Mum was washing the dishes when I went to the kitchen.
‘Karl Ove,’ she said. ‘I’ve just had a thought. Dad had a typewriter once. It’s probably still around. I can’t imagine he would have taken it with him. Have a look up in the barn, in the cardboard boxes.’
‘He had a typewriter?’
‘Yes, he did. He used it to write letters for a few years.’
She rinsed a glass in cold water and placed it upside down on the grooves in the drainer.
‘During the first few years we were together he wrote poems as well.’
‘Dad?’
‘Yes, he was very taken by poetry. Obstfelder was his favourite. He liked Vilhelm Krag as well, I remember. The Romantics.’
‘Dad?’ I repeated.
Mum smiled.
‘They weren’t very good though.’
‘I can believe that,’ I said, and went into the hall, put on my shoes and walked up to the back of the barn, which actually was the front because this was where the great barn door was, and inside was where the hay was stacked. The floor beneath, which dad had used, consisted of small rooms which had been converted into a flat in the 1970s. But here nothing had been done.
I went in and thought, as I had done so many times before, it was strange that we owned such a large room. And that we didn’t use it for anything.
Well, except for storage, that is.
All the old farming implements hung on the walclass="underline" cartwheels, harnesses, rusty scythes, mucking-out forks and hoes. In some places dad had written the nicknames he had used for me, in chalk, he did that when we moved in and when he was so happy about everything.
They were still there.
Kaklove
Loffe
Love
Klove
Kykkeliklove
Boxes were stacked against the wall facing me. I had never looked inside them. That would have been inconceivable when dad lived here, he often sat in the flat beneath the old floorboards and would definitely have come up to check if anyone had been walking around. And then I would have had to have an extremely good reason for being here, let alone rummaging through our old possessions.
I found clothes I remembered mum and dad wearing when I was smaller: flared trousers they must have bought the winter they had been in London together because you couldn’t get such big bell-bottoms in Norway, even in the 1970s, mum’s white coat, dad’s large orange jacket with the brown lining he had worn to go fishing, shawls and skirts and scarves, sunglasses, belts, boots and shoes. Then there was a box of pictures we used to have on the walls. A couple of boxes containing old kitchen utensils.
But no typewriter!
I opened a couple more boxes, flicked through them. Came to one containing what looked like magazines in plastic bags.
Comics I had forgotten I had?
I opened the top one.
They were porn mags.
I opened the next.
Also porn mags.
A whole removal chest full of pornographic magazines?
Whose were they?
I laid some of them on the floor and began to leaf through. Most were from the 60s and 70s. The centrefolds had bikini marks; all the breasts and bottoms were white. Many of the women were posing outdoors. Standing behind trees, lying in fields, all the colours of the 70s, big breasts, some sagging, with big nipples.
I sat there with an erection, turning the pages. A couple of the magazines were from the 80s and there was nothing strange about them. The ones from the 60s had no shots of girls with their legs open.
Had he had these magazines at home during all that time? Down in his office?
And, not least, had he actually bought them?
I put them in a pile and stood musing. I ought to hide them. First of all this wasn’t anything mum should see. Second I would like to go through them again.
Or would I?
He had read them. He had pored over them.
I couldn’t do that. It was too disgusting.
I decided to put them all back as they had been. Mum would never go through these boxes anyway.
I couldn’t make this add up. All the years when I had been small, indeed, oh God, from the time before I was born until last year, he had been buying porn mags and keeping them at home.
Shit.
I opened the other boxes, and in the penultimate one I found the typewriter. It was an old manual model, I should have known, and if I had seen it before the magazines I would have been disappointed, I might even have rejected it and insisted on mum or dad buying me another one, but now, after finding his magazines, it didn’t matter.
I carried it back and showed it to mum, who was resting on the sofa.
‘That’s good enough, isn’t it?’ she said, her eyes half-closed.
‘Yes, it’ll have to do,’ I said. ‘Are you going to sleep?’
‘I’ll just have forty winks. Can you wake me in half an hour if I’m not up?’
‘OK,’ I said and went up to my room, where I read Lisbeth’s letter once again.
She had written unequivocally that she loved me.
No one had ever done that before.
Was that how it was with Hanne? When I said I loved her? Because I didn’t love Lisbeth. I liked her writing that she loved me, but it meant no more than that. It was nice, and I was happy that she had written it, but it existed outside me, she existed outside me. Not like Hanne.
Was that how Hanne felt about me?
That was what she said.
Was she playing with me?
Why didn’t she want me? Want to be with me?
Oh, how I wanted her!
That was all I wanted. She was all I wanted!
Really.
But if she didn’t want me I wasn’t going to get any further. So it didn’t matter.
I decided to give her a taste of her own medicine. It wouldn’t matter anyway.
I stood up, went downstairs to the telephone, lifted the receiver and dialled all the numbers except the last. Gazed out of the window. Two blackbirds were in the bush across the drive, pecking at the small red berries growing on it. Mefisto watched from a crouch position, his tail wagging to and fro.
I dialled the last number.
‘Yes, hello,’ Hanne’s father said.
I hated it when he answered because his daughter was going out with someone else, not me, and he knew what I was trying to do. Sometimes we chatted for more than an hour on the phone. So he probably didn’t like me phoning.
‘Hello, Karl Ove here,’ I said. ‘Is Hanne in?’
‘Just a moment, Karl Ove, and I’ll have a look.’
I heard his footsteps going down the stairs and watched Mefisto creep closer to the two birds, which continued to jerk their heads and peck at the red berries undeterred. Then came the sound of light steps and I knew it was Hanne, and my heart beat faster.
‘Hi!’ she said. ‘Funny you should ring. I was just thinking about you!’
‘What were you thinking?’ I said.
‘About you, that was all.’
‘What are you doing this evening?’
‘I’m studying. French. It’s a level up from last year. Quite difficult. How’s it going with your French?’
‘Same as last year. I knew nothing then, and I know nothing now. Do you remember the test I got a Good in?’
‘Yes, I do. You were proud of that.’
‘Was I? Well, usually I got Poor. So, of course I was pleased. But what I did was incredibly simple. The text was long, right, with lots of French words in it. So I just used them in my answer, adapted them a bit and added a few of my own. And, hey presto, a Good.’
‘You’re so smart!’
‘Yes, aren’t I.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Well, nothing special actually. I’ve received a letter I’ve read a few times.’
‘Oh? Who from?’
‘A girl I met in Denmark.’