Blessed Are Those Who Thirst: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel (27 page)

The room was spacious. The boy thought it could not be a living room; it wasn’t furnished as you would expect a living room to be, and there was no TV. Along one wall stood a long kitchen counter, with a sink and stove. But there was no smell of food. He stuck his nose in the air and sniffed a couple of times, concluding that there must be another kitchen somewhere in the house. A proper kitchen. This room was a recreation area. The walls were
covered with drawings, and small woolen characters the children must have crafted suspended from the unusually high ceiling. A gull made of cardboard and woolen yarn flapped directly above his head, gray and white with a fiery red beak that had partly fallen off and was hanging like a slack tooth from a flimsy thread. He stretched out toward it but could not reach up far enough. Instead he ripped down an Easter chick fashioned from an egg carton and yellow feathers. Picking it up, he pulled off all the feathers and threw the egg carton back on the floor.

Beneath two vast windows with crossbars was a massive worktable. Four children had stopped what they were doing. They stared at the new arrival. The eldest, a girl of about eleven, skeptically looked him up and down, from head to toe. Two boys who could be twins, wearing identical sweaters and with chalk white hair, sniggered, whispered, and poked each other. A four-or five-year-old redhead sat terror-stricken for a few seconds before sliding off her chair and racing toward the only adult in the room, a plump woman who immediately lifted the little one up, caressing her curls in reassurance.

“This is the new boy,” she said. “His name is Olav.”

“That’s just what I said,” Olav said, annoyed. “I’m the new boy. Are you married?”

“Yes,” the woman replied.

“Is it only these children who live here?”

His disappointment was apparent.

“No, you know that perfectly well,” the woman said, smiling. “There are seven children living here. The three over there . . .”

She nodded in the direction of the table, sending them a stern look at the same time. If they noticed, the boys did not let on.

“What about her there? Doesn’t she stay here?”

“No, this is my daughter. She’s only here for the day.”

She smiled, as the child buried her face in the hollow of her neck and clung more tenaciously to her mother.

“Oh I see. Do you have many children?”

“Three. This is the youngest. She’s called Amanda.”

“What a show-off name. Anyway, I thought she must be the youngest. You’re too old to have children, you are.”

The woman laughed.

“You’re quite right about that. I’m too old now. My two other children are almost grown up. But won’t you say hello to Jeanette? She’s almost as old as you. And to Roy-Morgan? He’s eight.”

Roy-Morgan was not at all interested in saying hello to the new boy. He squirmed in his seat and thrust his head demonstratively and dismissively toward his buddy’s.

Frowning, Jeanette drew back in her chair as Olav approached with outstretched hand, dripping with dirty, melted snow. Before he had come right up to her and long before she had made any sign of taking hold of the outstretched fingers being offered, he started to take a deep bow and declared solemnly:

“Olav Håkonsen. Pleased to meet you!”

Jeanette pressed herself against the chair back, and grabbed on to the seat with both hands, drawing her knees up to her chin. The new boy attempted to pass his hands down through the side, but his body shape and clothing caused his arms to remain fixed diagonally, like a Michelin man. The offensive posture was gone, and he forgot to spread his legs. Now his kneecaps kissed beneath his stout thighs, and his big toes pointed toward each other inside his mammoth shoes.

The little boys fell silent.

“I know why you don’t want to say hello to me,” Olav said.

The woman had managed to steer the smallest child into another room. When she returned, she spotted Olav’s mother in the doorway. Mother and son were strikingly alike; the same black hair, the same wide mouth and conspicuous bottom lip, seemingly unusually soft and a moist, dark red, not dry and cracked as one would expect this time of year. On the boy it appeared
childish. On the adult woman the lip seemed repellent, especially since she kept shooting out a similarly bright red tongue to wet her lips. Apart from her mouth it was her shoulders that aroused most interest. She did not possess shoulders. From her head a smooth curve ran downward, as on a bowling pin, or a pear, a curved line that culminated in incredibly broad hips, with hefty thighs and skinny legs to hold all this up. The body shape was more pronounced than on the boy, probably because her coat fitted. The other woman tried to make eye contact with her, without success.

