‘Are you the new teacher?’ asked one of the boys, hanging over the handlebars of his bike.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You’re going to have us,’ he said, spat and pushed his cap further up his forehead. ‘We’re in the ninth class. And him, he’s in the eighth.’
‘Oh yes?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re from the south?’
‘Yes, from Sørland,’ I said.
‘Right,’ he said, nodding, as though indicating the audience was over now and I was free to go.
‘What are your names?’ I said.
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ he said.
They laughed at that. I gave an unabashed smile but felt stupid as I walked past them. He had outmanoeuvred me.
‘What’s your name then?’ he called out after me.
‘Mickey,’ I said. ‘Mickey Mouse.’
‘He’s a comedian as well!’ he shouted.
After I had eaten the hamburger I got undressed and went to bed. It was still only around nine o’clock, the room was as light as if it were the middle of a grey day, and the silence that was everywhere magnified the sounds of every movement I made, so even though I was tired it took me a few hours to fall asleep on this evening too.
I woke in the middle of the night to a door banging somewhere. Immediately afterwards I heard footsteps on the floor above. Half awake, I imagined I was sleeping in dad’s office in Tybakken and it was him walking above me. How on earth had I ended up here, I found myself thinking, before I sank back into the darkness. The next time I woke I was in a state of panic.
Where was I?
In the house in Tybakken? The house in Tveit? Yngve’s bedsit? The youth hostel in Tromsø?
I sat up in bed.
The glances I cast around the room didn’t find anything to hold them; nothing of what I saw gave any meaning. It was as though my whole being were sliding down a slippery wall.
Then I remembered.
Håfjord. I was in Håfjord.
In my own flat in Håfjord.
I lay back in bed and mentally retraced my journey here. Then I imagined the village as it was outside the windows, all the people in all the houses whom I didn’t know and who didn’t know me. Something that could have been expectation, but could also have been fear or insecurity, erupted inside me. I got up and went into the tiny bathroom, showered and put on a green silky shirt, baggy black cotton trousers, stood in front of the window for a while looking down towards the shop, I would have to go there to buy food for breakfast, but not right now.
There were several vehicles in the car park. A little cluster of people was gathered between them. Now and then someone came out of the door carrying shopping bags.
Well, might as well dive right in.
I went into the hall and put on my coat, beret and white basketball boots, glanced at myself in the mirror, straightened my beret, lit a cigarette and went out.
The sky was as serene and grey as yesterday. The mountains plunged into the water on the other side of the fjord. There was something brutal about them, I saw that in a flash, they didn’t care, anything could happen around them, it meant nothing, it was as though they were somewhere else at the same time as being here.
There were five people gathered outside the shop now. Two were old, at least fifty, the other three looked a few years older than me.
They had seen me from way off, I knew, it was inevitable, it wasn’t every day a stranger in a long black coat came down the hill, I imagined.
I raised the cigarette to my mouth and inhaled so deeply that the filter became hot.
Either side of the door hung a white plastic flag advertising the newspaper Verdens Gang. The window was full of green and orange paper plates emblazoned with a variety of special offers, written by hand.
I was fifteen metres away from them now.
Should I say hello? A chirpy, easy-going ‘Hi’?
Stop and talk to them?
Say I was the new teacher? Make a little joke about it?
One of them looked at me. I gave a slight nod.
He didn’t nod back.
Hadn’t he seen it? Had my nod been so slight that it had been perceived as an adjustment of the way I held my head, or a twitch?
Their presence felt like daggers in me. A metre away from the door I threw the cigarette to the ground, stopped and trod on it.
Could I leave it there? Litter the pavement? Or should I pick it up?
No, that would look just a bit too pedantic, wouldn’t it?
To hell with it, I’ll leave it, they’re fishermen, I’m sure they chuck their bloody cigarette ends away when they’ve finished with them!
I placed my hand on the door and pushed, took one of the red shopping baskets and began to move down the aisle between the various shelves. A rotund lady in her mid-thirties was holding a packet of sausages in her hand and saying something to a girl who must have been her daughter. Thin and gangly, she stood there with a sullen, obstinate expression on her face. On the other side of the woman there was a boy of around ten leaning over a rack and rummaging. I put a wholewheat loaf in the basket, a packet of Ali coffee and a box of Earl Grey tea bags. The woman glanced at me, put the sausages in her basket and continued to the other end of the shop with the boy and girl in tow. I took my time, wandered around looking at all the food items, added a brown goat’s cheese from a cabinet, a tin of liver paste and a tube of mayonnaise. Then I picked up a carton of milk and a packet of margarine and went over to the counter, where the woman was now packing her items into a bag while her daughter stood reading a noticeboard by the door.
The assistant nodded to me.
‘Hello,’ I said and started to empty the basket in front of him.
He was small and stocky, his face was broad, his nose curved and his powerful chin covered with a mass of grizzled bristles.
‘Are you the new teacher?’ he said as he was entering the prices on the till beside him. Over by the noticeboard, the girl had turned to look at me.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Arrived yesterday.’
The boy was tugging at her arm; she yanked it free and went out of the door. The boy followed her, and a moment later so did the mother.
I needed oranges. And apples.
I hurried over to the modest fruit counter, filled a bag with some oranges, grabbed a couple of apples and went back to the till, where the assistant was cashing up the last item.
‘And a pouch of Eventyr tobacco and roll-up papers. And Dagbladet.’
‘You’re from the south?’ he said.
I nodded. ‘Kristiansand.’
An elderly man wearing a cloth cap entered the shop.
‘Good morning, Bertil!’ he shouted.
‘Oh, it’s you, is it!’ the assistant said, giving me a wink. I squeezed a smile, paid, put my purchases in a bag and left. One of the people standing outside nodded, I nodded back and then I was out of their range.
Up the hill, I gazed at the mountain rising from the end of the village. It was completely green, all the way to the top, and that was perhaps the most surprising feature of the countryside here, I had expected something bleaker, with less colour, not this green which seemed to resonate everywhere, drowned out only by the greys and blues of the vast sea.
It was a good feeling going back into my flat. It was the first place I had ever been able to call mine, and I enjoyed even the most trivial activities, like hanging up my jacket or putting the milk in the fridge. Admittedly, I had lived for a month in a small flat next to Eg Psychiatric Hospital earlier in the summer, that was where mum had driven me when I moved from the house we had occupied for the last five years, but it wasn’t a proper flat, only a room off a corridor with other rooms where in the old days the unmarried nurses had lived, hence its name the Henhouse, in the same way that the job I had there wasn’t a proper job either, just a short summer temping vacancy without any real responsibility. And then it was in Kristiansand. For me it was impossible to feel free in Kristiansand, there were too many ties with too many people, real and imagined, for me ever to do what I wanted in that town.