What was it about fire?
It was so alien here, it was so profoundly archaic that nothing about it could be associated with its surroundings: what was fire doing side by side with Gustavsen’s trailer? What was fire doing side by side with Anne Lene’s toy shovel? What was fire doing side by side with Kanestrøm’s sodden and faded garden furniture?
In all its various hues of yellow and red it stretched up to the sky, consuming crackling spruce twigs, melting hissing plastic, switching this way, switching that, in totally unpredictable patterns, as beautiful as they were unbelievable, but what were they doing here among us ordinary Norwegians on ordinary evenings in the 1970s?
Another world was revealed with the fire, and departed with it again. This was the world of air and water, earth and rock, sun and stars, the world of clouds and sky, all the old things that were always there and always had been, and which, for that reason, you didn’t think about. But the fire
came,
you saw it. And once you had seen it you couldn’t help seeing it everywhere, in all the fireplaces and wood-burning stoves, in all the factories and workshops, and in all the cars driving round the roads and in garages or outside houses in the evening, for fire burned there, too. Also cars were profoundly archaic. This immense antiquity actually resided in everything, from houses – made of brick or wood – to the water flowing through the pipes into and out of them, but since everything happens for the first time in every generation, and since this generation had broken with the previous one, this lay right at the back of our consciousness, if it was there at all, for in our heads we were not only modern 1970s people, our surroundings were also modern 1970s surroundings. And our feelings, those that swept through each and every one of us living there on these spring evenings, were modern feelings, with no other history than our own. And for those of us who were children, that meant no history. Everything was happening for the first time. We never considered the possibility that feelings were also old, perhaps not as old as water or the earth, but as old as humanity. Oh no, why would we? The feelings running through our breasts, which made us shout and scream, laugh and cry, were just part of who we were, more or less like fridges with a light that came on when the door was opened or houses with a doorbell that rang if it was pressed.
Did I really think it would last?
Yes, I did.
But it didn’t. One day toward the end of April I told Anne Lisbet we were going to go up to their place after school, and she said we couldn’t come.
“Why not?” I said.
“Someone else is coming over,” she said.
“Who?” I said, thinking perhaps it was an uncle or an aunt.
“It’s a secret,” she said, smiling her sly smile.
“Someone from the class?” I said. “Marianne or Sølvi or Unni?”
“It’s a secret,” she said. “You and Geir can’t come. Bye!”
I went over to Geir and told him what she had said. We decided to sneak over after school and spy on them. After dropping off our satchels at home we took the other way up, cut through the building site in the forest below, where the foundations for the new houses had already been built, crept through the trees, over the bog, and up to the cul-de-sac between their houses.
No one.
Were they indoors?
We couldn’t ring the bell, of course; we weren’t supposed to be there. We walked down. Geir had the brilliant idea of ringing the bell at Vemund’s house. He came out and stood in the doorway with that same stupid expression on his round face. Yes, they had gone down the hill some time ago.
Alone?
No, they were with two others.
Who?
‘Fraid he hadn’t seen.
Boys or girls?
Boys, he thought. At first he had assumed it was us, as we were here so much, but now he could see of course it must have been someone else!
He laughed. Geir laughed, too.
Who could it be?
And what were they doing with them?
“Come on, let’s follow them,” I said to Geir.
“But they didn’t want us with them,” Geir said. “Wouldn’t it be better to go to Vemund’s for a while?”
I stared at him, my eyes as wide as they could be.
“OK,” he said.
“Don’t say anything to the others,” I said to Vemund. He nodded, and then we walked across their property and down to the road.
Where could they be?
For all we knew, they could have gone all the way down to the shop. But something told me they would stay near the house. We joined the road below theirs. Four of them. They should be easy to see and hear.
“Should we go up?” I said, stopping at the crossroads where one road led up to Dag Magne’s and theirs.
Geir shrugged.