“I know well enough why you don’t want to say hello to me,” Olav repeated. “I’m gross and fat.”

He stated this without a trace of bitterness, with a slight, satisfied smile, almost as though it were a fact he had just stumbled upon; the solution to a complicated problem he had spent the last twelve years working out. He wheeled around, and without glancing at the director of his new foster home, asked her where he would be living.

“Could you show me to my room, please?”

The woman extended her hand to shake his, but instead of grasping it, he made a gallant and sweeping motion with his arm and made a little bow.

“Ladies first!”

Then he waddled after her up to the next floor.

*   *   *

He was so big. And I knew that something was wrong. They laid him in my arms, and I felt no joy, no sorrow. Powerless. A tremendous, heavy powerlessness as though I had something imposed on me that everyone knew I would never manage. They comforted me. Everything was completely normal. He was just so big.

Normal? Had any of them tried to squeeze out a lump weighing
twelve pounds? I had gone three weeks beyond my date, I knew that, but the doctor insisted that it was wrong. As though she could know that. I knew exactly when he had come into being. One Tuesday night. One of those nights I gave in to avoid trouble, when I feared his outbursts so much that I didn’t have the strength to resist. Not just then. Not with so much alcohol in the house. He was killed in a road accident the next day. A Wednesday. Since then I hadn’t had any man near me before that baby tub of lard came smiling into the world. It’s true! He smiled! The doctor said it was only a grimace. I know it was a smile. He still has the same smile, has always had it. His best weapon. He hasn’t cried a single time since he was eighteen months old.

They placed him on my stomach. An unbelievable mass of new human flesh that already there and then opened its eyes and groped with its wide mouth over my skin to find my breast. The folk in white coats laughed and slapped its bottom one more time. What a guy!

I knew there was something wrong. They said that everything was normal.

*   *   *

Eight children and two adults sat around an oval dining table. Seven of the children said grace together with the grown-ups. The new boy had been right. It was not the kitchen he had entered earlier in the day.

That was located farther inside the capacious, converted villa from the turn of the century, and had probably been a pantry at the time the house was built. It was homey and cozy, with blue kitchen appliances and rag rugs on the floors. The only aspect that distinguished it from a private home apart from the unusually large bunch of kids were the rosters hanging on an enormous notice board beside the door leading to one of the living rooms—the day room, as the new boy had found out. In addition to the
names there were little photographs of the staff on display. This was because not all the children could read, the boy had learned.

“Ha, they can’t read,” he muttered scornfully. “There’s nobody here under seven years old!”

He had not received any reply other than a friendly smile from the plump lady, whom he now knew was the director. “But you can call me Agnes. That’s my name.”

Agnes was not present now. The adults at the supper table were far younger. The man even had bad acne. The lady was quite pretty, with long blonde hair she had braided in a strange and lovely way, beginning right at the front of her head and ending with a red silk bow. The man was called Christian and the lady’s name was Maren. They all sang a short little song while holding hands. He did not want to join in.

“You don’t need to if you don’t want to,” Maren said, and was actually really kind. Then they started to eat.

Jeanette, who had refused to say hello to him that morning, was sitting by Olav’s side. She was slightly overweight, too, with brown, unruly hair in an elastic band that kept sliding out. She had protested about sitting beside him, but Maren had firmly squashed all discussion. Now she was sitting as far over on the opposite side of her chair as it was possible to go, causing Roy-Morgan to poke his elbow into her side continually and yell that he would catch girl lice. On the other side of Olav sat Kenneth, who at seven years old was the youngest in the house. Struggling with the butter, he ruined a sandwich.

“You’re even more clumsy than me, you know,” Olav said contentedly, grabbing a fresh slice and neatly spreading a generous portion of butter before placing it on Kenneth’s plate.

“What do you want on top?”

“Jam,” Kenneth whispered, sticking his hands underneath his thighs.

“Jam, you dope! Then you don’t need butter!”

Olav grabbed yet another slice, slapping an extravagant tablespoonful of blueberry jam in the center and using the spoon to spread it out with awkward movements.

