Child Wonder (21 page)

On her return she was more weary than furious and at once started to tidy a cupboard, which is what she does when she wants to be left in peace or is at a loss to know what to do with her hands, clearing up all the things that accrue in the course of a lifetime whose sole
raison d’être
is that it is comforting to know that they are there.

What, however, surprised me was not the telling-off I had been given, but that it should be so terrible that Linda was finally allowed to start in a proper class. So I asked. And straightaway she was on the edge of the abyss.

“Because I can’t take any more disappointments!”
she screamed into the idiotic cupboard.
“Can’t you get that into your head?!”

“Disappointments …?”

I must have been hearing things.

“Well, imagine she doesn’t make the grade! I won’t be able to bear it!”

Had I been quicker on my feet, or eighteen years older, it would have been reasonable to ask if Linda had been allocated to the special class so that she,
Mother,
would not be exposed to potential disappointment. Instead I committed the deadly sin of asking whether there had really been so many disappointments in her life; you see, I didn’t go around every day remembering my father and the divorce and the widow’s pension and the
horrible
stuff she had experienced in her childhood. She stood in front of me and asked me point-blank if I was pulling her leg, or what.

I had to go back into my room and read my letter to Tanja in the hope that it would have its usual effect on me. But scarcely a couple of minutes had passed before she came in and sat down on Linda’s bed and said:

“Sorry, of course it’s not your fault that they’re moving her …”

“No, it isn’t,” I said.

“Just hope she’ll make it.”

“Course she’ll make it.”

But her eyes became even more sorrowful, now she had found Amalie sleeping under Linda’s duvet, grabbed her and sat with her in her lap, the rag doll with two disjointed childhoods behind her.

“She is
so
like me, Finn.”

“Mhm …”

“It’s all there.”

“You didn’t go to a special class, did you?” I essayed.

“No, I didn’t. It’s not that …”

“Well, what
is
it then?” I cried, in order to have it out once and for all what it was that was tormenting her brain, and maybe mine too, and preventing us from being the people we were, and she said something about Linda lacking concentration and coordination and a number of other Latin-sounding words that did not mean much to me and which she gave up trying to explain.

“You’ll understand one day,” she concluded and caught sight of the letter I was making a half-hearted attempt to conceal. “Have you been sent a letter, too?”

“Nope, it’s one I’ve written.”

“Who to?” “Tanja.”

“Who’s Tanja?”

“Erm,” I prevaricated until she remembered the scene I made in the spring, about this self-same Tanja, who I reckoned at that time ought to have been allowed to live with us since there were so many of us here already, so that she wouldn’t have to set out on the long trek to the country I now knew to be Rumania.

“The one you wanted to stay here?” she laughed, patting the duvet to signal I should sit down. Then she began to tell me I couldn’t go through life feeling sorry for all and sundry, she reminded me I was always dragging cats and dogs home I wanted to adopt, you’ll mess up your life, Finn, if you think that you’re here to save others, like that Freddy, for example …

I objected, saying how else could you spend your time, while realising once again how deeply I had missed being able to sit here, without any screaming and shouting, hearing her say that now we would have to concentrate on Linda, Mother and I. I answered, almost triumphantly, that we didn’t need to worry about Linda because she could read already.

“No, she can’t, Finn.”

“Oh, yes, she can, and she’s only in the first class. None of the others can read anyway …”

“But no-one has practised as hard as we have, every day for almost a whole year. We have …”

“True,” I persisted without raising my voice. Again Mother looked as if she was going to have a relapse and scream, but then seemed to be mulling things over instead, as though maybe I had a point, and she asked how it could be that Linda never managed to read the simplest of words when she and Mother were relaxing together over a book. I said:

“She can’t be bothered, I suppose.”

“Now you’re pulling my leg.”

“No, I am not,” I said. “She
can
read, even words she’s never seen before.”

“If only that were so,” Mother sighed.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“At the twins’.”

