I locked my bike and put it in its place outside the house, stood still inside the house listening to hear where the others were, now was not the time to bump into anyone, and when it sounded as if the coast was clear I went upstairs and into the bathroom, where I washed my face carefully before going into my room and sitting down on the bed.
After a while I got up and went to Yngve’s room. He was on the bed playing the guitar and glanced up when I entered.
“What’s up? Have you been crying?” he said. “Is it Kajsa? Did she end it?”
I nodded and started crying again.
“It’s all right, Karl Ove,” he said. “It’ll soon pass. There are so many girls out there waiting. The world is full of girls! Forget her. It’s no big deal.”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “We only went out for five days. And she’s so good-looking. She’s the only one I want to be with. No one else. And today of all days. When we were going to be alone at her place.”
“Hang around,” he said, getting up. “I’ll play a song for you. It might help.”
“What kind of song?” I said, sitting down on the chair.
“Hang on,” he said, flicking through a pile of singles on the shelf. “This one,” he said, holding up one of The Aller Værste!’s. “ ‘No Way Back.’ ”
“Oh, that one.”
“Listen to the lyrics,” he said, removing the single from the sleeve, placing the plastic core in the middle of the turntable, then the forty-five, lifting up the stylus, and putting it down on the first groove, which was already whizzing around. After a second’s scratching the energetic drums pumped into life, then came the bass, the guitar, and the Farfisa organ with the rest, followed by the jangling, unbelievably exciting guitar riff and then the voice of the singer with the Stavanger accent:
I’m not lying when I say I knew
That me and you were already through
I saw you were trying to hide it
Until the sensi thin condom split
Long-term plans and our shared visions
Blown to bits in one minute flat
You gave me a hug; I wanted to give you more
But you certainly put paid to that
“Listen now!” Yngve said.
All things pass — all things must decay
You go to sleep; you wake up to a new day
No way back now, nuthin’ to thank you for
Nuthin’ to say, there’s your coat, there’s the door
“Yes,” I said.
We were on the point of going banal
I heard myself speaking and got irritated
We had one too many and went sentimental
But the words were still infected
You broke my heart and gave me the clap
I still haven’t finished the penicillin rap
Why must we bang our heads against the same old wall
When we know deep down we hate it all
All things pass — all things must decay
You go to sleep; you wake up to a new day
No way back now, nuthin’ to thank you for
Nuthin’ to say, there’s your coat, there’s the door
“All things pass,” Yngve said when the song was over and the stylus had returned to its little rest. “All things must decay. You go to sleep; you wake up to a new day.”
“I understand what you’re saying,” I said.
“Did it help?”
“Yes, a bit. Could you play it again?”
Fortunately Mom and Dad didn’t notice that I had been crying when we were having dinner. Afterward, too restless to stay inside, I went out and as the road was empty and the children I knew best were on vacation I ambled down to the pontoons. There was a whole crowd standing around Jørn’s boat, which was brand new. Lots of people had a new boat that spring, both Geir Håkon and Kent Arne had one, a GH 10 and a With Dromedille respectively, a ten-footer as well, both with a five-horsepower Yamaha outboard motor.
I walked over to them.
“Here’s our jessie,” Jørn said as I stopped.
That word again.
They laughed, from which I concluded it wasn’t well meant.
“Hi,” I said.
Jørn started the engine after a few tugs on the cord.
“Come here, Karl Ove,” he said.
“No,” I said. “Not likely.”
“I want to show you something,” he said, looking at his little brother. “You reverse when I tell you, right.”
His little brother nodded.
“Come on,” he said, moving to the bow.
I took a few hesitant steps forward. When I was on the edge of the pontoon he threw himself around my legs.
“Reverse!” he shouted to his brother.
The boat reversed, I went into a crouch, my legs were pulled away from beneath me, I fell and was dragged over the edge because Jørn didn’t let go and the boat continued to reverse. I made a grab for the edge and clung on by my fingers. Jørn’s brother accelerated, the engine revved, and I hung there with my legs on board the boat, my body over the water, and my hands on the pontoon. I shouted to them to stop. I started to cry. The bystanders smiled and looked on calmly at what was happening.
“That’s enough!” Jørn shouted.
The whole incident had lasted maybe a minute. Jørn’s brother revved forward, Jørn let go of my legs, and I climbed up and walked off as quickly as I could, crying. The tears didn’t stop until I was up by the rock face, where I sat down in the hot, perfectly still air, saturated with aromas of the sun-warmed rocks, dry grass, and wild flowers.
I mulled over whether I should call Kajsa and ask her why she had broken up with me, so that I could learn from it for the next time, but it was too complicated, I could hear it all now, her hesitation and my groping for words, for what? It was over, she didn’t want to be with me, simple as that.
Still weak at the knees and shaking, I got up and walked home. Washed my face slowly in cold water in the bathroom, drew the curtains, didn’t want anything from outside to slip in, put on Motörhead, Ace of Spades, but it felt wrong, so I took it off and put on the new solo record by Paul McCartney instead and started a Desmond Bagley book I had bought with my own money called The Vivero Letter. I had read it before, but it was about the pyramids in South America, the enormous underwater grottos, where the protagonists dived in search of a hoard of gold others were also after …
When I sat down to have supper Mom looked at me and smiled.
“It might be time for you to start wearing a deodorant, Karl Ove?” she said. “I can buy you one tomorrow.”
“Deodorant?” I repeated stupidly.
“Yes, don’t you think so? You’ll be starting at the new school soon.”
“You do stink, in fact,” Yngve said. “No girls like that, you know.”
Was that why?
But when I asked Yngve about it afterward, he smiled and said he doubted it was that simple.
The next morning Dad came in and told me I couldn’t spend the whole summer in bed reading, I had to get out, what about a swim? he said.
I closed my book without a word and walked past him without a second glance.
I sat on the concrete barriers for a few minutes throwing pebbles into the road. But I couldn’t stay there, everyone would see that I had nothing to do or anyone to be with, so I trudged down toward the big cherry tree at the edge of the forest by the road, where Kristen’s field started, to see if the cherries were ripe enough to eat yet. Who owned this tree was unclear, some said it was a wild cherry, others said it belonged to Kristen, but we had still stripped it every summer since we were old enough to climb, and no one had complained so far. Knowing every branch, I climbed almost to the top and along a branch until it began to bend. The berries weren’t quite ripe yet, the skin was hard and green on one side, but the other exhibited a faint redness and that was enough for me to bite into their skins, chew and swallow, and spit the pits as far as I could afterward.