Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book 4 (58 page)

The light was switched off, the two of them whispered for a while, then all went quiet.

I lay on my back staring at the ceiling.

How strange my life had become.

As if in a dream a figure rose from the bed. It was Ine, she came over and slipped in beside me.

Jesus, she was naked.

She snuggled up to me, breathing hard.

We kissed, I caressed her whole body, her wonderfully large dark breasts, oh, I devoured them, and I felt her smooth hair against my thigh, and she was breathing heavily and I was breathing heavily, was it going to happen now, I caught myself thinking, with this stupendous motorbike girl?

She rubbed herself against me, and I came.

I twisted away and pressed myself against the mattress.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

‘Did you come?’ she said.

‘Mhm,’ I said.

She got up, crept back into bed and slid back into the dream from which she had so enticingly risen only a few minutes earlier.

And thet was thet, as Fleksnes used to say.

For the next few days my love grappled with the remainder of my pride. I
couldn’t
go to see her again. I
couldn’t
ring,
couldn’t
write a letter,
couldn’t
look her in the eyes again.

She was still all I thought about, but the incident in her bedsit had been so definitive and so humiliating that not even the most enamoured thoughts could withstand the pressure and slowly but surely they disappeared from my system.

Then it was just school again. School and writing and drinking.

But the days lengthened, the snow melted, spring was on its way. One day there was an envelope marked H. Aschehoug & Co. in my post box. I took it with me outside with the other letters, lit a cigarette, gazed at the jagged white mountains across the fjord gilded by the sun, which with every day that passed came closer to the village with its retinue of rays. The sight was invigorating, there was in fact a light that burned for us out in space.

A car drove past. I didn’t see who it was but waved all the same. Some gulls screeched over by the fish-processing factory, I glanced across, they were circling in the air above the quay. The waves lapped against the stones on the shore. I opened the envelope. There were my two short stories. So they had been rejected. There was a letter attached, I read it. No contributions had been selected, it said. The general standard had been too poor, the anthology would not be published.

So at least I hadn’t been rejected!

I walked up to the road and ambled towards our yellow house. Tor Einar’s old blue Peugeot was parked outside. Tor Einar was chatting to Nils Erik in the sitting room, along with his cousin, Even, a boy in the eighth class, it was Saturday, we were going to Finnsnes. As I turned on to the little path down to the door, they came out.

‘Are you ready?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Are we going now?’

‘That was the idea.’

I went back up, opened the passenger door and got in. On the rear seat Even leaned forward and spread his arms across the front seats. He had kind blue eyes, dark hair, a small wispy moustache above his upper lip. His voice rose and sank in ways even he could not predict. Tor Einar started the car and drove slowly through the village, waving to the right and left to people on their way to or from the shop. I set about opening the pile of letters I had taken from the post box. The original twenty people I corresponded with had shrunk to twelve, still enough to ensure the post box was seldom empty. One of the letters was from Anne. She had worked as a technician on the radio programmes I had done in Kristiansand. She lived in Molde now, went to the university there or whatever it was, I wasn’t very interested, she
was
though, the letters I received were rarely less than twenty pages.

I opened it and took out the thick wad of paper. A small brownish lump came with it and fell onto my thigh.

‘What was that?’ Even said.

Christ! It was hashish.

‘What was what?’ I said, placing my hand over it.

‘What fell out. What did you get?’

‘Oh that?’ I said. ‘It was nothing. A friend of mine’s studying horticulture. She’s interested in trees. So she’s sent me a piece of bark off a rare specimen.’

‘Can I see?’ he said.

I stared ahead at the tunnel opening a few metres in front of us. What would he do if he knew what it was? Tell someone? There would be a hell of a fuss then.
DRUGS SEIZED ON HÅFJORD TEACHER.
They drank like nutters, but they didn’t have anything to do with hashish, marijuana, amphetamines or that sort of thing.

‘Let me see then!’ he said.

‘There’s nothing to see,’ I said. ‘Just a rare specimen of bark.’

‘Why did she send it to you then?’

I shrugged. ‘We had a relationship.’

