‘Let me go, let me go!’ I slung my legs in the air, took aim and kicked my heels against his arm with all my force. He groaned and had to let go, and I got to my feet and half stumbled, half ran towards the smashed gate, jumped over the debris. and when I looked back at the house, I saw Kari up in the window. She was still in her dressing gown, she raised her arm and her eyes met mine behind my sunglasses. I stopped. I was about to point and say something, but then instead I shouted:
‘KARI!’ But it was no good. My father was on his back now with his arms stretched out, his blue eyes gleaming, and I turned and kept running, down the road and all the way to the railway station.
12
I RAN AND the sun came out as I ran and the clouds dispersed. The grey turned yellow and green, and suddenly it was hot and sweat was running down my back, in my armpits, in my groin and behind my sunglasses, and I thought, I will take them off. But I could not face the sun, I could not stop, I just ran, thinking it was better to run, that I liked running, that I could see everything clearer then and what was behind me would stay behind.
I didn’t want to stop, and yet soon I would have to, for I had run past all the fields, past the crossroads by the chapel I had never been in, and then down the entire stretch of the road and into the streets between the houses where people came out to watch me. I saw the railway station ahead of me and people waiting on the platform to go in to work in Oslo. I ran right through the crowd, instead of skirting round them, it would take too much time, and bumped into people without paying heed. One man was shouting after me, but I did not stop to listen to what he was saying or to see who the man was, so his words were left there, hanging in the air before they fell to the ground and were gone, and I ran on along the rails until no one could see me any more and through the bushes to my cardboard house. It was still there, and I had no idea why I thought it would be gone.
I collected my things. I found the torch and the books, stuffed the blanket and clothes into my rucksack and rolled the sleeping bag into a tight bundle before strapping it in its place under the flap, and carried the whole lot to one side. In a rucksack pocket I found some matches, a big box decorated with red felt on the top and small shiny baubles the way you do in kindergarten to make your parents happy. I had made it myself and no one had ever touched it, it had been buried under some junk in a kitchen drawer. Now I was the first one to use it. I walked over to the cardboard house. It had not rained for weeks, so the cardboard was bone dry, and when I struck a match and held it close, it caught fire at once.
In the evening a bonfire can be nice and bright in the darkness, but during the day it is different. Whoosh it went, and within a few minutes the whole house was ablaze. The heat was intense, and I stepped back. When the bushes also caught fire my first thought was to run to the station and get water from the tap at the back, but there were people all around, and I had nothing to say to them. So instead I stood still watching the flames. They rose higher and higher as they spread to the bushes, and I guess they could be seen from a long way away, if anyone cared to look.
‘Kiss my arse,’ I said, and swung the rucksack on to my back. I set off, giving the station as wide a berth as possible. I waded through knee-high grass wet with dew along a path only we kids knew about, and then I was back on the main road. At the crossroads by the chapel, I didn’t go straight on as I usually would have. Instead I turned left on to a gravel road that at first was winding its way between the green fields of barley and then through a cluster of trees and on to places I had never been to before.
I walked for most of the morning. As the hours passed by, the landscape turned hilly and rolling, and all the hollows that cut across the path I was taking never ran in the same direction. Downhill it was easy to walk, but my rucksack felt heavy as lead against the small of my back on the way up again, and I didn’t dare stop and take it off until I was certain that what I saw round about was all new to me. And yet I kept seeing familiar things: a crag, a red house, a fence that had collapsed into disrepair. The straps were gnawing the flesh off my shoulders, and I put my thumbs under them to relieve the pressure, and that worked fine for a mile or so, but then that too became painful.
The sun rose and stayed high in the sky. The air was dry in my mouth, and with each step the dust came whirling up from the gravel road. On the track behind me, I could see my footprints like two straight lines in the thick dust, and if I didn’t keep my mouth closed, the dust would crunch between my teeth. At the top of a rise I finally stopped. I really needed a drink.
I didn’t have the strength to walk one step more. I looked around me. Across the little valley ahead, on the next peak, I could just make out a yellow barn behind a grove of birch trees. It stood out, the yellow was shrill and very unusual. I had never seen a yellow barn in my life, and I thought maybe I could get some water there. I had never been here before, so I guessed it was safe.
Briskly I set off downhill. The road curved down the slope, and I heard the river before I saw it. I walked faster even though the soles of my feet were burning as if someone had rubbed them with a grater, but I didn’t care. At the very bottom and around the bend, the river came flowing out of the green shadows between the trees and then into rapids, and the boulders whipped the water into a froth that curved under a bridge, and then the river spread, and there was a deep pool where the water gently whirled before shooting off again over wet, shiny boulders that looked like huge marbles.
That pool looked good.
To get there I had to leave the road, clamber down an incline and over a barbed wire fence. I slid down, took off my rucksack and threw it over the fence. I took a running jump, I was flying, and then I was over. I picked up the rucksack and held it in my arms the last few paces, underneath the bridge on the warm rocks and over to the still water and put it down, avoiding the cowpats. I scouted around. All I could see was a few cows. Not a soul in sight. I took off my sunglasses and all my clothes and stacked them in a pile and went naked over to the pool. I didn’t wait, I didn’t count, I just jumped in.
It was cold as hell.
Suddenly, and just like in the books, I felt a claw around my chest. I sank, I couldn’t move, the water was deep, and I felt my body starting to spin. This can’t be true, it’s too short a life, I thought, I am only thirteen, for Christ’s sake, and then I kicked for all I was worth, but the current was strong and I was pulled into it, my body spinning like a log. I couldn’t hold my breath for much longer, and then my hand hit a rock. I took hold and crouched round what air I had left and put my feet against the rock and kicked off and suddenly there was sun and dazzling yellow foam, and I drifted on to the next rock, and it was towering above me, and I clung to it and took breath after deep breath and gazed towards the bank. I was halfway out in the river, but the bank was not that far. I could make it. The cows lay chewing and watching me, their eyes large and round like vacant mirrors. I was nothing to them. OK, I thought, and then I jumped, and again it was cold, and there was a roar in my ears, I held my head high and swam with all my might, staring at the cows that glided past all too quickly.