On reaching land we dragged the boat deep into the forest to hide any possible traces. There was soot on our T-shirts; we dipped and wrung them in the water, and for safety’s sake we removed our shorts and rinsed them as well. If anyone asked we would say we had been swimming in our shorts and our T-shirts had fallen in the sea. Then we dived in to get rid of the smell of fire and walked home.
From a distance I could see there was no one in the front garden. I stopped in the halclass="underline" not a sound. Slipped into the boiler room, hung up the T-shirt, and went up to my room bare-chested, took another T-shirt from the wardrobe, and changed my shorts.
From the window in Yngve’s room I saw Dad lying on the sun bed on the lawn. He could lie in the sun for hours without moving, like a lizard. And the tan he had bore witness to it. The sound of a radio drifted over from somewhere; Mom must have been sitting on the terrace under the living-room window.
An hour later she came into my room with some deodorant for me. MUM for Men, it was called. It was a glass bottle, blue, and smelled sweet and good. I thought: for men. I was a man. Or a young man at least. I would be starting a new school in a few weeks and would use the deodorant.
She explained I should rub it in under my arms after washing, but always after washing, never without, otherwise the smell would be worse.
After she had gone I did as she said, inhaled the new aroma for a while, then resumed the book I was reading, it was Dracula, my all-time favorite, I was reading it for the second time, but it was just as exciting now.
“Supper’s up!” Mom called from the kitchen, I put it down and went in.
Dad was sitting in his place, dark-skinned and dark-eyed. Mom poured boiling water in the tea pot and put it down on the table between us.
“Martha has invited us to their cabin today,” she said.
“Out of the question,” Dad said. “Did she say anything else?”
Mom shook her head.
“Nothing special.”
I looked down at the table and ate as fast as I could without giving the appearance of haste.
An engine was started up nearby, it coughed a couple of times, then died. Dad got up to look out the window.
“Isn’t Gustavsen away?” he said.
No one answered; he looked at me.
“Yes,” I said. “But not Rolf or Leif Tore. They’re the only ones at home.
The car was started again. This time the engine was revved hard. Then it was put into first gear, and the drone rose and sank and stuttered.
“Someone’s driving their car anyway,” Dad said.
I stood up to see.
“Sit down!” said Dad.
I sat down.
“What’s going on?” Mom said.
“The brats are taking their parents’ car without asking.”
He turned and looked at Mom.
“Isn’t that incredible?” he said.
Jerking and stuttering, the drone went up the hill.
“Have they no control over their kids?” he said. “Leif Tore is in Karl Ove’s class. And he goes and steals his parents’ car?”
I gulped down the last bit of bread, poured a drop of milk in my tea to cool it enough to drink. Got up.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said.
“Pleasure,” Mom said. “Are you going to bed?”
“Think so,” I said.
“Good night then.”
“Good night.”
He came in before I switched off the light.
“Sit up,” he said.
I sat up.
He fixed me with a long stare.
“I hear you’ve been smoking, Karl Ove,” he said.
“What?” I said. “I have not! I promise you. I’m telling the truth.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard. I’ve heard you’ve been smoking.”
I glanced up and met his eye.
“Have you?” he said.
I looked down.
“No,” I said.
There it was, his hand around my ear.
“You have,” he said, twisting it. “Haven’t you.”
“Noooo!” I yelled.
He let go.
“Rolf told me you had,” he said. “Are you telling me Rolf was lying?”
“Yes, he must have been,” I said. “Because I have never smoked.”
“Why would Rolf lie?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“And why are you crying? If you have a clear conscience? I know you, Karl Ove. I know you’ve been smoking. But you won’t do it again. So that’ll have to do this time around.”
He turned and left, as darkly as when he came.
I dried my eyes with the duvet cover and lay staring at the ceiling, suddenly wide awake. I had never smoked.
But he had known I had done something.
How did he know?
How could he have known?
The next day we were unable to keep away and rowed past the islet.
“It’s all black!” Geir said, resting on the oars.
We laughed so much we almost fell in the water.
Even if, on the outside, this summer was like all previous summers — we went to Sørbøvåg, we went to Grandma and Grandad’s cabin, and for the rest of the time I hung around the estate and headed off with anyone who was around, if I wasn’t on my own reading — on the inside, it was quite different, for what awaited me, when it was over, was not only a new school year like all the other new school years, no, at the end-of-term party in June the head teacher had given a speech, and he had done this because we were leaving Sandnes Barneskole, our time there was past, after the summer vacation we would be starting the seventh year at Roligheden Ungdomsskole. We were no longer children, but youths.
I worked in a market garden all July, standing in the fields from dawn under the burning hot sun picking or packing strawberries, thinning carrots, sitting on a knoll eating my packed lunch as fast as I could in the middle of the day so that I could cycle to Lake Gjerstad and have a swim before work resumed. Everything I earned I would use for pocket money during the Norway Cup. For the week the tournament lasted Mom and Dad went walking in the mountains. There was a heat wave that summer, we played one of the matches on shale, it was so hot I collapsed and was taken to a kind of field hospital on the plain, where I came round that night; someone was playing Roxy Music’s More Than This in the distance, I looked up at the tent ceiling and was as happy as I had ever been for some reason I did not comprehend but acknowledged.
Could it have been because I’d hung around with Kjell during those days, sung Police songs on the Metro so loud the walls reverberated, hit on girls, and bought lots of band badges from a street-seller, including ones of The Specials and The Clash, as well as a pair of black sunglasses I wore every waking hour?
Yes, it certainly could. Kjell was one year older and the most popular boy with the girls in the school. His mother was Brazilian, but he was not only brown-eyed, black-haired, and attractive, he was also tough and someone everyone respected. So it was an enormous boost that he didn’t seem to mind me, it elevated me at once to somewhere higher than Tybakken and the kids there. They didn’t want to have anything to do with me, but Kjell did, so what did it matter? I also went to Oslo with Lars, which was more than I could actually have hoped for.
This was possibly why I was so incredibly happy where I was. But it may have been the song by Roxy Music, More Than This. The song was so captivating and so beautiful, and around me in that pale, bluish summer night lay a whole capital, not only crowded with people, of whom I knew nothing, but also record shops with hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of good bands on their shelves. Concert venues where the bands I had only read about actually played. The traffic hummed in the distance, everywhere there was the sound of voices and laughter, and Bryan Ferry singing More than this — there is nothing. More than this — there is nothing.