The Drifters (9 page)

Mrs. Bjørndahl found Britta a job—in the office of Mr. Holger Mogstad! The first months were a trying time, because Mr. Mogstad tried to maneuver her into corners where he would pinch her and run his hand up her leg. One day he caught her in the storeroom and started to unbutton her blouse, but this so enraged her that she slapped him about the head, saying. ‘You silly old man. Behave yourself or I’m going to punch you.’ It was an inept statement but it jolted him into accepting the fact that any further thought of an affair with this girl was futile. He took revenge by assigning her unpleasant jobs and by smiling lasciviously whenever Gunnar appeared at the end of the day to walk her home. Once he whispered, ‘I’ll bet you sleep with him, don’t you?’ It was most unsavory, but no other jobs were available.

She received her first serious glimpse into the future one night when Gunnar, having engineered it so that his parents
would be at the cinema, took her to his home—and as she lay in bed after their enjoyable sex, she thought to herself: How pleasant it will be when we can live together openly. But as she entertained these generous thoughts she happened to look at him, hunched over the table where he kept a short-wave radio, and she realized that he was as preoccupied with his radio as her father was with Ceylon. At this unpropitious moment Gunnar cried, ‘Listen, Britt! It’s that fellow in Samoa I told you about!’ And as he continued to fiddle with the dials she could visualize him decades from now, wasting his days in some trivial job he could not respect, filling his nights with radio. Her apprehension was multiplied when she happened to mention his hobby to her parents, and her father cried, ‘I wonder if he could get Ceylon?’ Eventually Gunnar tried to do so, and made contact with an Englishman in Kandy, and for several breathless nights Gunnar and Mr. Bjørndahl huddled over the radio, talking with Ceylon; and as the hours passed, strange messages were exchanged, and Mr. Bjørndahl came home at midnight in a kind of exaltation, for Ceylon really existed. But Britta noticed that during this spell of enchantment Gunnar seemed to forget her almost completely, and they did not go to bed together once during the whole month of October.

But a problem even more profound than sex had arisen: in early November, Tromsø entered the tunnel, forcing Britta to question the values of life in Norway. Each year on the twenty-second of September the sun, in its appointed climb up and down the heavens, reached the halfway mark in its descent, and then day and night were of equal length; but swiftly thereafter the sun declined, so that even at midday it remained hidden below the horizon, making the days brief and the nights interminable. As December approached, the people of Tromsø said, ‘We are heading into the tunnel,’ an appropriate simile, since it conveyed the idea that after a long dark passage the world would once more burst into joyous daylight; but to young people the image was a mournful one, because they could not take comfort from the promise of a distant spring. They could see only the extinction of light and the beginning of that dark interlude which gripped the soul.

In mid-December, when the darkness was deep upon them, Britta’s father said philosophically, ‘Well, here we go again, plunging into the tunnel.’ And in the nights that
followed, Britta heard him, hidden away in his small room, playing the imaginary music of Ceylon, and often as she worked in Mr. Mogstad’s office she would find herself softly whistling the cavatina from
The Pearl Fishers
, as if her life, too, were existing in a dream, and she would feel herself enmeshed in the futility that had overcome her father, and the world would seem unbearable, and she would whisper, ‘I want the sun.’

You must not suppose that Tromsø lay in complete darkness during the whole twenty-four hours of each day; at noontime there would be a soft gray haze which sometimes produced effects of unforgettable beauty, with the forests on the mainland emerging from shadow like the castles of imagination. At mid-afternoon girls who worked along the waterfront would leave their offices for a brief spell as the steamer from Bergen came around the end of the island on its trip north to Kirkenes, which lay beyond the cape. After the steamer had sailed, the girls would wander reluctantly back to work, and by the time the day was ended, their world would be engulfed in darkness. And when they said to each other, ‘We have entered the tunnel,’ they implied that the big job was to hold on, by any device, until this dreadful night was past.

On the morning of Monday, December 16, Britta was awakened at seven by a positive premonition that this day was to be special—something perhaps related to Gunnar or her job. Looking at the thermometer outside her window, she saw that it stood several degrees below zero and thought: Nothing special about that. The darkness was as black as ever: Nothing special there either. But she did sense a spirit of Christmas in the air, as if Laplanders might be in the streets with their reindeer when she went to work.