Tor Einar glanced at me. ‘Tell us about it,’ he said.

‘Nothing to tell,’ I said, putting the lump in my pocket with one hand while grabbing the handle above the door with the other. Not that it was necessary, Tor Einar was driving carefully as always. He and Nils Erik had to be the only motorists in the village who kept to the speed limits.

‘Am I going to see it or not?’ Even said.

Strange how persistent he was.

I turned. ‘Give me a break,’ I said. ‘I’ve put it in my pocket now. It’s just a bit of bloody bark.’

‘But it was rare,’ he said.

‘Are you interested in
bark
?’ I said.

‘No,’ he said, and laughed.

‘Well, there you are. Now I want some peace and quiet to read if that’s all right with you,’ I said, skimming through Anne’s pages.

When we returned a few hours later Tor Einar and Nils Erik were going to go skiing. They asked me if I wanted to join them, as usual I said no, I was going to write. The moment they were out of the door I took out the lump of hashish, warmed it up, mixed it with tobacco and rolled a joint. I drew the curtains, locked the door, sat down on the sofa and smoked it.

On the wall next to my Betty Blue poster Nils Erik had hung one of Charlie Chaplin. Sitting there, I imagined I was him and then I mimicked his walk. With my feet at a quarter to three and a stick happily whirring around in one hand I walked to and fro across the floor. It was a perfect imitation and I didn’t want to stop, I waddled up the stairs into my bedroom, which was bare except for a pile of clothes and a mattress against the wall, down again, did a circuit of the kitchen, back into the sitting room. I laughed several times, not because it was funny but because it felt so good. I was the tramp, I swung my stick and staggered around taking tiny footsteps, sometimes I lifted my hat and made a little pirouette to greet everyone. I could do no wrong. And my insides were lubricated to perfection, every movement rippled through my body, soon I was lying on the sofa and lifting first one shoulder, then the other, tensing my calf muscles, knees, abs, biceps, and it was as if I was both floating in the sea and the waves therein.

I woke up to someone knocking on the door. Outside, it was pitch black. I looked at my watch. It was half past five. I sat up, rubbed my hands over my face several times. There was another knock. The smell of hashish still hung in the air. I considered not answering, but when the third bout of knocking started I thought the person knocking must be sure I was here, I let some air in through a window, closed the sitting-room door behind me, went to the hall and opened up.

A man in his forties was standing outside. He was the father of one of my pupils although offhand I couldn’t say which. I had a faint rushing sound in my ears.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m Jo’s father. I wanted to have a little chat with you. It’s nothing serious, but I’d like to talk about Jo. It’s been on my mind for a while to drop by, but it hasn’t been convenient until now. Is this a suitable time for you? I know this is not exactly school hours but . . .’ He laughed.

‘No problem at all,’ I said. ‘Come in. Would you like some coffee?’

‘Please, if it’s on the go. But don’t make any especially for me.’

He walked past me into the kitchen.

‘I was just about to make some,’ I said. ‘I’ve been having a nap. It’s been a long week.’

He sat down at the kitchen table. Hadn’t taken off either his jacket or his boots. I filled the coffee pot with water.

It was always women who took care of everything to do with children and school. They were the ones who went to parents’ evenings, they were the ones who signed the slips children took home, they were the ones who did voluntary work and made sure school trips and so on were paid for.

I switched on the stove and sat down opposite him at the table.

‘Yes, our Jo,’ he said. ‘He’s not happy at school at the moment.’

‘Oh?’ I said.

‘No, he isn’t. He says he doesn’t want to go to school any more, he wants to stay at home. Sometimes he cries as well. If I ask him why, he won’t say. Or else he says it isn’t anything. But we can see there’s something wrong. He really doesn’t want to go. Well, he is . . . he always got on fine before, when he was smaller. He liked school then. But now . . . no . . .’

He looked at me.

‘I’ve come to you . . . erm, you aren’t his form teacher . . . I know perhaps it would have been more normal to go and see her . . . but he talks very warmly about you. He likes you so much. It’s Karl Ove said this and Karl Ove did that all the time. And so I thought I could talk to you about this. After all you know him.’

