Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book 4 (26 page)

I also bought one with my own money, which mum had given me that morning. To still my hunger I went to Geheb and bought a cardamom and custard bun, strolled up Markens gate munching, bun in one hand, records in the other, dropped the paper bag onto the street and was brushing my hands when a slightly plump but well-dressed elderly man shouted after me.

‘Hey, you!’ he yelled. ‘We don’t litter in this town! Pick it up!’

I turned, my heart pounding, and eyed him as coldly as I could. I was frightened, but I defied my fears and took a few steps towards him.

‘Pick it up yourself if it’s so important to you,’ I said.

Then, my legs trembling with fear and my chest quivering with emotion, I turned my back on him and continued up the street.

I half-expected him to come running after me, grab me and shake me, even punch me in the stomach, but nothing happened.

Nevertheless, I walked quickly for several blocks before daring to turn round.

No one there.

How had I dared!

To answer back like that!

Now I had given him something to think about. What the hell was he doing, ordering me about? Who gave him the right?

Wasn’t I a free person? No one was going to tell me what to do and what not to do.
No one!

This bubbled inside me as I walked past the Hotel Caledonien. It was around four o’clock, I had two hours to kill, and I headed for the library, through the side streets so that there was no chance of bumping into him again. Once there, I sat down in the reading room, studied my records for a while before going to find a book from the shelves behind me. There was the first volume of Bjørneboe’s trilogy about the history of bestiality which Hilde from our class had talked about with such enthusiasm. All I had read by Bjørneboe, apart from the few pages of
Ere the Cock Crows
that I had managed yesterday, was
The Sharks
, which I had read when I was twelve as if it were Jack London. But now, perusing the first few pages of this trilogy, I realised that I hadn’t understood a thing. This was deep, and it was painful. The opening, with the föhn wind, was fantastic.

Did evil come from outside?

Like a wind dragging people along with it?

Or did it come from inside?

I gazed at the square outside the church, where there were already yellow and orange leaves on the ground. In the street behind, people were walking under umbrellas.

Could I become evil? Find myself borne along by a wind of inhumanity and torture someone?

Or
was
I evil?

Torture wasn’t so relevant really, not now, I thought, and continued to read. But this was a book you had barely glanced at before you raised your eyes again. The torture was extreme, the annihilation of the Jews extreme. But it was carried out by normal people! Why did they do it? Didn’t they know it was wrong? Yes, of course they did. Is this what they wanted,
in their heart of hearts
? While they were walking around in their elegant little facade towns, making sure that everyone was doing what they should and believing that they were so bloody good, was evil what they really
wanted
if they got the chance? Without realising it themselves? Was it just something they carried within them, an evil without form, as it were, which emerged when the opportunity arose?

Oh, how stupid it was that they went around believing in a god and a heaven. It was so conceited! So unbelievably conceited! Why would God have selected
them
, people who were so preoccupied with ensuring everyone did the right thing all the time? Those petty-minded fools, why would God bother about
them
of all people?

I almost laughed out loud in the library, but managed at the last moment to stifle it to a giggle.

Looking around me, I saw that no one had noticed. Then, to disguise the fact that I had been looking around, I gazed out through the window again, with my head slightly tilted, so that it resembled an active decision, as if I was searching for something.

Wasn’t that Renate?

Yes, it was.

She was going into Peppes Pizza. And that was probably Mona with her, wasn’t it?

For one wild moment I considered going in after them. Bump into them as if by chance, ask if I could join them, sit down, turn on the charm, all casual, catch the bus home with them, it was Friday, they were popular, they were bound to be going to a party, we could have a few beers, I could accompany Renate home, she might hold my hand and ask if I wanted to come in, I would say yes and once inside I would pull off her T-shirt and trousers and spreadeagle her on the bed and fuck her senseless.

Ha ha.

Fuck her senseless, oh yes, Karl Ove.

I went weak at the knees even thinking about it. Yes, I could probably undress her, on a very, very good day I might be able to do that, but that was all I could do. That was where it stopped, then I went weak at the knees.

