My Struggle: Book One (19 page)

“Elgstien something or other,” he said. “I know more or less where it is.”

I removed my feet from the boots and rubbed them between my hands. When we came to the small unmanned service station, which had been there for as long as I could remember and had always been a sign that we were approaching Kristiansand and on our way to see my grandparents, I put my feet back, tied the laces, and was finished just as the bus pulled into the Varodd Bridge stop.

“Happy New Year,” Jan Vidar shouted to the driver, before leaping into the darkness after me.

Even though I had driven past on numerous occasions I had never set foot here, except in my dreams. Varodd Bridge was one of the places I dreamt of most. Now and then I just stood at the foot and gazed at the towering mast, or I walked onto it. Then the railing usually disappeared and I had to sit down on the road and try to find something to hold onto, or the bridge suddenly disintegrated and I slid inexorably toward the edge. When I was smaller it was Tromøy Bridge that fulfilled this function in my dreams. Now it had become Varodd Bridge.

“My father was at the opening,” I said, nodding toward the bridge as we crossed the road.

“Lucky him,” Jan Vidar said.

We plodded in silence toward the built-up area. Normally there was a fantastic view from here, you could see Kjevik and the fjord that came into the land on one side and stretched far out to the sea on the other. But tonight everything was as black as the inside of a sack.

“Has the wind dropped a bit?” I asked at some point.

“Seems like it,” Jan Vidar said, turning to me. “Have those beers had any effect, by the way?”

I shook my head.

“Nothing. What a waste.”

As we walked, houses began to appear. Some were empty and dark, some were full of people dressed in party clothes. Here and there people were letting off rockets from verandas. In one place I saw a gaggle of children waving sparklers in the air. My feet were frozen again. I had curled up my fingers in the mitten not holding the bag of bottles, to little effect. Now we would soon be there, according to Jan Vidar, who then stopped in the middle of an intersection.

“Elgstien's up there,” he pointed. “And up there. And down there, and down there too. Take your pick. Which one shall we take?”

“Are there four roads called Elgstien?”

“Apparently so. But which one should we take? Use your feminine intuition.”

Feminine? Why did he say that? Did he think I was a woman?

“What do you mean by that?” I asked. “Why do you think I have feminine intuition?”

“Come on, Karl Ove,” he said. “Which way?”

I pointed to the right. We started to walk that way. We were looking for number thirteen. The first house was twenty-three, the next twenty-one, so we were on the right track.

Some minutes later we were standing outside the house. It was a seventies build, and looked a bit run-down. The snow on the path to the front door had not been cleared, not for a long time, judging by the line of knee-deep tracks that wound toward the house.

“What was his name, the boy whose party this is?” I asked as we stood by the door.

“Jan Ronny,” Jan Vidar said, and rang the bell.

“Jan Ronny?” I repeated.

“That's his name.”

The door opened, it must have been the host standing in front of us. He had short, blond hair, pimples on his cheek and around the top of his nose, wore a gold chain around his neck, black jeans, a cotton lumberjack shirt, and white tennis socks. He smiled and pointed at Jan Vidar's stomach.

“Jan Vidar!” he said.

“Right first time,” Jan Vidar said.

“And you are . . .,” he said, brandishing his finger at me. “Kai Olav!”

“Karl Ove,” I said.

“What the fuck. Come on in! We've already started!”

We took off our outdoor clothes in the hall and followed him downstairs to a cellar room, where there were five people. Watching TV. The table in front of them was covered with beer bottles, bowls of chips, packs of cigarettes and tobacco pouches. Øyvind, who was sitting on the sofa with his arms around his girlfriend, Lene, only in the seventh class but still great and so forward you never thought about the age difference, smiled at us as we went in.

“Hi there!” Øyvind said. “Great you could make it!”

He introduced the others. Rune, Jens, and Ellen. Rune was in the ninth class, Jens and Ellen were in the eighth while Jan Ronny, who was Øyvind's cousin, was at technical school, a budding mechanic. None of them had dressed up. Not so much as a white shirt.

“What are you watching?” Jan Vidar asked, sitting on the sofa and taking out a beer. I leaned against the wall under the low cellar window, which was completely covered by snow on the outside.

“A Bruce Lee film,” Øyvind replied. “It's almost over. But we've got
Bachelor Party
as well, and a Dirty Harry film. And Jan Ronny's got a few of his own. What would you like to see? We're easy.”

Jan Vidar shrugged.

“I'm easy. What do you say, Karl Ove?”

I shrugged.

“Is there a bottle opener around?” I asked.

Øyvind bent forward and took a lighter from the table, tossed it over to me. But I couldn't open bottles with lighters. Nor could I ask Jan Vidar to open the bottle for me, that was too homo.

I took a bottle from the bag and put the top between my teeth, twisted it so the cap was right over a molar and bit. The cap came off with a hiss.

“Don't do that!” said Lene.

“It's fine,” I said.

I downed the beer in one gulp. Apart from all the carbon dioxide filling my stomach with air, which meant I had to swallow the tiny belches that came up, I still didn't feel anything. And I couldn't manage another beer in one go.

My feet ached as the warmth began to return.

“Anyone got any liquor?” I asked.

They shook their heads.

“Just beer, I'm afraid,” Øyvind said. “But you can have one if you want.”

“Already got some, thanks,” I said.

Øyvind raised his bottle.

“Clink'n'sink!” he said.

“Clink'n'sink!” the others said, touching bottles. They laughed.

