My Struggle: Book One (57 page)

I turned to look at the wall clock. It was twenty-five to twelve. Then I glanced at Yngve. He looked tired. His eyes were slits and slightly red at the margins. His glass was empty. I hoped he wasn't thinking of going to bed. I didn't want to sit there alone with Grandma.

“Do you want some more?” I asked, nodding to the bottle on the table.

“Well, maybe just a drop more,” he said. “But it'll have to be the last. We need to get up early tomorrow.”

“Oh?” I said. “Why's that?”

“We have an appointment at nine, don't you remember?”

I smacked my forehead. I doubted if I had performed this gesture since I left school.

“It'll be fine,” I said. “All we have to do is turn up.”

Grandma looked at us.

Please don't let her ask where we're going! I thought. The words “funeral director” would certainly break the spell. And then we would be sitting here again like a mother who has lost her son and two children who have lost their father.

However, I didn't dare ask her if she wanted anymore. There was a limit, it had something to do with decency, and it had been crossed ages ago. I reached for the bottle and poured a drop into Yngve's glass, then my own. But after I had done that, her eyes met mine.

“One more?” I heard myself ask.

“A little one perhaps,” she replied.

“It's late.”

“Yes, it's late on earth,” I said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“He said it was late on earth,” Yngve explained. “It's a quote from a famous Swedish poem.”

Why did he say that? Did he want to put me in my place? Oh, what the hell, I suppose it was a stupid thing to say. “Late on earth” …

“Karl Ove's going to have a book published soon,” Yngve said.

“Are you?” Grandma asked.

I nodded.

“Yes, now that you mention it, someone must have told me. Was it Gunnar, I wonder? Goodness. A book.”

She raised the glass to her mouth and drank. I did the same. Was it my imagination, or had her eyes darkened again?

“So you didn't live here during the war then?” I said, before taking another sip.

“No, after the war, it was a few years after when we moved here. During the war we lived over there,” she said, pointing behind her.

“What was it like actually?” I asked. “During the war, I mean?”

“Well, it was almost the same as before, you know. A bit harder to get hold of food, but otherwise there wasn't such an enormous difference. The Germans were normal people, like us. We got to know a few of them, you see. We went down to visit them after the war as well.”

“In Germany?”

“Yes. And when they were leaving, in May 1945, they gave us a call and said we could go and help ourselves to some things they had left behind, if we wanted. They gave us the finest drinks. And a radio. And a lot of other things.”

I hadn't heard that they had been given presents by the Germans before they capitulated. But then the Germans had been to their homes.

“Things they'd left behind?” I echoed. “Where?”

“By some cliff,” Grandma said. “They called to tell us exactly where we could find them. So we went out that evening, and there they were, precisely as they had said. They were kind, no doubt about that.”

Had Grandma and Grandad clambered around a cliff one May evening in 1945 hunting for the bottles left by the Germans?

The light from a pair of car headlights flitted across the garden and shone
on the wall under the window for a few seconds, then the car was around the bend and slowly glided past along the alley below. Grandma leaned toward the window.

“Who could that be at this time of night?” she wondered.

She sighed and sat back down, with her hands in her lap. Looked at us.

“It's good you're here, boys,” she said.

There was a silence. Grandma took another sip.

“Do you remember when you lived here?” she said suddenly, looking at Yngve with warmth in her eyes. “Your father came to pick you up and he had a beard. And you ran upstairs shouting ‘He's not my dad!' Ha ha ha! ‘He's not my dad!' We had so much fun with you, my goodness.”

“I remember that very well,” Yngve said.

“And then there was the time we were listening to the radio, and they were talking to the owner of Norway's oldest horse. Do you remember that? ‘Dad, you're the same age as Norway's oldest horse!' you said.”

She leaned forward as she laughed and rubbed her eyes with the knuckles of her index fingers.

“And you,” she said, focusing on me. “Can you remember the time you came with us to the cabin on your own?”

I nodded.

“One morning we found you sitting on the steps crying, and when we asked why you were crying you said ‘I'm so lonely.' You were eight years old.” It had been the summer Mom and Dad had gone on vacation to Germany. Yngve had been in SørbøvÃ¥g with Mom's parents, and I had been here, in Kristiansand. What did I remember of that? That the distance between me and Grandma and Grandad had been too great. Suddenly I was just one part of their everyday lives. They were strangers to me more than ever, as there was no one or nothing to bridge the gap between us. One morning there had been a bug in the milk, I didn't want to drink it, and Grandma told me not to be so fussy, I just had to take it out, that's how it was in nature. Her voice had been sharp. And I drank the milk, queasy with disgust. Why had that memory of all memories stuck? And no others? There must have been
others. Yes: Mom and Dad sent me a postcard with a picture of the Bayern Munich soccer team. How I had longed for that, and how happy I had been when it finally arrived! And the presents when they finally came home: a redand-yellow soccer ball for Yngve, a red-and-green one for me. The colors … oh, the feeling of happiness they brought …

“Another time you were standing on the stairs here shouting for me,” Grandma said, looking at Yngve. “
Grandma, are you upstairs or downstairs?
I answered
downstairs
and you shouted
Why aren't you upstairs?
”

She laughed.

“Yes, we had lots of fun … When you moved to Tybakken you just knocked on the neighbors' doors and asked if there were any children living there.
Are there any children living here?
you asked them.” She broke into laughter again.

