Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book 4 (34 page)

We drove past Knut Hamsun’s Nørholm property, I leaned forward to look past Yngve and into the grounds, I had been there once, on a class trip when I was in the ninth, we were shown round by Hamsun’s son and saw the cottage where he wrote and a few pieces of furniture he had made.

Now it was empty and looked overgrown.

‘Do you remember dad saying he had seen Hamsun on the bus to Grimstad once?’

‘No,’ Yngve said. ‘Did he say that?’

‘Yes, an old man with a stick and a white beard.’

Yngve shook his head. ‘Imagine all the lies he’s told us over the years. There must be loads we still believe without realising it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can’t say I’m sorry he’s moving.’

‘No,’ Yngve said. ‘Nor me.’

Dad and Unni had got jobs in Northern Norway, they were going to work at the same
gymnas
and during recent weeks had packed everything they owned and sent it north. They would be driving up in a couple of days’ time.

‘Has Kristin recovered from the wedding?’ I said. ‘I assume it must have been a bit of a shock?’

‘It was somewhat special, yes,’ he said.

We drove down to Grimstad, past the Oddensenter Mall, the old Hotel Norge, where Hamsun had done some of his writing, up the steep incline and onto the wide plain.

‘And what was that business with the hotel?’ I said. ‘They booked a room at the hotel where we ate, they even went up to see it. But did they sleep there?’

Yngve shrugged.

‘Perhaps they went back there after we left?’

‘Didn’t look like that.’

‘No, but there are a few things in their lives they don’t plan. Such as when they said, if you remember, they wouldn’t be having a honeymoon. But the day after they caught the boat to Denmark and stayed at a hotel in Skagen.’

‘That’s true,’ I said.

We drove past Kokkeplassen, mum’s old workplace, where I had been at a nursery for a year, and I craned my neck, there had been a cliff there, we had climbed up a tree over the cliff every day, I seemed to remember. But it wasn’t a cliff, it was just a little slope, I could see now. And the tree must have been chopped down. Then we motored down the hill with Arendal below us and beyond it the island of Tromøya, in all its nostalgic splendour, flooded with sunshine.

‘Well?’ Yngve said. ‘Are you going to find a pitch right now?’

‘May as well,’ I said.

Nothing had been arranged in advance; Rune thought all you had to do was ask in a shop whether they minded if you set up outside in the street and used their electricity, and then hope they didn’t charge you a commission. Offer them a couple of hundred if they dithered was his advice.

Yngve parked the car, we walked down the pedestrianised street, I popped into a randomly chosen boutique and asked whether it was all right if I sold cassettes in the street outside and if they had a socket I could use. Might attract customers for them too.

No problem.

Once that was arranged we drove up to his bedsit. He had taken his prelims that spring, after finishing the foundation year in comparative politics before Christmas, and now he was working at the Central Hotel in town to earn some money for a trip to China he and Kristin were planning later in the autumn.

The bedsit he rented was by Langsæ, outside Arendal, and I would be staying for three weeks, sleeping on a lilo on the floor.

We hadn’t spent so much time together since we were little.

The next day he drove me to the town centre with all my paraphernalia. It was fantastic standing there in the quiet morning streets, with the sea so blue and heavy and still before us, erecting the old yellow 1970s camping table, arranging the cassettes on it – Genesis, Falco, Eurythmics, Madonna and anything else that sold well in those months – pulling the cable from the shop, plugging in the cassette recorder, sitting down on the chair, putting on my shades and pressing play.

The King of Arendal, that was me.

Beside my table was an ice cream stand, and soon after I arrived a girl started work there. She swept the street in front, carried in a few boxes, came out with a rag in her hand and wiped the outside of the window, went back in and stayed there.

She looked great. Reddish hair, freckles, big curves. When I saw her next, half an hour later, she was wearing a white apron.

Terrific!

But she didn’t look in my direction, not once.

That could be arranged.

