I Curse the River of Time (20 page)

‘You’ve booked a cabin?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I didn’t expect you until tomorrow.’

‘It was today,’ I said.

‘Was it?’ she said.

‘Yes, I believe it was,’ I said.

‘Well then, I guess it was,’ she said. ‘Not that it makes any difference, you are the only ones here, so you can have any cabin you like.’

I knew exactly which cabin I wanted. I told her the number. She opened the door, put down the bucket in the hall and I saw her take a key from the board on the wall that had several rows of small hooks, one number for each
hook with the same number on a plastic chip attached to the key ring.

‘There’s firewood in the pile behind the cabin. Help yourself, and if there is anything else you need, just let me know.’

‘We will,’ I said, ‘but I think we’ll manage.’

‘I’m driving to the shop tomorrow morning if there is anything you want me to get for you,’ she said, and we both said thank you and if there was, we would come up.

We left the doorstep and crossed the yard in front of the house where the kiosk to the left was closed and the
Dagbladet
banner on either side of the hatch had been taken down, and walked past a tractor covered by a tarpaulin and on past several cabins scattered randomly among the trees and at last we reached the red timber cabin by the lake. Its foundation was raised on the bare rock and it stood tall on the side facing the water and low on the other side with a terrace and a door to the path. From the windows there was a view across the bay to the ridge on the opposite shore where spruce trees stood like columns right down to the waterline. At the far end of the bay there was a grocery store in the summer when the holiday guests were numerous. They could row there from all over the lake, and then the boats would lie gunnel to gunnel in a long line, a festive sight, a lady told me when I was here last, but of course the store was shut now.

Some hours earlier we had taken the bus from Ankerløkka, a fine square at Akerselva in Oslo, now filled with student flats, but back then it still was a bus station, right across
from St Jacob’s Church, that was built of red brick like most churches in Oslo. It was pretty to look at standing there behind the naked trees that lined the road down towards the fairytale bridge and the river.

We caught the bus there, at Ankerløkka, and sat at the very back, and right on schedule the bus pulled slowly out into Storgata, and the wheels on the bus went round and round, as they do in the song. And then we drove through eastern Oslo, through Grønland and Gamlebyen and onwards along Mosseveien to the south, and we drove up the hills at Ljan Station or up Herregårdsveien, or a third route, and if we did I don’t remember which, but definitely down towards Hauketo where no high rises stood in those days, no terraced houses, more like it was in the countryside, in the woods. The diesel engine made the whole bus vibrate as we climbed higher and shuddering waves rose through our bodies, up our thighs to our stomachs and it was like an erotic sensation and she pressed both hands low down against her stomach and said:

‘More, more, I want more,’ and with a sensuous smile she closed her eyes. But then she took her hands away and laughed and blushed, and we sang the song of the Eighth Route Army softly to ourselves. We sang:

Soldier of the great people’s army
,

Don’t forget our three commandments

Or the law of the eight rules

March, oh soldier, march
.

and so on, and only a few passengers in the bus turned to look at us. We laughed at them a little, and the song too we laughed at, because here we were, sitting in a bus going through the woods in a country called Norway, where, of course, the class struggle was fought every single day, though not very visible to most of us, nor very fierce. But the song had a good rhythm, I mean, it was a march, wasn’t it? And we tapped out the beat on the seats in front of us as we sang.

The red, almost burgundy-coloured bus with the pale blue lines along the windows drove on, towards the junction at the roadside café where Hauketo railway station lay to the right and the sign to Enebakk pointed left. And that was the way we went, and everything was as it had been the last time I was here, each bend in the road, all the bus stops with their shelters and rusty signs, and the kiosks were all closed now, and in their worn-down nakedness they stood against the bare forest and were filled to the brim with emptiness and time which had come and now was gone again: no Kvikklunsj bars on the shelves, no chocolate from Freia, no cigarette packs in their colourful rows: Winston, South State, Blue Master and Tiedemanns Teddy.

