My Struggle: Book One (3 page)

“No. It wasn't a real face. The sea had formed into the shape of a face.”

For a moment he watched me without saying anything. Then he tapped a forefinger on his temple.

“Don't you believe me?” I said. “It's absolutely true.”

“The truth is you're a waste of space.”

At that moment Dad switched off the tap downstairs, and I decided it was best to go to my room now so that there was no chance of meeting him on the landing. But, I did not want Yngve to have the last word.

“You're the one who's a waste of space,” I said.

He could not even be bothered to answer. Just turned his face toward me, stuck out his top teeth and blew air through them like a rabbit. The gesture was a reference to my protruding teeth. I broke away and made off before he could see my tears. As long as I was alone my crying didn't bother me. And this time it had worked, hadn't it? Because he hadn't seen me?

I paused inside the door of my room and wondered for moment whether to go to the bathroom. I could rinse my face with cold water and remove the telltale signs. But Dad was on his way up the stairs, so I made do with wiping my eyes on the sleeve of my sweater. The thin layer of moisture that the dry material spread across my eye made the surfaces and colors of the room blur as though it had suddenly sunk and was now under water, and so real was this perception that I raised my arms and made a few swimming strokes as I walked toward the writing desk. In my mind I was wearing a metal diver's helmet from the early days of diving, when they bestrode the seabed with leaden shoes and suits as thick as elephant skin, with an oxygen pipe attached to their heads like a kind of trunk. I wheezed through my mouth and staggered around for a while with the heavy, sluggish movements of divers from bygone days until the horror of the sensation slowly began to seep in like cold water.

A few months before, I had seen the TV series
The Mysterious Island
, based on Jules Verne's novel, and the story of those men who landed their air balloon on a deserted island in the Atlantic had made an enormous impact on me from the very first moment. Everything was electric. The air balloon, the storm, the men dressed in nineteenth-century clothing, the weather-beaten, barren island where they had been marooned, which apparently was not as deserted as they imagined, mysterious and inexplicable things were always happening around them . . . but in that case who were the others? The answer came without warning toward the end of one episode. There was someone
in the underwater caves . . . a number of humanoid creatures . . . in the light from the lamps they were carrying they saw glimpses of smooth, masked heads . . . fins . . . they resembled a kind of lizard but walked upright . . . with containers on their backs . . . one turned, he had no eyes . . .

I did not scream when I saw these things, but the horror the images instilled would not go away; even in the bright light of day I could be struck with terror by the very thought of the frogmen in the cave. And now my thoughts were turning me into one of them. My wheezing became theirs, my footsteps theirs, my arms theirs, and closing my eyes, it was those eyeless faces of theirs I saw before me. The cave . . . the black water . . . the line of frogmen with lamps in their hands . . . it became so bad that opening my eyes again did not help. Even though I could see I was in my room, surrounded by familiar objects, the terror did not release its grip. I hardly dared blink for fear that something might happen. Stiffly, I sat down on the bed, reached for my satchel without looking at it, glanced at the school timetable, found Wednesday, read what it said,
math
,
orientation
,
music
, lifted the satchel onto my lap and mechanically flipped through the books inside. This done, I took the open book from the pillow, sat against the wall and began to read. The seconds between looking up soon became minutes, and when Dad shouted it was time for supper, nine o'clock on the dot, it was not horror that had me in its thrall but the book. Tearing myself away from it was quite an effort too.

We were not allowed to cut bread ourselves, nor were we allowed to use the stove, so it was always either Mom or Dad who made supper. If Mom was on the evening shift, Dad did everything: when we came into the kitchen there were two glasses of milk and two plates, each with four slices of bread plus toppings, waiting for us. As a rule, he had prepared the food beforehand, and then kept it in the fridge, and the fact that it was cold made it difficult to swallow, even when I liked the toppings he had chosen. If Mom was at home there was a selection of meats, cheeses, jars on the table, either hers or ours, and this small touch, which allowed us to choose what would be on the table or on our sandwiches, in addition to the bread being at room temperature,
this was sufficient to engender a sense of freedom in us: if we could open the cupboard, take the plates, which always made a bit of a clatter when they knocked against each other, and laid them on the table; if we could open the cutlery drawer, which always rattled, and place the knives beside our plates; if we could set out the glasses, open the fridge, take the milk and pour it, then you could be sure we would open our mouths and speak. One thing led naturally to another when we had supper with Mom. We chatted away about anything that occurred to us, she was interested in what we had to say, and if we spilt a few drops of milk or forgot our manners and put the used tea bag on the tablecloth (for she made us tea as well) it was no huge drama. But if it was our participation in the meal that opened this sluice gate of freedom, it was the extent of my father's presence that regulated its impact. If he was outside the house or down in his study, we chatted as loudly and freely and with as many gesticulations as we liked; if he was on his way up the stairs we automatically lowered our voices and changed the topic of conversation, in case we were talking about something we assumed he might consider unseemly; if he came into the kitchen we stopped altogether, sat there as stiff as pokers, to all outward appearances sunk in concentration over the food; on the other hand, if he retired to the living room we continued to chat, but more warily and more subdued.

This evening, the plates with the four prepared slices awaited us as we entered the kitchen. One with brown goat's cheese, one with ordinary cheese, one with sardines in tomato sauce, one with clove cheese. I didn't like sardines and ate that slice first. I couldn't stand fish; boiled cod, which we had at least once a week, made me feel nauseous, as did the steam from the pan in which it was cooked, its taste and consistency. I felt the same about boiled pollock, boiled coley, boiled haddock, boiled flounder, boiled mackerel, and boiled rose fish. With sardines it wasn't the taste that was the worst part – I could swallow the tomato sauce by imagining it was ketchup – it was the consistency, and above all the small, slippery tails. They were disgusting. To minimize contact with them I generally bit them off, put them to the side of my plate, nudged some sauce toward the crust and buried the tails in the
middle, then folded the bread over. In this way I was able to chew a couple of times without ever coming into contact with the tails, and then wash the whole thing down with milk. If Dad was not there, as was the case this evening, it was possible of course to stuff the tiny tails in my trouser pocket.

