All of this still existed. The smooth, flat rocks were exactly the same, the sea pounded down on them in the same way, and also the landscape under the water, with its small valleys and bays and steep chasms and slopes, strewn with starfish and sea urchins, crabs and fish, was the same. You could still buy Slazenger tennis rackets, Tretorn balls, and Rossignol skis, Tyrolia bindings and Koflach boots. The houses where we lived were still standing, all of them. The sole difference, which is the difference between a child’s reality and an adult’s, was that they were no longer laden with meaning. A pair of Le Coq soccer boots was just a pair of soccer boots. If I felt anything when I held a pair in my hands now it was only a hangover from my childhood, nothing else, nothing in itself. The same with the sea, the same with the rocks, the same with the taste of salt that could fill your summer days to saturation, now it was just salt, end of story. The world was the same, yet it wasn’t, for its meaning had been displaced, and was still being displaced, approaching closer and closer to meaninglessness.
I wrung out the cloth, hung it from the edge of the bucket and studied the fruits of my labors. The gleam in the varnish had come to the fore although there was still a scattering of dark dirt stains as though etched into the wood. I suppose I must have done a third of the woodwork up to the first floor. Then there were the banisters and railings to the third floor as well.
Yngve’s footfalls echoed in the corridor above.
He appeared with a bucket in his hand and a roll of garbage bags under his arm.
“Have you finished downstairs?” he asked, on seeing me.
“No, I haven’t. Are you out of your mind? I’ve done just the bathrooms and the laundry room. I was thinking of waiting to do the others.”
“I’m going to start on Dad’s room now,” he said. “That’s the biggest job, it seems.”
“Is the kitchen done?”
“Yes. Pretty damn close. Have to clean out a couple of cupboards. Otherwise it looks good.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to take a break now. A bite to eat. Is Grandma in the kitchen?”
He nodded, and went past. I rubbed my hands, which were soft and wrinkled from the water, against my shorts, cast a last glance at the railings and went up to the kitchen.
Grandma was sitting in her chair brooding. She didn’t even look up as I entered. I remembered the sedatives. Had she taken one? Probably not.
I opened the cupboard and took out the packet.
“Have you taken any today?” I said, holding it up.
“What is it?” she said. “Medicine?”
“Yes, the tablets you took yesterday.”
“No, I haven’t.”
I fetched a glass from the cupboard, filled it with water, and passed it to her with a tablet. She put it on her tongue and washed it down. She didn’t seem to want to say anymore, so to avoid being forced by the silence into talking, I grabbed a couple of apples, instead of the sandwiches I had planned, plus a glass of water and a cup of coffee. The weather was mild and gray, like yesterday. A light breeze blew off the sea, gulls screamed in the air above the harbor, metallic blows sounded from close by. The constant hum of urban traffic from below. A crane, high and fragile, steepled above the rooftops a couple of blocks from the quay. It was yellow with a white cabin or whatever the thingy the crane driver sat in at the top was called. Strange I hadn’t seen it before. There were few things I found more beautiful than cranes, the skeletal nature of their construction, the steel wires running along the top and bottom of the protruding arm, the enormous hook, the way heavy objects dangled when being slowly transported through the air, the sky that formed a backdrop to this mechanical provisorium.
I had just eaten one apple — seeds, stalk, and all — and was about to sink my teeth into the second when Yngve walked through the garden. He was holding a fat envelope.
“Look what I found,” he said, passing me the envelope.
I undid the flap. It was full of thousand-krone notes.
“There’s about two hundred thousand in there,” he said.
“Wow,” I exclaimed. “Where was it?”
“Under the bed. It must be the money he got for the house on Elvegata.”
“Oh, shit,” I said. “So this is all that’s left?”
“I guess so. He didn’t even put the money in the bank, just kept it under his bed. And then he drank it, no less. Thousand-note by thousand-note.”
“I don’t give a shit about the money,” I said. “The life he had here was just so sad.”
“You can say that again,” Yngve said.
He sat down. I put the envelope on the table.
“What shall we do with it?” he asked.
“No idea,” I said. “Share it, I suppose?”
“I was thinking more about inheritance tax and that kind of thing.”
I shrugged.
“We can ask someone,” I said. “Jon Olav, for example. He’s an attorney.”
The sound of a car engine carried from the narrow street below the house. Even though I couldn’t see it, I knew it was coming here by the way it stopped, reversed, and drove forward again.
“Who could that be?” I wondered.
Yngve got up, took the envelope.
“Who’s going to look after this?” he asked.
“You,” I said.
“Anyway, the problems regarding funeral expenses have been solved now,” he said, walking past me. I followed him in. From the downstairs hall we could hear voices. It was Gunnar and Tove. We were standing between the hall door and the kitchen door, physically ill at ease when they came up, as though we were still children. Yngve was holding the envelope in one hand.
Tove was as suntanned and as well-preserved as Gunnar.
“Hello there!” she exclaimed with a smile.
“Hello,” I said. “Long time, no see.”
“Yes, that’s true,” she said. “Shame we should have to meet under such circumstances.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
How old could they have been? Late forties?
Grandma came out of the kitchen.
“So it’s you,” she said.
“Sit down, Mother,” Gunnar said. “We just thought we should give Yngve and Karl Ove a hand with all this.”
He winked at us.
“You’ve got time for a coffee, I suppose?” Grandma inquired.
“No coffee for us,” Gunnar said. “We’ll be off soon. The boys are alone at the cabin.”
“All right,” Grandma said.
Gunnar poked his head into the kitchen.
“You’ve already done a lot,” he said. “Impressive.”
“We were thinking of having the get-together here, after the funeral,” I said. He looked at me.
“You’ll never make it,” he said.
“We will,” I said. “We’ve got five days. It’ll be fine.”
He looked away. Perhaps because of the tears in my eyes.
“Well, it’s your decision,” he said. “So if you two think it’s fine, then that’s how we’ll play it. But we’ll have to get a move on!”
He turned and went into the living room. I followed him.
“We’d better toss out everything that’s broken. There’s no point in saving anything here. The sofas, what state are they in?”
“One of them’s OK,” I said. “We can wash that one. The other, I think, . ”
“Then we’ll take it,” he said.
He stood in front of the large, black, leather three-seater. I went to the other end, bent down, and grabbed hold.
“We can carry it through the veranda door and out that way,” Gunnar said. “Can you open it for us, Tove?”