We walked up the gentle slope. Dag Magne’s house lay in a little dip. There was a garage adjacent to it, full of bikes and tools and car tires. Under the veranda there was a pile of wood.
Reaching the summit of the slope, we saw Dag Magne in a window looking out at us. To avoid giving the impression that we were on our way to see him we cut across their property without looking at him and down into the forest on the other side. Spring was in the air, the grass that had been white for so long was turning green, but there were no leaves on the trees, so we could see a long way into the young forest.
There. Directly below the slope to Solveig’s house I saw something blue and red moving.
“There they are,” Geir said.
We stopped and stood still.
They were laughing and chatting excitedly.
“Can you see who it is?” I whispered.
Geir shook his head.
We went closer. Hiding behind trees as far as we could. When we were about twenty meters away, we crouched down behind a rock.
I poked my head up and watched them.
It was Eivind and Geir B with them.
Eivind and Geir B.
Oh god, would you believe it! Eivind and Geir B, they were in our class! They were neighbors and best friends, and lived just along from Sverre, who lived just along from Siv, whose house we could see from our road.
What was the difference between them and us?
There was almost no difference!
They were best friends, we were best friends. Eivind was one of the best students in the class; I was one of the best students in the class. Geir B and Geir both just hung out with us two.
But Eivind was better looking than me. He had curly hair, high cheekbones, and narrow eyes. I had protruding teeth and a protruding bum. And he was stronger than me.
Now he was hanging from a dead tree trying to break it. Geir B was on the other side pushing as hard as he could. Anne Lisbet and Solveig stood watching.
They were showing off.
Oh flippin’ hell!
What should we do? Go over and act cool? Make a group of six?
I turned to Geir.
“What shall we do?” I whispered.
“I don’t know,” he whispered back. “Beat them up?”
“Ha ha,” I whispered. “They’re stronger than us.”
“We can’t stay here all day, anyway,” he whispered.
“Should we get out of here?”
“Yes, let’s go.”
As carefully as we had come, we crept off. At the crossroads, Geir asked if I wanted to go up to Vemund’s.
“No way!” I said.
“I’ll go then,” he said. “See you.”
“See you.”
After a few meters I turned and watched him. He had found a twig and was whacking one knee and then the other as he walked on the sidewalk alongside the wall. I cried almost all the way home and kept to the path past the soccer field so that no one would see.
This happened on a Friday. Early on the Saturday morning I ran up to Geir’s, but he was going to Arendal with his parents. Mom and Dad were cleaning the house and vacuuming, Yngve had caught the bus to Arendal with Steinar, so I was left to my own devices. I went into the bathroom and locked the door, rummaged through the dirty linen basket and found my ugly brown cords, which were filthy around the knees. I put them on, ran into my room, and searched for my disgusting yellow sweater, put it on, went downstairs unobserved and into the boiler room, where my rubber boots were, the ugliest footwear I possessed, carried them into the hall, and put them on. From the hook I grabbed the thin gray jacket I had been given last spring, too small now and pretty grubby, on top of which the zipper didn’t work, so I would have to walk with it undone. That suited me fine because the yellow sweater underneath would be visible then.
Dressed like this, in the ugliest clothes I could muster, I set off for the estate where Anne Lisbet lived. With eyes downcast all the while, I wanted people who saw me to realize how upset I was. And if I bumped into Anne Lisbet, which was the object of the exercise, I wanted her to see what she had done. The filthy, ugly clothes I was wearing, the drooping head, all of this was for her benefit, so that she would understand.
I didn’t want to ring, or else I would have to talk to her. No, the whole point was that she would happen to catch a glimpse of me and realize for herself how upset I was about what she had done.
When I reached Vemund’s house, and there was still no sign of her, I entered the road leading to her house, even though it could ruin my plan, because what was I actually coming here for, if not to meet them?
To meet Bjørn Helge perhaps?
He was a year younger, and the idea of playing with him was inconceivable. Although he played soccer and was quite grown-up for his age.
