Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book 4 (23 page)

Had she forgotten the apples?

For a few seconds I was at a loss to know what to do. She had said I could take some with me, so surely it wouldn’t be unreasonable to remind her?

But she had just given me some money for the bus. I didn’t want to hassle her.

She turned her head, saw her reflection in the mirror, put a hand on top of her hair and patted it in place.

‘Did you say you had some apples? I could take a few with me and mum could try some. I’m sure she misses them too.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘The apples.’

She opened the door beside the staircase that led down to the cellar.

In the meantime I inspected myself in the mirror. Pulled at the back of my T-shirt to straighten the neck. Ran my fingers through my hair to make it stand up more. Smiled. Put on a serious face. Smiled.

‘Here you are,’ grandma said, coming up the steps. ‘You’ve got a few here.’

She passed me a bag, I took it, went out onto the front doorstep and turned to grandma.

‘Bye then!’ I said.

‘Bye,’ she said.

I turned and set off. The door shut behind me.

At the Rundingen shop I lit a cigarette while waiting for the bus. There was only one every hour, but I was lucky: the next one arrived after only a few minutes.

I boarded and while I was waiting for my ticket and change I squinted down the bus.

Wasn’t that Jan Vidar?

Yes, it was.

He was sitting gazing out of the window, his chin resting on his hand. Didn’t notice me until I reached his seat. He removed the small Walkman earplugs.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi,’ I said, plumping down onto the seat. ‘What are you listening to?’

‘B.B. King actually,’ he said.

‘B.B.
King
!’ I said. ‘Have you gone nuts?’

‘He’s a bloody good guitarist,’ he said. ‘Believe it or not.’

‘Him?’ I said.

Jan Vidar nodded.

‘He’s so fantastic that when he plays, his guitar is
horizontal
,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you seen? It’s like he’s playing a steel guitar.’

‘Where do you think Led Zeppelin got everything from?’ he said. ‘They’re old blues boys.’

‘Yes, of course. I know that,’ I said. ‘But that doesn’t mean
we
should listen to it. Blues is a pile of shit, if you ask me. Fine for inspiration for something else, but on its own? It’s the same bloody song again and again, isn’t it.’

‘If you can play like him you can play anything,’ Jan Vidar said. ‘You were the one who always talked about feeling. Who said that was why Jimmy Page was better than Ritchie Blackmore or Yngwie Malmsteen. I agree with you now. We don’t need to discuss the point any more. But for feeling, brother, just listen to this guy!’

He passed me the earplugs, I put them in, he pressed play. I listened for two seconds before taking them out.

‘Same song,’ I said.

He looked a bit annoyed.

‘Are you annoyed or what?’

‘No, why should I be? I know I’m right.’

‘Ha ha,’ I said.

The bus stopped at the lights before the E18.

‘Why were you at Rundingen?’ Jan Vidar said. ‘Have you been visiting your grandparents?’

I nodded.

‘But before that I was at
Nye Sørlandet
.’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘I’ve got work there.’

‘Work?’

‘Yes.’

‘What as? Paper boy?’ He laughed.

‘Ha ha,’ I repeated. ‘No, as a music journalist. I’m going to review records.’

‘Are you? Fantastic! Really?’

‘Yes, I start next week.’

There was a silence. Jan Vidar drew up his knees and put his feet on the seat opposite.

‘And you?’ I said. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Out with a friend. We’ve been jamming.’

‘Where’s the guitar then?’

He tossed his head back.

‘On the seat behind.’

‘Is he good?’

‘Better than you anyway.’

‘That’s not saying much,’ I said.

We smiled. Then he gazed out of the window. I glanced behind us, in case someone I knew was sitting there and I hadn’t noticed them. But there was just a boy I hadn’t seen before, perhaps a seventh year, and a woman of around fifty with a white shoe-shop bag on her lap. She was chewing gum, which was a mistake, chewing gum didn’t go with her glasses and hair.

‘Do you remember when you stood in for me?’ Jan Vidar said.

‘Of course,’ I said.

He had been a paper boy. Over time he had built up a long challenging round. Then he had to have a holiday and I was given his job for a week. He didn’t go anywhere, just lazed around while I was working, and then we went swimming or biked out to a friend’s. But after three days there were so many complaints from people on the round that he had to take over. Some
bloody
holiday that was, he had said. But he didn’t look too bothered.