Gradually people began to trickle by, they walked up and down the small pedestrian street, passed my table several times, I kept a careful eye on them and was quick to recognise faces and bodies. Some of them stopped and examined my selection of cassettes, and if they pointed to one, I jumped up, took an unopened one from the box beside the table, pocketed the money they passed me, thanked them, registered a cross on a sheet of paper I kept handy and sat down.

What a job!

At eleven sales began to take off with a vengeance. Through to one I sold loads of cassettes, then business flagged until I shut up shop at a few minutes to four, when Yngve came to collect me.

At his place I counted out the money due to Rune and put it in a plastic bag. The rest I spent when we went out in the evening. I bought bottles of white wine in ice buckets, danced, chatted to whoever came over to Yngve’s table. White wine, that was the discovery of the summer for me, it slid down like water, and the buzz it produced made me feel light and happy.

The next day the girl in the ice cream stand smiled at me when she arrived. A little smile, it was true, but unmistakable.

I knocked on her window at eleven and asked if I could have a glass of water.

She handed me one.

‘We’re neighbours,’ I said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Sigrid,’ she said.

Her accent was curious. The ‘r’ was hard. She also pronounced the ‘d’.

‘Where are you from?’

‘Iceland,’ she said with a beam.

That was as far as we got, she didn’t come over to exchange a word or two, a little smile and a nod sufficed: the day had begun.

A couple of evenings later she was suddenly standing in front of me at the disco. I was so drunk that everything except her face was blurred. When I woke up in her bed the next morning I couldn’t remember how I had got there, was mystified as to how I had managed it, everything was black apart from a couple of scenes from her bedsit: she is lying on the bed wearing only panties and I’m on top of her, we’re snogging, I kiss her magnificent breasts, I put my hand between her legs, no, she says, absolutely no way, and I get up and take off my underpants and stand in front of her in all my glory, which can’t have impressed her as much as I must have imagined it would because she laughed at me and said no again.

I held my head in shame. I had of course registered long ago that she wasn’t there, but I hadn’t considered where she was until the next second, when I sat up and said hello into the empty room.

No answer. Was she in the toilet perhaps?

I stood up.

Oh no, I was
still
naked.

On the table in the middle of the room there was a note.

Hi, King of Arendal!

I’ve gone to sell some ice creams.

See you again,
maybe
.

S.

(Put the door on the latch when you leave)

Why on earth had she underlined
maybe
?

I got dressed, stuffed the note in my back pocket, put the door on the latch as she had requested and went down the narrow, gloomy and musty-smelling staircase. I hadn’t the slightest idea where I was. For all I knew, I could have been kilometres out of town.

The sunlight hit me in the eyes as I emerged.

A street, a house on the other side.

Where was the town?

I followed the street down, rounded a corner and suddenly saw where I was. Somewhere up by Skytebanen!

I strolled down to the centre, gave the ice cream stand a wide berth and sat down in Pollen with a Coke and a bag of rolls. The mere smell of seawater put me in a good mood.

After watching the boats entering and leaving the harbour, the gulls circling and the cars heading along Langbrygga on the other side, all beneath a deep-blue motionless sky, I went to see Yngve at the hotel. He was dealing with some guests, I sat down on the sofa and observed him, his patient smile and polite nod, speaking in English, dressed in his not quite immaculate hotel uniform.

When they had gone he came over to me.

‘Where did you get to then?’

‘I went back to the ice cream girl’s place,’ I said and could hear what a wonderful sentence that was to say.

‘How was it? Are you two together now?’

‘Don’t think so. She wasn’t there when I woke up. But she left me a note on which she had underlined the word
maybe.
See you again, maybe
. What do you think that means?’

He shrugged, suddenly uninterested.

‘Kristin will be at my place tonight, by the way.’

‘Where shall I sleep then?’

‘In the bathroom.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yes. It’s no problem, is it?’

‘No, of course not. I was thinking of you two.’

‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. I’ve warned her. Anyway, I stayed at her place last night.’

It was fine too, though it felt a little strange lying on the mattress in the bathroom listening to Yngve and Kristin giggling and laughing and chatting in subdued voices in the bed.

