That must have been why, unwittingly of course, I was converting the inside of my room into an enormous outside. When I read, and for a while I did hardly anything else, it was always the world outside I moved in as I lay still on my bed, and not just the world that existed in the here and now, with all its foreign countries and foreigners, but also the one that had been, from Stokke’s Bjørneklo, the Stone Age boy, to the one in the future, such as in Jules Verne’s books. And then there was the music. It, too, opened my room with its moods and the strong emotions it evoked in me, which had nothing to do with those I normally felt in life. Mostly I listened to The Beatles and Wings, but also to Yngve’s music, which for a long time was bands and solo artists like Gary Glitter, Mud, Slade, The Sweet, Rainbow, Status Quo, Rush, Led Zeppelin, and Queen, but who in the course of his secondary school years were changing, as other, quite different, music began to sneak its way between all these old cassettes and records, like The Jam single and a single by The Stranglers, called
No More Heroes,
an LP by the Boomtown Rats and one by The Clash, a cassette by Sham 69 and Kraftwerk, as well as the songs he recorded off the only radio music program there was,
Pop Spesial.
He started to have friends who were interested in the same music and also played the guitar. One of them was called Bård Torstensen, and one day at the beginning of May when Dad was out for a few hours and thus the house was left unguarded, he joined Yngve in his room. They sat playing guitar and listening to records. After a while there was a knock at my door, it was Yngve, there was something he wanted to show Bård. I was reclined on the bed reading and got up when they came in.
“Look,” Yngve said, going over to the Elvis poster I had on the wall over the desk. “Can you guess what’s on the back?”
Bård shook his head.
Yngve loosened the drawing pins, took the poster down, and turned it around.
“Look,” he said. “Johnny Rotten! And he hangs it up with Elvis on the front!”
Both of them laughed.
“Can I buy it off you?” Bård said.
I shook my head.
“It’s mine.”
“But you’ve got it up the wrong way round!” Bård said, laughing again.
“I haven’t,” I said. “That is Elvis, you know!”
“Elvis is the past!” Bård said.
“No, he isn’t. Not Elvis Costello,” Yngve said.
“That’s true,” Bård said.
After they had gone I looked at the two pictures for a while. The one called Johnny Rotten was ugly. Elvis was good-looking. Why should I swap the ugly one for the good-looking one?
Outdoors, we did what we always do every spring: cut branches off the birch trees, tie bottles onto the remaining stumps, collect them the next day, full of light-colored, viscous sap, and drink it. We cut branches off the willow trees and made flutes from the bark. We picked large bunches of white wood anemones and gave them to our mothers. Well, we were too big for the latter really, but it was a gesture, it was us being good, then one morning, when we had only three hours, I dragged Geir with me into the forest, I knew a place where there were so many anemones that from a distance it looked like snow on the ground. Not without some self-torment, though, for flowers were living beings, picking them was killing them, but the cause was good, with their help I could spread happiness. The light fell in shafts through the branches, the bog was a luminous green, and we each picked an enormous bunch, which we ran home with.
When I arrived Dad was at home. He was in the laundry room at the bottom of the house. He turned to me, anger in every movement.
“I picked you some flowers,” I said.
He reached out with his hand, took them, and threw them in the large sink.
“Little girls pick flowers,” he said.
He was right. And he was probably ashamed of me. Once some of his colleagues had come home and they had seen me on the stairs, with my blond hair quite long, because it was winter, and I was wearing red long johns.
“What a nice girl you’ve got,” one of them said.
“It’s a boy,” Dad answered. He had smiled, but I knew him well enough to know the comment had not gladdened his heart.
There was my interest in clothes, my crying if I didn’t get the shoes I wanted, my crying if it was too cold when we were in the boat on the sea, indeed my crying if he raised his voice in situations when it would have been absolutely normal to raise your voice. Was it so strange he thought: what kind of son have I got here?
I was a mama’s boy, he was constantly telling me. I was, too. I longed for her. And no one was happier than I when she moved back for good at the end of the month.
When summer was over and I was about to start the fifth class it was Dad’s turn. He was going all the way to Bergen, to stay at something called the Fantoft Student Town, to major in Nordic literature and become a senior teacher.
