Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book 4 (54 page)

In the evening Yngve came. It was his birthday, he was twenty-three, after dinner we ate cake, drank coffee and had a glass of brandy. I gave him a record, mum gave him a book. After mum had gone to bed we sat up and had a couple more glasses of brandy. I asked him to read the latest short story I had written. While he did so I stood outside on the veranda in the drizzle gazing into the distance, I was overjoyed to be home although the few signs of mum and her life that existed in the flat didn’t make the alienness any more homely, as one might imagine, more the contrary, they made the homeliness more alien. Seeing her things there was like seeing them in a museum. But then home was no longer a place. It was mum and Yngve.
They
were my home.

I craned my neck and looked into the living room. He was still reading.

Was that the last page?

It looked like it.

I forced myself to wait a little longer.

Then I pushed up the long handle and slid open the glass door. Closed it behind me, sat down on the sofa across the table from him. He had placed the sheets of paper in a pile. He was busy rolling a cigarette, oblivious of my presence.

‘Well?’ I said.

He smiled. ‘Well, it’s good.’

‘Sure?’

‘Ye-es. It’s similar to the other ones I’ve read.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I’ve done six now. If I can speed up I could have fifteen ready by the time I finish at the school.’

‘What are you going to do then?’ Yngve asked, putting the somewhat crooked roll-up between his lips and lighting up.

‘Send it to a publishing house, of course,’ I said. ‘What do you reckon?’

He looked at me.

‘You don’t think anyone’s going to publish it, do you? In all seriousness? Do you think they will?’

Chilled to the depths of my soul, I met his gaze. All the blood had drained from my head.

He smiled. ‘You did, didn’t you,’ he said.

My eyes glazed over and I had to avert my head.

‘You can send them anyway,’ he said. ‘And see what they say. They might go for them, you never know.’

‘But you said you liked them,’ I protested, getting up. ‘Didn’t you mean what you said?’

‘Yes, I did. But everything is relative. I read it as a story written by my nineteen-year-old brother. And it is good. But I don’t think it’s good enough to be published.’

‘OK,’ I said, going back out onto the veranda. I watched him carry on reading the Fløgstad book mum had given him. The brandy glass resting in his hand. As though what he had said had no special significance.

Bugger him.

What did he know, really? Why should I listen to
him
? Kjartan liked it, he was a writer. Or did he also say that based on who I was, his nineteen-year-old nephew, I wrote well considering who I was?

Mum had said she considered me a writer after reading it. You’re a writer, she had said. As though that surprised her, as though she hadn’t known, and she couldn’t have put that on. She meant it.

But for Christ’s sake I was
her
son.

Surely you don’t think anyone is going to publish it? In all seriousness?

I’ll bloody show him. I’ll bloody show the whole sodding fucking world who I am and what I am made of. I’ll crush every single one of them. I’ll render every single one of them speechless. I will. I will. I bloody well will. I’ll be so big no one is even close. No one. No. One. Never. No bloody chance. I will be the bloody greatest ever. The fucking idiots. I’ll bloody crush every single one of them.

I
had
to be big. I
had
to be.

If not, I might as well top myself.

The sight of the pallid winter sun in the damp muted countryside continued to keep me fascinated throughout Christmas, it was as though I hadn’t seen the sun before it was gone again, what energy it brought, how rich the play of light on nature when its rays were filtered through the clouds or the mist or just flooded down from a blue sky, and all the endless nuances that appeared when nature reflected the light back.

Nothing had changed in Sørbørvåg. Grandma’s state hadn’t noticeably worsened, grandad hadn’t noticeably aged and the fervour in Kjartan’s eyes wasn’t noticeably diminished. Since last Christmas he had passed a philosophy exam in Førde, and now it was his lecturer’s name, rather than Heidegger’s and Nietzsche’s, that was mentioned, at least they were not referred to as often as before, in that casual confidential way of his. I might have imagined we could talk about literature, but apart from him showing me some poems, hardly a word of which I understood, nothing came of this. He had also acquired an astronomical telescope, it stood on the living-room floor, beside the ceiling-high window, from where he studied the universe at night. He had also developed an interest in ancient Egypt, ensconced in his old leather chair reading about that mysterious culture which was so far removed from ours it seemed almost non-human to me, as if they actually
had
been gods. But then I knew nothing about it, and just flicked through his books when he wasn’t there and examined the pictures.

