Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book 4 (62 page)

For a few minutes at a time I succeeded in engrossing myself totally in the book. Then the dreadful thoughts returned like an electric shock and everything became distorted. Again I had to force myself back into the confidence trickster’s world, where I could stay for several minutes until another shock reopened the sores.

Nils Erik came in and put on a record. It was half past five. He stood for a moment gazing across the fjord, then he sat down with a newspaper. His presence helped, what I had done didn’t seem so terrible when there was a friendly person in the room.

I read aloud a passage describing Krull’s view of the Jews.

‘He wasn’t so high-minded, this Thomas Mann,’ I said. ‘That’s pure anti-Semitism!’

Nils Erik looked at me.

‘You don’t think it’s ironic then?’

‘Ironic? No, do you?’

‘He’s famous for being ironic.’

‘So he doesn’t really mean it. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said, because I hated it when Nils Erik thought he knew better than me. Which he often did.

The image of the seventh year with her tousled hair and cheeky expression was clear in my mind’s eye again. And my lips closing on hers.

Why had I done it? Oh why, oh why!

‘What’s up?’ Nils Erik said.

‘What?’ I said.

‘You went like this,’ he said, and raised his head, narrowed his eyes and pinched his lips together hard.

‘Nothing in particular,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking about something.’

But nothing happened. I went to school the next day and no one there said anything about what had happened, everyone behaved as they normally did, even my pupils, who I thought might have heard about it, some of them probably knew her.

But no.

Could it simply pass, just like that?

The only place it existed was in me. And if I let it stay where it was, there was no problem, it would slowly lose its power and in the end vanish, as sooner or later all the other shameful things I had done had vanished.

Towards the end of May a letter from the
akademi
arrived in my post box, I tore open the envelope and read it standing outside the post office. I had been accepted. I lit a cigarette and started to walk back towards the school, I would ring mum and tell her, she would be pleased. And then I would ring Yngve because it meant I would be moving to Bergen that autumn. In a strange way I had expected to be accepted because although I knew what I had written might not have been that good and consequently they ought to have rejected me, it was me, however, who had done the writing and that, I felt, they would not be able to ignore.

May passed, June began and it was as though everything was dissolving into light. The sun no longer set, it wandered across the sky all day and night, and I had never seen anything like the light it cast over the wild terrain then. The light was reddish and full, it was as if it belonged to the ground and the mountains, it was them that were shining, as if after a catastrophe. On a couple of nights Nils Erik and I drove along the deserted coastal roads, and we seemed to be on a different planet, so alien was everything. Through sleeping villages, everywhere the reddish gleam and the strange shadows. The people were transformed too, out at night, couples walking, cars driving past, whole flocks of young people rowing out to the islands for picnics.

I received another letter from Ingvild. She said she had rolled up her trousers to her knees and was sitting with her feet in Sogne fjord while she was writing. I loved Sogne fjord, the feeling the surface gave of the enormous depth, the immense chains of mountains with the snowy peaks towering above it. All clear and still, green and cool. Ingvild, who was moving in these surroundings and who affected me in so many ways, wrote more about herself this time. But it wasn’t much. The tone approached self-irony, she was in defensive mode. Against what? She wrote that she had been an exchange student in the US for a year, that was why she was still in the third class. So we were the same age, I reflected. She was going back there in the summer for a holiday with her host family, they were going to cross the country in a camper van. She would write more from the States. In the autumn she would be going to Bergen to study.

The last day of school came. I wrote
HAVE A GOOD SUMMER
! on the board, handed out the grade books to my pupils, wished them luck for the rest of their lives, ate cake with the teachers in the staffroom, shook everyone’s hand and thanked them for the past year. As I walked downhill on my way home I was, as I had expected, neither happy nor relieved because I had been waiting for this day for more than six months, just empty inside.

In the afternoon Tor Einar dropped round. He had brought with him some gull eggs and a crate of Mack beer.

‘It’s a scandal you haven’t eaten seagull eggs before,’ he said. ‘There are two dishes which are the
essence
of Northern Norway.
Mølje
and seagull eggs. You can’t leave before you have tried them.’

