I took out a cigarette and looked down at the waterfall, the last kilometre home was a drag, but I did finally manage to motivate myself and set off with my bag on my back.
As I came up the last hill I saw mum by the barrel we used to burn paper in. A thin, almost transparent flame flickered to and fro over the edge. She caught sight of me and walked down.
‘Hi,’ she said with a smile. ‘How was it?’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Everything all right here?’
She nodded.
‘I’ve been fine,’ she said.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Think I’ll have a shower and change.’
‘You do that,’ she said. ‘I’ve made dinner. Just have to heat it. Are you hungry?’
‘Yes, starving.’
In the evening I sat at my desk reading, but I couldn’t settle, my thoughts ran hither and thither, and everywhere they went they confused me, none of them were as they had been. Now and then I looked out of the window, saw the garden merge imperceptibly into the dense forest behind the little potato patch, felt the trees close to us waiting or listening, darkness always gave me this sense, and as the gentle gusts of wind grew stronger the leaves trembled and the branches swayed. A week ago I had never seen her, hardly knew who she was. Now we were going out.
What about Hanne?
And the girl in the ice cream stand, what had that been?
It was as though I was faced with a jigsaw puzzle made of pieces from several sets. Nothing fitted, nothing made any sense.
I went downstairs to mum in the living room.
‘Are you sure you’ve been fine while I’ve been away?’ I said.
She put down the book she was reading on the table.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I really have been.’
‘You weren’t lonely?’
She smiled. ‘Not at all. I was at work. There was a lot to do. And then it was wonderful to come up here afterwards.’
Presumably roused by our voices, the cat padded across the floor with a sleepy face. He jumped straight into my lap and rested his heavy head on my thigh.
‘How about you?’ she asked.
I shrugged.
‘It was fine,’ I said. ‘I liked selling the cassettes on the street. In a way I lived from hand to mouth. Earned money during the day and spent it at night.’
‘Oh?’ mum said. ‘What did you spend it on?’
‘Well, various things,’ I said. ‘I went out for meals quite often, for example. That costs money. And then I had the odd beer with Yngve. But I’ve saved a bit too. I’ve brought a bag of money back with me. Nearly three thousand kroner.’
I hadn’t counted the money, in fact I had forgotten all about it, so now I got up and went into the hall to check and keep it in something more suitable than a plastic bag.
But the bag wasn’t there.
I had dropped it on the floor just inside the door, hadn’t I?
Yes. On top of the shoes. A white Beisland bag it had been. Full of creased notes.
Had mum put it away?
I went back into the living room.
‘The bag that was in the hall,’ I said. ‘Have you moved it?’
She looked up at me, her index finger keeping her place on the page.
‘A plastic bag in the hall?’ she said. ‘I chucked it away.’
‘Chucked it away? Are you crazy? There was three thousand kroner in it!’
And it wasn’t even mine, it was Rune’s. In fact, he should have had more than that because I had spent quite a chunk of his money during the last few days there.
‘You had money in it?’ mum said. ‘And you left it on the floor? How was I supposed to know?’
‘Where did you throw it?’
‘In the barrel. Where we burn paper.’
‘Have you burned it? How could you? Have you burned the money?’
I shook my hands in the air. Then I dashed into the hall, slipped on a pair of shoes and ran up the slope.
There was the bag.
But was the money in it?
I snatched at it and peered inside.
Oh, thank God. There it was.
I took the bag, emptied the money onto the floor of my room, counted it, there was a bit more than three thousand two hundred kroner, put it in a drawer and went down to the living room.
‘Find it, did you?’ mum said.
I nodded. Put on a record, ran my eye along a bookshelf, eventually picked out Hamsun’s Pan, sat down on the sofa and began to read.
There was a week left before school began and I decided to spend it writing some reviews, went down to town, dropped in on Steinar Vindsland, it was good I came, he said, he had been trying to get hold of me, had rung a couple of times without any luck.
‘Thing is I’m finishing here. I’ve got a new job on Fædrelandsvennen. You can probably carry on here, but I can’t guarantee it, after all it was me who hired you.’
‘That’s a shame,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I have an offer for you. I’ll be responsible for the young adults and music sections. Would you fancy writing for Fevennen? It won’t be record reviews, Sigbjørn Nedland does that, as I’m sure you know. But material for young adults, and then perhaps reviews of gigs and interviews with bands.’
‘Yes, I would,’ I said.
‘Great,’ he said. ‘See you!’
Nye Sørlandet was a sinking ship, that was common knowledge, so this was good news. Fædrelandsvennen was a paper everybody read. If I wrote something there everyone would see it.
I went to Platebørsen and bought five LPs to celebrate my promotion, which was how I considered it. I had taken the money from the plastic bag, the odd couple of hundred kroner wouldn’t make any difference anyway, somehow I would have to find the money to pay Rune.
When I returned home Yngve rang, eager to know what had happened on the last evening. Cecilie had been so strange and secretive and was writing a letter to me.
I told him.
‘So you’re going out with Cecilie?’
‘Yes, that’s about the size of it.’
‘Isn’t that a bit weird?’
‘Yes. Does it matter?’
‘No. . I don’t suppose it does.’
‘Good!’
But it made no sense to me. Two days later the letter arrived. She was confused, it had been like a dream, she wrote, and she ought not to tell me, but when she had left me that evening tears had been streaming down her cheeks. On the Friday I went to see her, we were alone, we had to edge our way forward. We talked about what had actually taken place. She said she had been so intrigued by me after all the things that Kristin had told her and the photos she had seen. She had wondered whether perhaps something might happen, and after she had seen me she wanted something to happen, but it couldn’t, after all we were just the younger siblings. I said I had felt the same. She said Yngve had looked at us one evening, first of all at her, then at me, then at her again. It had been in the air. Yes, I said, and I ached. We didn’t know each other, didn’t know what it was, but then it happened again, suddenly we were embracing, kissing each other and then we went to bed. .
But we didn’t make love. I thought she was so young, we didn’t know each other and I ought to tread carefully. .
No, that was not the real reason.
The real reason was that I came before anything had happened.
I was so ashamed that I lay totally still so as not give myself away.
And not only then, it happened every time we lay together in the ensuing weeks.