On 28 December I went down to Kristiansand, celebrated New Year’s Eve there, Espen had hired a room with some others at the Hotel Caledonien, which had just reopened after the fire, it was heaving with people, everyone was smoking and drinking, and it wasn’t long before two firemen came dashing along the corridor in full kit. I laughed myself silly when I saw them. I had been on my way up to the rooftop with some others, I sat on the edge and dangled my feet over, with the town beneath me and the sky lit up with fireworks. We talked about a crowd of us going to the Roskilde Music Festival in the summer, and with Lars I semi-planned a hitchhiking trip down to Greece afterwards. I managed to include a visit to grandma and grandad as well, nothing had changed there either, with them, the house, everything inside and its smells. It was me who had changed, it was my life that was on a wild trajectory.

On 3 January I caught the plane up to Tromsø, shortly after halfway we flew into a tunnel of darkness, and I knew it wouldn’t end, this was how it would be, pitch black all day for some weeks yet. Then everything would slowly change, soon the darkness would be gone and the light would fill every hour of the day. This was just as wild, I thought, smoking in the narrow seat.

But first came the darkness. Dense and heavy, it lay over the village when I arrived by bus on the morning of 4 January, not open, as it could be when the sky was cloud-free and the stars were shining out in space, but dense and heavy like at the bottom of an abandoned well.

I unlocked the door to my flat, went in, unhitched my rucksack and switched on the light. It was like coming home.

There was my Betty Blue poster, there was the Liverpool FC poster, there was the new landscape poster I had bought in Finnsnes on one of my first days here.

I put the coffee machine on, crouched down by my record collection and began flicking through it. After that I surveyed the tiny library of books I had bought. It all filled me with pleasure.

I went into the kitchen and poured some coffee into a cup. Through the window I saw a little group of kids coming up the hill. In case they were coming to see me I put on Mozart’s Requiem, one of the two classical LPs I possessed, and turned the volume up to full.

There was a ring at the door.

Andrea, Vivian, Live, Stian and Ivar, the tall ninth-year boy, stood outside.

‘Happy New Year,’ I said. ‘Come in.’

From the hall, where they were hanging up their coats, I heard Vivian say:
he likes opera!

I smiled to myself, standing with a steaming cup of coffee in my hand as they came in. Stian had been here only once before, right at the start, with Ivar, he had gone through my record collection and asked whether I had any heavy metal. In the few lessons I had with him at school I ignored him as far as I was able, trying not to rise to all the provocation he dished out. I placed no demands on him, he had made up his mind anyway. Tor Einar had them much more than me and had made a stand against them, which didn’t go too well, once he had returned to the staffroom trembling all over, two of them, Stian and Ivar, had knocked him to the ground, Ivar had got him in a stranglehold. They were sent home for a few days because of the incident, but the school was so small, the place so transparent that what would have been a serious matter elsewhere wasn’t so serious here. We were expected to deal with the likes of Stian and Ivar. When they went fishing or hung out with some of the younger men, they were young kids, brats no one bothered about. So Tor Einar could hardly say they had held him by the throat. Not if he wanted to elicit any sympathy or understanding at any rate.

Stian sat down brazenly on the sofa with his legs wide apart. He was the only one not to have taken off his coat. The three girls hung on his every word, I could see, as though ready to obey his every command. If he spoke they watched him with rapt reverence. If he addressed one of them directly they cast down their eyes and squirmed uncomfortably on the sofa.

‘Get anything nice for Christmas?’ I asked.

Vivian giggled.

I went over and sat in the chair opposite them.

‘What about you, Stian?’ I said. ‘Did you get anything nice?’

He blew out his cheeks.

‘I went fishing at Christmas. Earned a fair bit. Gonna buy a moped as soon as the snow’s gone.’

‘He’ll be sixteen in March,’ Andrea said.

Why did she say that?

‘Then you’re only three years younger than me,’ I said. ‘It won’t be long before you can have my job. That’s what you have in mind, isn’t it, to become a teacher?’

