Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book 4 (22 page)

Steinar Vindsland had been exactly as I had imagined a journalist to be. Unbelievably fast. Everything happened fast. They had deadlines, that was why they had to nail their articles at breakneck speed.

And he knew about music. Probably knew Harald Hempel. Maybe some of the bands in Oslo.

Now I could meet them!

I hadn’t even thought about that. But now I was a music journo I could hang out with the bands when they came to town.

No messing!

Fifteen metres in front of me was the crossroads between Dronningens gate and Elvegaten. Since I was in the area I ought to go and see either dad or grandma and grandad.

There was just one problem: I didn’t have more than seven kroner on me and after five o’clock my student card was no longer valid on the bus.

But I ought to be able to borrow what I needed. After all, I had a job now.

I stopped by the traffic lights, which were red, pressed the button on the blue box and closed my eyes to get an impression of what it would be like for a blind person to be standing here.

Perhaps it was more important to visit grandma and grandad? I hadn’t been to see them since dad moved out. Perhaps now that dad was divorced they were afraid they might lose contact with me or that I might stick with mum.

I could see dad on Tuesday after the meeting with Steinar.

Steinar!

At that moment the ticking started. The signal for the blind. I opened my eyes and walked over the pedestrian crossing, past the large square building with the supermarket and onto Lundsbroa Bridge, where the smell of the sea was always stronger and the light also seemed stronger, probably because it reflected off the water, which widened out at this point.

A couple of white sails were visible in the distance. A double-ender was on its way in. I stopped, placed my hands on the brick parapet and leaned over. The water around the columns was a deep green.

Once dad had fallen in here. This was about the only story he had told us about his childhood. He had been given a sound beating by grandad, he had said, and put under the stairs, where he stayed for several hours.

Whether that was true or not, I didn’t know. Dad had also said he had once been a promising footballer and played for IK Start, which turned out to be lies. Another time he had said that everything the Beatles did was plagiarism, they had stolen the songs from an unknown German composer and when I, twelve years old and a big Beatles fan, asked him how he knew, he said he had played the piano when he was young, and one day he had played some tunes by this German composer, whose name he couldn’t remember, and discovered they were the same as the Beatles’ songs. He still had the music at home. I believed him, of course; it was dad who had told me. The next time we go there, could you find the sheets of music and play them on the piano? I had asked. No, they were stored away in the loft, it would take too long to find them. And then the realisation dawned on me! He was lying! Dad was lying!

This insight was a relief, not a burden, because it was a face-saver for the Beatles.

I kept walking, took the short cut to the right, came out in Kuholmsveien and walked up the gentle slope, from there I saw the sea widen out, so desolate and blue.

But why had he said we were so poor?

What did that have to do with anything?

I shook my head and passed a garden surrounded by wire fencing, inside which there were three trees groaning with dark red apples. A blue estate car parked in the adjacent drive glinted in the sunlight.

Grandma poked her head out of the window when I rang the bell, disappeared and reappeared a minute later at the door.

‘Well, look who it is,’ she said. ‘Come in!’

I leaned forward and gave her a hug. She stiffened slightly. I was too old for this now, I thought, and straightened up.

She had the same fragrance as always, and it was as though the whole of my childhood opened inside me as I smelled it. We were going to grandma’s! Grandma’s coming! Grandma’s here!

‘What’s that in your ear?’ she said.

I had forgotten it!

The two previous times I had been here I had taken the cross out. But not today.

‘It’s just a cross,’ I said.

‘Yes, times are changing,’ she said. ‘Boys wearing jewellery in their ears! But that’s how it is nowadays.’

‘Yes, it is,’ I said.

She turned and I followed her up the stairs. Grandad was sitting where he always did, in the kitchen chair.

‘Well, look who it is,’ he said.

Under the clock on the wall I saw the tall blue step chair I had always loved, and on the table the coffee pot on the small wire stand that had always been here as well.

‘Got your ear pierced?’ he said.

‘Yes, that’s cool nowadays,’ grandma said. She smiled and shook her head. Came over and ruffled my hair.

‘I got myself a job today,’ I said.

‘Did you now?’ grandma said.

I nodded.

