Another surprise was that Fru Hjellen, our houskeeper, lived with her husband in the house next to Anne Lisbet’s. They had no children, she was always happy to receive visitors, and I went there both on my own and with the other three. When she cleaned our house I told her all sorts of things, even things I didn’t tell Mom and Dad. She taught me how to open the front door with the key I had been given – the trick was to pull it out a
tiny
bit after fully inserting it and
then
turn.
And so it was Fru Hjellen I confided in when one of the rocks we regularly dropped on cars from the road below us finally hit one. I was the one who dropped it. We were standing by the green fence, Geir had just missed his car, when I picked up a stone and waited for another car to come. The stone was bigger than my hand and so heavy that I pushed it rather than dropping it. There, a car was coming round the bend. Racing across the flat stretch. Now!
The stone flew through the air. The instant it left my hand I knew it was going to hit. However, I had not anticipated the bang on the car roof would be so loud. Nor that the very next second there would be a squeal of brakes and locked tires screaming across the tarmac.
Geir looked at me with terrified eyes.
“Let’s scram!” he said.
He crawled up the rocks, dashed across the road, climbed up the little knoll, and was gone.
Absolutely paralyzed, I didn’t move. I simply couldn’t move a muscle. I was too frightened. Even when I heard a car door slamming below, the engine starting, and the car heading for where I was standing. I didn’t move.
Thirty seconds later the car came up the road. With tears running down my cheeks and my legs trembling so much I could barely stand, I watched it stop on the road three meters above me. The driver didn’t open the door and get out; he hurled it open and leaped out, his face red with fury.
“Did you throw that rock?” he yelled, already on his way down the slope.
I nodded.
He grabbed both my arms and shook me.
“You could have killed me, do you understand? If the rock had hit the windshield! Do you understand! And whatever happens, the car’s a WRITE - OFF! Do you know how much it costs to repair a roof? Oh, this is going to cost you a bundle!”
He let go of me.
I was crying so much I couldn’t see.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“Karl Ove,” I said.
“Surname?”
“Knausgård.”
“Do you live here?”
“No.”
“Where do you live then?”
“Nordåsen Ringvei,” I said.
He straightened up.
“You’ll be hearing from me,” he said. “Or your father will be hearing from me, I should say.”
He took the slope in one stride with his long legs, got into his car, slammed the door hard, and drove off with a jerk.
I sat down on the ground sobbing. All hope was gone.
A moment later Geir called from the terrain above. He came sprinting down, bursting with questions about what had happened and what had been said. I knew he was glad it was me who had thrown the rock and that I had given my name. But what he wanted to know most was why I hadn’t run. After all, we’d had plenty of time to get away. If I’d run he would never have caught me and never known it was me who had dropped the stone.
“I don’t know,” I said, drying my tears. “But I couldn’t. Suddenly I couldn’t move.”
“Are you going to tell your mom and dad?” Geir said. “That’d be best. If you tell them the truth they’ll be angry, but it’ll be over and done with quickly. If you don’t say anything and he rings, it’ll be worse.”
“I don’t dare,” I said. “I can’t tell them.”
“Did you tell him your father’s name?”
“No, just mine.”
“But your name’s not in the phone book!” he said. “And he’ll have to ring your dad. But you didn’t tell him his name!”
“No,” I said, with a flicker of hope.
“In that case, definitely don’t tell them anything,” Geir said. “Perhaps nothing will come of it!”
When I got home, Fru Hjellen was there. She could see I had been crying and asked me what was wrong. I asked her not to say a word to anyone. She promised. Then I told her. She stroked my cheek and said it would be best if I told my parents. But I didn’t dare, I told her, and so we left it at that. Whenever the phone rang in the following days, I froze in a fear that was greater than any I had ever experienced. An immense darkness hung over those days. But it was never him on the phone, it was always someone else, and I was beginning to believe that everything would pass and disappear of its own accord.
Then he called.
