Oh, the smell of an abandoned car in a wet forest! The smell of the synthetic material on the torn seats, moldy and mildewed, but still sharp and fresh compared with the heavy, musty smell of rotting leaves emanating from the ground all around them. The black window seals that had come loose and hung from the roof like tentacles. All the glass that had been smashed to pieces and largely lost in the soil, although there were scattered fragments on the floor mats or in the door openings, like small matte diamonds. And, oh, the black floor mats! Shake them and a whole horde of creepy crawlies ran for cover. Spiders, daddy longlegs, and woodlice. The resistance of the three floor pedals, which you could hardly move. The raindrops that fell through a window onto your face whenever the wind forced them off track or shook them from the leaves of the swaying branches above.
Sometimes we found objects lying around and about near the car: a lot of bottles, some bags of car or porn magazines, empty cigarette packets, empty plastic bottles of windshield fluid, the odd condom, and once we found a pair of underpants still full of shit. We laughed about that for a good long time, about someone shitting themselves and then coming here to throw away their underpants.
But we used to have a shit in the forest when we were on our walks. We would climb up trees and shit from there, squat on top of a cliff and shit over the edge, or on the bank of a stream and shit in it. All to see what happened and how it felt. What color the turds were, whether they were black, green, brown, or light brown, how long and fat they were, and what happened when they lay there glistening on the forest floor, between heather and moss, whether there would be flies swarming around them or beetles climbing over them. Also the smell of shit was sharper, stronger, and more distinct in the forest. Now and then we revisited places where we’d had a shit, to see what had happened to it. Sometimes they had vanished, sometimes there were only dry remains, and at other times they lay flat as though they had melted in a pool.
But now we had to go to school and there was no time for such activities. Down the hill, across the playground, which consisted of little more than a rusty climbing frame, a rusty swing, and a rotting sandpit with next to no sand in it. Up the steep slope, over the high concrete barriers, across the road, and B-Max stood in front of us. The line of satchels in the queue was already long. Some girls were skipping despite the pouring rain; others stood under the overhanging roof in front of the shop. But where was Anne Lisbet? Wasn’t she here?
At that moment the bus came up the hill. Geir and I crossed the road and reached the bus stop as it turned into the tarmac shoulder outside the supermarket. We got on last and sat right at the front. The big windows misted up with the moisture we brought in with us. Many of the kids started drawing in the condensation. The driver closed the doors and set off toward the main road. I knelt on my seat and scanned the back of the bus. She wasn’t there, and it was as if all meaning had leaked from the world. Now I would have to go all day without seeing her and perhaps the following day as well. Solveig wasn’t there either, so it wouldn’t be possible to find out how ill she was or for how long.
Ten minutes later the bus stopped outside the school, we ran across the playground and into the wet-weather shelter, where we huddled with almost all the other pupils until the bell went and we lined up. I knew most of them by appearance now, some also by name and reputation. We had gymnastics with the parallel class, who had an advantage over us, as they came from this area and were on home ground. This was their school, the teachers were their teachers, to them we were just some kind of immigrant, without any rights. But they were also tougher than we were, that is, they had more fights, they caused more trouble and mouthed off more, at least some of them did, which only the toughest of us, viz Asgeir and John, stood up to. The rest of us were pushed around as they pleased. Any second you could feel an arm around your throat, and then a jerk and you were on the floor. Any second a fist could hit you in the shoulder, where it hurt most, as you lined up or were on the way to the classroom. Any second someone could stamp on your toes in a soccer game. But they quickly learned they couldn’t bully John or Asgeir because they retaliated and gave as good as they got. These boys, who lived on the east of the island, also dressed differently from us, at least some of them did. Their clothes were older and seemed more used, as though they only wore hand-me-downs, and not just from one brother but two or maybe even three … Geir’s and my greatest fear was that some of these boys would find us when we were in our secret place. But they didn’t represent much of a problem, you only had to be on your guard when you were out and everything was usually fine. Perhaps the most significant consequence was that we stuck together more and saw ourselves as a unit and the classroom as a bastion of security.