To keep alive the spirit of this strange day, she chose her shortest miniskirt, bright red; and to protect her legs, she pulled on heavy-ribbed raw-wool stockings and a pair of white boots made of reindeer skin. Over her embroidered blouse she drew a parka that did afford protection for her face but which reached only a few inches below her hips. Studying herself in the mirror, she whispered, ‘Nothing spectacular, but you’ll pass.’ Calling goodbye to her mother, she left home and started picking her way along icy paths hemmed in by waist-high drifts. Within moments her cheeks were as red as her skirt.

Few towns in the world could have been more attractive than Tromsø on this Arctic morning, for it presented a man-made aurora borealis. Years ago the citizens had decided that they had better do something to offset the drabness of the north, so they agreed that each man would paint his house some individual and brilliant color. Now, when Britta walked to work, she passed blue houses and purple, and cerise and ocher and golden yellow. And each was brightly lit, for electricity was cheap and lights that were turned on in October were left burning till April. Tromsø was a fairyland of color, accentuated by girls like Britta in their bright miniskirts.

As she entered Peter Hansen’s Gate, a wide street that led to the harbor, she waved to everyone, then turned left into Storgata, filled with red-cheeked people, their faces shining like lanterns in the perpetual night. She smiled at each one, still convinced that this was to be her lucky day. Then, as she was about to leave Storgata, she came face to face with the plate-glass window of a travel agency displaying a poster showing a life-size Scandinavian girl in a swim suit standing beside an ancient stone windmill overlooking the Mediterranean. Only three words appeared on the poster, but they carried a mighty impact:
Come to Torremolinos.

At this first moment of confrontation, Britta did not stop to look at the poster, for she did not yet understand that it was the premonition which had awakened her, but in some subtle way it fired her imagination, so that when she looked at Mr. Mogstad she saw a stone windmill, and when she spoke with his secretary the woman became a girl in a bikini standing beside the Mediterranean.

On her way home that evening she studied the poster again, and when she heard her father playing ‘I hear as in a dream,’ she saw as in a dream: herself standing in sunlight beside a windmill in Spain. On its first appearance the image awakened no particular longing; in fact, her response was intellectual: Of course … Torremolinos … tower of the mill … what a lovely name. But when she went to her father’s room and asked to borrow his atlas, she found that the map of Spain did not show Torremolinos. It must be very small, she thought.

Gunnar came to dinner, after which they went to a cinema and from there to the home of a friend, where they popped quickly into bed. Their love-making was fun,
mostly because Britta insisted that it be so, but it had little significance, and as Gunnar fell asleep beside her, for he had no radio to play with, she saw on the walls of the darkened room stone windmills and curving beaches of white sand. On her way to work next morning she looked specifically at the poster and at a card beside it:
You too can enjoy sunny Spain for less than you think.
That evening she entered the travel office and tentatively approached the man behind the counter.

He was an eager little chap, quite short for a Norwegian, and wore in his left lapel a large plastic yellow flower. It carried a small personalized banner:
Come to Sunny Italy. Sven Sverdrup Tours, Tromsø, Norway.
Behind him stood an exciting poster which read:
Spend Your Vacation in Sunny Greece.
In the travel offices of northern Norway, sun was the marketable commodity.

In spite of the fact that Britta was obviously no more than seventeen and not apt to be interested in an expensive tour, Mr. Sverdrup hurried up to her as if she had thousands to spend. ‘My name is Sven Sverdrup,’ he said pleasantly. ‘And what does milady desire? A trip to Oslo for the Christmas vacation?’

‘I was thinking about Torremolinos,’ she said.

Without blinking, he assured her, ‘Best winter vacation in the world. I’ve been there myself. Perfection.’

‘How much?’

‘You get fifteen glorious sun-filled days. Tromsø, Oslo, Copenhagen, Torremolinos. Look at the accouterments.’ This word she did not know, but with it he handed her a brightly colored brochure whose cover contained the same Scandinavian girl, the same swim suit and the same windmill. He opened the pamphlet to show her the hotel she would be occupying in Torremolinos, the swimming pool, the dining facilities. ‘Appointments customarily reserved for American millionaires,’ he summed up.

‘How much?’