The phone rang, Dad picked it up downstairs, perhaps three minutes went by before the handset upstairs clicked, which meant he had rung off. He came upstairs, his footsteps firm and laden with determination. On his way to see Mom. The voices from the kitchen were loud. I sat in bed crying. A few minutes later my bedroom door opened. Both of them came in. That never happened. Their faces were grave and somber.
“A man has just called me, Karl Ove,” Dad said. “He told me you dropped a big stone on his car and destroyed the roof. Is that true?”
“Yes,” I said.
“How could you
do
such a thing?” he said. “What’s wrong with you? You could have killed him! Don’t you understand? Don’t you understand how serious this is, Karl Ove?”
“Yes,” I said.
“If the stone had gone through the windshield,” Mom said, “he could have driven off the road or collided with another car. He could have died.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Now I have to pay for the repairs. Which will run into several thousand kroner. And that’s money we don’t have!” Dad said. “Where do you think that’s going to come from, eh?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Oh, you accursed boy!” he said, turning away.
“And then you didn’t say a word,” Mom said. “It’s more than a week since it happened. You have to tell us when this kind of thing happens. Do you understand? Promise me you will.”
“Yes,” I said. “But I told Fru Hjellen.”
“Fru
Hjellen
?” Dad said. “And not us?”
“Yes.”
He looked at me with those cold, angry eyes of his.
“Why did you do it?” Mom said. “How could you even think of dropping stones on cars? You must have known it was dangerous?”
“We didn’t think we would hit anything,” I said.
“We?” Dad said. “Were there more of you?”
“Geir was with me,” I said. “But I dropped the stone that hit the car.”
“Looks like I’ll have to have a chat with Prestbakmo as well,” Dad said, glancing at Mom. Then he turned to me.
“You’re grounded today and for two more days. No pocket money for this week or the following one. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Then they went out.
It had all passed. This too. It had been the darkness between the act and the revelation, when everything appeared normal but wasn’t, which had been so terrible. When everything trembled behind the static facade of everyday normality. Once, about a year earlier, a similar situation had made me run away. Then it had been not a rock but a knife that had led to the misfortune. All the other children had been given scout knives, except me. I was too small and too irresponsible. But then one day, in an act that bore some resemblance to a ceremony, Dad presented me with a knife. They trusted me, he said. I hid my disappointment that it was a girl’s knife he had bought and that the scout in the picture on the sheath wore a skirt, not trousers, these were details you could not expect an adult to understand, and I allowed my pleasure at receiving the knife to predominate because now I could cut and carve and chop and throw with the others. All I needed to do was keep the sheath out of their sight. That day I carved a sword with Leif Tore. A long piece of wood I sharpened at the end like a bradawl and a short piece nailed on as a handle. Swords in hand, we roamed the estate. Finding two girls, each with a doll’s stroller, we snuck after them for a while before we launched an attack, imagining we were pirates and they were ships, and again and again we ran our swords through the leather hoods of the strollers. The girls shouted and screamed, we retreated, they said they would tell on us, we began to worry about what we had done, and kept a wary eye on them. First of all, they went home, then they came out, and started to walk toward Gustavsen’s house and ours. Terrified of the consequences, we decided to run away. We climbed the mountain, went into the forest at the top, and walked as far as we could, that is, to the cliff above Lake Tjenna. Neither Leif Tore nor I had been there before. It was a long way from home and I thought we could sleep there and leave the following morning. We sat on the edge looking over. The sun hung low in the sky behind us; the countryside that spread out around us was golden in the sunshine. We sat there for half an hour perhaps. Then Leif Tore wanted to go home. He was hungry, he said. I tried to persuade him, we had run away after all, we couldn’t go back, but he stuck to his guns, he didn’t want to sleep outdoors under any circumstances, so I went back with him. Dad was waiting for me in the garden when I arrived home. He grabbed my arm in an iron grip, dragged me to my room, and told me I was grounded. The knife was confiscated, even though that wasn’t what I had used but a sword. They didn’t understand the difference. Stabbing with a knife was unthinkable. The sword was made of wood, it was what we had used for the attack, and they should have confiscated that. But they took the knife. I heard them talking about it. “Look,” Dad had said. “Look at the sheath. It’s completely ruined.” He was referring to all the holes I had made to hide the fact that the scout was wearing a skirt and not trousers, but he interpreted it as a sign that I was careless and immature. Sitting there in my room, grounded for that night and the following one, I watched Leif Tore playing outside. He had been given a slap and that was that. Slaps didn’t bother him.
