“What’s the matter?” I said. “She’s naked, isn’t she?”
“Oh, yuk,” Geir said. “She looks as if she’s dead.”
That was exactly how she looked. Like the living dead. Or death in living form.
The next weekend Mom and I went to visit Dad. It was odd to see him in his flat. It was on a higher floor in a tower block, it was all white, the sun shone in through the windows, filling it completely, and there was so little furniture it almost seemed as if no one were living there.
What did he do here?
He drove us to Grandma and Grandad’s, where we ate, and then he drove us home. No one quite seemed to know when we were going to move, it was dependent on so many factors, the house had to be sold, a new one had to be bought, Mom had to find a job, we had to change schools, so I didn’t think too much about it. But I had no objection to leaving the estate or the school. It felt as if all my cards had been played. I made mistake after mistake. One day after gym, for example, when I was standing in the corridor outside the classroom, Kjersti came over to me.
“Do you know what, Karl Ove?” she said.
“No,” I said, fearing the worst, for her expression was sardonic.
“We’ve just been talking about you,” she said. “And we discovered that not one of the girls in the class likes you.”
I said nothing, I glared at her, filled with a sudden, enormous fury.
“Did you hear me?” she continued. “Not one of the girls in the class likes you!”
I smacked her cheek as hard as I could. The flash of my arm and the following slap, which turned her cheek crimson, caused people to turn their heads.
“You bastard,” she shouted, and punched me in the mouth. I grabbed her hair and pulled. She hit me in the stomach, kicked me in the calf, and grabbed my hair, too, we were a whirl of blows and kicks and hair-pulling, and I, poor, pathetic, miserable little shit, I burst into tears, it all became too much for me, a pathetic sob escaped my mouth; all those who had gathered around us within the space of seconds shouted, he’s crying, I heard them, but I couldn’t stop myself, and then I felt a heavy hand on my collar, it was Kolloen, he was holding Kjersti in the same way and asked what on earth was going on, are you fighting? I said it was nothing, Kjersti said it was nothing, and then we were frog-marched into the classroom, each with a teacher’s hand in the middle of our backs, me a laughingstock, for I had not only broken the rule about never crying but also the one about never fighting with a girl, Kjersti now had the status of a hero, for she had been hit and hit back, and she didn’t cry.
How low can you sink?
Kolloen said we had to shake hands. We did, Kjersti apologized, and smiled at me. The smile was not sardonic, it was heartfelt, in a way, as though we were complicit in something.
What did it mean?
In the last week of May the heat came, the whole class set off for Bukkevika to go swimming, the sand was white, the sea blue, and the sun burned in the sky above us.
Anne Lisbet emerged from the sea.
She was wearing a bikini bottom and a white T-shirt. It was wet, and her round breasts were visible. Her wet, black hair shone in the sun. She beamed her broadest smile. I watched her, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her, but then I noticed something beside me, and turned my head, and there was Kolloen, he was watching her, too.
There was no difference in our gazes, I realized that at once, he saw what I saw and he was thinking what I was thinking.
About Anne Lisbet.
She was thirteen years old.
The moment didn’t even last for a second, he looked down as soon as I noticed him, but it was enough, and I’d had an insight into something that a moment before I didn’t even know existed.
Three days later Dad picked me up from school early, we were going off to look at a house, it was twenty kilometers from Kristiansand, by a river, we were considering buying it, now I had to say what I thought, and I had to be honest. From the way Dad was talking — it had a barn, the house was old, from the 1800s, it was on a big piece of land, you could have a normal garden and a vegetable garden, too, there were big, old fruit trees growing there, and perhaps we could keep hens, as well as grow our own potatoes, carrots, and herbs — I had already decided, I would tell him I liked it, whether I did or not.
When we arrived, with the sky blue, the grass green, and the river glinting down below I ran from window to window and peered in so that he could see how enthusiastic I was, which was not entirely insincere, just somewhat exaggerated, and the matter was decided. If it was available we would buy it. Mom applied for a job at the nursing college, Dad would continue at the gymnas, and I would start at a new school here. What Yngve would do was less clear. He refused to move. For the first time in his life he stood up to Dad. They argued, and that had never happened before. We had never argued with Dad. He was the one who told us off, and we were on the receiving end.
But there was Yngve saying no.
Dad was furious.
But Yngve continued to say no.
“I don’t want to spend my last year in Kristiansand,” he said. “Why should I? All my friends are here. I’ve only got one year of school left. It would be ridiculous to start afresh somewhere new.”
They stood face to face in the living room. Yngve was as tall as Dad.
I hadn’t noticed before.
“You might think you’re grown-up, but you’re not,” Dad said. “You have to stay with your family.”
“No, I do not,” Yngve said.
“All right,” Dad said. “Can you tell me how you’re going to manage? You won’t be getting one øre from me, you know.”
“I’ll take out a loan,” Yngve said.
“Who do you think will give you a loan?” Dad said.
“I can apply for a study loan,” Yngve said. “I’ve checked.”
“Are you going to take a study loan before you begin to study?” Dad said. “That’s very clever.”
“If I must, I must,” Yngve said.
“Where are you going to live?” Dad said. “The house will be sold, you know.”
“I’ll rent a bedsit,” Yngve said.
“You do that then,” Dad said. “But you won’t get any help from us. Not so much as a krone. Do you understand? If you want to live here, you can, but don’t you come running to us for any help. You’ll have to manage on your own.”
“OK,” Yngve said. “I’ll be fine.”
And that was what happened.
When the last day of the seventh class came, it had been announced that I was moving and my classmates of seven years had bought farewell presents. First of all, I was given a cabbage head as my name, Karl, as some called me, sounded in the broad dialect we spoke like “Kål,” cabbage, which became a nickname. Then I was given a cloth monkey because I looked like a monkey. That was it.
Then we went through the doors, and I never saw my classmates again.
But it wasn’t quite over. That evening there was to be a class party at Unni’s. Some of the girls met early that afternoon to get everything ready, and at around six the rest of us cycled over. The party was held in the garden and in the cellar, and as the summer night fell over the hills we could see across and all the red roofs of the houses on the estate glinted in the light of the setting sun, and the party slowly began to degenerate, even though no one was drinking. A year’s secret thoughts and desires began to stir. It was simply in the air. Hands wandered under sweaters, not as part of an assault or any brutality, it went on close by, among the lilac bushes in the garden, amid hot panting, mouths met, mouths kissed, and then some of the girls took off their tops, they walked around with their breasts bobbing, it was a kind of early puberty orgy that had been slowly building up steam and the very same girls who only one month earlier had said they didn’t like me offered themselves to me, one after the other, they sat on my lap, they kissed me, they rubbed their breasts against my face. The hierarchy the girls had been placed in, with some slowly climbing during autumn and others falling, had no significance here, it didn’t make any difference who it was, I pressed my face against their soft, white breasts, kissed their dark, erect nipples, ran my hands over their thighs and between their legs, and they didn’t say no, there wasn’t a no in their mouths on this night, instead they leaned forward and kissed me, their eyes were warm and dark, but also surprised, as mine must have been, is it really us doing this?