How was it?
It was nothing special. It was how it was.
Oh I still cast glances at Liv when I had the opportunity and could do so unobserved, and in English classes a shiver could still go through me when I saw Camilla’s shapely body sitting there, but the mounds and curves, all the softness and grace they possessed, no longer had a disorientating effect, I was no longer fascinated. I saw, and I liked what I saw, but it was not part of me. With Andrea it was different, she was special, but if I was happy when she looked up at me from the corner of her eyes in the way she did, I didn’t let it show, no one could see what I felt, not even her.
What was it I felt?
Well, it was nothing. A tenderness, that was all, something light and sparkling that whistled past and was gone, it had no right to exist.
One day a letter from Kaupanger arrived.
I couldn’t read it standing in the post office or sitting at home or lying in bed, the conditions had to be perfect, so I put it aside, ate with Nils Erik, had a smoke, drank a cup of coffee, then I took the letter with me to the beach, sat on a rock and opened it.
A strong smell of salt and decay rose from around me. The air was still and warmed by the sun, but every so often a gust swept in from the fjord taking everything with it, which then had to be painstakingly built up again. The mountaintops on the other side of the fjord were still white, but if I turned and looked towards the village there was a faint green glimmer on the ground, and although all the low trees and bushes were still leafless they didn’t appear to be dead, as in winter, they stood as though they could sense life was on its way back.
I opened the letter and began to read.
She wrote nothing about herself. Nonetheless she began to take shape within me, I could sense who she was, this is different, I thought. This is quite, quite different.
When I folded the letter and replaced it in the envelope it was as though I was a new person. I walked slowly back to the house. She had an aura around her, and every sentence, no matter how tentative and probing, was testimony to that.
I considered getting on a bus the next morning, catching the boat to Tromsø, flying to Bergen, taking the boat to Sogndal and then simply standing in front of her and declaring that the two of us belonged together.
I couldn’t of course, that would have ruined everything, but that was what I wanted to do.
Instead I sat down and wrote another letter. Any hint of emotion or openness was stifled at birth, this was going to be an eloquent calculating letter that would press all the buttons I had at my disposal, make her laugh, make her reflect, arouse a desire in her to want to know me.
Writing was, after all, something I could do.
On 17 May I sat reading at home the whole day. There was an expectation that teachers would take part in the Constitution Day procession and the subsequent activities, but it was not compulsory, so when the meagre procession passed by on the road outside I was sitting on the sofa and watched it through the window, heard the pathetic flutes and the scattered cheers, lay back and continued reading The Lord of the Rings, which I had read only two years before but had already completely forgotten. I couldn’t get enough of the battle between light and darkness, good and evil, and when the little man not only resisted the superior powers but also showed himself to be the greatest hero of them all, there were tears in my eyes. Oh, how good it was. I had a shower, donned a white shirt and black trousers, put a bottle of vodka into a bag and walked up to Henning’s, where there was a whole gang of people drinking. There was a party on Fugleøya, we drove there a few hours later, one minute I was standing in the car park chatting, the next I was on the dance floor rubbing up against someone or other, or up on an embankment scrapping with Hugo, trying to prove that I wasn’t the weakling everyone took me for. He laughed and threw me to the ground, I jumped up and he threw me to the ground again. He was much smaller than me, so it was humiliating, I ran after him and said he wouldn’t be able to do it again, but he’d had enough and came over, wrapped his arms around me and threw me to the ground with such force that he knocked the air out of my lungs. And that was how they left me, gasping for air like a fish. I took the nearly empty vodka bottle with me and sat on a little mound beside the car park. The light hovered above the countryside. There was something sickly about it, it seemed to me, and I don’t remember anything until I was trying to prise open a door surrounded by young fishermen, I must have told them I had some experience in such matters, presumably I had given the impression that a locked door was no problem for me, I could do a bit of everything, had done a bit of everything, but now, trying all the keys I had found in the drawer downstairs, and then a screwdriver and various other tools, it began to dawn on them that we were not going to get into the locked bedsit in the house Nils Erik and I were renting, and one after the other they trooped back down to the sitting room, which was already bathed in sunlight.
When I woke up I couldn’t remember a thing at first. I didn’t know where I was or what time of day it was. Fear pumped through me.
The light outside told me nothing, it could equally well have been morning as night.
But nothing had happened, had it?
Oh yes, it had. I had run after Hugo and had been thrown to the ground time after time.
I had tried to kiss Vibeke when we were dancing and she had averted her face.
And the girl standing by the entrance, the one with the cheeky expression, I had stopped and exchanged a few words with her, and then I had kissed her.
How old would she have been?
She had told me. She was in the seventh year.
Oh God, was that possible?
Please be kind to me.
Oh no, oh no.
I was a teacher, for goodness’ sake. What if this got out? Teacher kisses thirteen-year-old at party?
God almighty.
I covered my face with my hands. Heard music downstairs, scrambled out of bed, couldn’t stay there being tortured by the awfulness of my deeds. No, I had to be active, move on, talk to someone who would say it didn’t matter, that kind of thing happened.
But it didn’t.
It happened only to me.
Why did I have to kiss her? It had just been a spontaneous action, something I did on bloody impulse, it meant nothing.
Who would believe that?
As I left my bedroom I had to support myself on the wall, I was still drunk. Downstairs, Nils Erik was at the stove frying fish tongues. He turned when I entered the room. He was wearing a checked shirt and a pair of those green hiking pants with loads of pockets.
‘So you’re honouring me with your presence?’ he said with a smile.
‘I’m still drunk,’ I said.
‘I can believe that,’ he said.
I sat down at the kitchen table, rested my head on my hand.
‘Richard was not best pleased today,’ he said. He slipped the spatula under the fried tongues and transferred them to a plate, filled the pan with more tongues coated in white flour. They hissed.
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I said you were ill.’
‘Which was true.’
‘Yes, but he was angry. He was.’
‘I don’t give a shit about him. There’s only a month left now. What’s he going to do? Give me the boot? Besides, I haven’t been ill once all damn year. So it’s no big deal.’
‘Would you like some cod tongues?’
I shook my head and got up.
‘Think I’ll have a bath.’
But it was unbearable lying in hot water staring at the ceiling, it didn’t fill me with peace, on the contrary, it gave all my painful thoughts ample room to spread, so I got out after a few minutes, dried myself, put on my tracksuit, which was the only clean clothing I could find, and lay down on the sofa with Felix Krull instead.