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to come home every weekend,” he said during dinner just before leaving. “Perhaps no more than once a month.”
“That’s a shame,” I said.
I went into the drive to see him off. He put his suitcases in the trunk, and then he got in on the passenger side because Mom was driving him to the airport.
It was one of the strangest sights I had seen.
Dad didn’t look right in a VW Beetle, he didn’t. And if he was going to sit in one, it definitely shouldn’t be as a passenger, it verged on the grotesque, especially when Mom got in beside him and started the engine, turned her head, and reversed.
Dad wasn’t a passenger; that much was obvious.
I waved, Dad raised a hand, and they were gone.
What should I do now?
Go into the workshop room, hammer and saw, chop and cut for all I was worth?
Go into the kitchen and make waffles? Fry an egg? Brew up some tea?
Sit with my feet on the table?
No, I knew what.
Go into Yngve’s room, take out one of his records, and put it on full volume.
I chose
Play
by Magazine.
Turned up the volume almost full blast, opened the door, and went into the living room.
The bass was making the walls vibrate. Music was
belting
out of the room. I closed my eyes and I swayed back and forth to the rhythm. After doing that for a while I went into the kitchen, took the bar of cooking chocolate, and ate it. The music was booming out around me, but I wasn’t inside it, it was more like part of the house, the dining-room table, or the pictures on the wall. Then I started swaying back and forth again and it was as though I were devouring the music and had it inside me. Especially when I closed my eyes.
Someone downstairs was calling me.
I opened my eyes and gasped.
Had they forgotten something and come back?
I dashed into the bedroom and turned the volume right down.
“What
are
you doing?” Yngve called from downstairs.
Oh. What a relief.
“Nothing,” I said. “I borrowed one of your records.”
He came up the stairs. Followed by another boy. I hadn’t seen him before. Perhaps someone from volleyball?
“Have you gone completely nuts?” Yngve said. “You can
burst
the speakers. They’re probably ruined now. You damned idiot!”
“I didn’t know,” I said. “Sorry. Really sorry.”
The other boy smiled.
“This is Trond,” Yngve said. “And this is my stupid little brother.”
“Hi, little brother,” Trond said.
“Hi,” I said.
Yngve went into his room, turned up the volume, and placed his head against the speakers.
“You haven’t burst them, fortunately,” he said, straightening up. “You were lucky. You’d have bought me some new ones otherwise. I would have personally made sure you did.”
He looked at me.
“Have they been gone long?”
I shrugged.
“Half an hour,” I said.
Yngve closed his bedroom door, and I hung around in the living room for a while until I spotted Marianne and Solveig outside. They were pushing a stroller. I went out and ran after them.
“Why don’t we walk together?” I said.
“All right,” they said. “Where are you going?”
“Up.”
“Who are you going to see?”
I shrugged.
“Whose baby is that?”
“The Leonardsens’.”
“How much are you getting?”
“Five kroner.”
“Are you saving up for something?”
“Nothing special. A jacket maybe.”
“I’m going to buy a new jacket, too,” I said. “A black Matinique. Have you seen it?”
“No.”
“The sleeves are long and they’re made of a different material from the rest. Sort of wavy. And it’s got a little flap down the middle covering the zipper. What kind of jacket are you going to get?”
Marianne shrugged.
“A coat, I was thinking.”
“A coat? A light color?”
“Maybe. Quite short.”
“You’re the only boy who talks about clothes,” Solveig said.
“I know,” I said. And it was something I had discovered recently. It was so difficult to talk to girls. Once you had taken their hats or shouted a few bad words after them that was where it usually ended. Well, you could talk to them about homework. But nothing else. Then I suddenly realized. Clothes, that was what they were interested in. All you had to do was chat away.
As we got closer to B-Max, I said bye and ran down the slope to the play area, which was deserted, then up the grass slope to the old car wreck, which was deserted, then over to the soccer field, which was deserted, and over the fence to Prestbakmo’s and the front of the house, where I rang the bell. But Geir was having dinner, and afterward he was going up to Vemund’s.
