Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book 4 (53 page)

‘Can we come in?’ he said.

‘Course,’ I said, and stepped aside. They hung up their jackets, with snow on the shoulders, kicked off their shoes, dark from the slush, went into the sitting room and sat down.

The wind had picked up. Down by the sea waves were hurling themselves at the shore like furious beasts. The wash that was always present had a darker undertone when there was a storm, a kind of boom or a muted rumble.

They each put a bottle of Absolut on the table.

‘I haven’t got any mixers, I’m afraid,’ I said.

‘We stick them in the freezer and drink it neat,’ Henning said. ‘That’s what the Russians do. That’s how it’s supposed to be drunk. If you add a bit of pepper, it tastes fantastic.’

‘OK,’ I said and went for some glasses. After they had filled theirs, and also mine, to the brim, I put on one of the two U2 mini LPs I had, which not many people had heard. Henning, who liked U2, actually asked me what the music was, and I was able to bask in the sun for a while.

The music evoked at once the atmosphere of my ninth class and the first class at
gymnas
. The enormous bare beautiful but also lonely space for music that I had loved, and now discovered that I still loved, as well as everything else around it, everything that had been going on in my life then, condensed into this unbelievably vibrant concentrated moment which only feelings can produce. A year relived in a second.

‘Just fantastic!’ I said.

‘
Skål
,’ said Kåre.

‘
Skål
,’ said Johnny.

‘
Skål
,’ said Henning.

‘
Skål
,’ I said, and drained my glass with a shiver. Turned up the music. With the darkness so dense outside and the lights so bright inside, it was as if you were being transported. In a shuttle of some kind. Way out into space.

And it was true too. We
were
hovering out in space. I had always known that, but it was only when I came here that I understood. Darkness did something to your perception of the world. The Northern Lights, this cold burning in the sky, as well. And the isolation.

I cursed myself for not having been able to keep my eyes off Andrea. Whatever I do I mustn’t encourage her feelings.

Mustn’t look at her again.

Or at least only in a teaching context.

I didn’t
need
it. Liking her had nothing to do with it, I liked lots of the others as well. Fourth years as much as seventh years. The exception was Vivian’s sister Liv, but for Christ’s sake she was sixteen, only two years younger than me, no one could object to my looking at
her
.

‘Did you get back today?’ I said, looking at Henning.

He nodded.

‘Did you catch anything?’

He shook his head.

‘Black sea.’

They didn’t leave until five. By then I had drunk almost a whole bottle of vodka. I had enough presence of mind to set the alarm clock, but when it rang at a quarter past eight I must have been dead to the world because it was still beeping in its devilish way when I was brought to by other sounds that had merged with it, namely, someone ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door.

I tumbled out of bed, threw some cold water over my face and opened up.

It was Richard.

‘You’re awake, are you?’ he said. ‘Come on then. Your class is waiting. It’s a quarter past nine.’

‘I’m ill,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to stay at home today.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Come on. Have a shower and get your clothes on. I’ll be waiting here.’

I looked at him. I was still drunk, my brain was in a corridor with glass walls. I saw Richard from far off although he was a metre from me.

‘What are you waiting for?’ he said.

‘I’m ill,’ I said.

‘You’ve got one chance,’ he said. ‘I suggest you take it.’

I met his eyes. Then I backed away and went into the bathroom, turned on the shower and stood under it for a few seconds. I was furious. I was an employee, a teacher, and if one of the others didn’t appear for work one day and said they were ill, Richard wouldn’t dream of going to get them. Not a hope. The fact that he was right – after all I wasn’t ill – was irrelevant. I was an adult, not a child, a teacher not a pupil; if I said I was ill, I was ill.

I turned off the shower, dried myself, rolled deodorant under my arms, got dressed in the bedroom, put on a coat, shoes and a scarf in the hall and opened the door again.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Let’s go up then.’

He had humiliated me, but there was nothing I could do about it. Right and power were on his side.

