‘When you’ve finished, you go out and find Leif, if you feel like it,’ Signe said.
I walked out into the sunshine with my dark glasses on. I couldn’t see Leif anywhere, but there was an old man in overalls standing in the yard. He was thin as a rake and tall, the overalls hung off his shoulders like a flabby tent, and he was holding his hands against the small of his back, gazing up into the air, so I too looked up, but there was nothing there, just air. Then he was aware of me, and he turned on his heel, and we stood up straight staring at each other, and he shook his head and stroked his chin and made a friendly gesture. I did the same, and when he smiled his face split in two, and he was off across the yard and behind the barn.
‘That’s Bjørn, the farm boy,’ Signe said behind me. I turned and there she was, standing in the doorway with a swill bucket in her hand. ‘He helps round here, looks after the horse and mucks out the cowshed. It’s the last door on the right,’ she said, pointing. I walked that way. The hook was off and the door was ajar, and through the crack I could hear Leif swearing like a trooper.
‘Goddamnit, you’re tryin’ to teach your father to fuck?’ he yelled, and then I heard a bang. When I entered, it was half dark, but past the empty stalls I could make him out among a few calves. In each hand he had a shiny pail. The biggest calf had small horns already and was banging against the nearest pail, pulling and tugging at the tether and making a hell of a row. Leif leaned over to put the pail in the trough, and the calf jerked its head and hit him on the temple.
‘You bastard!’ he shouted and dropped the pail on the floor and smacked the calf between the eyes. It gave a jolt. It’s going to keel over, I thought, I was certain of it, for his hands were like sledgehammers. But it shook its head and beat a retreat. Leif turned, holding his forehead and grinned.
‘Rearing the young is a tricky business.’
‘Is that what you do to children?’ I said slowly, sensing the open door behind me, and I already knew his legs were bad. The place stank of cow muck and cow feed, and calf bodies were crashing about in the murk, and he looked at me with round eyes. Then he shook his head and said:
‘People are not animals, Audun.’ He bent over the calf and patted its flank. I had no idea how he knew my name. He pushed the pail over to the calf.
‘You halfwit, Ferdinand, now there’ll be less for you. It’s your own fault,’ and the calf slurped up what was left in the pail, and Leif gently rested his upper chest on Ferdinand’s back and stroked its flank, and the calf stood quite still and just slurped. Leif straightened up, holding on to the calf’s back, grabbed his stick and came over to me.
‘Ferdinand will be a good bull, but he’ll be big, and it’s just as well he learns who’s boss from the off. Soon it will be too late.’
We walked out into the sun. I felt fine now. Apart from one thing.
‘How did you know my name?’ I said.
He laughed. ‘It was written on the inside of your rucksack. Come on, let’s go and say hello to Toughie.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘The scourge of the chicken run.’
Toughie was a fox. He was tied up behind the barn and was almost tame, and wonderful to behold at close quarters. When Leif approached, Toughie jumped up on the leash and smiled as foxes do but he wasn’t that tame. Whenever he screamed there was chaos in the chicken run. But no one would let Toughie go. They had grown to love him, and they would either have to kill him or drive him miles away, and that was not an option.
‘A fox is a fox,’ Leif said, ‘and now that he knows his way around, it’s no good to have him running loose.’
We walked around, and Leif showed me the place. The stable, the sheep shed, the tractor that wouldn’t start just now, and the two baby goats he kept for entertainment.
‘We’ve got no TV here, Audun, and we have to have something to amuse ourselves with.’ And he pointed to the yellow barn and said: ‘Isn’t it fine,’ and I said it was, and then we crossed the yard, and Leif got in behind the wheel of the Volvo, and I got in on the other side.
‘I’ve a job for you,’ he said. ‘Let’s drive off now, and if you see something on the road I should brake for, anything living or breathing or whatever, you tell me in good time.’
‘Right,’ I said. I didn’t understand why, but we drove off, and for a minute there I was afraid we were going back the way I had come, but we didn’t. We were going to the shop and that was in the opposite direction. At one point I saw a tractor ahead of us on the road, and I told Leif in good time, and then he put his right hand under his right leg and lifted it off the accelerator and on to the brake, and we stopped just a metre from it.
‘Leg’s not what it used to be,’ Leif said.
I was there for a whole week. At night I slept in the room beneath the skylight, and in the morning I got up, and Signe served me her home-made bread in the kitchen. And then I worked most of the day on the jobs that Leif decided I could manage. There were more and more, and I could not get enough, and in the evening I swam in the river at a far better spot than the first one I found. At ten o’clock I was sent upstairs with a hug from Signe, and I was so greedy for it that I blushed. I tried to think as little as possible, I just drank it all in. On Wednesday one of their sons came up and fixed the tractor. They let me join him for a test drive, and then I drove it alone across the farmyard with everyone watching and cheering. The engine roared, and I sat up high, and I could steer it wherever I wanted to go.
On Saturday it was raining, and Leif said ‘Thank God, that’s not a day too soon’, and for the first time, I went out into the yard without my sunglasses on.
When I got up on the eighth day and went downstairs, my father was standing in the kitchen. He was smiling, and he was clean-shaven, but in his eyes I could see what was in store for me. Leif was sitting at the table looking down as I came in.
‘Sorry, Audun, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. We had to let them know. Anything else would be illegal.’
IV
13
I REIN MYSELF in. On the first day I take the Metro from Veitvet, get off just a few stations closer to Oslo and cross under a railway bridge where I can see the sky between the sleepers above my head, and I walk up a road with factory buildings and warehouses lined up on each side, until I am at the top. Behind a warehouse storing washing powder and down another road to the left, I see the tall, grey Alles Hjem office block across the way, with a car park on the opposite side. The production plant is behind the office block. You cannot see it from the road. I try the main door I entered last week, but it is locked and dark inside. I rattle the brass handle until I realise the people up above don’t start until half-past eight. Now it’s only half-past six, and I walk around the building and find a small gate and enter the yard where there is a loading ramp the entire length of the wall. Pallets are stacked up in rows with waste paper compressed into bales, and I walk along the ramp and in through the plastic flap doors where the forklifts come and go.
The large room I walk into is the finishing shop. Just inside the door there are pallets of shrink-wrapped magazines shoulder to shoulder, twenty-five in each rack, and twelve racks high, ready for the distribution centre, and right in front the conveyors, long and low, and one so new you can still see the blue paint. Last week when I was here with the foreman, waiting to be shown round, a little man came down from his platform. His forearms were as big as Popeye’s, and he grabbed my shoulders in an iron grip.