‘That was good,’ Geir said. ‘You’ve got that down to a fine art. I don’t know what you were moaning about. You could travel round earning money from it!’
‘It went well,’ I said. ‘But I give them what they want. I say what they want to hear. I pander to them the way I pander to everyone and everything.’
‘There was a woman in front of me,’ Geir said. ‘She looked like a teacher. When you started to talk about child abuse she stiffened. Then you said the word they wanted to hear. Infantilisation. She nodded. This was a concept she could handle. It smoothed over everything. But if you hadn’t said it, if you hadn’t gone into detail, I’m not sure everyone would have spoken to you afterwards — I’m not. And what is paedophilia, if not infantile?’
He laughed. I closed my eyes.
‘And the brass band in the middle of the forest. Baroque music. Who would have expected that? Ha ha ha! It was a great evening, Karl Ove, it was. Almost magical. The darkness and the stars and the sough of the forest.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
We drove around Kristiansand, over Varodd Bridge, past the animal park, past Nørholm, Lillesand and Grimstad. Chatted about this and that, arrived in Arendal, where we strolled around on the Tyholmen peninsula, I had a beer in a pub and for no particular reason felt completely out of kilter. Being here, surrounded by familiar buildings around the harbour, with the silhouette of Tromøya island on the other side of the water, in a world so crammed with memories, felt good but strange, not least because Geir, whom I connected with the Stockholm part of my life, was with me. At around twelve we drove to the island of Hisøya, he showed me some places which I looked at without being able to muster much interest, among them a quay where they had hung out in his youth, then we drove to the estate where he had grown up. He parked outside a garage, from the boot I took my bag and the bouquet I had been given and followed him to the house, which was a similar type to ours, or at least from the same period.
The hallway was full of flowers and wreaths.
‘There’s been a funeral, as you can see,’ he said. ‘If you like, you can put yours in one of these vases.’
I did as suggested. He showed me the room where I would sleep, which actually belonged to his brother, Odd Steinar, but had been tidied up for me. We had a couple of sandwiches in the kitchen, I wandered round the two living rooms looking. He had always said his parents actually belonged to the generation before our parents’ generation, and when I saw how they had arranged the house I understood what he meant. Tablecloths, runners, rugs, there was something 1950s, deepest Norway, about it, and the same applied to the furniture and the pictures on the walls. A 1970s house furnished like a 1950s home, that was how it looked. Lots of family photos on the walls, a large collection of ornaments on the windowsills.
I had been in a house once before when someone had just died. It was total chaos. Here everything was as good as unaffected.
I had a smoke on the lawn. Then we said goodnight, I went to bed, I didn’t want to close my eyes, I didn’t want to meet what I met there, but I had to, I summoned all the strength I had to think about a neutral topic and fell asleep after a few minutes.
The following morning I was woken at seven by activity in the rooms above me. Njaal, Geir’s son, and Christina had got up. I showered, dressed and went upstairs. A man of around seventy with a kind face and friendly eyes came out of the kitchen and greeted me. It was Geir’s father. We talked a bit about how I had grown up here and how beautiful it was. He radiated goodness, but not in that open, almost self-exposing, way that Linda’s father did. No, there was also solidity in this face. Not hardness exactly, but… character. That was what it was. Then Geir’s brother came in, Odd Steinar. We shook hands, he sat down on the sofa and began to talk about this and that; he too was friendly and kind, but with a shyness his father didn’t have and Geir definitely didn’t. The father set the table for breakfast in the living room, we sat down and I kept thinking that his wife and their mother had been buried yesterday, and that it was inappropriate for me to be here, yet I was being treated with kindness and interest, any friends of Geir’s were their friends, their house was an open house.
Nonetheless, I took a deep breath as I left afterwards.
The flight home was in the afternoon, we had planned to drive around, go to Tromøya where I hadn’t been for a long time, not to Tybakken, where I had grown up, and then straight to the airport, but Geir’s father had insisted we should go back home first. It was Saturday, he would buy some shrimps at the harbour, I would have to experience them before I went to Malmö, we didn’t have shrimps like that there, did we.
So we got into the car and motored over to Tromøya. Geir talked about the places we passed, told anecdotes associated with them. A whole life emerged from this area. Then he told me about his family. About who his mother had been, who his father and his brother were.
‘It was interesting to meet them,’ I said. ‘Now I understand more about what you’ve been saying. Your father and brother, they have almost nothing in common with you. With your temperament. Your mind and your curiosity. Your restlessness. With your father and brother there was just kindness and friendliness. So where’s the connection? Someone was missing, and it was so obvious. Your mother must have been like you. Am I right?’
‘Yes, you are. I understood her. But that was also why I had to get away. Shame you never met her, by the way.’
‘I’ve arrived when it’s all over.’
‘The most solid connection between the three generations is probably that Njaal, dad and I all have the same head from the back.’
I nodded. We drove up the hills before Tromøya Bridge. Mountains had been dynamited, roads built, industrial plants established like everywhere in the district.
Beneath us I saw the little island of Gjerstadholmen, further behind it Ubekilen Bay. To the right, Håvard’s house. The bus stop, the forest below, where in the winter we had made ski slopes and in the summer walked down to the rocks to go swimming.
‘In there,’ I said.
‘Where? To the left? Jesus, you didn’t live there, did you?’
Old Søren’s house, the wild cherry tree, and there, the estate. Nordåsen ringvei.
My God, it was so small.
‘There it is. Straight ahead.’
‘Where? The red house?’
‘Yes. It was brown when we lived there.’
He parked the car.
How small everything was. And so ugly.
‘Not a lot to see,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s go on. Up the hill here.’
A woman in a white Puffa jacket was walking down pushing a buggy. Otherwise there wasn’t a sign of life anywhere.
Olsen’s house.
The mountain.
We had called it the mountain, but it was only a little hill. Siv’s house behind it. Sverre and the others’ house.
Not a soul. Yes, there was. A huddle of children.
‘You’ve gone quiet,’ Geir said. ‘Are you overwhelmed?’
‘Overwhelmed? No, more like underwhelmed. This is so small. There isn’t anything here. I’ve never experienced that before. There’s nothing at all. And at one time it was my everything.’