‘But that wasn’t me! It was her! She just came up to me! Then she put her hand on my chest. Like this.’
I placed my hand flat against his chest.
‘Hey, stop that!’ he shouted.
We laughed.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking at me. ‘Do you think I’ll ever get a girl? Honestly?’
‘Ever? Honestly?’
‘Cut the crap. Do you think there’s someone who will have me?’
Jøgge was the only person I knew who could ask questions like that and really mean them. He could be completely open. He was as honest as the day was long. But good-looking? Maybe not many would call him that. Nor elegant. Robust, that was perhaps the word. Solid. A hundred per cent reliable. Intelligent. A good person. A sense of humour. But he was no male model.
‘There’s got to be someone,’ I said. ‘You aim far too high. That’s your problem. You want. . well, who do you want?’
‘Cindy Crawford,’ he said.
‘Now you cut the crap,’ I said. ‘Come on. Which girls do you usually talk about?’
‘Kristin. Inger. Merethe. Wenche. Therese.’
I spread out my arms.
‘There you are. The cream! You’ll never get any of them! You’ve got to understand that!’
‘But those are the ones I want,’ he said with his broadest grin.
‘Same here,’ I said.
‘Oh?’ he said, turning his head towards me. ‘Thought it was just Hanne with you?’
‘That’s something else.’
‘What’s that then?’
‘Love.’
‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘Think I’ll join the others.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
They were playing cards around a table in the café, drinking Coke now; we were approaching land. I sat down with them. Harald, his protegé Ekse, Helge and Tor Erling were there. They didn’t like me, I had no real relationship with any of them, except on occasions like this. I was tolerated, but no more than that. A sarcastic comment was never far away. It didn’t matter though, I couldn’t give a shit about them.
Jøgge was different. We had been in the same class for two years, discussed politics until smoke came out of our ears, he was a Fremskrittsparti man, a right-winger of all things, I was a Sosialistisk Venstreparti supporter, the left. He liked good music, strangely enough, out there in farming country he was the only person I knew who had an ounce of good taste. He had lost his father when he was small, lived at home with his mother and younger brother, he had always had big responsibilities. Now and then people tried to tease him, he was an easy target, but he just laughed and so they gave up. The crowd we were sitting with used to bait him in a good-natured way and if he reacted they would just imitate his laugh, then he went quiet or laughed along with them.
Yes, he was a good man. He went to the business gymnas, as a couple of others in the team did, the rest went to the technical school, and I had written a few essays for him and been paid for it, he had been concerned that they shouldn’t be too good, the teachers would never swallow that. Once, when he had been in the danger zone, I had written a poem for him to hand in and his teacher considered that way out of character for Jøgge. But he scraped through; he had been obliged to interpret this poem, which he did satisfactorily and was awarded a pass grade.
I had been a little disappointed because I had put my heart and soul into that poem and I’d had a top grade in mind. But this was the business gymnas, so what could you expect?
In town, in one of the cafés, I would have probably looked in a different direction if Jøgge had walked in, he was a different breed, the wrong breed, but he may have known that himself. At any rate, I never saw him in such surroundings.
‘Hey, Casanova, want another beer?’ he said now.
‘Why not,’ I said. ‘But who are you then? Anti-Casanova?’
‘My name is Bøhn, Jørgen Bøhn,’ he said and laughed.
An hour and a half later I walked ashore in Kristiansand with my big seaman’s kitbag over my shoulder. The others were going up to Tveit, I was going to a party with Bassen, who was waiting for me when I came out of customs.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Had a good summer?’
‘So-so. And you?’
‘Good.’
‘Any women?’ I said.
‘Of course. A couple, I suppose.’
He laughed, and we headed for the bus station to catch a bus to the ferry quay. We had a kind of competition running that year, to see who could make out with most girls in our class, we chatted about that as we sat drinking beer and waiting for Siv to come in her boat and collect us. The approaching night was the last chance to change the score, which was heavily weighted in Bassen’s favour: he had snogged seven; I had snogged only four.
Occasionally I wondered what school would be like in the autumn. He was going down the science route, I was doing social subjects, until now we had been in the same class, which meant it was natural to hang out together.
In one of the first lessons we had sat next to each other, and after the form teacher had handed out slips of paper for us to write down three personal qualities we had Bassen had looked at my answer. Sombre, torpid and serious, I had written.
‘Are you a complete idiot?’ he had said. ‘You should add lacking in self-knowledge! I’ve never seen anything like it. You aren’t bloody sombre or torpid, are you. And there’s no way you’re serious, either. Who’s put these ideas in your head?’
‘What did you write then?’
He showed me.
Down to earth, honest, randy as hell.
‘Chuck your piece of paper away. You can’t write that!’ Bassen said.
I did as he said. Then on a new piece I wrote, intelligent, shy, but not really.
‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Jesus! Sombre and torpid!’
The first time I went to his house, late that autumn, I was filled with respect, I could hardly believe it, he was all I wanted to be, and even later, when we saw more of each other, that thought was never far away. Also now. His presence pervaded every part of me, I admired everything he did, I noticed every look he cast, even across the sea in boredom, and reflected on it.
Why did he want to meet me? I had nothing that was of any use to him.
When we were together I always left early so that he would not discover how boring I really was. There was a kind of fever in me, two conflicting emotions, such as on the spring morning when we skived off school and went by moped back to his and listened to records on the lawn. It was fantastic, yet I had to bring it to a close, something told me I wasn’t worthy or couldn’t fulfil his expectations. So I lay on his lawn with my eyes closed, like a cat on hot bricks, listening to Talk Talk, whom we had discovered at the same time. ‘It’s my life,’ they sang, and everything should have been great, it was spring, I was sixteen years old, had skived off school for the first time and was lying on the grass with my new friend. But it wasn’t great, it was unbearable.
He probably thought I feared a reprimand for skipping school and that was why I got up to go. How could he have known that it was because it was much too good? Because I liked him too much.
Now we hadn’t said anything for perhaps five minutes.
I rolled a cigarette to fill the silence with a normal activity. He glanced at me. Took a packet of Prince Mild from his shirt pocket, poked a filter tip in his mouth.
‘Got a light?’ he said.
I passed him a yellow Bic lighter. He lit up and blew out a cloud of smoke, which hung in the air for a few seconds in front of him before dissolving.