soccer player in a yellow shirt and black shorts on the other.

“Wow, a Start mug!” I said and gave her another hug.

It was strange having Grandma there. I had hardly ever seen her without Grandad, and hardly ever on her own with Dad. They sat chatting in the kitchen; I could hear them through the door, which I had left ajar. There were intermittent pauses when one of them got up to do something. Then they chatted a bit more, Grandma laughed and told a story, and Dad mumbled. He called us, we ate, he was quite different from how he normally was, coming closer to us and distancing himself all the time. Sometimes he was completely in tune with what Grandma was saying, then he would be gone, looking elsewhere or getting up to do something, then he would look at her again and smile and make a comment that would make her laugh, and then he was gone again.

She left the following evening. She gave Yngve and me a hug, then Dad drove her to the bus station in Arendal. I put on
Rubber Soul
and lay down with a biography of Madame Curie. When the second song came,
Norwegian Wood,
I took my eyes off the book and gazed at the ceiling as the mood of the music in some incomprehensible way got into me and raised me to where it was. It was a fantastic feeling. Not only because it was beautiful, there was something else present that had nothing to do with the room I lay in or the world I was surrounded by.

Fantastic, fantastic.

Then I went on reading about Madame Curie until ten and I switched off the light. As I drifted into sleep, as whatever existed in my room was somehow diluted with images, where they came from I had no idea, but I accepted them nonetheless, the door was suddenly thrust open and the light switched on.

It was Dad.

“How many apples have you had today?” he said.

“One,” I said.

“Are you sure? Grandma said she gave you one.”

“Really?”

“But you had one after dinner, too. Do you remember?”

“Oh yes! I’d forgotten that one!” I said.

Dad switched off the light and closed the door without another word.

The next day after dinner he called me. I went into the kitchen.

“Sit down,” he said. “Here’s an apple.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He handed me an apple.

“Sit here and eat it,” he said.

I glanced up at him. He met my gaze, his eyes were serious, and I looked down, started to eat the apple. Once it was finished, he handed me another. Where had he got it from? Had he got a bag behind his back or what?

“Have another,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. “But I only eat one a day.”

“You had two yesterday, didn’t you?”

I nodded, took it, and ate it.

He handed me another.

“Here’s another,” he said. “This is your lucky day.”

“I’m full,” I said.

“Eat your apple.”

I ate it. It took me longer than the first two. The bite-sized chunks seemed to be lying on top of the food from dinner; it was as though I could feel the cold apple flesh down below.

Dad handed me another.

“I don’t want it,” I said.

“There were no limits yesterday,” he said. “Have you forgotten? You must have had two apples because you wanted them. Today you can have as many as you want. Eat.”

I shook my head.

He leaned down. His eyes were cold.

“Eat your apple. Now.”

I started eating. Whenever I swallowed my stomach contracted and I had to swallow several times not to throw up.

He was standing behind me, there was no way I could trick him. I cried and swallowed, swallowed and cried. In the end, I couldn’t go on.

“I’m so full!” I said. “I simply can’t eat any more!”

“Eat up,” Dad said. “You like apples so much.”

I tried a couple more bites, but it was no good.

“I can’t,” I said.

He looked at me. Then he took the half-eaten apple and threw it in the trash can in the cupboard under the sink.

“You can go to your room,” he said. “Now I hope that has taught you a lesson.”

Inside my room there was only one thing I longed for, and that was to grow up. To have total control over my own life. I hated Dad, but I was in his hands, I couldn’t escape his power. It was impossible to exact my revenge on him. Except in the much-acclaimed mind and imagination, there I was able to crush him. I could grow there, outgrow him, place my hands on his cheeks, and squeeze until his lips formed the stupid pout he made to imitate me, because of my protruding teeth. There, I could punch him in the nose so hard that it broke and blood streamed from it. Or, even better, so that the bone was forced back into his brain and he died. I could hurl him against the wall or throw him down the stairs. I could grab him by the neck and smash his face against the table. That was how I could think, but the instant I was in the same room as he was, everything crumbled, he was my father, a grown man, so much bigger than me that everything had to bend to his will. He bent my will as if it were nothing.