‘At
Nye Sørlandet
, the newspaper. As a record reviewer.’

‘Do you know anything about music?’ grandad said.

‘Bit,’ I said.

‘How time flies,’ he said then. ‘You’re so big now.’

‘He goes to the
gymnas
,’ grandma said. ‘He’s probably got a girlfriend as well, don’t you think?’ She winked at me.

‘No, I’m afraid I haven’t,’ I said.

‘You will,’ she said. ‘Good-looking lad like you.’

‘If you take that cross out of your ear,’ grandad said, ‘the girls’ll come running.’

‘You don’t think it’s the cross they want then?’ grandma said.

Grandad didn’t answer, he picked up the newspaper which he had put down when I arrived. He could spend hours reading it. He absorbed absolutely everything, every little advert.

Grandma sat in the chair and reached for the pouch of menthol tobacco on the table.

‘But you haven’t started smoking yet, I suppose!’ she said.

‘In fact, I have,’ I said.

She scrutinised me.

‘You have?’

‘Not much. But I have tried.’

‘You didn’t inhale though?’

‘No.’

‘Because you mustn’t inhale, you know.’

She looked at grandad.

‘Hey, Grandad!’ she said. ‘Do you remember who got
us
started?’

He didn’t answer, she licked the edge of the paper and shaped the cigarette.

‘It was your father,’ she said.

‘Dad?’

‘Yes, we were in our mountain cabin. He had brought some cigarettes along. And he told us to try one. So we did. Didn’t we, Grandad?’

When she didn’t get an answer this time either, she winked at me.

‘He’s getting senile, I think,’ she said, put the cigarette between her lips, lit up and then blew a huge cloud of smoke out through her mouth.

No, she didn’t inhale. I had never thought about that before.

She looked at me.

‘Are you hungry? We ate some time ago, but if you like I can heat something up for you?’

‘Oh, please,’ I said. ‘Actually I’m ravenous.’

She placed the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, got up and shuffled over to the fridge in her slippers. She was wearing a blue dress, it went down to her mid-calves, which were light brown under her tights.

‘If it’s in the
fridge
, you don’t need to warm it up,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry. It’s no trouble,’ she said.

She began to clatter around. I watched grandad. He was interested in politics and football. I was too.

‘Who do you think will win the elections?’ I said.

‘Eh?’ he said, lowering the newspaper.

‘Who do you think will win the elections?’

‘Hard to say. But I’m hoping it will be Willoch. We can’t take much more socialism in this country, that’s for sure.’

‘I’m hoping it’ll be Kvanmo,’ I said.

He studied me. With a stern, solemn expression. No, no, that wasn’t how it was, because the next moment he smiled.

‘You’re like your mother there,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I don’t want money to control people’s lives. Or us to be focused only on ourselves in our own backyard.’

‘Who should we focus on if not ourselves?’ he said.

‘Those in wretched situations. The poor. Refugees.’

‘But why should they come here and be maintained by us? You explain that to me,’ he said.

‘Don’t listen to him,’ grandma said to me and put a pot on the stove. ‘He’s just teasing you.’

‘But we have to help those who are less well off, don’t we,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But we have to look after our own first. Then we can help the others. But what they want is to live here. Help is not what they want. We’ve slogged our guts out and we’ve done well, and now they want to take over. Without lifting a finger. Why should we allow that?’

Grandma sat down on her chair.

‘Why did the man from the laboratory refuse to enter the labyrinth?’ she said.

‘Don’t know,’ I said, although I knew what was coming.

‘Because it was too laborious!’ she said and laughed.

Grandad picked up the newspaper again.

There was a silence. The pot crackled on the hotplate. Grandma lit another roll-up, placed one hand on her other arm and whistled softly to herself.

Grandad turned over a page.

I had exhausted all my conversational topics. We had spent less time on my new job than I had anticipated.

Did I dare take out the cigarettes from my jacket pocket?

Would the cross plus smoking be too much for them? I wondered.

An image of dad entered my head. Perhaps smoking had been the link, my having smoked twice in his presence without him saying a word.

If it was fine by him, it should definitely be fine by them, shouldn’t it?

I took out the packet.