Oh, yes.
The road too was deserted. It was Sunday, dinner time, kids were eating or they were out visiting or they were on a trip with their parents.
Then I had a sudden brainwave: Yngve had a friend with him! Perhaps I could join them?
I ran down the hill, but their bikes had gone, they must have already left.
What could I do?
It was cloudy and not very warm. There probably wasn’t anyone at the Rock.
Slowly I started walking down to the pontoons. Probably no one there, either, but if nothing else I could look at the various boats and breathe in the distinctive smell of fiberglass and wood, gasoline and salt water.
No, a whole crowd was there.
I mingled with them unobtrusively. Some of them had boats, they were sitting on board and spitting into the water while listening to those on the pontoon who didn’t have a boat but had come to be close to those who did. I stood with them although I had no dreams of ever owning a boat, it was so unrealistic that I might just as well have dreamed about waking up in the Viking Age the next morning, as a boy had done in one of the books I was reading. No, if I dreamed about anything, it was a pair of new, white sneakers with the light-blue Nike logo, like the ones Yngve had, or new light-blue Levi jeans, or a light-blue Catalina jacket. Or a new pair of Puma soccer cleats, an Admiral tracksuit or a pair of Umbro shorts. Or Speedo trunks. I thought a lot about the black-and-white Adidas Olympia sneakers. Then there was a pair of shin pads with instep protection I wanted, and a Puma bag, and for winter Atomic slalom skis and Dynastar slalom poles. I wanted slalom pants and a genuine down jacket. Splitkein fiberglass skis, new Rottefella bindings. And light-colored, Sami reindeer-hide boots, the ones with the little curled-up toe. I wanted a new, white shirt and a red college sweater. I had mentally chosen white rubber boots instead of the dark blue ones I had now. I would also have liked a pink coral necklace I had seen, white in a pinch.
Boats, mopeds, and cars interested me less. But as I couldn’t say this to anyone I had a few favorite brands among them, too. Boat: a ten-footer With Dromedille with a five-horsepower Yamaha engine. Moped: Suzuki. Car: BMW. These choices had a lot to do with the unusual letters. Y, Z, W. For the same reason I was drawn to Wolverhampton Wanderers, it was the first soccer team I supported, and even after Liverpool took over that role, my heart still beat for the Wolves, who else when their ground was called Molineux and their logo was a wolf’s head on an orange background?
Trousers, jackets, sweaters, shoes, and sports gear were on my mind a lot because I wanted to look good and I wanted to win. When John McEnroe, whom I rated as perhaps the all-time greatest, got that dangerous glint in his eye after a line judge’s decision, when he glared up at the umpire while bouncing the ball on the court before serving, I thought desperately, No, don’t do it, don’t do it, it won’t help, you can’t afford to lose the point, don’t do it! – and could barely watch when he did it anyway and started to swear at the line judge, perhaps even sling his racket to the ground so hard it bounced up several meters. I identified with him to such a degree that I cried every time he lost, and couldn’t bear to be indoors, but had to go out onto the road, where I sat on the concrete barriers mourning the defeat, my cheeks wet with tears. The same applied to Liverpool. A defeat in the FA Cup Final drove me outside onto the road with my face streaming. On that team I liked Emlyn Hughes best, he was the one I rooted for, but I liked the others, too, of course, especially Ray Clemence and Kevin Keegan, before he went to Hamburg and Newcastle. In one of Yngve’s soccer magazines I had read a comparison of Kevin Keegan and his replacement, Kenny Dalglish. They were compared point by point, and even though they had their own strengths and weaknesses, they came out of it fairly even. But one thing that had been written left a searing mark on me. The article said that Kevin Keegan was an extrovert while Kenny Dalglish was an introvert.
Just seeing the word
introvert
threw me into despair.
Was I an introvert?
Wasn’t I?
Didn’t I cry more than I laughed? Didn’t I spend all my time reading in my room?
That was introverted behavior, wasn’t it?
Introvert, introvert, I didn’t want to be an introvert.
That was the last thing I wanted to be, there could be nothing worse.
But I was an introvert, and the insight grew like a kind of mental cancer within me.