But it passed. Everything passed. The girls got new strollers, the motorist got a new roof, the grounding came to an end, pocket money was reinstated, the road outside the house was packed with children in the evening, and the forest below was always open, day and night, winter and spring. Anne Lisbet and Solveig didn’t come down to us, we always went up to them, and in that way we had two worlds: one outside our houses, where we joined the gatherings of kids every evening, kicking a soccer ball, playing in the road, building dens in the forest below, running round and poking our noses in every nook and cranny of the estate, and when the cold came and the water froze, skating on Tjenna, with the wonderful sound of steel blades on ice, resounding against the low hills bordering the lake, and every day was filled with such intense pleasure – and another world up there with them, where everything appeared to resemble what we had at home because here too children were throwing themselves into everything you could throw yourself into, here too they kicked a soccer ball in the road, played games in the dark, here too they skipped, here too they skated when the water froze and skied when snow fell, yet it was different. The pleasure was somehow elsewhere, not in what we did but in who we did it with. So intense was the pleasure that it was often there even when they weren’t. One evening we played table tennis in Dag Lothar’s garage, one evening we snuck around a couple of workmen’s sheds by a new road in the forest, one evening we sat in Geir’s bedroom playing Chinese checkers, one evening I would be getting undressed by my bed and the thought of Anne Lisbet and her whole being could suddenly strike me with such force that I was left reeling with happiness and longing. Furthermore, it was not just her in those feelings, there was also her beautiful mother and her broad-shouldered father, who was a diver and had a couple of yellow oxygen bottles in the cellar bathroom, her little sister and brother, all the rooms in their house, and the pleasant fragrance that filled them. There were all the things she had in her room, so different from those that occupied mine, lots of dolls, dolls’ clothes, a lot of pink and frills. And there was what we did together, which her joy and enthusiasm heightened and added gloss to. Especially at school, where we kept to ourselves until a particular situation brought us together, it might be in a circle when we played
Ta den ring og la den vandre
and it was me she gave the ring to, or when it was me she caught while singing the last line of “
Bro bro brille
” and clasped her arms around or when I chased her in tag and she deliberately slowed down so that I could catch her. Oh, had it been up to me I could have run after Anne Lisbet all my life as long as I was allowed to wrap my arms around her at the end.
Did I know that it couldn’t last?
No, I didn’t. I thought it would just go on and on forever. Spring came, and with it a lightness: one day I put on my new sneakers, and running in them after months of trudging around in various kinds of boots was like flying. Puffa pants and jackets, which made all movement so awkward and clumsy, were replaced by light trousers and light jackets. Gloves, scarves, and caps were packed away. Skis and skates and sleighs and sleds were put into sheds and garages; bikes and soccer balls were taken out, and the sun, which for so long had hung low in the sky and whose rays had been for the eyes only, rose higher and higher with every day that passed and was soon so hot that the jackets we put on in the morning were stuffed in our satchels when we returned from school at midday. But during these weeks the most telling sign of spring was the reek of burning garden refuse wafting across the estate. The cool evenings, the bluish darkness, the cold emanating from ditches still littered with the remains of snowdrifts, as hard as ice and studded with grit, the constant buzz of children’s voices outside, children running after a soccer ball in the road, others cycling up and down ditches or doing wheelies on the sidewalk, everything bubbled with life and lightness, you had to run, you had to cycle, you had to shout, you had to laugh, all with the pungent yet rich smell of burning spring grass that was suddenly everywhere in your nostrils. Now and then we ran up and watched: the low, dense flames like little orange waves, damp almost with the intensity of color brought out by the evening gloom, tended by a proud mother or father, often with a rake over their shoulder and gloves on their hands, like some kind of lower-middle-class knight. Now and then there were real bonfires they kept watch over, when all the trash they had collected in the garden during the winter was burned.