‘For fifteen days, every single expense, including tips … Look here, a mere ninety-five dollars—less than seven hundred kroner.’ Before she could react he dropped his voice and said, ‘Of course, that’s two in a room. If you insist upon a single, the rate is a little higher—one hundred and ten dollars.’

‘I’d be willing to share the room,’ she said quickly. He had tricked her into the first positive response.

‘Why not?’ he asked professionally. ‘You’re young. You’re not so stuck in your ways you need a room to yourself.’

‘You’re right,’ she said as she left.

All next day, as she worked among her papers, she thought of Spain. At mid-afternoon, when the boat from Bergen steamed up to the wharf, she remained at her desk, studying the brochure and fixing in her mind the location of the dining room and swimming pool. She also began those calculations which would occupy her during the rest of December: I’d need to have some spending money. She then reviewed her finances, considering a loan from her father (hopeless), a salary advance from Mr. Mogstad (dangerous, because he would agree, provided she join him again in the sail locker), and some kind of new job that would pay her more money (none available, and besides, if she changed jobs she wouldn’t be entitled to a vacation till next summer). I’m certainly not going to Spain in the summer, she thought. I’ll take the winter when it does you some good.

She began questioning her friends about Spain, and those with acquaintances who had made the trip gave enthusiastic reports. She finally found a woman in the clothing store who had actually made the trip, a large woman in her fifties, but her report was somewhat deflating: ‘Some people say a lot more about Spain than other people ought to believe.’

Firmest encouragement came from Mr. Sverdrup and his hymns of praise to the sun. Day after day, as she stopped by his office for additional temptations, he assured her that even if she had to beg or borrow, Spain was a necessity: ‘Imagine yourself in the sun, with the blue Mediterranean ten feet away from where you are dining, lulling you to sleep at night with its gentle waves.’ After one especially enthusiastic description of what she would be enjoying, she went to Mr. Mogstad’s office and said, ‘I’d like to ask you a hypothetical question.’

‘A what?’

‘For instance. If I can get the money together, would it be all right if I took my vacation in January?’

Mr. Magstad put his right thumb and forefinger to his mustache, smoothing down the two halves. ‘January would be a good month for a vacation. But where would you get the money?’

‘I’ve been saving.’

‘And where would you go? Oslo?’

‘Torremolinos.’

‘Spain?’ he asked incredulously. ‘You’d go to Spain?’

‘It’s where the young people are gathering,’ she said, quoting from the brochure.

Mr. Mogstad bit the ends of his moustache, then said in a low voice, ‘But why not go to Oslo? I could come down on business. It wouldn’t cost you …’

‘I’m going to Torremolinos,’ she said.

‘But if you went to Oslo, we could see the
Kon-Tiki
at Bygdøy. I’d give you the money.’

That afternoon she returned to the travel office and asked Mr. Sverdrup, ‘Torremolinos … what’s your very cheapest rate?’

He looked at her carefully, as if weighing whether or not to take her into his confidence, then said, ‘Miss Bjørndahl, ninety-five dollars is a sensational bargain. But’—and here he led her to a corner of the office—‘we reserve a few seats for clergymen, students, hardship cases … The man who owns this agency used to be a clergyman. He authorizes us … well, seventy-five dollars.’

Britta, trying not to show her exultation, asked crisply, ‘And how much would I need for spending money?’

Mr. Sverdrup preened his plastic flower and said, ‘You’re young and pretty. You ought to enjoy yourself. Don’t try to get by on less than five dollars a day.’

‘That’s a hundred and fifty dollars in all. That’s a lot of money.’

‘It is a lot of money but you have a lot of years to live. Take my advice. Enrich them with lovely memories of the sun. If you were my daughter, I’d say, “Go.” ’

She grasped his hand and said, ‘You give good advice.’

And then something quite unexpected happened. Gunnar had been spending so much time with Britta’s father on the short-wave talking to Ceylon that she felt he had lost interest in her. Certainly she no longer cared much for him and had already decided that whether she got to Spain or not, when Christmas vacation was over she was going to look around Tromsø for some new young man. ‘To put it bluntly,’ she told one of the girls in the office,
‘Gunnar bores me.’ Then, with a tender display of affection, he arranged for his aunt to stay with relatives so that he and Britta could use her quarters, and when they were in bed he said, ‘Britta! Mr. Nordlund’s promoted me to general supervisor, so I think we ought to get married.’