The bell rang, we lined up, and Frøken, tall and thin as ever, appeared at the top of the stairs with her slightly lopsided gait and nervous hand movements, and we marched down to the classroom, where, after hanging up our outdoor clothes on the pegs outside, we at once sat down in our places.
“Anne Lisbet’s sick today as well!” someone said.
“And Solveig.”
“And Vemund.”
“And Leif Tore,” Geir said.
Then I remembered what had happened the night before.
“Vemund’s sick in the head!” Eivind said.
“Ha ha ha!”
“No, no, no,” Frøken said. “We are not nasty to anyone in this class. And certainly not behind their backs!”
“Leif Tore’s father was drunk yesterday!” I said. “My mom had to drive them to a relative’s house. That’s why he isn’t here today!”
“Shhh,” Frøken said, looking at me, holding a finger to her lips and shaking her head. Then she wrote something in her book before scanning the class.
“Anyone else away? No? So, let’s get started, shall we?”
She stepped forward and perched on the edge of her desk. “This week we’re going to learn about farms. Has anyone ever been to a farm?”
Oh, I shot up my arm as high as I could, almost standing up, shouting,
Me, me, me! I have!
I wasn’t the only person to have something to say about the topic. And it wasn’t my hand Frøken pointed to but Geir B’s.
“I’ve ridden a horse in Legoland,” he said.
“But that’s not a
farm
,” I screeched. “I’ve been to a farm lots of times. Grandma and Grandad –”
“Was it your turn, Karl Ove?” Frøken said.
“No,” I said, eyes downcast.
“It’s true that Legoland is not a farm,” she continued. “But horses are on farms, that’s true, Geir. Unni?”
Unni, who was that?
I turned. Ah, that’s the girl who was always giggling. Chubby with blonde hair.
“I live on a farm,” she said with flushed cheeks. “But we haven’t got any animals. We grow vegetables. And Dad sells them at the market in town.”
“But I’ve been to a farm
with animals
!” I said.
“Me too,” Sverre said.
“And me!” said Dag Magne.
“You’ll have to wait your turn,” Frøken said. “Everyone has to have a chance.”
She pointed to five other people before I was finally able to take my hand down and say what I had to say. Well, Grandma and Grandad had a farm, it was big, they had two cows and a calf, and they had hens. I had collected the eggs many times, and I had seen Grandma milking the cows in the morning. First she shoveled away the muck, and then she fed them, and then she milked them. Sometimes they lifted their tails and had a piss or a shit.
A wave of laughter rolled toward me. Emboldened by it, I continued. And once, I said, sitting there in class, my face crimson, one of the cows pissed on me!
I looked around and lapped up the ensuing laughter. Frøken said nothing, she pointed to someone else, but I could see from her face that she didn’t believe me.
When everyone who wanted to say something had had a turn, she read a passage from a book about Ola Ola Heia. She asked us questions about what she had read out, completely ignoring me until the bell rang, when she asked me to stay behind.
“Karl Ove,” she said. “Wait here. I need to have a word with you.”
I stood beside her desk while the others hurried out. When we were alone she perched on the edge of her desk and looked at me.
“We can’t tell everyone all the things we know about one another,” she said. “What you said about Leif Tore’s father, for example. Don’t you think Leif Tore would be upset about that?”
“Yes, he would,” I said.
“He wouldn’t want anyone else to know. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said, starting to cry.
“We all have private lives,” she said. “Do you know what that is?”
“No,” I said, sniffling.
“It’s everything that happens at home, in your home, my home, their homes, everyone’s home. If you see what happens in other people’s homes, it’s not always nice to tell others. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Good, Karl Ove. Don’t be upset. You didn’t know. But now you do! So off you go.”
I scampered up the stairs, through the hall, and onto the playground. Cast an eye over the various groups standing there. Some girls were doing French skipping with elastic, some with a rope, some were playing tag. Down on the soccer field I saw a mass of players in front of the nearest goal. The center of the field was covered in a pool of yellowish mud. Geir, Geir Håkon, and Eivind were standing by the bench below the little rock with the flagpole on it, and I ran over to join them. They were playing with Geir Håkon’s boat cards.
