“No.”
She sighed.
“No, it isn’t always easy. But you look good. You look happy.”
“I’ve never been so happy. Never.”
For some insane reason tears welled up in my eyes when I said that. It wasn’t just that my eyes glazed over, which often happened when I said something that moved me, no, tears were coursing down my cheeks.
I smiled.
“They’re really tears of happiness,” I said. And then I let out a sob and had to turn away. Fortunately the water was boiling by then and I could take it off the stove, add coffee, press down on the lid, bang the pot on the burner a few times and pour two cups.
As I put them on the table I was fine again.
Six months later, one evening toward the end of July, I got off the last bus at the stop by the waterfall. Over my shoulder I was carrying a seaman’s bag, I had been to Denmark for a soccer training camp, and after that, without going home first, to a class party in the skerries. I was happy. It was a few minutes past ten thirty, what darkness there was had fallen and lay like a grayish veil across the countryside. The waterfall roared beneath me. I walked uphill and along the road bordered with curbstones. Below, the meadow sloped toward a row of deciduous trees growing by the river bank. Above was the old farm with the tumbledown barn gaping open from the road. The lights were off in the main farmhouse. I walked around the bend to the next house, the guy who lived there was sitting in the living room with the TV on. A truck was rumbling along on the other side of the river. The sound reached me after a time lag; I didn’t hear the change of gears as it sped up the small incline until it was at the top. Above the treetops, against the pale sky, I saw two bats, and I was reminded of the badger I often bumped into on my way home from the last bus. It used to come down the road beside the path of the stream as I was climbing. For safety’s sake I always held a stone in each hand. Sometimes I encountered it on the road too, when it would stop and look at me before scuttling back with its distinctive jog-trot.
I stopped, threw down my bag, put one foot on the curb and lit a cigarette. I didn’t want to go home right away, I wanted to drag the time out for a few moments. Mom, with whom I had been living all spring and half the summer, was in Sørbøvåg now. She still had not bought out my father and he had stuck to his rights and would be living there until school started again, together with his new girlfriend, Unni.
Over the forest came a large plane, it banked slowly, straightened up, and a second later passed overhead. The lights on the wingtips were flashing and the undercarriage was being lowered. I followed the plane until it was out of sight, and all that remained was the roar, though weaker and weaker, until it too was gone, just before it landed in Kjevik. I liked planes, always had. Even after living for three years under a flight path I still looked up with pleasure.
The river glinted in the summer darkness. The smoke from my cigarette did not rise, it drifted sideways and lay flat in the air. Not a breath of wind. And now the roar of the plane was gone, there was not a sound. Yes, there was, from the bats which soared and plummeted wherever their roaming took them.
I stuck out my tongue and stubbed out my cigarette on it, threw the butt down the slope, slung the bag over my shoulder, and continued on my way. The lights were on in the house where William lived. Above the approaching bend the tops of the deciduous trees were so close together that the sky was not visible. A few frogs or toads were croaking down in the marshlike area between the road and the river. Then I glimpsed movement at the bottom of the hill. It was the badger. It hadn’t seen me and was trotting across the tarmac. I headed for the other side of the road to allow it a free passage, but it looked up and stopped. How elegant it was with its black-and-white striped chic snout. Its coat was gray, its eyes yellow and sly. I completed my maneuver, stepped over the curb and stood on the slope below. The badger hissed, but continued to look at me. It was clearly assessing the situation because the other times we had met it had turned at once and run back. Now it resumed its jog-trot and to my great delight disappeared up the hill. It was only then, as I stepped back onto the road, that I heard the faint sounds of music that must have been there the whole time.
Was it coming from our house?
I hurried down the last part of the hill and looked up the slope where the house stood, all lights ablaze. Yes, that was where the music was coming from. Presumably through the open living room door, I thought, and realized there was a party going on up there because a number of dark, mysterious figures were gliding around the lawn in the grayish light of the summer night. Usually I would have followed the stream to the west of the house, but with the party up there, and the place full of strangers, I didn’t want to crash in from the forest, and accordingly followed the road all the way around.
There were cars all the way along the drive, parked half on the grass, and beside the barn and in the yard as well. I stopped at the top of the hill to collect my thoughts. A man in a white shirt walked across the yard without seeing me. There was a buzz of voices in the garden behind the house. At the kitchen table, which I could see through the window, were two women and a man, each with a glass of wine in front of them, they were laughing and drinking.
I took a deep breath and walked toward the front door. A long table had been set up in the garden close to the forest. It was covered with a white cloth that shimmered in the heavy darkness beneath the treetops. Six or seven people were sitting at the table, among them Dad. He looked straight at me. When I met his gaze he got up and waved. I unhitched the bag, put it beside the doorstep and went over to him. I had never seen him like this before. He was wearing a baggy white shirt with embroidery around the V-neck, blue jeans, and light-brown leather shoes. His face, tanned dark from the sun, had a radiant aura. His eyes shone.
“So, there you are, Karl Ove,” he said, resting his hand on my shoulder.
“We thought you would have been here earlier. We’re having a party, as you can see. But you can join us for a while, can’t you? Sit yourself down!”
I did as he said and sat down at the table, with my back to the house. The only person I had seen before was Unni. She too was wearing a white shirt or blouse or whatever it was.
“Hi, Unni,” I said.
She sent me a warm smile.
“So this is Karl Ove, my youngest son,” Dad said, sitting down on the opposite side of the table, next to Unni. I nodded to the other five.
“And this, Karl Ove, is Bodil,” he said, “my cousin.”
I had never heard of any cousin called Bodil and studied her, probably in a rather quizzical way because she smiled at me and said:
“Your father and I were together a lot when we were children.”
“And teenagers,” Dad said. He lit a cigarette, inhaled, blew the smoke out with a contented expression on his face. “And then we have Reidar, Ellen, Martha, Erling, and Åge. Colleagues of mine, all of them.”
“Hi,” I said.
The table was covered with glasses, bottles, dishes, and plates. Two large bowls piled with shrimp shells left no doubt as to what they had been eating. The colleague my father had mentioned last, Åge, a man of around forty, with large, thinly framed glasses was observing me while sipping a glass of beer. Putting it down, he said:
“I gather you’ve been at a training camp?”
I nodded.
“In Denmark,” I said.
“Where in Denmark?” he asked.
“Nykøbing,” I said.
“Nykøbing, on Mors?” he queried.
“Yes,” I said. “I think so. It was an island in the Limfjord.”
He laughed and looked around.