I woke to the bell ringing. Outside it had not only stopped raining, as I saw when I got up to open the door, the sky over the village was also blue.
It was Nils Erik.
He was holding his arms to his sides like two brackets, with his knees bent outwards, his lips compressed into a zany smile and his eyes wide and staring.
‘Is this where the party is?’ he squeaked in an old man’s voice.
‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘It’s here. Come in.’
He didn’t move.
‘Are there any. . any. . any really young girls here?’ he said.
‘How young?’
‘Thirteen?’
‘Yep! Come on in! It’s bloody freezing!’
I turned my back on him and went in, took a bottle of white wine from the fridge and opened it.
‘Do you want some white wine?’ I shouted to him.
‘My wine should be as red as a young girl’s blood!’ he wheezed from the hall.
‘Nasty,’ I said. He came into the kitchen with a bottle of red wine in his hand and put it on the worktop. I passed him the corkscrew.
He was wearing a blue Poco Loco shirt, a black leather tie and a pair of red cotton trousers.
The impression he made on people didn’t bother him at any rate, I thought with a smile. Not caring what others thought about him was an essential part of his personality, it seemed.
‘I must say you’re colourful tonight,’ I said.
‘You’ve got to strike while the iron is hot,’ he said. ‘And I’ve heard you have to dress like this if you want to attract women up here.’
‘Like that? Red and blue?’
‘Exactly!’
He put the bottle between his knees and pulled out the cork with a plop.
‘Wonderful sound!’ he said.
‘I’m just going to have a quick shower. Is that all right?’ I said.
He nodded.
‘Of course. I’ll put some music on while you’re in there, OK?’
‘No problem.’
‘No one can say that we aren’t polite young men,’ he said with a laugh. I went into the bathroom, undressed at speed, turned on the water and stepped under the shower, hastily washed under my arms and between my legs, looked at my feet, leaned my head back and wetted my hair, then I turned the shower off, dried, put some gel in my hair, wrapped the towel around my waist and went into the sitting room, past Nils Erik, who was on the sofa with studiously closed eyes listening to David Sylvian, and into the bedroom, where I put on clean underpants and socks, a white shirt and black trousers. I buttoned up my shirt, then put on my shoelace tie and went back to Nils Erik.
‘But I was told that’s exactly how you shouldn’t go dressed!’ he said. ‘If you want to pull. White shirt, shoelace tie with eagle and black pants.’
I tried to come up with a smart retort, but failed.
‘Ha ha,’ I said, filling my glass with white wine and drinking it in one long draught.
The taste was of summer nights, discotheques bursting at the seams, buckets of ice on the tables, gleaming eyes, tanned bare arms.
I shuddered.
‘Not used to drinking?’ Nils Erik said.
I sent him a withering glance and recharged my glass.
‘Have you heard the new Chris Isaak single?’ I said.
He shook his head. I went and put it on.
‘It’s brilliant,’ I said.
We sat for a while without speaking.
I rolled a cigarette and lit it.
‘Did you have a look at my short story?’ I said.
He nodded. I got up and lowered the volume.
‘I read it before I left. It’s good, Karl Ove.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Yes. Lively style. Actually I don’t have much more to say than that. I’m not exactly a literary expert or a writer.’
‘Is there anything you particularly liked?’
He shook his head.
‘Nothing really, no. The writing’s even and good. Hangs together well.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘What do you think about the ending in relation to the rest?’
‘It was a strong ending.’
‘That’s what I want, you know,’ I said. ‘Something completely unexpected, the bit about the father.’
‘It is as well.’
He filled his glass. His lips were already red from the wine.
‘Have you read Saabye Christensen’s Beatles by the way?’ he said.
‘Of course I bloody have,’ I said. ‘It’s my favourite novel. That was what made me decide to become a writer. That and White Niggers by Ambjørnsen.’
‘Guessed as much,’ he said.
‘Oh? Is it similar?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Too similar?’
He smiled.
‘No, I wouldn’t say so. But I can see you were influenced by it.’
‘What did you think of the blood bit? The bit that comes in the middle? Where everything changes into the present tense?’
‘I don’t think I noticed it.’
‘That was what I was most pleased with, in fact. I describe him seeing Gordon’s blood and veins and flesh and sinews. It’s quite intense in the middle there.’
Nils Erik nodded and smiled.
Then there was another silence.
‘It was much easier to write than I’d thought,’ I said. ‘It’s the first short story I’ve ever written. I’d written bits in papers and so on before, but that was quite different. That was sort of why I came up here. I just wanted to try and write a book. And then I began and well. . yes, all I had to do was write. It wasn’t difficult at all.’
‘I see,’ he said. ‘Are you planning to go into writing as a career?’
‘Yes, yes, that’s what this is all about for me. I’m planning to write another short story this weekend. Have you read Hemingway by the way?’
‘Oh yes. Part of growing up.’
‘A bit like that, yes. Straight to the point. Simple and clear.With weight behind it.’
‘Yes.’
I refilled my glass to the brim and drank it in one go.
‘Have you wondered what it would have been like if we had applied for a different school?’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it’s such an incredible quirk of fate that it happened to be Håfjord. It could have been anywhere. Then we would have had to adjust to whoever lived there, wouldn’t we, and life would have been very different from what’s going to happen here.’
‘Not to mention the fact that two different people would have been listening to wine and drinking Chris Isaak. Or vice versa. The wine would have been listening and Chris Isaak drinking. Well, have you ever heard the like? Or is it: have you ever leard the hike? I’m all inside out! Spoutside up! Upside down!’
Nils Erik laughed.
‘Skål, Karl Ove, and I’m glad it’s you sitting there and not someone else!’
We raised our glasses and said skål.
‘Although, if it’d been someone else would I have said the same to him?’
At that moment the doorbell rang.
‘That must be Tor Einar,’ I said, getting up.
He was standing with his back to me and staring down at the village when I opened the door. The grey August light hung between the mountainsides, seemingly of a completely different texture from that which illuminated the sky, for that was blue and gleamed like metal.