I fished out the pack of cigarettes from the bag and lit up. Pall Mall mild, not exactly the coolest cigarette around and, standing there with the all-white cigarette in my hand – the filter was white too, I regretted not having bought Prince. But my mind had been focused on the party we were going to after twelve, the one that Irene from the class was throwing, and Pall Mall mild would not be too conspicuous there. It was, also, the brand that Yngve smoked. At least it had been the one time I had seen him smoking, one evening in the garden when Mom and Dad had been at Alf's, Dad's uncle's.

Time for another bottle. I didn't want to use my teeth again, something told me that sooner or later I would come up short, sooner or later the molar
would give way and break. And now that I had shown that I could open bottles with my teeth, perhaps it wouldn't seem so homo to let Jan Vidar open it for me.

I went over to him, nabbed a few chips from the bowl on the table.

“Can you open this for me?”

He nodded, without taking his eyes off the film.

Over the last year he had been doing some kickboxing. I kept forgetting, was just as surprised every time he invited me to a session or some such thing. Of course I always refused. But this was Bruce Lee, the fighting was the whole point, and he had one foot in the door.

With a beer bottle in my hand I went back to my place by the wall. No one said anything. Øyvind looked at me.

“Take the weight off your feet, Karl Ove,” he said.

“I'm fine standing,” I said.

“Well,
skål
, anyway!” he said, raising his bottle to mine. I took two paces over to him, and we clinked.

“Down in one, John!” he said. His Adam's apple pumped up and down like a piston as he drained the bottle.

Øyvind was big for his age, and unusually powerful. He had the body of a grown man. He was also good-natured, and didn't take much notice of what was going on around him, or at least he was always relaxed about it. As if he were immune to the world. He played drums with us, yes, why not, might as well. He went out with Lene, yes, why not, might as well. He didn't talk much to her, dragged her around to see his friends mostly, but that was fine, she wanted to be with him more than anyone else. I had checked her out once, a couple of months ago, just to see how the land lay, but even though I was two years older than them she was not in the slightest bit interested. Oh, how stupid that was. Surrounded by girls at the gymnas and I tried it on with her. Girl from the seventh class. But her breasts looked great under her T-shirt. I still wanted to take it off. I still wanted to feel her breasts in my hands, whatever her age. And there was nothing about her body or manner that indicated she was only fourteen.

I put the bottle to my lips and downed the rest. I really wouldn't be able to keep this up, I thought as I placed it on the table and opened another with my teeth. My stomach was exploding with all the carbon dioxide. Any more and froth would be oozing out of my ears. Fortunately, it was nearly eleven now. At half past eleven we would leave and then be at the other party for the rest of the night. If not for that, I would have gone long ago.

A boy called Jens suddenly half-rose from the sofa, grabbed the lighter from the table and held it to his ass.

“Now!” he said.

He farted as he flicked the lighter, and a ball of flame flared out behind him. He laughed. The others laughed too.

“Stop that!” Lene said.

Jan Vidar smiled, and was careful not to meet my gaze. Bottle in hand, I wandered over to the far door in the room. Behind it there was a small kitchen. I leaned over the counter. The house was on a slope, and the window, well above ground level, faced the back of the garden. Two pine trees were swaying in the wind. There were more houses farther down. Through the window of one I saw three men and a woman standing, glass in hand, talking. The men wore black suits, the woman a black dress with bare arms. I went to the other door and opened it. A shower. On the wall was a wetsuit. Well, that's something at least, I thought, closed the door and went back to the living room. The others were sitting, as before.

“Can you feel anything?” Jan Vidar asked.

I shook my head.

“No. Not a thing. You?”

He smiled.

“A bit.”

“We'll have to be off soon,” I said.

“Where are you going?” Øyvind asked.

“Up to the intersection. Where everyone's going at twelve.”

“But it's only eleven! And we're going there too. We can go together, for Christ's sake.”

He looked at me.

“Why do you want to go there now?”

I shrugged.

“I've arranged to meet someone there.”

“She'll wait for you, don't worry,” Jan Vidar said.

It was half past eleven when we made a move to go. The quiet residential area where, apart from a few people on the odd veranda or drive, there had not been a soul half an hour earlier was now full of life and activity. Smartly dressed partygoers streamed out of the houses. Women with shawls over their shoulders, glasses in their hands and high-heeled evening shoes on their feet, men with coats over their suits, patent leather shoes, holding bags of fireworks, excited children running among them, many with fizzing sparklers, filled the air with shouts and laughter. Jan Vidar and I were carrying our white plastic bags of beer and walking alongside the pimply schoolkids dressed in everyday clothes with whom we had spent the evening. In actual fact, we were not alongside them. I kept a few steps ahead in case we should meet anyone I knew from school. Pretended to look with interest this way and that so it would be impossible for anyone who saw us to imagine we were together. Which of course we were not. I looked good, white shirt, sleeves rolled up the way Yngve had told me they should be that autumn. Over the suit jacket and my black suitlike trousers I was wearing a grey coat, on my feet Doc Martens, and leather straps around my wrists. My hair was long at the back and short, almost spiky, on top. The only thing that didn't belong was the bag of beer. Of that, however, I was painfully aware. It was what also linked me with the shabby crowd lurching along behind me, because they had plastic bags as well, each and every one of them.

At the intersection, which was on higher ground, and had been an assembly point because you could see the whole bay from there, there was total chaos. People stood shoulder to shoulder, most were drunk, and everyone was letting off fireworks. There were bangs and crackles on all sides, the smell of gunpowder tore at your nostrils, smoke drifted through the air and one after another multicolored rockets exploded beneath the cloudy sky. It
shook with flashes of light looking as if it could rupture and burst at any moment.