Nils Erik had a temperature and was on the sofa, there was no question of him having beer or eggs, so it was left to Tor Einar and me to do them justice.

‘Shall we go down to the beach?’ Tor Einar said, eyeing me with that knowing grin of his. ‘It’s such fantastic weather.’

‘Can do,’ I said.

I had never quite found the right tone with Tor Einar. We were the same age and had a good deal in common, much more than I and Nils Erik had, but it didn’t help, it was irrelevant. I always assumed a role when I was with Tor Einar, which wasn’t the case with Nils Erik, and I didn’t like myself when I did, when there was a distance between the person I was and what I said, a kind of delay that allowed space for calculations, as if I wanted to say what he preferred to hear rather than what I had to say or talk about.

On the other hand, that is how I was with almost everyone, in fact it had even become like that with Jan Vidar, who was the closest friend I’d had for the last five years.

It wasn’t a problem, just rather unpleasant, and the only consequence was that by and large I tried to avoid being on my own with Tor Einar for any period of time.

Now this was not possible. Luckily, though, we had beer with us as we trudged down to the beach, it would only take a couple of bottles before such problems disappeared like blackboard chalk beneath a wet sponge.

Under the deep blue sky, beside the water, with the sun playing on it, we both sat down on a rock. Tor Einar opened a beer and passed it to me, opened one for himself, winked and said
skål
.

‘Now we’re laughing, eh!’ he said. ‘Last day of school, the sun’s shining and we’ve got enough beer for a long night.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Some fishing boats were chugging shoreward, bobbing up and down on the waves in the middle of the fjord, with a trail of gulls behind them.

What a scene.

‘Let’s sum up then, shall we?’ said Tor Einar.

‘Regarding the school year?’ I said, producing a pouch of tobacco.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Has it fulfilled our expectations?’

‘I didn’t have any, I don’t think,’ I said. ‘I just came up here and hoped for the best. But you? Are you happy with the year?’

He hesitated.

‘Every year without a girlfriend is a bad year,’ he said, squinting into the sunlight. Then he turned to me.

‘You had a couple of adventures anyway. Ine and Irene? And that temp on Fugleøya, what was her name? Anne?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But it didn’t work out. Actually nothing worked out.’

‘Didn’t you have them?’

‘No.’

‘Not one of them?’

‘No.’

He stared at me in disbelief. ‘And there was me going round thinking at least one of us had struck lucky this year. Then you tell me you didn’t either.’

I looked at him and smiled, clinked my bottle against his, drank the last drop, opened another.

‘Who did you have your eye on?’ I said.

‘Tone,’ he said.

That was the girl who had rejected my approach while she was brushing her teeth.

‘Yes, she’s nice, she is,’ I said. ‘I had a go at her as well, but she wasn’t at all interested.’

‘No, it’s not easy,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got a chance. We’re going inter-railing together. Well, not just us two, there are four others as well, but, Jesus, a month travelling together through Europe, surely there’s got to be a chance.’

‘You’re inter-railing?’

He nodded.

‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Well, it’s not inter-railing. I’m going to hitch down through Europe with a friend after the Roskilde Festival.’

‘Then I’ll do my best to avoid you,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to warm her up and prime her just so that you can take over.’

‘You must have a very high opinion of my qualities as a seducer,’ I said. ‘If there’s one thing I can’t do, it’s that.’

‘My strategy is to be present,’ he said. ‘That’s the only chance I have. Amble along behind her like a dog, always be there, and then hope she’ll cuddle me sooner or later.’

I shuddered. ‘That’s a terrifying image.’

‘Yes, it is, but it’s true.’

‘That’s why it’s so terrifying. There’s a bit of the doggie about me as well.’

He stuck out his tongue and panted heavily a few times.

‘Anyone else you’ve been trotting along behind this year?’ I said.

‘Liv,’ he said, staring straight at me.

‘Liv?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘All the girls of our age have left the village. But she’s unbelievably pretty. Don’t you think?’

‘Yes,’ I said with a smile. ‘Have you seen her body? Her bum?’

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘She’s fantastic. Camilla is not bad either.’