‘I still can’t understand how you could make such a balls-up of it,’ he said now.

I shrugged. ‘Actually I did the best I could.’

‘Unbelievable,’ he said.

He had gone over the route with me twice, there were two or three quirks to watch out for – some wanted the newspaper through the door, others had boxes with their names on – and I couldn’t remember these nuances when I was standing there, even though he had repeated them several times, so I improvised and followed my gut instinct.

‘That was only last year!’ I said. ‘At first I thought it was several years ago!’

‘That was a good summer, that was,’ he said.

‘Yes, it was.’

We entered the forest after the Timenes crossroads. The sun was shining on the hilltop trees but completely absent here. I associated the bus stop we passed with Billy Idol, we had been to one of those half-baked parties we sometimes ended up at and as we had been going home in the freezing cold I had been humming the song ‘Rebel Yell’.

‘I think I can associate some memory with every damn bus stop from here to home,’ I said.

He nodded.

Topdalsfjord opened in front of us on the right. The water was a gleaming blue close to the shore, but further out it was foam-tipped in the breeze. A couple of families were sitting on the beach and children were wading in front of them.

It would soon be autumn.

‘Any nice girls at school?’ I said.

‘Not that I’ve seen. And at Katedralskolen?’

‘Actually, there’s a great one in my class. But she’s a Christian, first off.’

‘That’s never deterred you before.’

‘No, but she’s the perfection type. Pentecostalist. Well, you know the type, Puffa jackets and Bik Bok and Poco Loco clothes.’

‘Second off?’

‘She doesn’t like me.’

‘Seen anything of Hanne then?’

I shook my head. ‘Spoke to her on the phone a couple of times, that’s all.’

I wondered whether Jan Vidar wasn’t sick of hearing about Hanne, so I didn’t follow up, even though I was burning to talk about her. Instead we sat silent for the last ten minutes, lulled into the regular drone of the bus that we both knew so well. It felt as if we had been catching the bus for the whole of our lives. Up and down, back and forth, day after day. Bus, bus, bus. We knew all about buses. We were bus experts. In the same way that we were experts on pointless cycling and endless footslogging, not to mention the very centre of our existence, something we knew very well: using the grapevine to stay up to date with what was happening. What? Someone had
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
on video? Right, over we cycled, a tumbledown house with piles of rubbish outside, and a complete stranger, a dubious but also dopey-looking twenty-year-old, who was just
standing
there when we arrived, in the middle of the yard, with no discernible aim, he was just standing there, and when we showed up he turned towards us.

The house was situated in the middle of a bloody field.

‘Heard you’d got a copy of
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
,’ Jan Vidar said.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘But I’ve just lent it to someone.’

‘I see,’ said Jan Vidar, looking at me. ‘Better cycle back then, eh?’

An eighth year who was alone at home and had invited a few friends round? Right, off we trudged, knocked on the door and were invited in, they were watching TV, had nothing to drink, there were no girls and they were just some twats with nothing in their heads, we stayed nevertheless, the alternative was no
better
, that was the point, if we were completely honest.

And we frequently were.

Oh! Someone somewhere had got a new guitar.

Right, onto our bikes and off we pedalled to see it.

Yes, we were good at using the grapevine. But what we were best at, what we were really the kings of, that was buses and sitting around in bedrooms.

No one could beat us at that.

None of this led anywhere. Well, we probably weren’t very good at doing things that led somewhere. We didn’t have particularly good conversations, no one could say we did, the few topics we had developed so slowly we ourselves assumed they had nowhere to go; not one of us was a brilliant guitarist, although that is what we would have loved to be, more than anything else, and as far as girls were concerned, it was rare we came across one who wouldn’t object if we pulled up her jumper so that we could lower our heads and kiss her nipples. These were great moments. They were luminous shafts of grace in our world of yellowing grass, grey muddy ditches and dusty country roads. Yes, that was how it was for me. I assumed it was the same for him.

What was this all about? Why did we live like this? Were we waiting for something? In which case, how did we manage to be so patient? For nothing ever happened!
Nothing
happened! It was always the same. Day in, day out! Wind and rain, sleet and snow, sun and storm, we did the same. We heard something on the grapevine, went there, came back, sat in his bedroom, heard something else, went by bus, bike, on foot, sat in someone’s bedroom. In the summer we went swimming. That was it.