I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with others I loved it and the change to the world it brought. Running around in the forest or between houses was different in the darkness, the world was enchanted, and we, we were breathless adventurers with blinking eyes and pounding hearts.

When I was older there was little I liked better than to stay up at night, the silence and the darkness had an allure, they carried a promise of something grand. And autumn was my favourite season, wandering along the road by the river in the dark and the rain, not much could beat that.

But this darkness was different. This darkness rendered everything lifeless. It was static, it was the same whether you were awake or asleep, and it became harder and harder to motivate yourself to get up in the morning. I succeeded, and five minutes later I was standing in front of my desk again, but what happened there was also rendered lifeless. It felt as though I was getting nothing back from what I was doing. However much effort I put in, nothing came back. Everything vanished, everything dissolved into the great darkness in which we lived. I might as well say this as that, do this as that, nothing made any difference.

At the same time I was depressed by being under constant observation, by everyone always knowing who I was, by never being allowed to have any peace. Especially at school, where Richard hovered over me like some damn bird of prey, ready to pounce on me the second I did something he didn’t like.

All the drinking reinforced my unease, and since nothing of what I did gave me anything back I became more and more worn down, it was as though I was being drained, I became emptier and emptier, and soon I would be walking around like a shadow, a ghost, as empty and dark as the sky and the sea around me.

I drank several times in midweek after the day Richard came to fetch me, but I always managed to stagger out of bed and get myself to school punctually. The next occasion he had reason to find fault with me was different. I had been to a party in Tromsø at the weekend, Jøgge was on leave and wanted to meet me, and on Sunday evening I missed the boat to Finnsnes, had to stay overnight in Tromsø, and then when I finally returned to the village it was too late in the morning for it to be worth going to school.

The next day Richard called me into his office. He said he had confidence in me, I was an important part of the school, but things had to function smoothly, things had to function smoothly every day, and if I didn’t turn up for work this created big problems for everyone. Also for the pupils. It was my responsibility, no one else’s, and this must not happen again under any circumstances.

As I stood there, with pupils running hither and thither outside the window and him sitting behind his desk and telling me this in a loud harsh voice, I was raging inside. But his voice paralysed my fury, it could not find a vent, except in the old despised way it used to do, as tears in my eyes.

He humiliated me, although he was right, it was my responsibility, I couldn’t skip work the way I had skived from
gymnas
.

All my strength had ebbed away, and all my resolve.

I closed the door behind me, washed my face in the staff toilet, sat down on the sofa without even the energy to pour myself a cup of coffee.

Torill was sitting at the table making some Christmas decorations. She noticed me looking at her.

‘Just have to make sure I can do this before I ask the kids to do it,’ she said.

‘Don’t they teach you that kind of thing at training college?’ I said.

‘That wasn’t the main priority, no. Pedagogics and that kind of useless stuff was more the style,’ she said with a grin.

I sat up.

I could just stop teaching.

Who said I couldn’t?

Who said so?

Everyone said so, but who said
I
had to listen to them?

No one could stop me handing in my notice, could they? I didn’t even need to hand it in, all I had to do was stay down south after Christmas, just not return. I would be putting the school in a predicament, but who said I couldn’t do that?

The teacher my class had had the year before turned up drunk for classes, was always taking days off and in the end had simply slung his hook and never returned.

Oh, how they had moaned and groaned about him in the months I had been up here.

I got up, the bell rang the next moment, so deeply were the routines ingrained in my body. But the thought of stopping shone bright in me. I wanted to be free, and freedom existed everywhere but here.

After the last lesson that day I rang mum. Caught her as she was about to leave work.

‘Hi, Mum,’ I said. ‘Have you got time for a little chat?’

‘Yes, of course. Has something happened?’

‘No. Nothing has changed here, but the job’s beginning to weigh me down. I can only get out of bed in the morning with the greatest of difficulty. And it struck me today that I could just hand in my notice. I’m not enjoying it at all, you see. I haven’t been trained for this either. So I wondered about studying after Christmas instead. Doing the foundation year.’

