If there was anything Simon wanted to know, he simply asked Brage Sollund. The nineteen-year-old who had come over when Simon started the AUF branch in Salangen was also a first-timer at the congress, but he had more experience in the party. They looked so smart sitting there in nice shirts and dark jackets. They had both styled their fringes over to one side, Brage’s several shades lighter than Simon’s.
The congress was declared open. Simon put on his reading glasses. All the paperwork was in the folder in front of him. It was a bit late to start looking at it now. He would have to get to grips with things as they went along.
There was a lot at stake, with a general election coming up in the autumn. Prime Minister and Labour Party leader Jens Stoltenberg had to make people believe that the government’s social project was going to carry on. The opinion polls were showing that voters were far from convinced.
There was a round of applause for Jens Stoltenberg as he went to the lectern. All round the country fellow party members were following the speech on the internet.
‘The first thing to say is: this crisis is global! We have been brutally reminded how small the world is,’ began the man who was an economist by profession.
‘Reagan said in his First Inaugural Address: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Margaret Thatcher went as far to say, “There is no such thing as society.” This led to three decades hailing the unregulated market. And the cultivation of greed.’
The Prime Minister looked straight at his audience.
‘What went wrong? Well, comrades, when the American investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, it was not just a bank going broke, it was a political ideology going bankrupt. The failure of market liberalism. It ended decades of naive, uncritical faith in the market looking after itself. It does not!’
The previous autumn, as Simon was setting up the Salangen AUF, Stoltenberg’s government implemented measures based on a Keynesian stabilisation model. The banks were given the money they needed, export industry got increased guarantees and money was earmarked for investment at home. There were tax concessions for business and industry, and maintenance work in the municipalities was brought forward to keep employment levels from slumping.
It was to prove effective. Admittedly, Norway had been better prepared than most countries thanks to its considerable income from oil and gas, and unemployment rose to no more than a little above 3 per cent. Lending rates went down, as did inflation. Robust state regulation of banks, insurance companies and financial institutions meant the Prime Minister had more means at his disposal than his counterparts around Europe. As Stoltenberg repeatedly reminded everyone throughout the crisis, ‘The market is a good servant, but a bad master.’
‘The market cannot rule, it has to be ruled. The market is not self-regulating. It has to be regulated,’ declared Stoltenberg.
‘Four more years!’ yelled some people in the audience.
‘Four more years!’ yelled Simon. It was a history lesson, a sociology lesson and an introduction to rhetoric all in one.
In the break, Simon went over to the table where bottles of Farris mineral water were on offer. ‘Free Farris!’ he had pointed out to Brage earlier. Two men were coming towards him.
‘Here’s the youngest delegate at conference,’ one said to the other.
Simon straightened up.
‘Hello, I’m Jens. Good to meet you,’ said the Prime Minister.
‘Simon Sæbø, from Salangen.’
‘So you’re from Troms…’ began Stoltenberg.
Simon had no time for small talk. With the Prime Minister in front of him, he had to strike while the iron was hot. He spoke with passion about the fish-farming industry in the Salang fjord where the net pens were crowded with salmon.
‘But the framework agreement for fish farmers…’ he continued, elaborating on the problems facing the industry. In the AUF they called him the Fisheries Minister.
Simon won a pat on the shoulder and a ‘Keep it up!’
Somebody took a photo. The Prime Minister and the Fisheries Minister, something to send to Anders and Viljar!
At the congress dinner, Simon was impressed by grown-up life – the posh food, the red wine, the witty speeches and the ladies in evening dresses. Afterwards, everybody went out into town. The bars and cafés round Youngstorget filled up with delegates from the nineteen counties of Norway. Simon went with the Troms delegation to one of them, Justisen.
Brage got in, the people behind Brage got in. Simon was stopped.
‘ID! It’s over-twenties only here!’
The sixteen-year-old looked up at an intimidating chest and brandished the card he had round his neck.
‘See this? Delegate from Troms county to the Labour Party Congress. You think Troms county would let under-age kids run the show?’
The doorman waved him into the glorious darkness. The lads found themselves sharing a table over some beers with the leading lady of the Justice Committee in Parliament.
‘This is what I want to do!’ he texted to his comrades.
Politics was fun. Life was brilliant.
Writings
He called it the fart room.
The ceiling was painted white, the walls were papered in a geometric design. Embossed triangles, squares and circles ran from floor to ceiling. The wallpaper had hung there for a long time and started to yellow. It was a narrow box of a room with an opening at each end. A single bed ran along under the window.
The brick-built apartment block stood at a junction in a former industrial area in Skøyen. Anders’s room looked out at the back. From the window he could jump down onto the grassy area between the blocks if he wanted, because his mother had bought a ground-floor flat. In the middle of the grass, in the middle of his field of vision if he turned his head away from the screen, stood the big birch tree. If he stood up, he could just about see the end of his mother’s balcony. There was an artificial thuja in a red pot, and two window boxes hanging from the rail. In these his mother had planted plastic roses in bark chips the colour of soil. When she bought them, the roses were white and pale pink, but age and the elements had faded them. The petals had turned grey.
This was the view from the window of his room.
It was an internet hermit’s room. The black leather swivel chair was soft, deep and accommodating. Just the right height for the screen. There was some IKEA shelving where he kept paper and ink cartridges. On the floor beside the printer were two safes.
The only objects telling another story were three bold pictures on the wall. They were faces, painted with the sharply delineated shadow technique of the graffiti artist. The faces were grey, the backgrounds dramatic orange or bright turquoise. They were the work of Coderock, a Norwegian artist with roots in graffiti. Once, he had been so proud of owning them, boasting that they had been painted specially for him.
If he left the room he could go left, turn the handle of the front door, go down a short set of steps and be out in Hoffsveien, where the pavement was separated from the road by a narrow verge with trees. On the other side of the road were a Coop, a flower shop and a café. His mother went to the café every day to meet up with her neighbours, drink coffee and smoke.
But generally when Anders left his room he turned right, into his mother’s flat.
Whenever he wanted to eat something; to get a glass of water; to go out onto the balcony for a smoke, or needed the loo: always to the right.