“Have you been crying?” Eivind said.
I shook my head. “It’s the wind,” I said.
“What did Frøken say then?”
“Nothing much,” I said. “Can I have a card?”
“You’ve been crying,” Eivind said.
Along with Sverre and me, Eivind was the best in the class. He was the best at math, Sverre was next best, and I was third best. I was best at reading and writing, Eivind was next best, and Sverre third best. But Eivind was much faster than me, and of the boys in the class only Trond was faster than him. I was the sixth fastest. And he was stronger than me. I was the next weakest, only Vemund was weaker, and since he was the fattest and the dumbest boy in the class, it wasn’t a very good situation, no one took any notice of him. Even Trond, the smallest boy in the class, was stronger than me. I was the third tallest in the class, a bit taller than him. I was the fourth best at soccer; ahead of me were Asgeir, Trond, and John, while Eivind was fifth best. I was better at drawing than him, but not as good as Geir, who could draw everything as it really was, and Vemund. As for throwing a ball, I was next to last, again only Vemund was worse than me.
“The wind was in my eyes as I came down the steps,” I said. “I wasn’t crying. Can I have a card too?”
The first card I took was SS
France,
the world’s biggest passenger liner, which walloped everybody else in all categories.
In the next lesson we wrote letters of the alphabet in our notebooks:
u
as in
kui, a
as in lam,
å
as in
gås.
For homework we had to write the same letters in our notebooks. Frøken asked whether anyone lived near the students who were absent today and, if so, could they pass on the homework.
But I didn’t become aware of the opportunity that had presented itself until the next and final lesson, which was gymnastics, as I was running round and round the tiny gymnasium. I could walk up to Anne Lisbet’s and tell her what we had to do for homework! The thought made me flush with pleasure. As soon as we had dressed and left the changing room, on the way up to the place where we lined up to wait for the bus, I told Geir about my plan. He wrinkled his nose, go to Anne Lisbet’s, why? We had never been there, that was one thing. And Vemund lived there, that was another. Couldn’t Vemund take the homework? You don’t understand, I said. The whole point is that
we
do it!
He still hemmed and hawed, but after I had put a bit more pressure on him, he agreed to go with me.
Instead of making everyone get off at B-Max, this morning the bus went up through the estate and dropped us off on the way. It did that now and then, and it was a strange sight every time, because the enormous bus didn’t belong there, on the narrow roads, it towered over everything like a liner in a canal. We stood on the sidewalk watching it go up the hill, as it groaned with the effort and released clouds of greasy fumes in its wake.
“Shall I go up or will you come down?” I said.
“You come up,” Geir said.
“OK,” I said, walking in the drive, which as fortune would have it was clearly empty. It was no longer raining, but everything I saw was wet. On the dark-brown wall there were extensive patches of black damp, on the brick doorstep all the little hollows were full of water, on the spade leaning against the wall raindrops hung trembling from the handle. I unzipped my jacket and took out the key to see if I could perhaps get it to open the door today. But the same happened, the key went in, but the little drum that was supposed to rotate didn’t budge. I looked up the road. No one there. So I went to the garbage can by the fence, took out the black half-empty bag, and put it on the ground, grabbed the garbage can by the handles, and lifted it. It was heavier than I had anticipated, and I had to put it down several times on the way to the house. Still there was no one to be seen on the hill. A car came past, but it wasn’t anyone I knew, so I carried the can across the lawn and placed it under the window. Clambered on top, lifted the window, and pushed my head and shoulders through. The feeling of losing control, because I couldn’t see if anyone was watching me, all I saw was the empty room in front of me, dark and hot, filled me with panic. I twisted and turned, and when I had half my body in, I grabbed the metal pipe on the tank and pulled myself through.
Down to the floor, off with my boots – which I carried through the hall and put on again on the porch – open the door and out again. Hollow with fear and tension, I looked down the hill. No cars, nothing. As long as he stayed away for the next two minutes, and didn’t come home because he had forgotten something, or because he was ill, which never happened, Dad was never ill, everything would be fine.