‘I can understand you being frustrated and that it’s tough going,’ she said. ‘But I think you should sleep on it before you decide. Christmas is around the corner, and you’ll be able to unwind and relax lying on the sofa here if you like. I think everything will look different then, when you go back up.’

‘But that’s exactly what I don’t want!’

‘Work goes through patches. There was a time when you thought it was a lot of fun. It’s quite normal for you to have a down period now. I’m not going to say whether you should stop or not. That’s up to you to decide. But you don’t need to make up your mind right now, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘I don’t think you understand what I’m telling you. It won’t get any better. It’s just a bloody slog. And for what?’

‘Life is a slog at times,’ she said.

‘That’s what you always say. Your life may be a slog, but does mine have to be?’

‘I was only trying to give you some advice. In my opinion, it’s good advice.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘The odds are I’ll give up the job, but you’re right, I don’t need to make a decision now.’

Usually I took care to make sure the staffroom was empty when I phoned, or that only Nils Erik was there, but this time I had been so upset and desperate that I hadn’t given it a thought. When I opened the door to leave Richard was in the kitchen.

‘Hi, Karl Ove,’ he said. ‘I’m just doing the washing up. Are you on your way home?’

‘Yes,’ I said, turned and left.

Had he heard? Had he been standing there and listening
as well
?

I couldn’t believe that.

But then came the last day of school before the holidays, grade books were handed out, coffee was drunk and cakes were eaten, in an hour I would be getting on the bus to Finnsnes and setting off on the long journey down to mum in Førde, where we would stay for a few days before going to Sørbøvåg for Christmas Eve. Richard stopped in front of me.

‘You should know that I consider you’ve done a fantastic job here this term. You’ve been an invaluable member of staff. And you managed the odd spot of bother with aplomb. Now you have to promise me you’ll be back after the Christmas holidays!’

He smiled to soften the impact, to make it seem like a pleasantry.

‘Why would you think I wasn’t coming back?’ I said.

‘You
must
come back, you know,’ he said. ‘It’s not easy up here in the north, but it is still fantastic. We need you here.’

This was unadulterated flattery, as transparent as glass, but that didn’t stop me puffing out my chest with pride. Because he was right. I
had
done a good job.

‘Of course I’ll be back,’ I said. ‘Happy Christmas! See you in 1988!’

The next day, in the evening, mum was waiting on the quay as the
hurtigrute
boat from Bergen docked in Lavik. It was half past eight, pitch black, the crew lowered the gangplank while the roaring propellers churned up the sea. The light from the lamp above the tiny waiting room glimmered in the film of water that lay over the tarmac. I stepped ashore, leaned forward and gave mum a hug, we walked together to the car. Around us doors were being opened and closed, engines started and the express boat was already speeding off down the fjord. The weather was mild, the countryside snowless, the car windscreen dotted with small raindrops which were intermittently swept away by the wipers. The cones of light from the headlamps roamed like two frightened animals in front of us. Trees, houses, petrol stations, rivers, mountains, fjords, whole forests appeared in them. I leaned back in my seat staring. I’d had no idea that I had missed trees until I was sitting there and saw them.

Mum had made a casserole before she left, we ate it, chatted for an hour, then she went to bed. I stayed up to write but didn’t get much done beyond a couple of lines. She had rented the flat furnished, and I felt like a stranger there.

The next day we drove to town to do our final Christmas shopping. The sky was overcast, but the clouds hiding the sun were thin and straggly, my back was cold as I opened the door, stepped out of the building and for the first time in several months saw the burning globe hanging behind the clouds. Even if the colours of our surroundings were reduced to a minimum in which only the pale yellow of the grass and the wan green of the hedges stood out from the grey, to me they seemed to glow. There was no sharpness, there were no marked contrasts, no steep mountain peaks, there was no endless sea. Only lawns, hedges, estate houses, and behind them gentle friendly mountains, all muted by moisture and grey winter light.