My Struggle: Book 3 (50 page)

“Listen now!” Yngve said.

“Yes,” I said.

“All things pass,” Yngve said when the song was over and the stylus had returned to its little rest. “All things must decay. You go to sleep; you wake up to a new day.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” I said.

“Did it help?”

“Yes, a bit. Could you play it again?”

Fortunately Mom and Dad didn’t notice that I had been crying when we were having dinner. Afterward, too restless to stay inside, I went out and as the road was empty and the children I knew best were on vacation I ambled down to the pontoons. There was a whole crowd standing around Jørn’s boat, which was brand new. Lots of people had a new boat that spring, both Geir Håkon and Kent Arne had one, a GH 10 and a With Dromedille respectively, a ten-footer as well, both with a five-horsepower Yamaha outboard motor.

I walked over to them.

“Here’s our jessie,” Jørn said as I stopped.

That word again.

They laughed, from which I concluded it wasn’t well meant.

“Hi,” I said.

Jørn started the engine after a few tugs on the cord.

“Come here, Karl Ove,” he said.

“No,” I said. “Not likely.”

“I want to show you something,” he said, looking at his little brother. “You reverse when I tell you, right.”

His little brother nodded.

“Come on,” he said, moving to the bow.

I took a few hesitant steps forward. When I was on the edge of the pontoon he threw himself around my legs.

“Reverse!” he shouted to his brother.

The boat reversed, I went into a crouch, my legs were pulled away from beneath me, I fell and was dragged over the edge because Jørn didn’t let go and the boat continued to reverse. I made a grab for the edge and clung on by my fingers. Jørn’s brother accelerated, the engine revved, and I hung there with my legs on board the boat, my body over the water, and my hands on the pontoon. I shouted to them to stop. I started to cry. The bystanders smiled and looked on calmly at what was happening.

“That’s enough!” Jørn shouted.

The whole incident had lasted maybe a minute. Jørn’s brother revved forward, Jørn let go of my legs, and I climbed up and walked off as quickly as I could, crying. The tears didn’t stop until I was up by the rock face, where I sat down in the hot, perfectly still air, saturated with aromas of the sun-warmed rocks, dry grass, and wild flowers.

I mulled over whether I should call Kajsa and ask her why she had broken up with me, so that I could learn from it for the next time, but it was too complicated, I could hear it all now, her hesitation and my groping for words, for what? It was over, she didn’t want to be with me, simple as that.

Still weak at the knees and shaking, I got up and walked home. Washed my face slowly in cold water in the bathroom, drew the curtains, didn’t want anything from outside to slip in, put on Motörhead,
Ace of Spades,
but it felt wrong, so I took it off and put on the new solo record by Paul McCartney instead and started a Desmond Bagley book I had bought with my own money called
The Vivero Letter.
I had read it before, but it was about the pyramids in South America, the enormous underwater grottos, where the protagonists dived in search of a hoard of gold others were also after …

When I sat down to have supper Mom looked at me and smiled.

“It might be time for you to start wearing a deodorant, Karl Ove?” she said. “I can buy you one tomorrow.”

“Deodorant?” I repeated stupidly.

“Yes, don’t you think so? You’ll be starting at the new school soon.”

“You do stink, in fact,” Yngve said. “No girls like that, you know.”

Was that
why
?

But when I asked Yngve about it afterward, he smiled and said he doubted it was that simple.

The next morning Dad came in and told me I couldn’t spend the whole summer in bed reading, I had to get out, what about a swim? he said.

I closed my book without a word and walked past him without a second glance.

I sat on the concrete barriers for a few minutes throwing pebbles into the road. But I couldn’t stay there, everyone would see that I had nothing to do or anyone to be with, so I trudged down toward the big cherry tree at the edge of the forest by the road, where Kristen’s field started, to see if the cherries were ripe enough to eat yet. Who owned this tree was unclear, some said it was a wild cherry, others said it belonged to Kristen, but we had still stripped it every summer since we were old enough to climb, and no one had complained so far. Knowing every branch, I climbed almost to the top and along a branch until it began to bend. The berries weren’t quite ripe yet, the skin was hard and green on one side, but the other exhibited a faint redness and that was enough for me to bite into their skins, chew and swallow, and spit the pits as far as I could afterward.

Sitting there, I saw Jørn come cycling toward me. He was holding a canister of gasoline on the luggage rack with one hand and steering with the other. When he spotted me he braked gently and stopped.

“Karl Ove!” he shouted.

I climbed down as fast as I could. It took roughly the same time to clamber down as it took him to get off his bike and come to the tree because by the time I was on the ground he was only a few meters from me. Our eyes met, then I hared off, up toward the forest.

“I only wanted to say I was sorry!” he said. “About yesterday! I heard you crying.”

I didn’t turn.

“I didn’t mean it!” he said. “Come back down, so that we can shake hands on it!”

Ha ha, I thought, and stumbled on up between thickets and bushes until I was at the top and could watch him amble back to his bike, get on, and continue on his wobbly way down to the boats. Then I went back down. But the hard, bitter cherries had lost their fascination, so I gave up on the tree, and instead wandered off in the hope that someone would appear on the road after a while. Sometimes people came out if they saw you from a window, so I went for a walk up the hill, staring into the gardens on both sides as I went. Not a soul anywhere. People were in their boats or they had driven to swimming holes on the far side of the island or they were at work. Tove Karlsen’s husband was lying on a sunbed in the middle of their yellowing lawn with a radio beside him. Fru Jacobsen, the mother of Geir, Trond, and Wenche, was sitting under a parasol on the veranda smoking. On her head she was wearing a white bucket hat. She had covered the rest of her body in light, white clothes. Their two-year-old brother was sitting on the floor beside her; I glimpsed him between the bars of his playpen. Behind me, someone called my name. I turned. It was Geir; he sprinted up with his palms facing inward.