As I walked down the pedestrian street next morning I was excited. I had got up extra early to be there before her, I thought that would give me an edge. She arrived, smiled her little smile and went into her stand. I stayed where I was, sold loads of cassettes and when I finally did go over to her it was to ask for a glass of water.

I was given one.

‘Thanks for the other night,’ I said.

‘Thank
you
,’ she said.

‘I was thinking of going out tonight. Would you like to come?’

She shook her head.

‘Tomorrow night then?’

She shook her head again. ‘You’re not my type,’ she said with a smile. ‘We could meet though.’

‘When?’

She shrugged and smiled again.

I went back to my table and the days passed. She attended to her business in her stand, I attended to mine, once in a while our glances met and we smiled.

That was all.

I bought a felt pen and some cardboard from a bookshop and hung a sign on the tree beside the table.
ORGINAL CASSETTES
, I wrote, then the price and the names of some Top Twenty artists. It wasn’t long before a man in his mid-forties stopped and said it was ‘original’, not ‘orginal’. I was good at writing, my spelling was perfect, so I said no, you’re wrong, that’s how it’s spelt. There’s not another ‘i’ in ‘orginal’. I stuck to my guns, he stuck to his and in the end he walked away shaking his head.

The money was rolling in. People were crazy about my cassettes, buying four or five at a time, so when evening came and I went out with Yngve I didn’t stint myself. I drank as I had never drunk before. If I ran out of cash all I had to do was sell some more cassettes the next day. Once a week Rune dropped by in his red car with fresh stock. And now and then someone I knew from the old days happened by. Dag Lothar, for example, who had a summer job in a bank and was the same as always. Geir Prestbakmo, who was at vocational college and rode around on a brand new moped, he was his old self as well. And then John, the class tough guy, who just loafed around, as he put it.

Yngve and I went to the other side of Tromøya one day, to the place where dad had always taken us swimming. Yngve parked the car by the rifle range, we walked down through a dense prickly thicket, I relished the incomparable smell of heather, pine needles and saltwater, the massive grey ridge that had been there for so many million years, and then the sight of the sea below. The air was thick with insects. I stamped my foot down hard at every step, the area was full of adders, at least it had been when I was growing up.

Once dad and I had encountered one only a few hundred metres from where I was walking now, it was spring, the snake had been stretched out on a stone slab in the sun. I must have been about ten. Dad went mad, started throwing stones at it, I watched as they seemed to sink into the snake’s body as they struck, the adder tried to get away, it was hit time and time again until it lay still beneath a pile of stones. But as we were about to walk on, out it wriggled again. Dad went closer, continuing to throw stones at it, he wanted me to do the same, I was on the point of throwing up, the snake was still now, dad ventured closer and crushed its head with the big rock he was holding in his hand.

I turned. Yngve was behind me. We walked along the spine of sea-smoothed rocks and found a warm spot by the water’s edge. I went down to examine the great sinkhole in the rock, which wasn’t so big any more, dived into the foaming water, swam out to the long island maybe a hundred metres away and then back again. Lay down to dry in the sun, ate biscuits and oranges, smoked and drank coffee. Yngve suggested going with him to Kristin’s place afterwards, so that would save him having to take me to the town centre. Is that all right? I said, of course, he said, they’re incredibly open and kind. Anyway, the rest of the family’s on holiday, so she’s the only one there.

A few hours later he pulled up outside their house. We watched a video and ate pizza. Yngve had been there a lot over the last six months, he liked her parents, her brother and sister, and they liked him. He was like a son in the house, I could see.

Her sister’s name was Cecilie and she was one year younger than me, I saw some photos of her and was impressed. Her brother was much younger than them, he was still at primary school.

I stayed the night and slept in Cecilie’s bed. We decided to go out together the following night, Kristin would bring along some girlfriends, but first we would eat in a restaurant, just us three.

I drank two bottles of white wine with the food, and when we went to the discotheque I had three more.

And who should I meet there but the girl from the ice cream stand!