I was so upset when he said that, I hadn’t been so touched for many years. The trust he showed in me I had already betrayed. Not through anything I had done, but through what I had thought. Now, with him sitting opposite me, his face grave and tormented, it was obvious he loved his son, that for him Jo was unique and precious. I realised that what for me had been a minor matter, a maladjusted boy who cried for nothing, for him was major, it filled his life, indeed it
was
his life, everything he had.

My guilt burned in me like a forest fire.

I would have to make amends. I would have to make amends now, to the father, who fortunately, oh how fortunately, had no idea what I had been thinking. And then I would have to make amends to Jo. As soon as I saw him I would do that.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘He’s a fine boy.’

‘Have you noticed anything at school? Have there been any incidents?’

‘No, nothing specific. But I’ve noticed he doesn’t fit in. And that sometimes the others don’t want him along, or they make fun of him. Nothing serious though, if you know what I mean. That is, no violence or systematic bullying. I haven’t seen anything like that. I don’t think it happens either.’

‘No,’ he said, rubbing his chin as he looked at me.

‘But he’s a . . . well, chubby lad. Others tell him that. And perhaps he’s not as good at ball games as some of the others. So he avoids them. And that means he’s sometimes left to his own devices. He goes around on his own.’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know what we should do,’ I said. ‘But it’s a small school. We’re not talking about a lot of pupils. Everything’s quite open. Everyone knows everyone else inside out. So if he was being bullied it would be easy to do something about it. I mean, these are not children we don’t know, big gangs or anything like that. This is Stig, Reidar, Endre. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? It shouldn’t be impossible to talk to them about it.’

‘No,’ he said.

Oh, he did trust me, he was thinking through what I had said, and it hurt, it hurt him, he was a father in his forties, I was a boy of eighteen, so should he listen to me?

‘It’s all fine in the classroom,’ I went on. ‘There may be the odd comment, but there is about everyone, more or less, and if anything more serious crops up of course it’s dealt with at once, so what we’re really talking about is the breaks. Maybe we can try to set up some activities he likes and can do, and get others to join in? I can talk to Hege about it, and then we can draw up a little plan. It might be as simple as talking to the other boys and explaining the situation to them. I don’t think they know how he feels.’

‘I think they do,’ he said. ‘I think they know all too well. They never come back to play with him any more, and they exclude him from their games.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘But I don’t have the impression there’s anything malicious in it or that it means much to them. It’s more that it’s just happened that way.’

‘Won’t it get worse if you talk to them about it?’

‘It’s a risk we have to take. It has to be handled sensitively. And they’re nice children, all of them. I think it’ll be fine.’

‘Do you think so?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘I’ll have a word with Hege on Monday. Then we’ll put together a plan of action.’

He got up. ‘Then I won’t take up any more of your time.’

‘It’s not a problem,’ I said.

‘Thank you very much!’ he said, and shook my hand.

‘Everything will be fine,’ I said.

After he had gone I flopped down on the sofa. The sitting room was freezing cold, the window was still open. Noises filtered in from outside and filled the room, which in the atmospheric conditions became distorted, everything seemed to be close. It sounded as if the waves on the shore were beating against the house wall. Footsteps on the road, the crunch of the snow, seemed to come from out of thin air, as though a ghost were walking past, on its way to the sea. A car passed, the drone of the engine rebounded off the wall I was lying next to. Someone laughed somewhere, how eerie, I thought, the devils are out tonight. The state of disquiet Jo’s father had produced in me, the chasm between his trust and my betrayal, was like an ache in my chest. I got up, put on a record, the one I had been playing most of that year, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions’ latest, which I sensed would always remind me of the moods up here, lit a cigarette, closed the window, pressed my forehead against the chilly glass. After a while I went into the little study adjoining the sitting room, full of piles of books and papers, switched on the light and sat down at the desk.

The second I laid eyes on the sheet in the typewriter I saw someone had written something on it. I went cold. The first half of the page was mine, and then came five lines that weren’t. I read them.