He stopped in front of me.

“Where’s Vemund?” I said.

“On vacation,” Geir said. “They left today. Are you coming in the boat?”

“All right,” I said. “Where do you want to go?”

Geir shrugged.

“Gjerstadsholmen. Or one of the small islands beside it?”

“OK.”

Geir only had a row boat, so the radius of his activities was much more limited than that of the other boat owners. Nevertheless, it took us out to the islets and on occasion we had rowed several kilometers along the coast of the island. He wasn’t allowed to row in Tromøya Sound.

We scrambled on board, I pushed off, he positioned the oars in the rowlocks, applied force with his feet, and rowed so hard, with his oars so deep, that a grimace distorted his entire face.

“Ugh,” he groaned at every pull. “Ugh. Ugh.”

We glided along the light-blue surface of the sea, which was sporadically ruffled by gusting shoreward winds. The waves further out in the sound had white tips.

Geir turned and located the little island, adjusted his course with one oar, and then resumed his grunts while I hung my hand in the water and rested my eyes on the little there was of a wake.

As we approached, I stood up, leaped ashore, and pulled the boat into a tiny inlet. I didn’t know how to tie any knots, so it was Geir who tethered the rope to one of the metal rods that appeared to be fixed to every single little crag in the archipelago.

“Feel like a swim?” he said.

“Fine by me,” I said.

On the side facing Tromøya Sound, a rock rose from the sea into a two-meter-high pinnacle from which we jumped and dived. It was cold in the wind but warm in the water, so we swam for almost an hour before getting out and lying on the cliff to dry.

When we had dressed, Geir took a lighter from his pocket and showed it to me.

“Where did you get hold of that?” I said.

“It was in the cabin,” he said.

“Want to set fire to something?”

“Yes, well, that was the idea.”

Grass grew in all the cracks on the rock face, and in the middle of the islet there was a grass plain.

Geir crouched down, cupped his hand around the lighter, and set fire to a little tuft. It caught at once with a clear, transparent flame.

“Can I try?” I said.

Geir stood up, swept his stiff bangs to one side, and passed me the lighter.

“Hey!” I said. “Watch out! It’s spreading!”

Geir laughed and stamped on the fire. It was as good as out when flames suddenly flared up further away, where he had already put it out.

“Did you see that?” he said. “It started all on its own!”

He stamped it out, and I walked over to the plain and lit the grass there. At that moment a strong wind gusted in. The fire was raised like a little carpet.

“Give me a hand,” I said. “There’s so much to put out.”

We jumped and stamped for all we were worth, and the fire was suffocated.

“Give me the lighter,” Geir said.

I passed it to him.

“Let’s light the grass in lots of places at once,” he said.

“OK,” I said.

He lit it where he was, passed me the lighter, I ran to the other side and lit it there, ran over to him, to where he had moved, and he lit it there.

“Can you hear it crackling!” he said.

It was indeed. The fire crackled and spat as it slowly ate its way across. Where I had lit the grass the fire resembled a snake.

Another rush of wind blew in off the sea.

“Ooooh yikes!” Geir said as the flames rose and took a substantial chomp out of the middle.

He started stamping like a wild man. But suddenly it didn’t help.

“Give me a hand,” he said.

I heard a growing panic in his voice.

I started stamping as well. Another blast of wind, and now some of the flames were up to our knees.

“Oh, no!” I shouted. “It’s burning like hell over there, too!”

“Take your sweater off! We’ll put it out with those. I saw them do it in a film once!”

We took off our sweaters and began to beat the ground with them. The wind continued to whip up the flames, which spread even further with every gust.

Now the grass was well alight.

We stamped and beat at the flames like crazy men, but it was no use.

“It’s no good,” Geir shouted. “We won’t be able to put this out.”

“No,” I said. “It’s just getting worse and worse!”

“What shall we do?”

“I don’t know. Can we use the bailer, do you think?” I said.

“The bailer? Are you completely stupid or what?”

“No, I am not stupid,” I said. “It was just a suggestion.”

Oh, no. The fire was burning out of control. I could feel the heat from several meters away.

“Let’s get out of here,” Geir said. “Come on!”

And so, as the flames danced and crackled across the grass, with ever greater ferocity, we shoved out the boat. Geir got behind the oars and began to row, even harder than before.

“God Almighty,” he kept saying. “What a fire! What a fire!”

“Yes,” I said. “Who would have thought it?”

“Not me anyhow.”

“Me neither. Hope no one sees it.”

“Makes no difference,” Geir said. “The important thing is that no one saw
us.
”

On reaching land we dragged the boat deep into the forest to hide any possible traces. There was soot on our T-shirts; we dipped and wrung them in the water, and for safety’s sake we removed our shorts and rinsed them as well. If anyone asked we would say we had been swimming in our shorts and our T-shirts had fallen in the sea. Then we dived in to get rid of the smell of fire and walked home.

From a distance I could see there was no one in the front garden. I stopped in the hall: not a sound. Slipped into the boiler room, hung up the T-shirt, and went up to my room bare-chested, took another T-shirt from the wardrobe, and changed my shorts.

From the window in Yngve’s room I saw Dad lying on the sun bed on the lawn. He could lie in the sun for hours without moving, like a lizard. And the tan he had bore witness to it. The sound of a radio drifted over from somewhere; Mom must have been sitting on the terrace under the living-room window.

An hour later she came into my room with some deodorant for me. MUM for Men, it was called. It was a glass bottle, blue, and smelled sweet and good. I thought: for men. I was a man. Or a young man at least. I would be starting a new school in a few weeks and would use the deodorant.