I stood up, crossed the corridor, rang the Syversens’ bell and brought Linda back to the bedroom where Mother was still sitting with Amalie in her lap. She gave a tired smile and stroked Linda’s hair and asked how she was today, and Linda answered, as always, that everything was fine.

I told her to take a seat beside Mother, gave her my letter to Tanja and asked her to read it.

“I can’t,” she said with her teasing smile, to make
me
read. But it didn’t work, not this time. Puzzled, she looked up at Mother. For once, though, no help was forthcoming, Mother was already preparing to hide her eyes behind a trembling hand or two because this was now not only a university entrance exam, which no-one in this family had been anywhere near taking, but a doctoral
viva
in basic survival skills.

“I’m little,” she said.

“Are you heck,” I said.

“Do I
have
to?”

“Yes,” I repeated, this was a matter of life and death, and Mother had to exert her iron will not to shout: “Come on, pack it in, Finn, let’s go and eat and leave her alone,” etc.

Linda looked glumly down at the paper, took a deep breath and read:

“To the Tanja who packs up all her things every year and travels to Rumania and Sardinia …” And when she also succeeded in more or less stumbling her way through the impossible “Czechoslovakia”, Mother hoisted full sail and began to behave in a manner that I would prefer not to have to describe.

“It’s
my
fault! It’s
my
fault!”

Linda’s eyes grew wide in horror and she was assaulted with clumsy hugs and what I assume must have been outbursts of joy, although they were more like the throes of an excruciating demise. Mother jumped up holding her forehead as if she were unable to remember her own name or where she lived. And Linda was even more bemused. But I managed to snatch my letter before the more earnest sections were revealed, stuffed it in my satchel and took Linda into the kitchen to do some cooking, to make rissoles.

“With onions,” Linda said.

“With onions,” I said, taking the oval aluminium can from the fridge and giving her a large carving knife and showing her how to peel an onion, like this, like this, and started on the rissoles which were already half-cooked and needed little more than to be put in a pan with a lump of Melange margarine, I was prattling away non-stop because I had some vague notion that I should drag out the time, the longer it lasted the more composed Mother would be when at length she emerged to sort out the food, this is the kind of thing a son knows, heaven knows how, sooner or later his mother will come to her senses and take over and just laugh at the mess.

And so she did. Mother does not let you down when it really counts. Here she comes, with dried eyes, restored and calm and says oh, good for you, before grabbing the carving knife and – as I said – taking over. Mother rules the roost. In the meantime Linda and I sit facing each other drumming our knives and forks on the table and chanting bitumen and tarmac louder and louder and faster and faster until Linda explodes with laughter.

This is Freddy 1’s magic formula, which he still goes around mumbling; I have a suspicion his single reason for doing this is that he imagines they are elegant words, or because he is half nuts and can’t get them out of his head – he is full of weird words, red words and green words and words which are nigh on colourless, and in the end they all sound like a cry for help.

It would soon be Linda’s birthday. And here, too, she was on new ground, a new-born baby, an innocent, so the day had to be much more than the annual routines we others go in for, and it also marked an unparalleled performance in the reading test, with invitations to all the little girls the street could muster, Mother was going to bake, Marlene would sing, Kristian would do magic tricks …

And what would I do?

Nothing, I knew, something was beginning to take control of me, I was beginning to stay outdoors, until late at night, I sat in a tree in Hagan or in the bomb shelter or wittered on about setting up a room in the loft, temporary digs without Kristian, and when Mother asked me one day if we should invite some of my friends too, that did it.

“On
Linda’s
birthday?”

“Yes, is that so strange?”

“Er … yes, in fact it is.”

“What about Essi?”

“I don’t play much with Essi any more.”

She didn’t say much for a while, probably out of fear I would suggest Freddy 1, but a bit later she made the suggestion herself.

“That Freddy, he could come, couldn’t he?”

No sooner said than done. So when the evening arrived I hid my jacket and shoes in the bike room in the cellar; as the first guests, the twins, showed up, to a huge fuss, I managed to nip out unnoticed and down the stairs where I bumped into another guest, quite literally, Freddy 1, who was trying to hide something behind his back.