Yngve would frown and shake his head when I did that. Then he smiled. I returned the smile.

In the living room Dad stirred in his chair. There was the faint rustle of a box of matches, followed by the brief rasp of the sulfur head across the rough surface and the crackle as it burst into flame, which seemed to merge into the subsequent silence. When the smell of the cigarette seeped into the kitchen, a few seconds later, Yngve bent forward and opened the window as quietly as he could. The sounds that drifted in from the darkness outside transformed the whole atmosphere in the kitchen. All of a sudden it was a part of the country outside.
It's like we're sitting on a shelf
, I thought. The thought caused the hairs on my forearm to stand on end. The wind rose with a sough through the forest and swept over the rustling bushes and trees in the garden below. From the intersection came the sound of children, still crouched over their bikes, chatting. On the hill up to the bridge a motorbike changed gear. And, far off, as if raised above all else, was the drone of a boat on its way into the fjord.

Of course. He had heard me! My feet running on the shingle!

“Want to swap?” Yngve mumbled, pointing to the clove cheese.

“Alright,” I said. Elated to have solved the riddle, I washed down the last bite of the sardine sandwich with a tiny sip of milk and started on the slice Yngve had put on my plate. The trick was to eke out the milk because if you came to the last and there was none left it was almost impossible to swallow. Best of all, of course, was to save a drop until everything was eaten, the milk never tasted as good as then, when it no longer had to fulfill a function, it ran down your throat in its own right, pure and uncontaminated, but unfortunately it was rare for me to manage this. The needs of the moment always trumped promises of the future, however enticing the latter.

But Yngve did manage it. He was a past master at economizing.

Up at Prestbakmo's, there was a click of bootheels on the doorstep. Then three short cries cut through the night.

“
Geir! Geir! Geir!
”

The response came from John Beck's drive after such a time lag that everyone who heard concluded that he had been considering it.

“
Right
,” he shouted.

Straight after, there was the sound of his running feet. As they approached Gustavsen's wall, Dad got up in the living room. Something about the way he crossed the floor made me duck my head. Yngve ducked too. Dad came into the kitchen, walked over to the counter, leaned forward without a word, and closed the window with a bang.

“We keep the window closed at night,” he said.

Yngve nodded.

Dad looked at us.

“Eat up now,” he said.

Not until he was back in the living room did I meet Yngve's glance.

“Ha, ha,” I whispered.

“Ha ha?” he whispered back. “He meant you as well.”

He was two slices ahead of me and was soon able to leave the table and slip into his room, leaving me to chew for a few more minutes. I had been planning to see my father after supper and tell him they would probably be showing the story with the face in the sea on the late-night news, but under the circumstances it was probably best to ditch that plan.

Or was it?

I decided to play it by ear. After leaving the kitchen I usually stuck my head into the living room to say good night. If his voice was neutral or, if luck was with me, friendly even, I would mention it. Otherwise not.

Unfortunately he had chosen to sit on the sofa at the back of the room, and not in one of the two leather chairs in front of the TV, as was his wont. To gain eye contact I could not just poke my head in at the door and say good night, en passant, as it were, which I could have done if he had been sitting in one of the leather chairs, but would have had to take several steps into the
room. That would obviously make him aware that I was after something. And that would defeat the whole purpose of playing things by ear. Whatever tone he replied in I would have to come clean.

It wasn't until I was out of the kitchen that I realized this and was caught in two minds. I came to a halt, all of a sudden I had no choice, for of course he heard me pause, and that was bound to have made him aware I wanted something from him. So I took the four steps to enter his field of vision.

He was sitting with his legs crossed, his elbows on the back of the sofa, head reclining, resting on his interlaced fingers. His gaze, which had been focused on the ceiling, directed itself at me.

“Good night, Dad,” I said.

“Good night,” he said.

“I'm sure they'll be showing it again on the news,” I said. “Just thought I'd tell you. So that you and Mom can see it.”

“Showing what?”

“The face.” I said.

“The face?”

I must have been standing there with my mouth agape, because he suddenly dropped his jaw and gawked in a way I understood was supposed to be an imitation of me.

“The one I told you about,” I said.

He closed his mouth and sat up straight without averting his eyes.

“Now let's not be hearing anymore about that face,” he said.

“Alright,” I said.

As I made my way down the corridor I could feel his glare relinquishing its hold on me. I brushed my teeth, undressed, got into pajamas, switched on the lamp above my bed, turned on the main light, settled down, and started reading.

I was only allowed to read for half an hour, until ten o'clock, but usually read until Mom came home at around half past ten. Tonight was no exception. When I heard the Beetle coming up the hill from the main road, I put the book on the floor, switched off the light, and lay in the dark listening
for her: the car door slamming, the crunch across the gravel, the front door opening, her coat and scarf being removed, the footsteps up the stairs . . . The house seemed different then, when she was in it, and the strange thing was that I could
feel
it; if, for example, I had gone to sleep before she returned and I awoke in the middle of the night, I could sense she was there, something in the atmosphere had changed without my being able to put my finger on quite what it was, except to say that it had a reassuring effect. The same applied to those occasions when she had come home earlier than expected while I was out: the moment I set foot in the hall I knew she was home.