I shrugged. ‘You’ve got to keep some things private.’
‘You devil! Of all the people I know, you’re the one I know least about. But that’s just two.’
The big man with the enormous gut and the ever-open mouth stood by the fence watching us as we went past.
‘Quite a family, they are,’ I said.
‘Now, don’t you wriggle out of it,’ Espen said. ‘There are three left. I’ll list mine afterwards, if you’re interested.’
‘OK. There was an Icelandic girl working at an ice cream stand next to mine in the summer. When I was flogging cassettes on the street in Arendal. I went back to hers one night.’
‘Icelandic!’ Espen said. ‘Sounds great.’
‘Yes, it was as well,’ I said. ‘And then there were two one-night stands in town. I don’t even know their names.’
We drove down the last hill. The deciduous trees were as compact as a wall along the river. At the bottom the countryside opened out and I looked across the field to the small football pitch, where three tiny figures were shooting at a fourth in goal.
‘And yours?’ I said.
‘There’s no time for that now. We’re here.’
‘Come on,’ I said.
He laughed and stopped the car.
‘See you tomorrow!’ he said.
‘You bastard,’ I said, opened the door and walked up to the house. As I listened to the sound of his car hammering down the hill and soon disappearing, I reflected that I had given him too much information, it would have been better if I had just said it was none of his business. That is what he would have said.
How come he could do it and I couldn’t?
He didn’t rate girls as highly as I did, that was one thing. Not that he liked them any less than me, far from it, but perhaps he didn’t consider them better than him, put them on such a high pedestal that you couldn’t chat to them or do normal things with them; for him they were on the same level or perhaps he was even higher than them, for if there was one thing he had it was self-confidence. That meant he didn’t care, and when they saw that, he was someone they wanted to conquer. I looked upon them as completely unapproachable creatures, indeed, as angels of a sort, I loved everything about them, from the veins in the skin over their wrists to the curves of their ears, and if I saw a breast under a T-shirt or a naked thigh under a summer dress, it was as though everything in my insides was let loose, as though everything began to swirl around and the immense desire that then arose was as light as light itself, as light as air, and in it there was a notion that everything was possible, not only here but everywhere and not only now but for ever. At the same time as all this arose inside me, a consciousness shot up from below, like a water spout, it was heavy and dark, there was abandon, resignation, impotence, the world closing in on me. There was the awkwardness, the silence, the scared eyes. There were the flushed cheeks and the great unease.
But there were other reasons too. There was something I couldn’t do and something I didn’t understand. There were secrets and there was darkness, there were shady dealings and there was laughter that jeered at everything. Oh, I sensed it, but I knew nothing about it. Nothing.
I stuffed Bassen’s letter in my pocket and hurried up the hill. Nils Erik was supposed to be picking me up in half an hour and before that I had to have something to eat.
A couple of hours later we were driving along the main street of Finnsnes. Coming here from Oslo and Tromsø, I had regarded Finnsnes as a crummy little hole, but now, only five days later, coming from Håfjord it seemed like a large, complex, almost sophisticated place, rich with possibilities.
Nils Erik parked in the supermarket car park and then we walked off to find a Vinmonopol. I bought a bottle of Koskenkorva vodka for the party, four bottles of white wine and half a bottle of whisky to take home with me; Nils Erik bought three bottles of red wine, which came as no surprise, he was the red-wine type, not a beer and spirits man. After we had stowed the bottles in the boot I took him along to an electrical goods shop that also sold stereos. Mine wasn’t good enough, I had thought that for quite a while, and now that I had a steady job I decided to do something about it.
In the shop they had only racks, they weren’t the best, but I could buy a decent stereo later, I reckoned, and looked around for an assistant.
A man was standing behind the counter with his back to us, opening a large cardboard box with a small paperknife. I walked over.
‘I need some help,’ I said.
He turned to face me.
‘Just a moment,’ he said.
I went back to the wall of stereo racks. Waved to Nils Erik, who was flicking through a stand full of records.
‘Which one would you buy?’ I said.
‘None of them,’ he said. ‘Racks are shit.’
‘Agreed,’ I said. ‘But this is probably all they’ve got. And I only want it for while I’m up here.’
He looked at me.
‘Are you shitting money? Or is Knausgaard a family of shipowners? You never told me!’
‘You can get one on HP. Look, 3,499 kroner for that one. That’s only a few hundred a month.’
The assistant straightened up and looked around for me. A thin man with a bit of a gut, metal-rimmed glasses and a comb-over.
I pointed to the Hitachi rack.
‘I’d like that one,’ I said. ‘I can buy it on HP, can’t I?’
‘As long as you’ve got a job, you can,’ he said.
‘I’m working as a teacher in Håfjord,’ I said.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Then you’ll have to fill in a few forms, so if you come over to the counter with me. .’
While I stood writing he went to the storeroom and fetched the stereo system.
‘Is this such a good idea?’ Nils Erik said. ‘With HP you pay almost double in the end. And the monthly instalments are painful. Our salary isn’t that good, either.’
I glared at him. ‘Are you my mum or what?’
‘OK, OK, it’s your business,’ he said and went back to the records.
‘Yes, it is.’
At that moment the assistant returned from the storeroom with a large cardboard box in his arms. He handed it to me, I held it while he checked the papers and my ID, and when he was satisfied, I carried it to the car and placed it on the rear seat.
The next and final item on the agenda was the supermarket. Each trundling a trolley in front of us, we walked around plucking goods that weren’t available in the village shop from the shelves. My first target was two packets of cigarettes. At the back of the shop, next to the fruit counter, while Nils Erik was over by the pasta, I put the packets in my jacket, one in each pocket, then went on filling the trolley with food as normal. I always stole cigarettes when I shopped in supermarkets, and it was completely foolproof, I had never been caught. Stealing was closely related to freedom for me, about not giving a shit, doing what you wanted, not what you were supposed to do. It was a rebellious, nonconformist act while, as it were, pushing my personality towards one of the places where I wanted it to be. I stole, I was someone who stole.
It always went well, nevertheless I was nervous as I pushed my trolley towards the little island where the cashier sat. But there was nothing unusual about her expression and there were no men discreetly approaching from any direction, so I placed the items on the conveyor belt one by one with my sweaty hands, paid, packed them into a bag and walked, quickly but not conspicuously so, out of the shop, then I stopped, lit up and waited for Nils Erik, who arrived at my side a minute later carrying two bulging plastic bags.
The first kilometres were driven in silence. I was still annoyed with him for his moralising tone in the shop where I had bought the stereo. I hated it when people interfered in what I was doing, regardless of whether it was my mother, my brother, my teacher or my best friend: I didn’t want to know. No one had any business telling me what to do.