“What are you up to?” I asked.

“Er … don’t know,” he said sheepishly.

We stood eyeing each other, a meeting we could well have done without, both of us, I knew. Then one more guest appeared, Jenny, more straight-backed than ever, and I was able to slip into the bike room and change my clothes.

I left and went up through the estate, into Eikelundveien, along Liaveien, off to the right and up into relatively unknown territory. I had been here on my bike before, with pals, but a bike is one thing, on foot you are closer to the ground and a lot less mobile, both in time and space, more present, so to speak, in foreign parts. Around me there were gardens and detached houses in undeviating straight rows, packed with private life and stoicism in warm felt slippers. Then it started raining, it developed into a storm, sleet, and after passing the market garden I found myself opposite the boiler station on my own estate, again filled with that strange feeling of what it is like to return home without a single thing having changed.

But I had got no further than halfway down the estate before I spotted the fourteen or so colourful vehicles parked alongside the boundary fence between here and Gamlehagan, surrounded by raucous loudspeakers and an exotic jangle that could only mean fairground music. I remembered hearing about this, that a fair was coming to Tonsen, with a wheel of fortune and tombola and pyramids of tin cans you could take a shy at with small bags of peas, as well as a shooting gallery.

It was above all the latter that attracted my interest – I had in fact used an air gun before, at Østreheim, and was a pretty good shot, Uncle Tor had called me a natural talent. It had stopped raining by now as well, this was only October after all, it was somewhere between seven and eight o’clock in the evening and a last surviving angled ray of sun beamed down on me; furthermore, I had seventy øre in my pocket.

But there was a queue, formed and administered by Raymond Wackarnagel and his henchmen, and a violent altercation was developing at the shooting gallery between the robust owner, a broad-shouldered hulk, who spoke Swedish in a way the queue considered highly amusing and the afore-mentioned Wackarnagel who was furious about something – I heard words like cheat and traveller and scum being bandied around.

Before I could investigate the matter further I caught sight of Tanja, of all people, my Tanja, as invisible as always, sitting on a folding chair by the entrance to the chamber of horrors, as though she were on guard duty. It was a joy to observe that she had seen me first and now was waiting for
me
to notice her, and smile, which I assume I must have done because her eyes were downcast, with both pleasure and grace, of that there was little doubt.

This made it possible for me to continue gazing at her, from the front for a change. It was quite a sight: she was holding her knees together tightly beneath the hem of her red flowery dress, like Mother in shoe-shop mode, and they were a bit pointed.
Too
pointed? Me, I’ve always had a soft spot for rounded knees. Moreover, she had such thin calves, from the knees down they went one way, inwards, until the skinny ankles passed into a pair of concertina’d stockings and large old-lady shoes, the type Gran wore in her rocking chair. Not forgetting her hair, that wonderful cascade of shiny ink that was now divided into two and ran down each side of the magical Modigliani face she, as I have said before, was making a half-hearted attempt to hide; it never occurred to me that it was not for my sake it hung there, it would always be there for me, whether I observed her from the front or the back, it was
my
hair, shaped and washed and combed for my sake, then I felt a blast of moist breath inside my ear.

“Your turn, Finn, but actually I think you should give this shithead a miss, there’s somethin’ dodgy goin’ on here.”

Wackarnagel is a man whose advice one ought to heed, but I had set something in motion here, and it had to be finished, so I put fifty øre on the counter, and the great hulk shoved a zinc bowl towards me containing five darts of various colours plus a rifle way beyond well-used, which I weighed in my hands and studied: the scratches on the butt, the age, the wear and tear. I broke it open and loaded it, but as I was about to insert the first dart in the barrel, I started to quake, the dart fell out of my hands, and as I bent down to pick it up – to everyone’s amusement – again I caught the unmistakable aroma of flowers and petrol.

“The barrel’s warped. Aim to the right.”