An ice cream?
Oh yes.
Yngve bought an ice cream in a boat-shaped wafer, I bought a tub with a little red spatula and we ambled over to the quay with them in our hands. We sat on a brick wall and looked down at the water and the seaweed lying in wet, greasy clusters against the rocks. In the distance we saw the ferry arriving. The air smelled of salty water, seaweed, grass, and exhaust fumes, and the sun burned our faces.
“Are you still feeling sick?” I said.
He shook his head.
“Too bad we forgot the soccer ball,” he said. “But they’ve probably got one in Våjen.”
He said Våjen the way Grandma did.
“Yes,” I said, squinting into the sun. “Do you think we’ll get on this one?”
“Don’t know. Hope so.”
I dangled my legs. Loosened a big chunk with the spatula and put it in my mouth. It was so big and cold that I had to jiggle it to and fro with my tongue to prevent the icy texture from becoming intolerable. While doing this, I turned and glanced at our car. Dad was sitting with the door open and one leg on the ground, smoking. The sun glinted on his sunglasses. Mom was standing beside him with a basket of wild cherries on the roof and helping herself every now and then.
“What shall we do tomorrow?” I said.
“I’m going to be with Grandad in the cowshed anyway. He said he would teach me everything so that I can take over one day.”
“Do you think it’s possible to swim there now?”
“Are you out of your mind?” he said. “It’s as cold in the fjord as it was in the mountain lake.”
“Why is that?”
“It’s so far north of course!”
Some of the cars started their engines. The bow doors of the ferry opened. Yngve got up and walked toward the car. I ate my ice cream as quickly as possible and followed him.
After the ferry trip to Kvanndal the next high point of the journey was climbing Vikafjellet. The steep, narrow road wound upward, round and round, round and round, so steep in some places I was frightened the car would tip over and fall backward.
“There are probably quite a few tourists who get a bit of a shock here,” Dad said as we drove up and I sat trembling and peering down at the precipice beneath us. “They use the brakes to slow down, you see. That could be fatal.”
“What do we use?” I said.
“We use the gears,” he said.
We weren’t tourists, we knew what was what, we weren’t the motorists you saw behind clouds of steam issuing from an open hood at the roadside. But immediately afterward things almost did go wrong, because at the next hairpin bend we met a car towing a trailer, we were only a few meters away from a collision, but Dad jumped on the brakes and the other car did the same. Dad reversed down until the road was wide enough for both of us. The other driver waved to us as he passed.
“Did you know him, Dad?” I said.
In the mirror I saw he was smiling.
“No, I didn’t know him. He waved to thank me for making room for him.”
Then it was on to the next mountain, and down to the next fjord. The mountains here were as high as by Hardangerfjord, but they were gentler in a way, not as steep, and the fjord here was wider, at some junctures almost like a lake. What’s the problem? the Hardangerfjord mountains said. Take it easy, these mountains said. Everything’s hunky-dory.
“Shall we take turns sleeping?” Yngve said.
“Fine by me,” I said.
“Great,” he said. “Me first then?”
“OK,” I said. And he laid his head on my lap and closed his eyes. It was good to have him sleeping there, his head was nice and warm, and it was as though something was going on in two places at once, the countryside outside the window, which was changing constantly and I never took my eyes off it, and Yngve’s head asleep on my lap.
When we parked in the queue for the next ferry, he woke up. We stood on the deck and enjoyed the wind blowing into our faces. Half an hour later we were back in the car and it was my turn to rest my head on Yngve’s lap.
I woke up and knew we were getting close. The nearer we got to the sea, the lower the uplands and the denser the vegetation, but of course nowhere near Sørland’s scrubbed-clean terrain and gnarled qualities. None of the roads here had stuck in my mind; I looked out of the window without connecting what I saw with anything until I suddenly recognized Lihesten, the vertical drop that plunged several hundred meters on the other side of the fjord from my grandparents’ house. We’d had the mountain in front of us for ages, but it was unrecognizable from all other angles except the one we had now, as we approached it from the side. The excitement constricted my chest. We were there! Oh yes, there’s the waterfall! There’s the chapel! There’s the hotel! There’s the Salbu sign! And there’s the house! Grandma and Grandad’s house!
Dad slowed down and turned into the gravel path. It led first past the neighbor, and then through the gate, with the shed on the right, up the last steep incline to the front of the house. I opened the door almost before the car had stopped and jumped out. On the other side of the enclosed field I saw Grandad. He was standing by the beehives in his beekeeper outfit. White overalls, white hat with a long, white veil around his head. All his movements were slow, also the hand he raised to greet us. It was as if he was submerged beneath water or on an alien planet with different gravity. I lifted my hand and waved, then I ran into the house. Grandma was in the kitchen.
“We almost crashed into a car on Vikafjellet! We were climbing like this,” I said, depicting the gradient on the yellow vinyl tablecloth with my finger while she smiled at me with her warm, dark eyes.
“And then a car with a trailer came. Like this …”
“I’m glad you got here safe and sound,” she said. Mom came in through the other door. In the hall I could hear what must have been Dad carrying in all the baggage. Where was Yngve? Had he gone over to Grandad? With all the bees buzzing around?
I dashed out onto the drive. Nope. Yngve was helping Dad to unload the car. Grandad was still there in his white spacesuit. With infinite patience he lifted some frames from the hive. The sun had gone from the farm, but was shining on the spruces growing on the slope behind the pond. A light wind blew past the house, rustling the treetops above me. Kjartan walked over from the cowshed. He was wearing overalls and boots. Longish black hair, square glasses.
“Good evening,” he said, stopping by the car.
“Oh, hi, Kjartan,” Dad said.
“Good trip?” Kjartan said.
“Yes, it was fine.”
Kjartan was ten years younger than Mom, so in his early twenties that summer. There was something stern, almost angry about him, and even though I had never experienced his anger, I was still afraid of him. He was the only one of the children to live at home: Kjellaug lived in Kristiansand with her husband, Magne, and their two children, Jon Olav and Ann Kristin, who would soon be coming here, while the next youngest, Ingunn, was a student and lived in Olso with Mård and their two-year-old daughter, Yngvild. Kjartan and Grandma quarreled a lot, he was not as she would have liked her only son to be, I gathered. The idea was that he would take over the smallholding when the time came. Now he was training to become a pipe fitter on ships and planning to work at a yard somewhere in their county of Hordaland. But the most important thing to know about Kjartan, which was frequently mentioned when talk turned to him, was that he was a communist. A fervent communist. When he discussed politics with Mom and Dad, which he was wont to do on their visits, for some reason their conversations always ended up there, and his somewhat shy, evasive eyes changed and became fiery. At home when the subject of Kjartan came up, Dad tended to laugh at him, mostly to tease Mom, who was not exactly a communist, but who nonetheless disagreed with Dad on most matters concerning politics. Dad was a teacher and voted for Venstre, a center party.