“Okay,” I replied.
“What’s that you’re reading?” he asked.
“Nothing special,” I said. “Just some newspaper cuttings for Norwegian.”
I got up. The rays from the sun flooded the floor. The window was open, outside there was the sound of birdsong, birds were twittering on the branches of the old apple tree a few meters away. Dad handed me the shopping list.
“Mom and I have decided to separate,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“Yes. But it won’t affect you. You won’t notice any difference. Besides, you’re not a child anymore and in two years you’ll be moving to a place of your own.”
“Yes, that’s true,” I said.
“Okay?” Dad asked.
“Okay,” I said.
“I forgot to write potatoes. And perhaps we should have a dessert? Oh, by the way, here’s the money.”
He handed me a five-hundred-krone note, I stuffed it in my pocket and went down to the street, along the river, and into the supermarket. I wandered between the shelves, filling the shopping basket. Nothing of what Dad had said managed to emerge above this. They were going to separate, fine, well, let them. It might have been different if I had been younger, eight or nine, I thought, then it would have meant something, but now it was of no significance, I had my own life.
I gave him the groceries, he made lunch, we ate without saying much.
Then he left.
I was pleased he did. Hanne was going to sing in a church that evening, and she had asked whether I wanted to go and watch, of course I did. Her boyfriend would be there, so I didn’t make my presence known, but when I saw her standing there, so beautiful and so pure, she was mine, no one else’s feelings could hold a candle to those I cherished. Outside, the tarmac was covered with grime, the remaining snow lay in dips and hollows and up shadowy slopes on both sides of the road. She sang, I was happy.
On the way home I jumped off at the bus station and walked the last part through town, although that did nothing to diminish my restlessness, my feelings were so varied and so intense that I couldn’t really deal with them. After arriving home I lay on my bed and cried. There was no despair in the tears, no sorrow, no anger, only happiness.
The next day we were alone in the classroom, the others had left, we both lingered, she perhaps because she wanted to hear what I thought of the concert. I told her that her singing had been fantastic, she was fantastic. She lit up as she stood packing her satchel. Then Nils came in. I felt ill at ease, his presence cast a shadow over us. We were together in French class, and he was different from the other boys in the first class, he hung out with people who were a lot older than himself in the town’s pubs, he was independent in his opinions and his life as a whole. He laughed a lot, made fun of everyone, me included. I always felt small when he did that, I didn’t know where to look or what to say. Now he started talking to Hanne. It was as if he were circling her, he looked into her eyes, laughed, drew closer, was standing very close to her now. I would not have expected anything else of him, that was not what upset me, it was the way Hanne reacted. She didn’t reject him, laugh off his advances. Even though I was there she opened herself to him. Laughed with him, met his gaze, even parted her knees at the desk where she was sitting, when he went right up to her. It was as if he had cast a spell over her. For a moment he stood there staring into her eyes, the moment was tense and full of disquiet, then he laughed his malicious laugh and backed away a few steps, fired a disarming remark, raised a hand in salute to me and was gone. Wild with jealousy, I looked at Hanne, she had gone back to packing her bag, though not as if nothing had happened, she was enclosed inside herself now, in quite a different way.
What had gone on? Hanne, blond, beautiful, playful, happy, always with a bemused, often also naïve, question on her lips, what had she changed into? What was it that I had witnessed? A dark, deep, perhaps also passionate side, was that her? She had responded, it was only a glimpse, but nonetheless. Then, at that moment, I was nobody. I was crushed. I, with all the notes I had sent her, all the discussions I’d had with her, all my simple hopes and childish desires, I was nothing, a shout on the playground, a rock in scree, the hooting of a car horn.
Could I do this to her? Could I have this effect on her?
Could I have this effect on anyone?
No.
For Hanne, I was a nobody and would remain so.
For me, she was everything.
I attempted to make light of what I had seen, also in my attitude to her, by continuing just as before, pretending that things were fine. But they were not, I knew that, I was never in any doubt. The only hope I had was that she shouldn’t know. But what actually was this world I was living in? What actually were these dreams I believed in?
Two days later, when the Easter holiday started, Mom came home.
Dad had implied that the divorce was done and dusted. But when Mom came home, I could see that was not the way she saw things. She drove straight up to the house, where Dad was waiting for her, and they were there for two days while I wandered around town trying to kill time.
On Friday she parked her car outside my flat. I spotted her from the window. She had a large bruise around one eye. I opened the door.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “But that’s not what happened. I fell. I fainted, I do that once in a while, you see, and this time I hit the edge of the table upstairs. The glass table.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
“It’s true,” she said. “I fainted. There’s no more to it than that.”
I stepped back. She came into the hall.
“Are you divorced now?” I asked.
She put her suitcase down on the floor, hung her light-colored coat on the hook.
“Yes, we are,” she said.
“Are you sorry?”
“Sorry?”
She looked at me with genuine surprise, as if the thought had never struck her as a possibility.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Sad maybe. And you? How will you be?”
“Fine,” I said. “So long as I don’t have to live with Dad.”
“We talked about that too. But first I need a cup of coffee.”
I followed her into the kitchen, watched while she put the water on to boil, sat on a chair, bag in hand, rummaged for her pack of cigarettes, she had started smoking Barclay in Bergen, evidently, took one out and lit up.
She looked at me.
“I’m moving up to the house. We two will live there. And then Dad can live here. I assume I’ll have to buy him out, don’t know quite how I’ll manage that, but don’t worry, I’ll find a way.”
“Mhm,” I mumbled.
“And you?” she asked. “How are you? It’s really good to see you, you know.”
“Same here,” I said. “I haven’t seen you since Christmas. And so many things have happened.”
“Have they?”
She got up to fetch an ashtray from the cupboard, took the packet of coffee, and placed it on the counter as the water began to hiss. It sounded a bit like the sea as you get close.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good things by the look of it?” she smiled.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m in love. Hook, line, and sinker.”
“Lovely. Anyone I know?”
“Who would you know? No, someone from the class. That bit is perhaps not very smart, but that’s how it is. It’s not exactly something you can plan, is it.”
“No,” she agreed. “What’s her name?”
“Hanne.”
“Hanne,” she said, looking at me with a faint smile. “When do I get to meet her?”
“That’s the big question. We’re not going out together. She has someone else.”
“It’s not so easy then.”