I stood for a moment at the cul-de-sac wondering whether to go up to Bjørn Helge’s. But just seeing the house where she lived upset me, so after a while I went down into the forest, past the newly blasted building sites. The construction machines and portacabins stood idle, staring ahead through vacant, black windows onto the road along the flat land. I looked for a while at the new parish hall that was being built, then at the field where we used to play soccer and the gate to the path leading to the garbage dump, which was a hundred meters further on. Slowly I began to descend. In the middle of the hill I walked past, hidden behind rocky outcrops and trees, lived Eivind and Geir B. We had been up there a couple of times to play, and in the winter before the snow fell we had taken them to Lake Tjenna and gone skating. Once we had also been to Geir B’s birthday party. And once to Sverre’s. That time I had lost the ten kroner that had been meant for him, the envelope was empty when I arrived dressed in my Sunday best, I began to cry, it wasn’t good, it wasn’t good at all, but there was a reason, ten kroner was a lot of money. His father fortunately went with me to find it, we walked back up the road I had come along, and there, bright blue on the black tarmac, was the ten-krone note. So they could no longer think I had tricked them, taken the money myself, and pretended I had lost it.
On a lawn in a garden by the road stood the boy with the long, black hair and the Indian features playing keepie-uppie with a soccer ball.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I said.
“How many can you do?” he said.
“Four,” I said.
He laughed. “That’s nothing.”
“How many can you do then?”
“Did sixteen not long ago.”
“Show me,” I said.
He dropped the ball and placed his foot on top. With one swift flick he sent the ball into the air. One, two, three kick-ups and then the ball was too far from him and the last kick, a wild lunge with his leg, sent the ball into the hedge.
“That was four,” I said.
“It’s because you’re watching,” he said. “You make me think about what I’m doing. I’ll have another go. Will you wait?”
“Yes.”
This time he got the ball up to knee height, and then it was easy, the ball went from knee to knee five times before he lost control.
“Eight,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “But now I’ll show you.”
“I’ve got to run,” I said.
“OK,” he said.
His father, a fat man with glasses and thick, gray hair, was in the window watching us. I ran across the road, suddenly realized what clothes I was wearing, slowed down, and started to walk with my head bowed again.
When I came down the hill Dad was reversing the car out of the drive. He waved me over, leaned across the seat, and opened the door.
“Jump in,” he said. “We’re going to town.”
“But my clothes,” I said. “Can I change first?”
“Nonsense,” he said. “Jump in, now!”
I pulled the little lever at the side of the seat and was about to push it forward.
“Sit in the front,” he said.
“In the front?” I said.
This never happened.
“Yes,” he said. “We haven’t got all day! Come on now!”
I did as he said. After I had closed the door he put the car in gear and we set off down the hill.
“Your clothes are a bit dirty,” he said. “But we’re only going for a little trip. It won’t matter.”
I started fiddling with the seat belt and didn’t see a lot until it had clicked into position and we were on Tromøya Bridge.
“I felt like going to the fish market,” he said. “And the record shop. Do you want to join me?”
“Yes,” I said.
He steered with one hand on the wheel. The other was on the gearshift, a cigarette burning between his fingers. He drove fast as always.
For a long time we said nothing.
On the left was Vindholmen, and the shipyard with the huge cranes like monitor lizards and the fiberglass hall. The parking lot outside was just under half full. There was an enormous oil platform in the sound. A Condeep platform that was due to be towed out the following week.
After we had driven through the little tunnel and come into the town of Songe, he glanced at me.
“Have you been out with Geir today?” he said.
“No,” I said. “They’re in Arendal.”
“We might bump into them then.”
There was another silence.
It bothered me; he was in such a good mood and didn’t deserve to be met with silence. But what could I say?
After a while I thought of something.
“Where are you going to park?”
He shot me a sidelong glance.
“We’ll find somewhere,” he said.
“Maybe in Skytebanen? There’s always room on Saturdays.”