After the laughter had died down, she sat chuckling while forming another cigarette in the roller machine. The tip of the roll-up was empty and flared up when she lit it with the lighter. A tiny fragment of ash floated down to the floor. Then the flame reached the tobacco and shrank to a glow, which shone brighter every time she puffed on the filter.

“But now you've grown up,” she said. “And that's so strange. It seems like only yesterday you were boys here …”

Half an hour later we went to bed. Yngve and I cleared the table, tucked the vodka bottle away in the cupboard under the sink, emptied the ashtray, and put the glasses in the dishwasher while Grandma watched. When we had finished she got up too. Some pee was dripping from the seat of the chair, but she paid it no attention. She leaned against the door frame on her way out, first in the kitchen, then on the landing.

“Good night!” I said.

“Good night, boys.” She smiled. I watched her and saw the smile fade the moment she turned her head and began to go downstairs.

“Oh well,” I said when, a minute later, we were upstairs. “That was that.”

“Yup,” Yngve said. He pulled off his sweater, laid it across the back of the chair, and took off his pants. Warmed by the alcohol, I felt like saying something
kind to him. All the differences of opinion had been straightened out, there were no problems and everything was simple.

“What a day,” he said.

“Mm, you can say that again.”

He lay back in bed and pulled up the duvet.

“Good night,” he said, closing his eyes.

“Good night,” I said. “Sleep tight.”

I went to the door and turned off the main light. Sat down on the bed. Didn't feel like sleeping. For one insane second it occurred to me that I could go out. There were still a couple of hours before the bars closed. And it was summer, the town was full of people, some of whom I probably knew.

But then the tiredness hit me. Suddenly all I wanted to do was sleep. Suddenly I could barely lift my arms. The thought of having to undress was unbearable, so I lay back in bed with all my clothes on and descended into the soft, inner light. Every tiny movement I made, even the stirring of my little finger, tickled my stomach, and when I fell asleep the very next second it was with a smile on my face.

Even in deepest sleep, I knew something terrible awaited me beyond. As I approached a quasiconscious state, I tried to go back and would certainly have succeeded, had it not been for Yngve's insistent voice and the knowledge that we had an important meeting that morning.

I opened my eyes.

“What time is it?” I asked.

Yngve was standing in the doorway, fully dressed. Black trousers, white shirt, black jacket. His face seemed puffy, his eyes were narrow and his hair tangled.

“Twenty to ten,” he said. “Get up.”

“Shit,” I said.

I struggled into a sitting position and could feel the alcohol still in my body.

“I'll be downstairs,” he said. “Hurry.”

Still wearing the clothes from yesterday made me feel very uneasy, a feeling that grew as the memory struck me of what we had actually done. I pulled them off. There was a heaviness about all the movements I made, even getting up and standing on two feet took energy, not to mention what raising my arm and reaching for the shirt on the clothes hanger over the wardrobe door did to me. But there was no option, it had to be done. Right arm through, left arm through, do up the buttons on the sleeves first, then at the front. Why the hell had we done it? How could we have been so stupid? It wasn't what I had wanted, in fact it was the very last thing I had wanted, to sit drinking with her, here of all places. Yet that was
precisely
what I had done. How was that possible? How the hell had that been possible?

It was shameful.

I knelt in front of the suitcase and unpeeled layers of clothes before finding the black trousers, which I put on while sitting on the bed. And how good it was to sit! But I had to get to my feet again, to hoist my trousers, to find the jacket and put it on, to go down to the kitchen.

After pouring myself a glass of water and drinking it, my forehead was damp with sweat. I leaned forward and sprinkled water over my head from the running tap. It cooled me down and made my hair, which was short but untidy, look better.

With water dripping from my chin and my body as heavy as a sack, I lurched down to the hall and onto the steps where Yngve was waiting for me with Grandma. He was rattling the car keys in one hand.

“Got any chewing gum or something?” I said. “I didn't have time to clean my teeth.”

“You can't skip cleaning your teeth today of all days,” Yngve said. “You'll be fine if you hurry.”

He was right. I probably smelled of alcohol, and that was not how you should smell at the undertaker's. But hurrying was beyond me. I had to pause on the second-floor landing and hang over the banister; my will seemed to be drained. After getting my toothbrush and toothpaste from the bedside table I cleaned my teeth as fast as I could over the kitchen sink. I should have left the
toothbrush and tube there and dashed down, but something in me said that was not right, they didn't belong in the kitchen, they had to be taken back to the bedroom, and so two further minutes were lost. It was four minutes to ten by the time I was standing on the front steps again.

“We're off,” Yngve said, turning to Grandma. “It won't take long. Back soon.”

“That's fine,” she answered.

I got into the car, strapped myself in. Yngve plumped down in the seat beside me, inserted the key in the ignition, twisted it, craned his head and began to reverse down the little slope. Grandma was standing on the top step. I waved to her, she waved back. As we reversed into the alley and could no longer see her I wondered if she was still waiting, as she had always done, because when we moved forward again we could see each other for a last time and wave a final goodbye, then she would turn to go in and we would enter the road.

She was still there. I waved, she waved, and then she went in.

“Did she want to come along today as well?” I asked.

Yngve nodded.

“We'll have to do what we said. Be quick. Although I wouldn't mind sitting in a café for a while. Or visiting some record shops.”

He touched the indicator with his left index finger as he down-shifted and looked to the right. Nothing coming.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Absolutely fine,” Yngve said. “And you?”