The weather had just changed from sleet and rain, now winter was coming, the air was cold, was clear, but inside the bus it was warm. We were ten passengers or even fewer on board, although on that day at this time of year it was the only bus. No proletarians, not one member of the working class came to spend their holiday in the cabins by the lake, not one worker from Spikerverket, not one family
from the construction workers’ union came to Loch Lysern, to fish in one of its many bays, to lie on their back on the thwarts of a rowing boat, the oars pointing to the sky and in their hands the workers’ newspaper,
Arbeiderbladet
, or for no other reason than to stare into the blue after one more year of piecework and double shifts.

The others on the bus lived by the main road, so just the two of us were going all the way out to the holiday camp. We sat at the back of the bus and saw through the windows the frozen glittery dust whirling up in the slipstream of the bus, or in its wake, as after a boat. It hung like yellow curtains across the winding road and then was pulled aside by the wind after each bend before drifting in between the trees where it was gone.

‘Are you happy?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I am,’ she said.

In the autumn and winter the bus stopped at the junction with the main road, Route 120, and did not go all the way up to the holiday camp, it was a surprise, we had to walk. And we did. The gravel road was hard as concrete in the sudden frost and the stubble fields were covered with icing. The road had frozen so solid it rang out beneath our boots with every step we took, like taps on a Spanish guitar, and it took us an hour to get there.

The main house was quiet when we crossed the yard in the cold quiet air and we stood on the doorstep sending fans of misty breath from our mouths, and it was nearly dusk already and above the lake was a blue transparent light and a muted yellow light from the lamp above the
door. We knocked and then cautiously rang the brass bell by the entrance, and a woman in a quilted blue jacket came from behind the house, on the path from the lake with a bucket in her hand.

I unlocked the door and let her in, and dropped the bag by the door and walked around the cabin to fetch firewood from the woodpile and walked back with my arms loaded up to my chin, but when I came in, there was already a fire burning and there was firewood in a basket in the corner. I wondered if I should feel embarrassed that she was the one who got the fire going. But I did not.

‘Look what you can do,’ I said.

‘Girl Guides,’ she said. ‘I left only two years ago. Once a Guide, always a Guide,’ she said and sang:

When the shadows softly gather

Ere we close our eyes in sleep

We would thank thee, holy Father
,

For thy keep
.

Keep our loved ones free from sorrow

And in bed with us tonight

Let’s play our games till the morrow

Till the morning light

And she blushed as she always did, but I thought she was funny. She was funnier than I was.

*   *  *

We slept till late next morning. When I awoke the light was slowly coming; it was misty with a thin layer of white ice across the water to the other side of the bay as if someone had poured skimmed milk from a jug to let it freeze there. I looked at my watch and pulled my trousers on and my jumper I pulled over my head and closed the door softly on my way out and walked up to the main house. We were fresh out of tobacco, I had remembered the instant I woke up.

It was cold as hell on the way up, and past the tractor I saw her Ford in front of the kiosk shivering in the cold, pluming white fumes from the exhaust pipe. She was scraping ice off the windows on the other side of the car. I walked round and said:

‘Jesus Christ, it’s cold,’ and she nodded and smiled and kept on scraping, and I stood there waiting, stepping from one leg to the other right behind her, my bare feet in my worn-out boots. At long last she was finished and threw the blue plastic ice scraper on to the passenger seat.

‘We forgot the smokes,’ I said. ‘Would you mind?’

I fumbled with stiff fingers in a pocket and pulled out the pouch to show her which brand I wanted, in case she knew nothing about tobacco.

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, and I gave her the money she needed, and she looked at me and said: ‘Aren’t you freezing cold in that?’ And I was. The knitted jumper I had on was the first the girl in the cabin had ever completed, and my skin was showing through the coarse stitches. I am not sure, but I thought the manager looked me over a little too closely, before she finally got in her car and drove across
the yard and up the gravel track towards Route 120 and the shop.

I turned and walked down to the cottage.