“Here you are!”

Clattering the spoon onto the plate, he helped himself to the buttered slice and looked around the room.

“Where’s the sugar?”

“We don’t need any sugar,” Maren said.

“I want sugar on my bread!”

“It’s not healthy. We don’t do that here.”

“Do you actually know how much sugar there is in the jam that nitwit there is sitting gobbling up?”

The other children ceased their chatter and listened attentively. Kenneth, scarlet in the face, stopped munching with his mouth full of jam and bread. Maren stood up. Christian was about to say something, but Maren walked around the table and bent over toward Olav.

“You can have some jam as well, of course,” she said in a friendly voice. “Besides, it’s low-sugar jam, look!”

She reached for the jar, but the boy got there first with a lightning flash movement one would not have thought possible of him. Moving so quickly that the chair toppled over, he flung the jar across the room, banging it on the refrigerator door. The impact inflicted a large dent on the door, but amazingly the jar was still intact. Before anyone had the chance to prevent him, he was over at the tall kitchen cabinet at the opposite end of the room, snatching out a large sugar canister.

“Here’s the sugar,” he screamed.
“Here’s the fucking shitty sugar!”

Tearing off the canister lid and throwing it onto the floor, the boy raced around in a cloud of granulated sugar. Jeanette started to laugh. Kenneth burst into tears. Glenn, who was fourteen and had already begun to grow dark hairs above his top lip, muttered
that Olav was an idiot. Raymond was seventeen and a sly old fox. Accepting it all with stoic calm, he lifted his plate and disappeared. Anita, sixteen, followed him. Roy-Morgan’s twin, Kim-André, clutched his brother’s hand, excited and elated. He looked across at Jeanette and began to laugh somewhat uncertainly as well.

The canister of sugar was empty. Olav made a move to throw it on the floor, but was stopped at the last moment by Christian, who took hold of his arm and held it firmly, as in a vise. Olav howled and tried to tear himself free, but in the meantime Maren had advanced and placed her arms around his body. He had incredible strength for a twelve-year-old, but after a couple of minutes she could feel that he was beginning to calm down. She spoke to him the entire time, gently in his ear.

“There, there. Take it easy now. Everything’s all right.”

When he realized that Maren had control of the boy, Christian took the other children with him out to the day room. Kenneth had been sick. A small and unappetizing heap of chewed bread, milk, and blueberries was sitting on the plate he had held hesitantly in his hands as they walked to the other room, the same as all the others.

“Just leave it,” Christian told him. “You can have one of my slices!”

As soon as the other children had gone, Olav calmed down completely. Maren let go of him, and he sank down onto the floor like a beanbag.

“I only eat sugar on my bread,” he mumbled. “Mum says it’s okay.”

“Then I suggest one thing to you,” Maren said, sitting down beside him, with her back against the damaged refrigerator. “When you’re with your mom, you eat sugar the way you’re used to, but when you’re here, then you eat what we do. Isn’t that a good deal?”

“No.”

“Maybe that’s what you think, but unfortunately that’s the way it has to be, really. Here we have a number of rules, and we all have to follow them. Otherwise it would become quite unfair. Don’t you agree?”

The boy did not respond. He seemed totally lost. Gingerly she placed a hand on his bulky thigh. His reaction was instantaneous. He punched her arm.

“Don’t touch me, for fuck’s sake!”

She stood up quietly, and stood there looking down at him.

“Do you want something to eat before I clear it away?”

“Yes. Six slices of bread and butter with sugar.”

Smiling weakly, Maren shrugged her shoulders and started to wrap the food with plastic film.

“Do I have to go to bed hungry in this fucking dump, or what?”

Now he looked her directly in the eye, for the first time. His eyes were completely black, two deep holes in his pudgy face. It crossed her mind that he could have been handsome, were it not for his size.

“No, Olav, you don’t
have
to go to bed hungry. You’re choosing that yourself. You’re not having sugar on your bread, not now, not tomorrow. Never. You’re going to starve to death if you’re going to wait for us to give in before you eat. Got it?”