Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book 4 (52 page)

I leaned over her desk.

‘I can’t do this one,’ she said.

She pointed to a sum with her pencil. Her eyes darted to and fro behind her glasses. I explained it to her, she sighed and groaned, which was her way of playing down her ignorance in front of friends.

‘Are you with me?’ I said.

‘Yes, I am,’ she said and waved me away.

‘Teacher.’ Vivian giggled. ‘Teacher, I can’t do this one, teacher!’

When I leaned over her it was as if she was completely at sea. Her face was blank and expressionless, her eyes were blank and expressionless. The receptivity I sensed in her was a little eerie.

‘Why have you got stuck on this one?’ I said. ‘You’ve cracked fifteen of them in exactly the same way before!’

She rolled her shoulders.

‘Have another go,’ I said. ‘Look at the other sums. If you can’t do it I’ll come and help. OK?’

‘OK, teacher,’ she said, glancing round with a giggle.

As I straightened up I looked straight into Andrea’s eyes.

There was a longing in them, and my cheeks burned.

‘Everything OK?’ I said.

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I need some help.’

My heart beat faster as I stopped beside her. Oh, it was ridiculous, but the awareness that she might be in love with me made it suddenly impossible to behave normally.

I leaned over and she seemed to shrink back. Her breathing changed. Her eyes were locked on to the book. I could smell the fragrance of her shampoo, I studiously avoided any form of contact, placed my finger on the first number she had written. She stroked her hair to the side, rested one elbow on the table. It was as if everything we did had become conscious: every detail became visible and it was no longer unthinking and natural but considered and artificial.

‘There’s the slip,’ I said. ‘Can you see it?’

She blushed, said yes in a soft voice, pointed to the next sum, what about this one, said yes again after a few seconds in a soft low voice, and her breathing, hers, was tremulous.

I stood up and walked on, surveyed the whole class and the whole teaching area, but I had not been left unmoved, the tiny moment lived on, and to release myself from it I collected all the books on the desk, piled them high with a bang and addressed the whole class. The moment had to be destroyed by a new, a greater moment. And I had to make the class a place for everyone, a unit, a class that would learn.

‘It looks as if some of you are having the same problem,’ I said. ‘Let’s go through it on the board. Fifth and sixth years close your ears.’

Once it was done the lesson proceeded as before. Even before I realised that Andrea had feelings for me I had been careful to keep my distance from the pupils. I never put my arm around them, indeed I never touched them at all, and if the conversation or jokes went too far, into vaguely sexual areas, I always stopped them. The other teachers didn’t need to do this, for them distance was a fact of life which nothing could break. For me it was something I had to create.

In the afternoon I rang dad. His voice was sombre and cold and sober. He asked me how things were, I said fine but I was looking forward to the Christmas holidays.

‘Are you going to celebrate Christmas with your mother?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘We thought you would. Fredrik isn’t coming either. So we’re off down south again this year. You’ve got a sister here, Karl Ove. Don’t forget that.’

Did he really think I would fall for that? If I had said I wanted to celebrate Christmas with them they would have come up with a thousand and one excuses. He didn’t want me there. So why the impression that we were letting him down?

‘But I could maybe come up during the winter break,’ I said. ‘Is that convenient? You won’t be heading for the sun?’

‘We haven’t planned that far ahead,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to see when the time comes.’

‘I could catch the express boat or something,’ I said.

‘Yes, you could. Have you heard from Yngve recently?’

‘No, it’s a while ago now,’ I said. ‘I think he’s very busy.’

Throughout the short telephone conversation it was as if he was trying to find a way out. We rang off after about two minutes. I was glad it was like this. Whenever it happened I became aware that he wasn’t someone I needed.

Wasn’t it like this with everyone?

Walking downhill, with the snow arrowing in off the black sea, I wondered whether there was anyone I needed. Whether there was anyone I could not manage without.

If so, it had to be mum and Yngve.

But they weren’t indispensable either, were they?

I tried to imagine what it would have been like if they hadn’t existed.