Grandma eyed me.

‘Have you got your own cigarettes?’ she said.

I nodded. I didn’t want to use her lighter, somehow that would be too intimate, or too obtrusive, so I put my hand back into my pocket and took out my own. I lit up.

‘I was at dad’s a few days ago,’ I said. ‘Things are going well for him.’

‘Yes, he dropped by yesterday,’ grandma said.

‘We’re trying to maintain the amount of contact we had, even if we live separately,’ I said. ‘I think he must have been under quite a bit of pressure this summer, what with the divorce and so on.’

‘Do you think so?’ grandma said, looking at me as she blew out smoke.

‘Ye-es,’ I said. ‘They were married a long time. Getting separated is no laughing matter.’

‘No, it certainly isn’t,’ grandma said.

‘I’ll try to keep in touch with you as well,’ I said. ‘It’s easy enough to call by after school, for example. And now that I’ve got a job I can have dinner here every so often.’

Grandma smiled at me. Then she turned, glanced at the pot, which was making some muffled gurgling noises, got up and moved it to the side, switched off the hob, fetched a plate and cutlery, which she placed in front of me on the table.

I stubbed out my half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. She lifted the pot, held it by one handle, dipped the ladle inside and served three meatballs, two potatoes and some onions onto my plate.

‘I did it the easy way and heated the potatoes in the sauce,’ she said.

‘Looks fantastic,’ I said.

No one talked while I ate. I was soon finished.

‘Thank you!’ I said when I had eaten everything and placed the knife and fork on my plate. ‘That was fantastic!’

‘Good,’ grandma said, got up and carried the plate to the sink, rinsed it, opened the dishwasher lid, pulled out the little basket with the tiny fishbone-like plastic spikes, slotted the plate in and closed it again.

The wall clock said two minutes past five.

If I was going to ask to borrow some money it mustn’t look as if I had planned it or even counted on it. After all I could have stayed a shorter time and caught the bus home using my card. It would have to seem spontaneous.

But I didn’t need to do it yet.

Could I smoke another cigarette?

My intuition told me that would be a mistake. Too much.

‘What’s so interesting in the newspaper?’ grandma said. ‘I read it this morning and there wasn’t a damn thing in it.’

‘I read the obituaries,’ grandad said.

‘And they’re interesting now, are they!’ grandma said, glancing at me as she laughed. ‘The obituaries!’

I smiled.

‘Have you met dad’s new girlfriend?’ I said.

‘Unni? Yes. We have. Nice girl.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think she’s right for dad. But it’s a bit odd for me, I have to admit.’

‘I can imagine,’ grandma said.

‘It doesn’t matter though,’ I said.

‘Goodness, no,’ grandma said. ‘I’m sure it doesn’t.’

She whistled again, turned her hand over to form a little rake and inspected her nails.

‘Is there a lot of fruit this year?’

‘Yes, it’s not bad at all,’ she said. ‘Would you like to take some apples with you?’

‘Is that OK? They remind me of my childhood.’

‘I can imagine,’ she said. ‘You can have some in a bag.’ I raised my eyes and stared pointedly at the clock.

‘Oh no!’ I said. ‘Is that the time? Ten past five?’

I got up and rummaged through my pockets for money. Took it out, counted it, pursed my lips.

‘The last bus went at five,’ I said. ‘My travel card isn’t valid after five. And I haven’t got enough money.’

I glanced at grandma, then lowered my eyes.

‘I could hitchhike though,’ I said.

‘I’ll see if I’ve got some you can have,’ grandma said. ‘It’s such a long way. You really should take the bus.’

She got up.

‘I’ll be off then,’ I said to grandad.

He put down the newspaper.

‘Bye then,’ he said.

‘Bye,’ I said, following grandma down to the hall. She took a small purse from an off-white coat hanging up, opened it and looked at me.

‘How much does the bus cost?’

‘Fourteen kroner,’ I said.

She passed me two twenty-krone notes.

‘So you can buy yourself something nice with the rest,’ she said.

‘I’m just borrowing it,’ I said. ‘You’ll get it back next time.’

She snorted.

For a moment we stood in the hall without moving. I could feel she was waiting for me to go.