‘No, that’s true,’ I said. ‘But at least Liv’s sixteen. Camilla’s only fifteen.’

‘Who gives that a second thought?’ he said.

‘You’re right there.’

We opened another beer. He smiled, his face was bathed in sunlight.

‘Her breasts,’ he said. ‘Have you seen them?’

‘Naturally,’ I said. ‘I’ve hardly looked at anything else in the lessons with them.’

‘She
is
pretty. But she can’t beat Liv.’

‘No,’ I said.

I turned and gazed into the distance. A car was coming up the hill from the fish hall, further along the road a child was holding a stick and hitting the poles used to demarcate the edge of the road in deep snow. A seagull was sitting on the ridge of our roof and surveying the scene.

‘And then there’s Andrea,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘She’s a real stunner too. Have you seen her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Actually, I’ve thought a lot about her,’ I said.

‘I can imagine,’ he said.

‘What else could we do?’ I said. ‘They were the only ones around!’

We laughed and said
skål
.

‘She’s got such incredible eyes,’ I said. ‘And what long legs she has.’

‘Yes. What about Vivian then?’

‘Nothing compared to her sister.’

‘No, that’s true. But she has something. A charm of her own.’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you think would happen if anyone heard this conversation?’ I said.

He shrugged.

‘We’d never get a teaching job again. That’s for sure.’

He laughed and raised his bottle to me.

‘A
skål
for schoolgirls!’ he said.

‘
Skål!
’ I said.

‘What about their mothers then?’ he said.

‘I’ve never thought about them.’

‘Haven’t you?’

‘Have
you
?’

‘Oh yes, of course I have.’

‘I think I might have been a little in love with Andrea,’ I said.

‘I had a soft spot for her too,’ he said. ‘But I wasn’t in love. Liv, on the other hand. She brightened my days.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But it’s good it’s all over.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

The next day I packed my things, taped up the cardboard boxes again and carried them to Nils Erik’s car. He was going to drive me down to the express boat quay in Finnsnes, where I would have them sent to Bergen. Apart from the new stereo, some records and quite a few books, my belongings were identical to those that had come up the year before.

Once that was done I fried some sausages and potatoes, which I ate with Nils Erik in the kitchen. This was my last meal in the village. Nils Erik would be staying on for a few more weeks, he was planning to spend the time walking, and except for my bedroom, which I lightly dusted, he would see to cleaning the house.

‘I’ll keep the deposit on the bottles as my reward,’ he said with a smile. ‘It’ll tot up.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Shall we go then?’

He nodded, and we got into the car. We slowly drew away, said our goodbyes to east and west, and for every metre we covered part of the village disappeared for good for me, I didn’t look back and I would never, under any circumstances, set foot here again.

The chapel disappeared, the post office disappeared, Andrea and Roald’s house disappeared, Hege and Vidar’s house disappeared, and then the shop was gone, and my old flat, and Sture’s house. And there went the community centre and the football pitch, and then the school . . .

I leaned back in my seat.

‘How absolutely wonderful that it’s over,’ I said as the darkness of the tunnel filled the car. ‘I’ll never do a job again in my life, that’s for sure.’

‘So you
are
a shipowner’s son after all?’ Nils Erik said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Same shipping, new wrapping,’ he said. ‘Whack a cassette in, will you.’

After a night in a cheap hotel in Tromsø I caught a flight for Bergen the next morning, and at three I jumped off the airport bus in Bryggen and headed for the Hotel Orion, where Yngve worked as a receptionist. I was wearing black cotton trousers, wide at the thighs, a white shirt, a black suit jacket, black shoes and a pair of Wayfarer Ray-Bans. Slung over my shoulder was my seaman’s kitbag. The sun was shining, the water in Vågen glittered, a gentle wind blew in across the fjord.

I saw myself as a kind of primeval inhabitant going to a city for the first time because every time a car revved or a bus or a lorry thundered past I gave a start, and the sight of all these faces moving back and forth on the pavement made me feel insecure. Then I was reminded of something Yngve had once said, that his friend Pål always called them prime evil inhabitants, and once that was in your mind it was impossible to see anything else.