Roughly like now, minus the phone calls and the get-togethers at Christmas and in the summer.

Weren’t they indispensable?

But when I got my breakthrough as a writer, mum would have to be there.

I kicked away the snow in front of the door and went in. And perhaps if I had children?

But I wasn’t going to. The notion was unthinkable.

And, the way things were going, unfeasible anyway.

I smiled to myself as I removed my jacket. The next moment I was depressed. Everything connected with
it
lay like a shadow over my life. I couldn’t do
it
. I had tried, I hadn’t succeeded, it was no good.

Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, shit.

I threw myself onto the sofa and closed my eyes. How unpleasant it was, it was as though someone could appear outside at any moment and look in at me, indeed as if someone was standing there right now.

On Friday evening all the temporary teachers went to Hege’s, ate pizza and drank beer. Hege was the driving force and the centre of attention, as high-spirited as she was fast-talking, telling one story after the other. Nils Erik liked her and tried to impress her with his imitations and caricatures. I didn’t get a look-in, and that was strange as she had been at my place quite a bit over the last few weeks talking on and on about matters that were close to her hard heart.

After the food had been cleared from the table, she got a bottle of vodka from the freezer. The cold shiny drink elevated me into a cold happy world while Hege gradually began to lose control of her facial muscles and physical coordination. When she stood up to go to the toilet she raced over to the wall, supported herself on it, swayed and focused on the hall, laughed and set off again across the large open living-room floor, with more luck this time, for apart from the exaggeratedly straight line and a couple of staggers she reached the toilet door without further mishap. Half an hour later she was dozing off in a chair. I stroked her cheek, she opened her eyes and looked at me, I said she should go for a walk with me, the cold air would do her good. She nodded, I helped her to her feet and half carried her downstairs, she grinned, put her arms into the sleeves of the jacket I held out for her, pulled the hat over her head and slowly wound the scarf around her neck.

Outside, it was dark and still. The temperature had taken a nosedive over the last few hours, and the cloud cover that had hung over the area like a tarpaulin all week was now drawn to one side: the stars twinkled above us. I hooked her arm in mine and we began to walk. She stared straight ahead as we walked, her eyes were glazed and vacant, now and then she burst into laughter for no reason. We went down to the chapel and back, on to the school and back. Just above the mountain to the west a wave of green rippled across the sky, leaving a yellow and green veil after it was gone.

‘Look at the Northern Lights,’ I said. ‘Did you see them?’

‘Northern Lights, yes,’ she said.

We walked down to the chapel once again. Our shoes creaked in the dry snow. The mountains across the fjord stood silent and wild, a touch lighter than the night around them because of the snow. The cold lay around my face like a mask.

‘Are you feeling better?’ I said as we turned again.

‘M-hm,’ she said.

If this didn’t clear her head, nothing would.

‘Shall we go in then?’ I said by the drive to her house. She looked up at me and smiled what I interpreted as a devilish smile. Then she wrapped her arms round my neck, pulled me close to her and kissed me.

I didn’t want to offend her, and let her continue for a moment, then straightened up and freed myself.

‘We can’t do this,’ I said.

‘No,’ she said and laughed.

‘Let’s join the others, shall we?’ I said.

‘Yes, let’s.’

The clarity of mind she had gained dissolved quickly once she was back in the warm, soon she repaired to her bedroom, where she stayed for so long that we, without our hostess, cleared the bottles and glasses from the table, glanced in to see her, she was lying on her back in a large double bed, fully clothed and snoring, and then we all went our separate ways.

I wrote for all the rest of the weekend. On Sunday afternoon Hildegunn, Vivian, Andrea and Live came, they were bored as usual, I chatted with them for half an hour, avoided looking at Andrea, didn’t look at her, apart from once, and it was as though my eyes were magnets and hers were made of iron because a quarter of a second later she glanced towards me and blushed.

No, no, no, little Andrea.

But she wasn’t little, her hips were a woman’s, her breasts as big as apples, and it wasn’t just a child’s happiness that shone in her green eyes.

