She had an aura around her.
‘Do you want a beer?’ Jon Olav said. ‘They’re closing soon.’
Two minutes earlier I would have been glad they were closing soon, now the thought made me desperate in the same senseless way that I was sad whenever anyone left a drinks party, as though with every person who left I came a step closer to death or some other calamity.
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said and followed him to the bar.
‘I can carry two beers,’ Jon Olav said.
‘Who’s she?’ I said.
‘Who?’
‘The girl at the table.’
Jon Olav turned. Hadn’t he even noticed there was a girl sitting at our table?
‘Oh her,’ he said. ‘That’s Ingvild.’
‘Do you know her well?’
‘No, hardly at all. She lives in Kaupanger. But I know her bloke. Tord. Sleeping in the chair over there. Can you see him?’
Typical.
As though I could have been in with a chance if she hadn’t been with him.
I was on holiday, at my mother’s, leaving in two days, what was I dreaming of? One look at a beautiful stranger, was that supposed to be the future? Me and her, oh yes?
Why?
She had an aura around her.
I drank half the glass at the bar while Jon Olav was paying, then I ordered another and took both glasses with me to the table.
Four of Jon Olav’s friends at the table got up and left immediately afterwards. They had come in the same car and were going home, I gathered.
Around the table now were only Jon Olav, someone he was talking to, Ingvild and me. As well as her bloke, that is, but he was asleep and so didn’t count.
I took a couple of hefty swigs.
She was staring over her shoulder.
‘Do you want this beer?’ I said when she finally turned her eyes back to the table. ‘It’s untouched. I haven’t had a sip.’
‘If anything was likely to make me suspicious it would be a total stranger offering me a beer he’s had standing in front of him for a while. But you look harmless enough.’
She spoke in the Sogne dialect, and her eyes narrowed when she smiled.
‘I am,’ I said.
‘But no thanks. I have to drive.’
She motioned towards the boy sleeping at the table.
‘I have to drive him home among other things.’
‘I’m a good driver,’ I said. ‘I can give you a few tips if you like.’
‘Oh please! I’m a terrible driver.’
‘First of all, it’s important to drive fast,’ I said.
‘Oh yes?’
‘There are those who claim it’s best to drive slowly, but I think they’re mistaken. It’s better to drive fast.’
‘OK, fast. Anything else?’
‘Well, let me see. . Yep, I was driving along the road once. The car in front of me was going slowly. I think it’s important to drive fast, so I simply overtook him. It was on a bend, I crossed into the opposite carriageway, stamped my foot down on the accelerator and then I was past him.’
‘Yes?’
‘That was all. I just carried on.’
‘You haven’t got a licence, have you.’
‘No. I really admire those who have. Actually it’s incredible that I dare talk to you. Usually I would have just sat staring at the table. But then I’ve had a bit to drink and I love talking about driving cars. The theory, that is. I think a lot about how best to change gear to get the smoothest drive, for example. The whole interaction between clutch and gear and accelerator and brakes. But not everyone likes to talk about it.’
I looked at her. ‘Has your boyfriend got a licence?’
‘How do you know he’s my boyfriend?’
‘He who?’
‘He on the chair.’
‘Is he your boyfriend?’
She laughed. ‘Yes, he is. And he’s got a licence.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ I said. ‘Was it driving cars that brought you together?’
She shook her head.
‘But tonight it seems to be forcing us apart. I could have done with a few beers as well. Especially if he’s asleep. He might have had the decency to fall asleep without drinking. Then I could have had one.’
She looked at me.
‘Are you interested in anything else apart from driving cars?’
‘No,’ I said and took a swig of beer. ‘What are you interested in?’
‘Politics,’ she said. ‘I’m passionately interested in politics.’
‘What kind? Local politics? Foreign affairs?’
‘Just politics. Politics in general.’
‘Are you flirting with my cousin while your bloke is asleep?’ Jon Olav said.
‘I’m not flirting,’ she said. ‘We’re talking about politics. And then perhaps we’ll end up talking about emotions, if I know me.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ I said.
‘I have a wretched emotional life. What about you?’
‘It’s pretty poor, actually. Yes, if I’m honest. I never usually talk about it. But there’s something about you that gives me the courage.’
‘Ironic girls tend to have that effect. That’s my experience. In the end people get so sick of irony they’ll do anything to stop it. Since I started being ironic I’ve been told quite a few intimate details.’
The music in the room was switched off.
Jon Olav turned to me.
‘Shall we go then?’
‘OK,’ I said, and looked at her as I got up. ‘Drive home fast!’
‘I’ll drive like a bat out of hell,’ she said.
~ ~ ~
When I woke up the next morning she was on my mind. Jon Olav, who had slept at our place, went home to Dale in the morning. He was the only connection I had with her, and before he left I made him promise to send me her address when he got home even though something told me he would only do so with a heavy heart, after all she was going out with someone he knew.
It felt completely meaningless going back to Håfjord, but on the other hand there were only three more months until it finished for ever and I could spend the whole of the rest of my life in familiar surroundings, if that was what I wanted.
The letter from Jon Olav lay in my post box a few days after I returned. She lived in Kaupanger, he wrote, and was in the third class at gymnas in Sogndal.
Kaupanger, I thought, that must be a fantastic place.
I spent more than a week on the letter to her. She knew nothing about me, had no idea what my name was and had no doubt forgotten me the moment she left the disco that night. So I didn’t immediately reveal my identity, I touched on car driving a couple of times so that she could, if she remembered, work out who I was. I didn’t give an address; if she wanted to answer the letter she would have to make an effort to get hold of it, and in that way, I thought, I would have a deeper impact on her consciousness.
That same week I prepared my application for the writing course at the akademi in Bergen. They wanted twenty pages of prose or poetry and I enclosed the first twenty pages of my novel in the envelope, wrote a short letter of introduction and sent it off.
Now the mornings were light when I woke and went downstairs for a shower and breakfast, outside the house gulls were screaming, and if we opened the kitchen window we could also hear the waves lapping and gurgling over the pebbles beneath. At school the younger children were running around in sweaters and trainers in the breaks, the older ones sat on the ground leaning back against the wall with their faces to the sun. Everything that had happened in the darkness, when life had closed itself around me and even the tiniest details had become charged with tension and destiny, seemed incredible now, for out in the open, beneath this slow deluge of light, I saw it as it was.