He blew out his cheeks again, but a tiny smile crept into the corners of his mouth.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘The only book I’m going to open after I’ve left school will be a bank book.’

They laughed.

‘What about you, Ivar?’ I said.

‘Goin’ fishin’.’

He was only sixteen but already the tallest person in the village. His height was so conspicuous that he probably never thought about anything else. Seeing him beside the three seventh-year girls was painful, anything that was small and delicate caused him difficulty: letters, numbers, conversation, ball games, girls. In most ways he was a child, he burst into loud guffaws at the most basic, the most stupid things, blushed to the roots when he was corrected and only really felt at ease with Stian, who controlled him as you would a dog. He had lost his father when he was small and on the few occasions he had come to talk to me that had been the topic. It had all happened in the 1970s, a fishing boat sank without trace, the whole of Norway talked about it for some days, but then it faded into oblivion except for Ivar, his mother and the rest of the family. Barely a year after the accident they had moved up to Håfjord, where his mother had relatives. That was his story, his fate, the father who died when he was small.

‘What about you?’ I said, looking at the three girls.

They shrugged. Usually they had a certain confidence when they were here, I teased them, they laughed and answered back, found pleasure in being cheeky. But now they were more reserved. They didn’t want to give anything away in front of Stian, this was a different game, the stakes were higher.

‘Vivian’s got a boyfriend,’ Live announced.

Vivian looked daggers at her. Punched her hard on the shoulder.

‘Ow!’ Live exclaimed.

‘Have you?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Live said, rubbing her shoulder. ‘She’s going out with Steve.’

‘Steve?’ I said. ‘Who’s he?’

‘A guy who moved here at Christmas,’ Stian said. ‘He’s from Finnsnes and is going to start fishing this spring. He’s a complete prat, they say.’

‘He is not,’ Vivian said. She blushed.

‘He’s twenty,’ Live said.

‘Twenty?’ I said. ‘Is that possible? You’re thirteen, aren’t you?’

‘Yes!’ Vivian said. ‘And?’

‘They’re crazy up north,’ I said and laughed.

I got to my feet.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to hop it now. I’ve just come in the door. I have to unpack and so on. Prepare some lessons. I’ve got such a terrible class, you know. They don’t know anything.’

‘Ha ha,’ Andrea said, levered herself off the sofa, walked towards the hall, where she had hung her white jacket. The others followed, for a few seconds everything was jackets and arms, hats and gloves, and then they went out into the darkness, laughing and poking each other. I unpacked my clothes, ate some supper, read in bed for a couple of hours before switching off the light and going to sleep. Once I was woken by sounds from the room above, it was Torill and her husband, the floor shook, she shouted and screamed, he groaned, I took the duvet with me to the sofa and slept there for the rest of the night.

Nils Erik and I moved into the house the following weekend. Apart from the bedrooms and the little room leading off the sitting room, where I would do my writing, we shared everything. We took turns to cook and wash up. There was hardly an evening when we didn’t have visitors, either pupils or the other teachers, especially Tor Einar, he dropped by almost every day, but Hege also came a lot. At the weekend Nils Erik went on walks, he always asked me if I wanted to join him, I always answered no, nature was not the place for me, besides more often than not there was a party somewhere, and if I didn’t go I stayed at home writing, no more short stories but a novel called
Vann over/Vann under
–
Water Above/Water Below
. I had got the title from a song Yngve and his friend from Arendal, Øyvind, had penned. The novel was about a young man, Gabriel, who went to
gymnas
in Kristiansand, and would consist of a mysterious frame narrative with short report-like sequences and a present-tense plotline about drinking and girls, punctuated at regular intervals by small episodes from his childhood. It all culminated in him being trussed up at a party in a cabin in Agder province, having a nervous breakdown and being admitted to a psychiatric clinic, where the circle was closed, since this is where the short objective reports that had introduced every chapter stemmed from.

To ensure I had more time to write I completely altered my daily routine, it made no difference when you slept and when you were awake, morning and evening, night and day, in practice everything was the same. I started getting up at eleven at night, I worked through until eight in the morning, had a shower, went to school and had a sleep after I finished at around three in the afternoon.