Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book 4 (18 page)

‘Actually you know nothing about me,’ she said.

‘I know enough.’

‘No, what you see is something else. It’s not me you see.’

‘You’re wrong there,’ I said. ‘You are actually wrong there.’

We stared at each other. Then she smiled.

‘Well, shall we join the others?’ she said.

I sighed and got up. ‘For a bit more to drink, if nothing else,’ I said.

I held out my hand and pulled her up.

‘You promised!’ she said.

‘I promised nothing. Hanne?’ I said.

‘Yes?’

‘Can I hold your hand the short distance to the cabin?’

‘Yes.’

I put on my trousers and jacket and danced to ‘(Don’t You) Forget About Me’ by Simple Minds with Bassen while Hanne sat at the table chatting to Annette and watching us.

I stood next to her and poured vodka and juice into a glass.

‘You’re so sexy when you wear a jacket,’ she said.

‘Do you think so too?’ I said, looking at Annette.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course I don’t. Aren’t you two going to kiss soon?’

‘Not in this life by the look of things,’ I said.

‘Perhaps in heaven then?’ she said.

‘But I don’t believe in God,’ I said.

Hanne laughed, and I went over to Bassen, who was poring over the record collection.

‘Find anything?’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘There’s some Sting. But I need a kip. I’m off to England tomorrow. I don’t want to miss the boat.’

‘You can kip on the boat,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to go to bed now.’

He laughed. ‘Why not? You’ll have a free hand when I’m out of the way.’

‘OK, you win. I didn’t stand a chance.’

He took out the inner sleeve and held it at an angle so the record slid out. With his thumb on the edge and his other fingers on the label in the centre, he placed it on the deck.

‘How’s it going with you and Hanne?’ he said, swinging the pick-up arm to the first groove and lowering it with the little lever.

‘It’s not,’ I said.

‘You looked pretty happy out there on your rock.’

‘That’s as far as it goes,’ I said.

Then ‘If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free’ streamed out of the loudspeakers and soon everyone inside was dancing.

We slept in the loft, I lay dozing till late in the morning and dragged out the time for as long as I could after that, I didn’t want it to end, I wanted to be there, in the happiness I had felt, but then Siv had to take the last group back, and I jumped on board, sat quietly in the bow on the way across, found a seat to myself right at the back of the bus, pressed my forehead against the window and gazed out at the rolling Sørland countryside, which gradually became more and more urban until we reached the bus station and I got onto a bus that would take me home, to where dad was living now with Unni.

I had caught this bus almost every day for three years, but it felt like a whole life. I knew every bend, indeed every tree on the route, and I was on such familiar terms with many of the people who got off or on that we nodded to one another even though we had never exchanged a word.

It had been good on the island. Perhaps I’d never had such a good time.

On the other hand, it was only a class party.

Then there was Hanne.

Each in our own sleeping bag, we had lain face to face, whispering for maybe an hour before we fell asleep. She had also tried to whisper when she was laughing, and when she did I had thought, I can die now, it won’t matter.

‘Can I give you a goodnight kiss?’ I said as we were about to go to sleep.

‘On the cheek!’ she said.

I levered my way forward a few centimetres on my elbows, she half-turned her cheek to me, I moved my head slowly towards it, changed direction at the last minute and gave her a juicy kiss on the mouth.

‘You cheat!’ she said with a laugh.

‘Goodnight,’ I said.

‘Goodnight,’ she said.

That was how it had been.

And surely it is impossible for that whole evening and night not to mean something?

She had to feel something for me.

She had to feel something.

She had said several times that she wasn’t in love with me. She liked me, she said, very much even, but it was no more than that.

Now she was going to change school and start at Vågsbygd Gymnas, where she lived.

At least that would release me from the torment of seeing her every day!

The bus indicated it was going to Kjevik, and at that moment a plane flying low thundered over us, touched down and screamed along the runway at a speed that made it seem as if we were standing still.

