Naïve Super (7 page)

My brother replies, saying he’ll trust my judgement when it comes to the make of the car. But it has to be a cool car. A status symbol. It must have a fresh and sporty air about it. And the colour must be red or green. Maybe something like olive. And with an airbag.

Børre thinks it’s great that I’m going to buy a car. He thinks I ought to buy a racing car.

It is a big assignment my brother’s given me. I am flattered. I have never bought a car before.

Børre wants us to fax the racing car drawing to his grandmother. I tell him very few grandmothers have fax machines, but that we’ll mail it to her if he’s got the address. Børre figures we might just as well leave it if we can’t fax.

We go out to look at cars. Børre and I. First we look at the cars in the street. We look through the windows and check how high the speedometers go. To Børre, that’s the only thing that matters. He spots a BMW with a speedometer that goes to 280. He thinks I should buy that one.

We go to a Volvo dealership and test-sit a few Volvos. The dealer thinks Børre is my son. He treats me like a potential customer, showing us around and explaining technical things. Telling me Volvo put great emphasis on safety. Børre checks the speedometer. It barely passes 200. He shakes his head.

Børre, I tell him, 200 kilometres per hour is more than you think.

Now we’re test-driving the Volvo on the E18. Børre is clapping his hands. He is sitting in a kiddies’ seat we’ve been lent by the dealer.

Are we doing 200 now? he asks.

Almost, I say.

It’s a nice car. And green. When I get home I’ll fax my brother and tell him it has good road holding, whatever that means.

I come off the motorway and drive back towards town via a country road. It feels good to use the steering wheel a little. We stop at a shop to buy some ice cream. While we are eating, I read the notices posted by the entrance. Advertisements about bingo and riding lessons. But there’s another note. A nice note. Something for Børre. I read it to him.

Hi, my name’s Jessica. I am wondering if there’s someone who’d like to buy some of this stuff, because I’ve got some things in my room that I’m not using.

The things are:

If you’re interested, call and ask Jessica at phone number …

Børre is interested. Not in the girlie things, but in the Power Rangers pictures and maybe some of the other things. He doesn’t quite know. He has to see the stuff first.

We walk over to a telephone booth to call. It’s Børre who is doing the talking. I can hear him ask if Jessica is home. When somebody at the other end of the line wants to know who’s asking, Børre says it is he who’s calling. Børre.

Jessica and he talk for quite a while. Børre says yes a few times and Power Rangers a few times. Then he gets the address and hangs up.

The pearl ear studs and the brooch are sold, but none of the other things.

Børre’s on fire.

Jessica meets us on the doorstep. She is about twelve and wears her hair in a pigtail. Her parents are also home. And an older sister who looks a little like the one who drove a car and sang in the music video I saw on my brother’s TV. She looks my age.

We shake hands with everybody.

Jessica’s father is quite taken with the Volvo. He can tell it’s the latest model.

Børre and Jessica disappear into Jessica’s room.

I get invited for coffee and cookies.

The parents think it’s a little embarrassing that Jessica has put the note up in the store. They are worried people might think they are short of money and that Jessica isn’t getting an allowance. They explain that it is not the case. They are no worse off than other people, they say.

When Jessica’s mother is about to pour me coffee, I have to say I don’t drink coffee. She asks me what I’d like instead, and I tell her water or soda is perfectly fine. Or squash. She disappears into the kitchen.

Jessica’s father comments that it’s unusual not to drink coffee. He is right, of course. I have this discussion every time someone discovers that I don’t drink coffee. I explain that I don’t disregard the fact that I some day might start drinking coffee, but that I so far haven’t taken to it. I have actually never drunk it. I’ve had coffee in my mouth, but never swallowed. Now Jessica’s mother is returning with a glass of orange squash.

Jessica’s father is talking about cars. He has a Volvo himself, he says. And there’s that thing about Volvo that if you’ve ever had one, trying other cars is out of the question. He came close to buying a Japanese car once, but abandoned the idea. The car didn’t really have anything going for it. Volvo, however. Now there’s a car. Safety. It’s like a good friend. No nonsense, ever. And he puts down his coffee cup to make a hand gesture that seems to mean: full speed, forever. And sunshiny days.

While he is talking, I sit looking towards Jessica’s older sister, Lise. She is looking indulgently at her father. She is pretty.

I tell her father that I agree. Volvo is good. Then I ask Lise what she does for a living.

She’s trying to become a photographer, she says. She takes pictures for a couple of women’s magazines. But she’d prefer to take her own pictures.

I tell her I also photograph occasionally. I have a camera, I tell her. Nikon.

Nikon’s the best, says the father.

Nikon’s good, says Lise.

Børre and Jessica are emerging from Jessica’s room. Børre is carrying a box of Power Rangers pictures, a bottle of Henna shampoo and a piggy bank shaped like a duck. He’s grinning from ear to ear, and asks me for 35 kroner.

When we’re about to leave, Jessica’s mother asks if we wouldn’t like to stay for supper. It won’t be long now. I feel it would be going too far, and besides I have to return the car. I decline politely, telling her that we unfortunately have an appointment. We thank them for their hospitality and for the sale, and Jessica and her family wave us off.

As I put the car into second gear, I look at Lise one last time. In the rear-view mirror. It’s been a long while since I’ve looked at a girl and thought that she’s the kind I’d like to see more often, maybe as often as every day. But I am thinking it now. She ought to be sitting beside me, in the passenger seat, wearing a red sweater. And we ought to drive here and there. Together. I think everything will be a lot better when I get a girlfriend. It’s a terribly immature thought. But I am still likely to hope it might be true. I would in any case not exclude it.

