I was overcome by the same feelings, but everything else was different: I wasn’t thirteen, I was eighteen and not their classmate but their teacher.
They couldn’t see my feelings. They couldn’t know anything about what stirred inside me. I was their young teacher, and I smiled at them.
‘I’m going to read out what you’ve written in the class,’ I said. ‘So you might want to choose your material with a little more prudence?’
‘Prudence?’ Vivian said. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Look it up when you get inside,’ I said.
‘Typical of you,’ Andrea said. ‘We always have to look words up. Look it up, look it up! Can’t you just tell us?’
‘He doesn’t know himself,’ Vivian said.
‘Five more minutes,’ I said. ‘Then you have to go back inside.’
I walked towards the entrance, heard them laughing behind me, I felt such warmth for them, not only for them though, for all the pupils and all the people in the village, in fact, for everyone in the world.
It was that kind of day.
Eleven years later I was sitting in the study of our first flat in Bergen answering emails when the phone rang.
‘Hello, Karl Ove speaking,’ I said.
‘Hi, this is Vivian.’
‘Vivian?’
The moment she said her name everything went cold and black inside me.
‘Yes. Don’t you remember me? You were our teacher.’
There wasn’t a hint of accusation in her voice. I rubbed my hand, which was clammy, on my thigh.
‘Of course I remember you!’ I said. ‘How are things?’
‘Fantastic! I’m here with Andrea. We read about you in the paper, and then we saw you were going to give a reading in Tromsø. And so we thought perhaps we could meet you.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘That would be nice.’
‘We’ve read your book. It was brilliant!’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Yes! Andrea does too.’
To avoid going into detail about what was actually in the book, to nip that discussion in the bud, I asked what they were doing now.
‘I’m working at the fish-processing factory. No great surprises there. And Andrea’s studying in Tromsø.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘It’ll be great fun to meet you again. Should we arrange a time and place now?’
She suggested a café close to where I was going to read, some hours before. I said OK, see you then, and we rang off. A few weeks later I opened the café door and saw them sitting at the back of the room, they laughed when they spotted me, said I hadn’t changed at all. But you have, I said, and indeed they had, for although their faces were the same, and the way they behaved, they were adults now and the zone of ambivalence they had lived in then was completely gone. The woman in them held undisputed sway now.
I took off my coat, went over to the counter and ordered a coffee. I was nervous, they had both read the novel and would probably have recognised themselves in it. I decided to take the bull by the horns. Sat down, lit a cigarette, so you’ve read the novel, I said. Yes, they both replied, and nodded. It’s not you I was writing about, you know, although I’m sure there are similarities, I said. Enormous similarities, Andrea added. But don’t worry about it, it’s just funny, that’s all.
They told me about everything that had happened in the village since I was there, and it was not so little. The biggest sensation was a sex scandal at the school, which had led to a conviction and prison, and the village had been split into two camps. Otherwise lots of the same teachers were still at the school. Vivian often met the people she had known then, as well as the fishermen who had been my age at the time, of course. Andrea lived in Tromsø, where she was a student, and went home during the holidays and for the odd weekend.
I treated them as if they were still thirteen years old, the mould was already set, I couldn’t change that, and when I left an hour later it struck me how stupid that was, especially with regard to Andrea.
They went and listened to the reading and subsequent discussion, came over when it was finished and said their goodbyes, I left with Tore, whom I had done my reading with, and a couple of others and drank all evening. Later that night I saw Andrea again, she was standing with a guy in a taxi queue, he was behind her and she stretched her hands back while he kissed her neck and then stroked her breasts. An almost desperate feeling of failure came over me then, I crossed the street, she didn’t see me or pretended she hadn’t seen me, and I thought, I could be with her now if I had played my cards right. But I was married, and I wasn’t playing a game, so I never got further than the thought, which pursued me across the ensuing months and years: I should at least have tried to get her out of my mind.
Two weeks after Vidar had sat down on the edge of Nils Erik’s bed and asked where I was I went south for the Easter holiday.
Mum, who was standing on the quay in Lavik when I arrived, seemed tired, she had worked a lot that year and when she wasn’t working was looking after her parents in Sørbøvåg.
During the day we chatted, she did all the cooking and I lay on the sofa reading or walked down to the mall in Førde to do the shopping, in the evening we watched TV.
She told me that Jon Olav was also home, I rang him, we arranged to meet in Førde the next night. He had grown up in Dale, an hour’s drive away, and the disco where we went was full of people he knew.
I drank beer and talked to him, and away from the reservation, which was how I had come to consider Håfjord, everything felt much simpler and easier. I said I was thinking of applying for a writing course at the Skrivekunstakademi in Hordaland. He had never heard of it even though it was in Bergen, the town where he was studying. But it was a new course, this year’s intake was the first.
‘Who are the teachers then?’ he said.
‘I’ve never heard of them. Think they’re some obscure Vestland writers. Ragnar Hovland, Jon Fosse and Rolf Sagen. You heard of them?’
Jon Olav shook his head.
‘It’s a bit of a poor do that it’s such a local affair,’ I said. ‘But it’s one year and you can get a study loan. So at least I’d be able to write full time.’
‘In your last letter you were going to Goldsmiths in London,’ he said.
I nodded. ‘I’ll apply there too. Yngve got me the address, and I’ve just written off for application forms.’
Jon Olav was scanning the back of the disco, which was packed, it was the first day it had been open since the weekend.
‘I’ll just be a minute,’ he said.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I said.
Oh, the pleasure of being in a place where no one knew me!
Felt the alcohol going to my head. Smoked a few cigarettes, eyed up some of the girls, relaxed completely for a change.
When he came back an hour later I was sitting on the same stool, in the same posture even, elbow on the bar, chin resting on my hand.
‘I met some gymnas friends,’ he said. ‘We’re over there. Come and join us.’
I slid off the stool and followed him. He stopped by a table at the other end of the room, near the exit.
‘This is my cousin, Karl Ove,’ he said.
Those sitting round the table looked at me without interest and nodded.
In the midst of them was a girl. She was talking to someone on the opposite side of the table and didn’t see me. She laughed and leaned forward with both palms on the table. Her skin was pale, her dark fringe hung over her eyes, but that wasn’t what made me stare at her, it was her eyes, they were blue and at first joyous, only to turn serious and gentle the next second.
There was something French about her, I thought, slipping down onto the chair next to Jon Olav. Her features were beautiful, but it was only when she laughed again that a shiver ran through me.