Renate was
two
years younger. And had a body that made everyone drool. Where I lived she was
the
body.

Once, on the bus, they had teased me. Not her, she had only been listening, but Mona. And she was
three
years younger!

‘You’re so good-looking, Karl Ove,’ she had said. ‘But you never say anything. Why don’t you say anything? What is it with your cheeks? They’re so red! Are you coming with us? We’re going to Renate’s. That would be something, wouldn’t it? Or are you a homo? Is that why you’re so quiet?’

She was a cheeky little bugger with a great big mouth and even greater belief in herself.

I had been in love with her sister all through the eighth class and had absolutely no chance. I was so much older than them and couldn’t find an answer, she would tie me in knots. Renate was also there, and at least she wasn’t three years younger, only two, she was in the ninth class, and she . . . yes, but no, she was listening to all this and saw me rigidly staring out of the window, red-cheeked, as though I imagined it was possible to get out of this situation by pretending I could neither see nor hear them.

So hopeless. Couldn’t I just fuck them? Well, not Mona, but Renate?

No.
That
was exactly what I couldn’t do.

I lowered my gaze and continued reading. Not many seconds passed before any words other than those Bjørneboe had written were gone from my mind. Thank goodness.

Six other guests came to dinner at dad and Unni’s. They had set the big living-room table, there was a white cloth, there were candlesticks, serviettes and silver knives, forks and spoons. Have a glass of red wine with the food, dad said, and I did. I said very little, sat watching for the most part, saw their spirits rising as they chatted and laughed. After I had finished one glass I reached out for the bottle and lifted it. Dad saw me and shook his head once. I put the bottle back down. One of them said he had a six-month-old baby at home and now they were discussing whether to have her christened or not. Neither he nor his wife was a believer, but tradition was important for both of them. Was that enough? he asked.

My heart beat faster.

‘I got confirmed for money,’ I said. ‘And the day I turned sixteen I left the state church.’

Everyone looked at me, most with a soft smile on their lips.

‘Have you left the church?’ dad said. ‘Secretly? Who gave you permission?’

‘Everyone has permission when they’re sixteen,’ I said. ‘And, as you know, I am sixteen.’

‘It may be legal,’ dad said, ‘but that’s not the same as right.’

‘But you left the church too!’ Unni said, laughing. ‘So you can’t say your son shouldn’t do the same.’

He didn’t like that.

He hid it behind a smile, but I knew him. He didn’t like it. I could feel his chill. She didn’t notice. She went on chatting and laughing.

Slowly he warmed up, he drank and his stiffness evaporated, what had been important was important no longer, nor that I was allowed to drink only one glass of wine, I speculated, and I was right, I took the bottle, he didn’t notice, I poured and a completely full glass stood before me.

Dad let go, his aura was great, indeed immense in the room. He was the person you noticed, he was the person eyes sought. But not in a warm way. There was no warmth in their eyes. He was too much, he was too loud, he interrupted in the wrong places, laughed at nothing, uttered inanities, didn’t listen. Took offence, went absent for a while, returned as if nothing had happened. Gave Unni a lingering kiss in front of everyone. The others retreated with their eyes and expressions, they didn’t want to know what he had to say, it was over the top for their taste, he was inappropriate, I could see that, and I found myself thinking the bloody idiots knew nothing, understood nothing, they were petty and they didn’t know it, and that was the worst of it, their bloated opinions of themselves while all they were was petty.

