‘Have you just got back from China?’ I said, continuing to laugh, closed the door behind me and went into my room, where I undressed and clambered into bed still sniggering. My head felt as if it were a box full of objects swaying to and fro whenever I moved it. Now they were continuing to sway even though my head was still, I noticed, and then I fell asleep.
I woke up with my face aching. I remembered what had happened and sat up in horror.
Then I remembered Yngve was here.
Great.
There was a faint smell of smoke, they had lit the fire. Their low voices could be heard from the floor below, they were probably sitting in the kitchen and having breakfast.
I put on a T-shirt and a pair of trousers and went downstairs.
They looked at me. Yngve smiled.
‘Just need a wash,’ I said and went into the bathroom.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
My nose was slightly crooked, the bone beneath the bridge. In addition, it was extremely swollen and my nostrils were full of crusted blood. I washed it carefully and went back into them.
‘What happened to you yesterday?’ Yngve said.
‘Someone nutted me,’ I said, sat down and put a roll on my plate. ‘I didn’t do anything. A guy at the petrol station came over and just nutted me. Then he ran after the others I was with and chased them down the hill with a knife. Pure thuggery.’
Mum sighed, but she said nothing and in a second it was over because Yngve talked about China, which I assumed he must have been doing for a long time. He was full of it. He talked and talked, and I could visualise it: throngs of people swarming around Kristin when they arrived, attracted by her blonde hair, what fun it had been on the Trans-Siberian Railway, how wild it had been in Tibet and how foreign the colours were. Big yellow rivers and tree-clad cliffs, the alien cities and cheap hotels, the Great Wall of China, ferries and trains, crowds of people everywhere, dogs, hens, as far from the deserted snow-covered frozen countryside as it was possible to be.
Two days later, on New Year’s Eve, Yngve went to Vindilhytta while I went down to Bassen’s wearing shiny new shoes and a dinner suit I had rented. Hanne was there. I drank vodka and juice, I wanted to dance with her, we did, I drank more, I said we should get together even though it was ages since I had last seen her, it was almost an obsession, she laughed off my suggestion, I was offended, danced with other girls, got more and more drunk, and at twelve when everyone gathered together on the road, including people from the other houses in the vicinity, things degenerated, people lit rockets and held them until the very last second so that they whizzed around those standing there, people screamed and shouted, there were bangs and explosions, and I watched Hanne, she was shivering, and she was so beautiful, she really was, why couldn’t I be hers and stand there with my arm around her? I thought, and then a rocket landed by her feet.
People screamed and ran away.
But this was my chance, so I ran forward, I went to kick it away and just as I did, it exploded. It was a bizarre feeling, my calf went all hot, and looking down I saw my trousers in tatters. Blood was flowing. There was even a big hole in my shoe! I refused to go to A & E, someone washed the blood off with a cloth and wound a bandage around my leg, I shouted that I was Hamsun’s Lieutenant Glahn and had shot myself in the foot so that Hanne would realise how much I loved her, jumped around in tattered trousers and with the bandage soaked in blood, I’m Lieutenant Glahn, I yelled, and I have a vague memory of sitting on a chair in a corner and crying, but I am not absolutely sure. At any rate I got home at five, I remember asking the taxi driver to stop by the post boxes, as I always did, so the engine noise wouldn’t wake mum, and I put my trousers and shoes at the back of the wardrobe before going to sleep. The next morning I took off the bandage, put it in a plastic bag and shoved it to the bottom of the rubbish bin, washed the wound, which was quite deep, put a plaster over it and went in to have a hearty breakfast.
We don’t live our lives alone, but that doesn’t mean we see those alongside whom we live our lives. When dad moved to Northern Norway and was no longer physically in front of me with his body and his voice, his temperament and his eyes, in a way he disappeared out of my life, in the sense that he was reduced to a kind of discomfort I occasionally felt when he rang or when something reminded me of him, then a kind of zone within me was activated and in that zone lay all my feelings for him, but he was not there.
Later, in his notebooks, I read about the Christmas when he rang from the Canary Islands and the weeks that followed. Here he stands before me as he was, in mid-life, and perhaps that is why reading them is so painful for me, he wasn’t only much more than my feelings for him but infinitely more, a complete and living person in the midst of his life.
It was Yngve who found his notebooks. A few weeks after the funeral he rented a large car, drove back to Kristiansand and fetched dad’s things from the garage, and then he drove to the Østland town where dad had lived for his last years and collected the little that was left there, then he had it all sent to Stavanger, and he put it into the loft until I arrived and we could go through it together.
When he rang that evening in the autumn of 1998 he said that for a moment he had been convinced dad was alive and was following him in a car on the motorway.
‘There I was, in a car full of his things,’ he said. ‘Can you imagine how furious he would have been if he’d found out? It’s absolutely absurd of course, but I’m sure it was him following me.’
‘It gets me in the same way,’ I said. ‘Whenever the phone goes or someone rings at the door, I think it’s him.’
‘Anyway,’ Yngve said, ‘I’ve found some diaries he’d been writing. Well, actually, they’re notebooks. He jotted down a few notes every day. From 1986, 1987 and 1988. You’ve got to read them.’
‘Did he write a diary?’ I said.
‘Not exactly. Just a few notes.’
‘What does he say?’
‘You’ll have to read them.’
When I went to Yngve’s some days later, we threw away nearly everything dad had left behind. I took his rubber boots, which I still wear ten years later, and his binoculars, which are on my desk as I am writing this, and a set of crockery, as well as some books. And then there were the notebooks.
Wednesday 7 January
Up early, 5.30. Pjall.
The shower was cold.
Bus 6.30 from Puerto Rico. Nipped a quick snifter here too.
At the airport. Bought a Walkman. Dep. 9.30. Delayed — Kristiansand 16.40. Flight to Oslo 17.05. Problem.
The same in Alta. Met Haraldsen here. Via Lakselv (-31 degrees)
Taxi home. Cold house. Warmed myself on duty-free. Hard day.
Thursday 8 January
Tried to get up for work. But had to ring Haraldsen and throw in the towel. Grinding abstinence — stayed in bed all day. . I made an attempt to read Newsweek. Managed a few TV progs. School tomorrow?
Friday 9 January
Up at 7.00. Felt lousy at breakfast.
Work. Survived the first three lessons. Had terrible diarrhoea in lunch break and had to give the HK class a free. Home for repair — rum and Coke. Incredible how it helps. Quiet afternoon and evening. Fell asleep before TV news.
Saturday 10 January
Slept in. Made short work of the sherry in the kitchen. Evening spent in the company of blue Smirnoff!