Børre is happy with his day. I have given him a coin that he has deposited into his piggy bank. When I ask him what he is going to do with a bottle of Henna shampoo, he says he is going to give it to his mum. I can see he’s looking forward to it.

Børre is sleeping now. He was very tired. We were playing with his electric racing car track until long after he was supposed to be in bed. I let him win. And then we played a word game where you had to say the first word you could think of. Quickly. I had hoped it would be like I’d say sun, for example, and Børre summer, but it soon fell apart. Børre kept saying poo. No matter what I said, he’d say poo. And then he laughed a lot. But now he’s sleeping.

I went over to my brother’s flat and sent a fax to America. I wrote Volvo – full speed, forever. And sunshiny days.

I also fetched a woolly jumper. Now I’m sitting on Børre’s balcony drinking gin and tonic. His parents have a cupboard full of bottles. When I’ve drunk myself to courage, I plan to read on in the scary book about time. Now I’m reading. Paul writes about Einstein. I understand that Einstein is my friend.

It somehow appears to be integrated in his theory that past, present and future exist side by side. It’s one of the con-sequences of the theory of relativity. Naturally, I don’t grasp how it’s possible, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t give a shit about how it’s possible. The point is that I feel a little more at ease after having read it. I refill my glass and continue.

It excites me enormously to read that the experts (whoever they may be) disagree about the nature of time. Some of them want there to be defined, once and for all, a kind of universal time that can function as a measure of change, while others think one should declare the concept of time null and void, as non-existent. We can still have watches. We can keep measuring change in seconds and hours and years, but the idea of time as something which is just there is useless. The latter group has my full sympathy. As far as I am able to, I will lobby for the eventual recognition of their views.

All of this attracts me more and more. My existence is developing some distance from itself. Perspective. Perspective is one of those things one ought to be able to purchase and administer intravenously.

Paul’s not afraid of the big thoughts. He writes about eternity now. What’s important to know about eternity is that it’s not just a very big number, he says.

Eternity is something very different from what is simply vastly, incredibly huge. If the universe has unlimited time at its disposal, it does not simply mean that everything can happen. It means that everything will happen. No matter how improbable it is or how much time it will take, it will happen sooner or later. That means that if I were to live forever, I would do everything and experience everything. Something like that would only be interesting if my brain were able to think an infinite number of thoughts. I honestly don’t know if it is.

I put the book down to see if I can think of something. Something new. Anything. I close my eyes and take a few sips of gin and tonic. First I don’t think about anything in particular, but then I think about Lise. In a way it is a new thought. It’ll do. But there’s more. I see pictures. A combine harvester and a beach. And a fish. I don’t know whether or not I could call them thoughts, but at least it’s all new. I doubt if I’m imaginative enough to live forever.

Now Paul’s getting hardcore. He’s saying that everything points to the universe having had a precise beginning, and that it will also have an end. Paul says that one day, everything we know will disappear. That’s what he’s saying.

As a consequence of the Big Bang, the universe is expanding in all directions. The force driving it outward is great, but things indicate that the mass of the universe one day will have a gravity that in total will be more powerful than that force. The movement will then stop, and stars and systems and whatever all of it is, will contract again. Everything will go into reverse, and in the end it’ll all simply collapse. Paul calls it
the Big Crunch.

After that nothing will happen, not a turd. The same way nothing happened before the Big Bang, simply because there was no ‘before’ in which it could happen. Maybe the universe will start contracting in a hundred billion years, but it could also linger on for a billion billion years. And after that we’ll have as many years to pack our bags and prepare for the end.

I love these numbers. Paul’s an absolute fiend with numbers. Somewhere in the book he operates with a number he claims will be a one with several million noughts attached to it. It has to do with the distance, in light years, to a celestial phenomenon or a system of something that is located somewhere completely other than our solar system.

He also mentions a prognosis that concludes that the total number of galaxies in the universe seems to be in the region of ten billion, and that each of them has about a hundred billion stars the size of the sun. These numbers are so absurd that I strangely enough find myself in a good mood. It’s all so immense. I think Paul feels a bit like this as well. There is so little I can do to make a difference. It is liberating.

My own responsibility is decreasing considerably. I can feel it right now. The sense of responsibility is diminishing. At an enormous rate. I am hardly anything at all. Strictly speaking, that ought to be a frightening thought, but I don’t experience it that way. Maybe it’s the alcohol playing with me.

This thing about the universe apparently having an end naturally puts a damper on things. Any ideas I might have had about eternal life are sort of getting stuck in the throat. But it doesn’t seem to bother me. Not now. On the contrary. I feel more alive than in a long while. Suddenly it feels good to have a deadline to relate to. As a matter of fact, I’ve always worked well under pressure.

If we are allowed to carry on down here for another few thousand or million years, I’ll be happy. Afterwards the universe can explode and collapse as much as it wants.

What’s hectic about all this is the thought that I haven’t asked to be here. I am just here. So is everybody else. We are all here. But we haven’t asked to be. It’s not our fault.

Profoundly lyrical, I am sitting gazing out into the night when Børre comes shuffling in. He has woken up because he was having a scary and dangerous dream. He climbs up on my lap and I wrap him in my woolly jumper. I pat him and tell him not to be afraid. It was just a dream. And tomorrow is a new day. Børre rubs his eyes and asks if I can sing a song. Of course I can. I can sing ‘Fola Fola Blakken’
⁵
. It’s one of the nicest things I know. When the boy comes smiling into the barn with word from father that Blakken is going to rest, that’s when it all fits together. You dream about that, Blakken. Just eat, just stand easy. Maybe wander around the yard, with junior on your neck.