I went up into the stand and sat down.
After half an hour or so Hilde came over. She sat down beside me.
“I’ve got bad news, Karl Ove,” she said. “Lene’s ended it.”
“Yes,” I said, averting my head so that she couldn’t see the tears streaming down my cheeks. But she saw them because she stood up as if she had been burned.
“Are you crying?” she said.
“No,” I said.
“You really do love her, don’t you?” she said with surprise in her voice.
I didn’t answer.
“But Karl Ove,” she said.
I wiped my tears away with one hand, sniffled, and drew a slow, quivering breath.
“Is she out there now?”
She nodded.
“Shall I walk out with you?”
“No, no. You just go, Hilde.”
As soon as she had gone through the door at the end of the stand I got up, swung my bag onto my back, and left. Wiped my tears again, hurried along the corridor, emerged in the entrance hall, and opened the door to where they had been standing before.
I bowed my head and walked past.
“Karl Ove!” she said.
I didn’t answer, and as soon as they were out of sight I burst into a run.
Lene went out with Vidar, I was crushed for several months, but then spring came and with its immense power it washed everything aside. The year-eights and the year-nines were at school camp for a week, there were only the year-sevens left at school, and a kind of mania spread through the ranks of the boys in those days, we began to attack the girls, one stole up on them from behind and lifted their sweaters while another came at them from the front and groped their naked breasts as they screamed and struggled to get away, but never so loudly that any of the teachers heard. We did this in the corridors between the classrooms, we did it in the playground, and we did it on the unpopulated parts of the road to school. There were rumors that Mini, Øystein, and others in the Fina crowd had frigged Kjersti, held her down, pulled down her trousers, and stuck a finger inside her, so one evening Lars and I went up to her house, thinking perhaps that we could experience some of the same, but when we rang the bell it was her father who answered, and when Kjersti came down and we asked if we could come in, her lips formed a clear no, we would certainly not be allowed in, what were we thinking about?
But the glint in her eyes was even more brazen than that in our own; she understood exactly what we were after. A few weeks later we met at the Boat Fair in Hove where Lars and I had been at the Trauma stall selling lottery tickets, among them a winning ticket that we put aside and took with us when our stint finished, and we walked around looking at boats and people so as not to arouse suspicion, because we had a little scam in mind, then casually stopped by the stall, bought a ticket each, and opened them, and while I leaned forward with mine to ask if I had won a prize, Lars swapped his for the winning ticket. Christian and John were manning the stall now and they refused to believe Lars when he passed them the winning ticket. They said it was an old one. We denied this with such vehemence that in the end they agreed to give us half the winnings. We said fine and walked off with the enormous box of chocolates under one arm, bubbling with laughter and tremulous with fear at what we had done. Nearby, we bumped into Kjersti.
“Feel like a walk?” Lars said.
“OK,” Kjersti said, and my body felt so strange when she said that.
We walked through the forest and down to the pebble beach where we lay down and started on the chocolates.
She was wearing red trousers and a blue padded jacket and she said nothing as I gently stroked the outside of her thigh with my hand. Nor when I stroked the inside. Lars was doing the same on the other side.
“I know what you want,” she said. “But you’re not going to get it.”
“We don’t want anything,” I said, swallowing, my throat thick with desire.
“Nothing,” Lars said.
I stroked her crotch, placed my whole hand against it, and could have screamed out with happiness and frustration. Lars snuck a hand up to her jacket zipper and pulled it down, then put his hand up her sweater. I did the same. Her skin was hot and white, and I felt her breasts in my hand. The nipples were stiff, her breasts firm. I stroked her thigh again, put my hand on her crotch again, but then, gulping repeatedly, I made the mistake of pulling down the zipper of her trousers.
“No,” she said. “What are you thinking of?”
“Nothing,” I said.
She straightened up and pulled down her sweater.
“Any more chocolate?” she said.
“Yes, help yourself,” Lars said, and we sat there eating chocolate and staring across the sea as if nothing had happened. The breakers resembled white snowdrifts the second they crashed against the smooth, low rocks. Some seagulls swept past with their wings flapping. When the box was empty we got up and walked back through the forest to the fair. Kjersti said goodbye, see you later perhaps, and we decided to go home. But to do that we had to drop by the lottery stall to collect our bikes. Øyvind, our coach, was there, and he didn’t look happy when he caught sight of us. We denied everything. He said he couldn’t prove anything, but he knew what we had done. Why else would we have been content with half the prize? We denied it point blank. He said he was disappointed, he didn’t want to have to look at us any more that day, and we cycled home.
On Monday, before school began, Lars lifted up Siv’s sweater and I pressed both my hands against her breasts. She screamed and said we were childish and calmly walked off.
In the first lesson, which was Norwegian, we had to borrow a book from the library, read it during the week, and then write about it in an essay. I said I had read all the books in the library. Kolloen didn’t believe me. But it was true. I could tell him about every book he pulled out. In the end he allowed me to write about another book. Which meant I had nothing to do that lesson. I took out a history book and sat at the desk under the window. Outside, it was misty but warm. The playground was deserted. I flicked through the book and looked at the pictures.
Suddenly I saw one of a naked woman. She was so thin her hips protruded like bowls. All her ribs were visible. Between her legs there was a small, black tuft. Behind her there were rows of bunk beds in which I glimpsed other female figures.
My insides shook.
Not because she was so thin but because there was nothing attractive about her, although she was naked, and because on the next page there was a picture of an enormous pile of corpses in front of a deep grave where many bodies lay strewn. What I saw was this: the legs were only legs, the hands were only hands, the noses were only noses, the mouths were only mouths. Something that had been shaped and formed elsewhere was now here, scattered across the ground. When I stood up I felt nauseous and confused. As I had nothing to do I went out and sat against the wall. The sun warmed, despite being covered by mist. The grass growing in the cracks and hollows of the boulder in the middle of the playground, surrounded by walls and tarmac, was long and swayed to and fro in the gentle breeze. The nausea didn’t pass, it became associated with what I saw, it became a part of them. The green grass, the yellow dandelions, Siv’s bare breasts, Kjersti’s fat thighs, the skeletal woman in the book.
I got up and went back in, called Geir, and he came over with a quizzical look.
“I’ve found a picture of a naked woman,” I said. “Do you want to see it?”
“Of course,” he said, and I opened the book in front of him and pointed to the skeletal woman.
“That’s her,” I said.
“Oh, my God,” Geir said. “Ugh.”