I said they had to go, I had other things to do than entertain children all evening, they snorted and groaned and left, Andrea last, she leaned forward and pulled on her high boots, flashed me a look before leaving to join the others, who were already outside waiting, surrounded by driving snow, motionless for an instant. Then life flooded back into them, and they walked down the hill laughing while I slammed the door and turned the key.

On my own at last.

I turned the music up as loud as I could without speaker distortion, and sat down to try to finish the short story I had started the day before.

It was about some seventeen-year-olds who were on their way home from a party and saw a car that had been driven into a cliff. They were drunk, it was early one Sunday morning, the road they were on was empty, thick wet mist hung over the countryside. They came round a bend and saw the car, the front was smashed in, the windscreen shattered. At first they thought it had happened a long time ago, it was just an old wreck lying there, but then they spotted someone in the car, a man, he was sitting in the driver’s seat, which had been shunted back, his face was covered in blood, and they realised the accident must have only just happened, perhaps no more than ten or fifteen minutes before. Are you all right, they said to him, he stared at them and slowly opened his mouth, but not a sound emerged. What shall we do? they said, looking at one another. There was something dreamlike about the whole scenario because the surroundings were so quiet and the mist so thick and because they were so drunk. We have to ring for an ambulance, Gabriel said. But where from? The nearest house was on an estate a kilometre away. They decided that one of them should run there and ring, and that the other two should stay by the wrecked car and keep an eye on it. Moving the man was out of the question, he was trapped and probably also had internal injuries.

That was as far as I had got. What would happen next I had no idea, other than that the man would die while they were standing there watching. Perhaps he would say something, anything from a different context, incomprehensible to them yet still clear. I also toyed with the idea of the man coming from a place where another story was being enacted. He had locked his father in a room, for example, where he had subjected him to brutal treatment, a secret that he was now taking with him to the grave. Or this was all there was, a car accident early in the morning, a man who died.

Immersed totally in this image – the gleaming tarmac, the motionless spruce trees, the glass splinters and the contorted metal, the smell of burned rubber and the rain-wet forest, perhaps the pillars of a bridge just visible thanks to flashing red lights deep in the mist – I jumped up from my chair like a lunatic when someone knocked on the window in front of me.

It was Hege.

My heart seemed to stampede, for even when I saw that it was her and realised that she must have been ringing the bell for some time without any success my chest was still pounding. She laughed, I smiled and pointed to the door, she nodded, I went to the door and opened up.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise you were so jumpy!’

‘I was writing,’ I said. ‘My head was somewhere else entirely. Would you like to come in?’

She shook her head.

‘I told Vidar I was going down to the kiosk. So I thought I could pop by and apologise for Friday.’

‘There’s nothing to apologise for,’ I said.

‘Maybe not,’ she said. ‘But I’m doing it anyway. Sorry.’

‘Apology accepted.’

‘Don’t you go getting any ideas, by the way,’ she said. ‘I’m always like that when I’m drunk. Completely lose control of my emotions and launch myself at the first person I see. It doesn’t mean anything. You do understand, don’t you?’

I nodded.

‘I’m the same,’ I said.

She smiled.

‘Good! So everything’s back to how it was. See you on Monday!’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Bye.’

‘Bye,’ she said and walked back to the road.

I closed the door and noticed that I was angry, it would take me at least an hour to get back into the text, and it was already eight o’clock. Might as well go up to the school and watch
Sportsrevyen
, I thought, standing by my desk and staring at the last sentences I had written.

No. If this was going to be any good I had to invest everything I had into it.

I continued writing.

Then there was someone at the door again.

I switched off the music and went to answer it.

It was three of the young fishermen. None of them was in the football team, two of them I had barely exchanged a word with, despite being at the same table three or four times. The third was Henning. He was a year older than me, had been to
gymnas
and set great store on showing himself to be different in minor details, like the pointed shoes he wore, his black Levi’s, the music he played on his car stereo, which had more in common with what I liked than anything anyone else here listened to.