What was it all about?

We were friends, there was no more than that.

And the waiting, that was life.

Jan Vidar jumped off the bus at Solsletta, guitar case in hand, I continued as the sole passenger to Boen, where I also jumped off and plodded home with my rucksack on my back and the bag of apples in my hand.

Mum had been waiting for me with dinner.

‘Hi,’ she said as I went in through the door. ‘I’ve just got home as well.’

‘Look,’ I said, holding out the bag. ‘Apples from grandma.’

‘Did you pop in?’

‘Yes, they send their love.’

‘Thanks,’ she said.

I lifted the lid off the pot. Tomato sauce and chunks of fish, probably pollock.

‘I had dinner there,’ I said.

‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘But I’m starving.’

She put the cat down on the floor, straightened up and took a plate.

‘And how did you get on at
Nye Sørlandet
, Karl Ove?’ I said.

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘I’d completely forgotten.’

I smiled. ‘I got the job! He just skim-read the reviews and I was home and dry.’

‘You worked hard on them,’ she said, placed some bits of pollock on the plate, lifted the lid of the second pan and spooned out a potato. It wobbled around as she lowered the spoon and rolled off when she turned it.

‘And they’re going to make a little article about it,’ I said. ‘It’ll run tomorrow.’

‘Run’ was a genuine journalistic expression.

‘Very nice, Karl Ove,’ she said.

‘Yes, but there’s a snag.’

She put the plate on the table, took cutlery from the drawer and sat down. I took a seat opposite her.

‘A snag?’ she said, tucking in.

‘He said I had to get hold of a typewriter. Writing by hand is taboo. They don’t accept it. So I’ll have to buy one.’

‘A new typewriter costs quite a bit of money.’

‘Come on. We
must
be able to afford one. It’s an investment. I’ll earn some money doing this. Surely you can understand that?’

She nodded as she chewed.

‘Perhaps there’s one there you can borrow?’ she said.

I snorted.

‘First day at work? And then you walk in and ask to borrow a typewriter?’

‘Well, perhaps that wasn’t such a good idea,’ she said.

The cat rubbed against my leg. I bent down and scratched his chest. He closed his eyes and began to purr. I picked him up, he stretched out on my lap with his paws on my knees.

‘How much will one cost, do you reckon?’ mum said.

‘No idea.’

‘When I get my salary next month it should be OK. But for now, I’m afraid I’m flat broke.’

‘But that’s too late, don’t you understand?’

She nodded.

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ I said. ‘If there’s no money, there’s no money.’

‘That’s how it is, sadly,’ she said. ‘But you can ask your father as well, you know.’

I said nothing. It was true, I could. He had enough money. But would he give some to me?

If he wouldn’t, there would be an embarrassing situation. He would feel I was demanding something from him, and if he said no, or felt forced to say no, it would be me who had put him in this predicament. And by then it would be too late, he couldn’t suddenly say yes after saying no.

‘I’ll ask him,’ I said, caressing the cat behind the ear. He writhed in pleasure with his eyes closed.

‘There’s a letter for you, by the way,’ mum said. ‘I left it on the dresser in the hall.’

‘A letter?’

I put the cat down on the floor, I didn’t like to have to do that when he had been having such a good time, but the little twinge in my conscience was gone the very next second because I didn’t get letters that often.

My name on the envelope, written in a girl’s hand.

The postmark was almost unreadable.

But it was airmail, and the stamps were Danish.

‘I’m going to my room,’ I said. ‘Are you OK eating alone?’

‘Yes, of course!’ mum said from the kitchen.

In my bedroom I sat down on the chair by the desk, tore open the envelope, took out the letter and started reading.

Nyk M 20/8 85

Hi Karl Ove,

Hope you’re fine. I don’t know if you are because you haven’t written, although you promised you would. Why not? I wish you could see me running to our post box when I get up. Well, if you don’t want to write I won’t be annoyed, I love you too much for that, but I have to admit I will be upset if I never hear from you again. Are you coming to Denmark? And if so, when? It has been boring here since you left. During the day I’m with my friends. In the evening I go to the disco. But this will soon be over as I’m moving to Israel on 14 September. I’m really looking forward to that. I would just love to see you before I go.