When I opened the door, I rubbed my hands, and I rubbed my ears until they burned. I went over to the stove and opened the little door and laid pieces of firewood inside so it looked in there like Stonehenge looked and pushed folded pages of
Dagbladet
between the logs. I put a match to the paper and let it burn almost down and then I did it two more times and left the door to the stove ajar and that did the trick. The wood was so dry that it took at once and the flames licked the logs. I closed the door fully and the stove started to rumble.

I heard her turn over in bed and could feel her eyes on my back. She said:

‘Hello, boy, come back to bed.’

‘I’m coming,’ I said, and pulled off my jumper and trousers and lay down next to her under the duvet.

‘Oh fuck, you’re cold,’ she said. ‘Goddamnit you’re cold,’ she said, and she started to rub me hard all over my body, and then what happens happened, and afterwards we lay as we always did, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, and the warmth seeped into my body from her body, and I did not know how I kept warm all those years before I met her.

‘Do you want to go rowing after breakfast?’

‘There’s ice on the water,’ I said.

‘But the ice is maybe not that thick?’

‘Oh no, it’s just a thin film.’

‘Then it would be fun,’ she said, and I thought so too.

‘But first I want to lie here for a little while,’ I said and closed my eyes, pressed myself against her and said: ‘I went up to ask for some more cigarettes. We forgot to bring them. We only have the one pack, and that’s not enough. I caught the manager just before she left.’ I opened my eyes. ‘Christ, did she stare at me, before she got in her car,’ I said.

‘She probably thought you looked good in that jumper.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Of course. She could see right through those stitches.’

I laughed. ‘Does it matter to you that she did?’

‘Oh, no. That only means she and I have something in common. There’s nothing wrong with that. She has nothing to do with us.’

I closed my eyes and was pleased with her answer, which was the answer I had wished for. I heard a rumbling from the stove, and the cabin was slowly warming up with the sweet scent of birch wood surrounding us, and the old timber smelled like something I had always known and always liked.

We were only there for the one night and would travel back from the bus stop on Route 120 later that afternoon, and it was really not much time, so we had to make the most of this day, and then I fell asleep, and we both slept, and we woke up and went to sleep again. Finally we were both fully awake and we got dressed and had breakfast and our heads were still fuzzy from sleep and we walked down to the water and tipped the rowing boat on to its keel and
found the oars in the heather beneath the boat and together we dragged it down over the rocks to the water and pushed the boat in. We slid the oars on board and put a fishing rod under the thwarts. It was her fishing rod. We could hear the thin ice crunch. Carefully I stepped into the boat and sat down facing the shore and placed the oars in the rowlocks, and she followed and first she knelt on the stern thwart to push us off and she turned around and then we sat facing each other. She smiled.

‘Why don’t you row?’ she said.

‘Oh, sorry. Did you want to?’ I said.

‘It’s fine. I can sit here and watch you toil. You just row.’

She was probably good at rowing. Canoeing was my thing. Red Indian. Rowing boat was cowboy.

‘I’m the man,’ I said and laughed.

‘That’s right,’ she said and looked at me with narrow, almost dreamy eyes.

With each stroke the blades of the oars crunched the brittle ice and made ragged holes either side of the wide wake behind the boat. It sounded as if the ice was hitting back, like the polar ship
Fram
or even
Gjøa
on its way through the Northwest Passage, thump thump, but of course it didn’t. It was plain sailing.

‘This is fun,’ she said. ‘The sound of it, right? Is it hard?’

‘No, no,’ I said, ‘it’s plain sailing.’

She had two woollen vests on and an Icelandic sweater and a purple scarf around her neck and a leather cap on her head like the caps that fishermen wore in northern
Norway, in Lofoten, and she had mittens on her hands. She was really well wrapped up, and her cheeks were flushed, and I wore three checked flannel shirts that used to be my father’s, one over the other, and the jumper she had knitted and then my jacket and mittens. No cap. A cap was unmanly, and my ears grew quite cold, but not more than I could cope with.