Flashing lights, roaring engine. We were living in the future.

I might bump into her now and then in town, we could have lunch together, go to the cinema, I could take her swimming with me on Saturday mornings. Gradually she would realise she was in love with me. She would finish the other business, tell me with a glow in her eyes that now there was nothing to stop us any more.

But then?

When we were together?

Visit each other in the evenings, kiss and eat pizza? Go to the cinema with her friends?

That was not enough.

I
wanted
her. Not as part of a
gymnas
existence, a
gymnas
girlfriend, she meant more than that. I wanted to move in with her. Be with her day and night, share everything with her. Not in town, with everything that went on there constantly around us, but in the skerries or perhaps in the forest, no matter where, as long as it was a place where we could be completely alone.

Or in Oslo, a large town where no one knew us.

Then I could go shopping after returning from lectures because I would study, and make dinner for her, there in our own flat.

Then we could have a child.

The bus stopped in front of the tiny terminal building, and a man wearing a cap and carrying a little suitcase got on board, paid and walked down the bus whistling as he went. He sat down in the seat in front of me.

I threw my arms in the air. The whole bus was empty! And he has to sit right there!

He smelled of sweet aftershave. His neck was covered in a scattering of thin hairs. His ear lobes were fat and red. A farmer from Birkeland.

Child?

I didn’t want one, I didn’t want to work from nine to four, that was a trap I would steer clear of, but it was different with Hanne, that was about something else.

Jesus, no, of course we wouldn’t get married, of course we wouldn’t live in the skerries, of course we wouldn’t have children!

I smiled. It had to be the wildest idea I’d ever had.

On the other side of the runway, across the road, was Jøgge’s house. There was light in the windows, and I leaned forward to see if I could catch a glimpse of him. But, if I knew Jøgge, he would be lying on his waterbed listening to Peter Gabriel.

I woke up next morning to the drone of a Hoover in the room underneath. I didn’t move. The hoovering stopped and other sounds became more prominent: the clink of bottles, the hum of the dishwasher, water running into a bucket. They had been having a party when I arrived. The last I had seen of them before sneaking up to my room the night before had been his contorted face and her laying a hand on his shoulder. That was the first time I had seen him drunk and the first time I had seen him cry. After a while the door was opened, footsteps crunched on the gravel outside and then I heard their voices just under my window.

There was a bench with a table where dad used to sit in the summer in that characteristic way of his, one leg crossed over the other, his back bent slightly forwards, often holding a newspaper in his hands and a smoking cigarette between his fingers.

They laughed. Her voice was high-pitched, his deeper.

I got up and tiptoed over to the window.

The sky was a little misty, it softened a tone, but the sun shone and the air in the garden was perfectly still and quivered.

I opened the window.

And they were indeed sitting on the bench beneath, leaning against the wall with their eyes closed to the sun. Both tipped their heads back and looked up at me.

‘Well, isn’t that our Kaklove?’ dad said.

‘Good morning, early bird!’ Unni said.

‘Good morning,’ I said, securing the window with the latch. I didn’t like the way their voices seemed to embrace me, as though it was us three now. It wasn’t true; it was the two of them and me.

But I liked the role of the rebellious teenager even less. The last thing in the world I wanted was to give them any reason at all to blame me for anything.

I ate a few slices of bread in the kitchen, carefully tidied up afterwards, brushed the crumbs on the plate and table into the rubbish bin under the sink, fetched the Walkman from my room, tied my shoes up and went down to see them.

‘I’m off for a walk,’ I said.

‘You do that,’ dad said. ‘Are you going to visit a pal?’

He didn’t know the name of a single one of my pals, not even Jan Vidar, whom I had been friends with for three years. But now he was sitting beside Unni and wanted to show that he was a good father who knew his son’s habits.

‘Yes, reckon so,’ I said.

‘Tomorrow I’ll start moving my stuff down. It would be handy if you were here. I might need a bit of help carrying.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘OK, bye.’

I wasn’t going to a friend’s; Jan Vidar was working at a bakery in town this summer, Bassen was on his way to England, Per was probably grafting at the floor factory, and what Jøgge was doing I had no idea, but it wasn’t, and never had been, natural for me to get on my bike without a specific aim. It suited me to be alone though, and I put on my headset, pressed play and allowed myself to be engulfed in music as I walked downhill. The countryside lay serene before me, and the few clouds, above the ridges on the other side of the river valley, were motionless. I followed the road down, it was quiet too, because, apart from a farm a kilometre further up, there was barely a house on this side for some distance. Only forest and water.

The green of the spruce needles shone brightly in the sunshine, it was almost black in the shadows, but there was something light about all the trees, it was the summer that did that, they weren’t brooding or turned into themselves as in winter, no, they let the warm air filter through and stretched towards the sun, like everything else living.

I walked along the old forest path. Even though it was only a couple of hundred metres above our house I hadn’t been there more than two or three times, and then only in winter, wearing skis. Nothing happened there, it was deserted and none of the kids up here gravitated towards that path: down at the bottom was where it all happened, that was where people lived.

If I had grown up here I might have been familiar with every bush and rock, as I was with the countryside around our house in Tybakken. But I had lived here for only three years and no roots had developed, nothing meant anything, not really.

I turned off the music, pulled the headset down over my neck. Above me the air was so full of birdsong that it felt as if I could
see
it. Now and then there was a rustle in the undergrowth beside the path, that must have been birds too, I mused, but I didn’t see any.

The path rose gently, in constant shadow from the high trees growing on both sides. At the top there was a small lake, I lay down on the grass not far away, on my back and stared at the sky while listening to music, I played
Remain in Light
, and thought about Hanne.

I had to write another letter to her. It had to be so good that she wouldn’t be able to think about anything else but me.

Dad didn’t need much help from me with moving the following afternoon. He carried all the boxes himself, loaded them onto the big white rental van and drove off to town, three trips was all it took; it was only when it came to the furniture that he needed a helping hand. With it aboard he slammed the doors shut and shot me a glance.

‘Let’s keep in touch,’ he said.

Then he laid a hand on my shoulder.

He had never done that before.

My eyes went moist and I looked down. He removed his hand, clambered up into the driver’s seat, started the engine and drove slowly downhill.

Did he like me?

Was that possible?

I wiped my eyes on my T-shirt sleeve.

That was that, I thought. I would never live with him again now. From the edge of the forest came the cat, his tail held high. He stopped by the door and looked at me with his yellow eyes.

‘Do you want to go in, Mefisto?’ I said. ‘Are you hungry too?’

He didn’t answer, he rubbed his head against my leg as I went to open the door, darted in towards his dish and stood there staring up at me.

I opened a new can, dumped a large pile in the dish and went into the living room where a faint trace of Unni’s perfume hung in the air.

I opened the terrace door and stood in the step outside. Even if the sun no longer shone on the house it was still warm out there.

Per came up the hill, walking with his bicycle at his side.

I went to the edge of the slope.

‘Have you been working?’ I shouted.

‘By the sweat of my brow!’ he shouted back. ‘Not like some people I know who sleep all day!’

‘How much did you earn for your pension today?’

‘More than you’ll ever earn in the course of your whole life.’

I watched him chuckling. He was the type that chuckled and had always been older than his years.

He raised a hand in salute, I did the same and then I went inside.

Two of the pictures on the living-room wall had gone. Half of the records, I assumed, and half of the books. All his papers, the desk and the office equipment. The sofa in front of the TV, the two Stressless leather chairs. Half of the kitchen utensils. And of course all his clothes.

But the house didn’t seem to have been stripped.

In the room beside the hall the telephone rang. I hurried over.

‘Hello, this is Karl Ove,’ I said.

‘Hi, Yngve here. What’s new?’

‘Dad’s just left with the last load. Mum will be here soon. So I’m on my own with the cat. Where are you?’