One of her sisters.
In the kitchen I took a slice of bread, ate it leaning against the worktop and drank a glass of milk. Went back upstairs and started a letter to Hanne. I wrote that I thought it was best if we never saw each other again.
It felt good to write that, for some reason I wanted to avenge myself on her, to hurt her, to make her think of me as someone she had lost.
I put the letter into an envelope and dropped it into my school bag, where it lay until I bought some stamps after school the following day.
I posted it before catching the bus, convinced this was the right course of action.
In the evening, lying on the sofa and reading a book I had borrowed from the school library — Bjørneboe’s Ere the Cock Crows — it suddenly struck me what I had done.
I loved her, why would I say I never wanted to meet her again?
Regret exploded inside me.
I had to get it back.
I rested the book on the sofa arm and sat up. Should I write another letter and say I didn’t mean what I had written in the previous one? That I wanted to see her despite what I had written.
It would look absolutely idiotic.
I had to ring her.
Before I had time to change my mind, I went into the room where the telephone was and dialled her number.
She answered.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to apologise for the last time I called. I didn’t mean to behave as I did.’
‘You’ve got nothing to apologise for.’
‘Yes, I have. But there’s something else. To cut a long story short, I sent you a letter today.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes. But I didn’t mean what I wrote. I don’t know why I wrote it. Anyway, it’s rubbish. So now I’m wondering if you could do me a favour. Don’t read it. Just throw it away.’
She laughed.
‘Now you’ve really whetted my appetite! Not read it? Do you really imagine I could do that? What did you write?’
‘I can’t say. That’s the whole point!’
She laughed again.
‘You’re strange,’ she said. ‘But why did you write whatever it was you wrote if you didn’t mean it?’
‘I don’t know. I was in a funny mood. But, Hanne, please promise me you won’t read it. Throw it away and pretend it doesn’t exist. Actually it doesn’t really exist anyway, because I don’t mean any of what I wrote.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said. ‘But it is addressed to me. It’s me who decides what to do with it, right?’
‘Yes, of course. I’m just asking you to be extra nice to me.’
‘Is there anything that’s not nice in the letter? Yes, there must be of course.’
‘Now you know at any rate,’ I said. ‘But if you’d like me to go down on my knees and beg, I will. I’m doing it now. I’m on my knees now. Please throw the letter away!’
She laughed.
‘Up on your feet, boy!’ she said.
‘What are you wearing?’ I said.
Seconds passed before she answered.
‘A T-shirt and jogging pants. I didn’t know you would ring. What are you wearing?’
‘Me? A black shirt, black trousers and black socks.’
‘I don’t know why I asked,’ she said and laughed. ‘I’m going to give you such a brightly coloured bobble hat for Christmas that you’ll be embarrassed to walk down the street wearing it, but you’ll have to because I gave it to you. When you see me anyway.’
‘That’s pure evil,’ I said.
‘Yes, you don’t have a monopoly on it,’ she said.
‘What do you mean by that? Surely I’m not evil just because I don’t believe in God?’
‘I’m just teasing you. No, you’re not evil at all. But now they’re calling me. I think they’ve cooked something they want me to taste.’
‘So you’ll throw the letter away?’
She laughed.
‘Bye!’
‘Hanne!’
But by then she had rung off.
The meeting with Steinar Vindsland was brief and was basically him showing me how to write the reviews, there were special forms they used at the newspaper, some boxes at the top had to be filled out in a special way and I was given a stack of them. Then he said I should choose three new releases a week from a record shop with whom they had an arrangement. I could keep the records, that was my fee, OK? Of course, I said. You deliver the reviews to me, he said, and I’ll fix the rest.
He winked and shook my hand. Then he turned and started to read some papers on the desk, and I went into the street, still with the tension from the meeting in my body. It was only half past three and I went to see if dad was at home. I stopped outside the door and rang, nothing happened, I stepped to the side and looked through the window, the house looked empty and I was about to head for the bus stop when his car, a light green Ascona, appeared.
He pulled in by the kerb.
Even before he got out of the car I could see he was the way he used to be. Rigid, severe, controlled. He undid his seat belt, grabbed a bag beside him and placed a foot on the tarmac. He didn’t look at me as he crossed the road.
‘Waiting for me, were you,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thought I’d pop by.’
‘You should ring in advance, you know,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I was in the vicinity, so I. .’ I shrugged.
‘There’s nothing happening here,’ he said. ‘So you may as well catch the bus home.’
‘OK,’ I said.
‘Ring next time, OK?’
‘All right,’ I said.
He turned his back on me and inserted the key in the lock. I started to trudge towards the bus. It was right what he had said: I may as well go. I hadn’t visited him for my sake but for his, and if it wasn’t convenient I wasn’t bothered. Quite the contrary.
He rang at half past ten in the evening. He sounded drunk.
‘Hi, Dad here,’ he said. ‘You haven’t gone to bed?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I like sitting up late.’
‘You dropped by at an inconvenient moment, I’m afraid. But it’s very nice of you to come and visit us. It isn’t that. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Don’t give me yes, of course. It’s important we understand each other.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know it’s important.’
‘I’m sitting here making a few calls to hear how people are, you know. And I’m relaxing with a. .’
Then he used an Østland expression, pjall, an alcoholic drink, which he had recently started to say. Another was slakk, off colour. He had it from Unni. I’m feeling a bit slakk, he had said once, and I had looked at him because it was as though it wasn’t him who had used the word but someone else.
‘We’re having people round for dinner tomorrow evening, a few colleagues, well, you met them up in Sannes, and it would be nice if you had time.’
‘Yes, I’ll come,’ I said. ‘What time?’
‘Six, half past, we thought.’
‘Fine,’ I said.
‘Yes, but we don’t have to ring off already. Or do you want to?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘I believe you do. You don’t want to talk to your old dad.’
‘I do.’
There was a brief pause. He took a swig.
‘I heard you visited grandma and grandad,’ he then said.
‘Yes.’
‘Did they say anything about Unni and me?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘At any rate nothing special.’
‘Now you have to be more precise than that. They said something, but it was nothing special?’
‘They said you’d been there the day before, and then they said they’d met Unni and she was nice.’