A pattern began to emerge that autumn. Dad drank every weekend, it made no difference whether I visited in the morning or the afternoon or the evening, on Saturday or Sunday, although at the beginning of the week he didn’t drink, or at least he drank much less, apart from perhaps the odd blip one evening a week, when he phoned everyone he knew, including me, and wittered on about something or other. I tried to see him at least once, preferably twice a week, and when he wasn’t drinking he was stern and formal, exactly as he always had been, asked me a couple of questions about school and perhaps Yngve, and then we sat watching TV, not a word was spoken until I got up and said I had to go. He didn’t want me there, I could feel that, but I continued to ring him and ask if I could come at such and such a time, and he said, I’m home then, yes. When he was drunk everything was a mess, he would talk about what a great time he was having with Unni and he didn’t spare me the details about his life with mum, how it had been compared with the life he had with Unni. Then he would cry, or else Unni would make a thoughtless remark and he would leave the room in a furious temper or extremely upset, she only had to mention a man’s name and he could be on his feet and gone, and the same applied to her, if he mentioned a woman’s name she would stand up and leave.

At least once during the course of these evenings he would talk about my childhood, which then merged into his, grandad had beaten him, he said, and even though he might not have been a good father to me he had always done the best he could, this he said with tears in his eyes, there were always tears in his eyes then, when he said he had done the best he could. Often he would mention how he had massaged my leg and how poor they had been in those days, they’d had almost no money, he mentioned that a lot.

I told mum about some of this. With her I lived a completely different life, my real life; with her I discussed every thought that went through my head, apart from anything to do with girls, and the terrible feeling of being on the outside at school, and what dad was doing. I told her everything else and she listened, occasionally with a genuinely surprised expression on her face, as though she hadn’t thought about what I was saying. Although she had, of course, it was just that her empathy was so immense that she forgot herself and her own thoughts. Sometimes it was as if we were like minds. Or equals at least. Then something changed and the distance between us became apparent. Such as the weeks when I was reading Bjørneboe and for several evenings in succession I went on about the meaninglessness of all things until she burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, and with tears in her eyes, exactly the same as her father, said that wasn’t what life was like, look around you! How offended I was for the rest of the week. But she was right, and what was strange was the fact that we had switched positions. Usually I was the one who said life was about enjoyment and that I would never fall into the traps known as duty and the nine-to-four working day, and she said life was a slog, that was the way it was. I subscribed to Bjørneboe’s pessimism and the wall of meaninglessness you saw as soon as you started thinking along these lines, I acknowledged the world’s misery; however, this did not apply to my own life and the plans I had, which were positive and robust. There was a connection though, for the alternative life, life outside bourgeois values, brought with it some insight into the meaninglessness, was this not the basis for all the thinking about enjoying yourself, not working, not giving a damn and not conforming to duty? The diary I kept in my
gymnas
years was full of this kind of reasoning. Was there a god? I wrote at the top of one page, no, there probably wasn’t, I concluded three lines later. I wasn’t an anarchist in the punk ‘fuck ’em all’ way, I was more structured, there should never be anyone above anyone else, no national state but more of a loose federation of individuals at a local level, in my opinion. No multinational companies, no capitalism and definitely no religion. I stood for freedom, free people performing free acts. Who would take care of the sick? mum would counter. We-ell, that could be done locally, couldn’t it? Who would pay for it then and in what currency? she would respond. Surely you would need some national institutions? Or would you like to abolish the whole financial system? Why not? What’s wrong with natural housekeeping? I would say. But why on earth would we do that? How could all your records be produced in that kind of system? Then I was on shaky ground, two of my worlds were colliding, one that contained everything that was good and cool and one that contained principles. Or, expressed in a different way, what I wanted and what I believed in. I was no bloody eco-vegetarian, for Christ’s sake! That wasn’t what this was about. However, it was where I ended up if I followed the logic of my basic principles.

A couple of times she received visits from friends in Arendal, a couple of times from old student friends in Oslo and a couple of times friends she had made in Kristiansand. For them I was the grown-up son, I joined them and chatted away to surprise and impress them, he’s so grown-up they said to mum after I had gone and it was ridiculously easy to make them believe I was.

I spent most of my time outside school writing the three weekly record reviews, but since I wasn’t paid in kroner and øre I also worked several evenings at the floor factory. During these months I was especially careful to drop in on grandma and grandad because they knew what dad was doing and it was up to me to show that I was my old self while also, in a way, representing dad, if life was going well for me this helped to offset the impression that dad’s life gave.