Sunday 11 January
Had a feeeling when I woke up it was going to be a bad day. I was right!
Monday 12 January
Slept badly. Tossing and turning and hearing ‘voices’. Work. Started with English background. Hard going when you’re out of shape. Evening classes even more stressful!
Tuesday 13 January
Another sleepless night. My body won’t accept being without alcohol. Went to work.
Tuesday 20 January
Another bad night. Always like that when you don’t take any ‘medicine’. After an hour and a half you’re too exhausted to do a good job. Lutefisk for dinner — my favourite. I had a siesta after dinner — a very long nap — up at 10. Worked till 3. Working through the night is the norm now!
And so it goes on. He drinks every weekend, but also more and more often during the week, and then he tries to stop, to have some alcohol-free days or even weeks, but it doesn’t work, he can’t sleep, he is restless, hears voices and is so worn out it’s almost a relief when he finally goes to the Vinmonopol or buys beer and comes home with the drinks, and all his inner conflict eases.
Under ‘Wednesday 4 March’ his notebook just says Yngve, Karl Ove, Kristin. We went up north in the winter holiday to visit them. Dad paid for us all. Unni had invited her son, Fredrik, who was there when we arrived. I flew with Kristin from Kristiansand to Bergen, I was a bit nervous about it of course, because of what had happened between Cecilie and me, but she didn’t say a word about it and treated me as she always had. Yngve joined us in Bergen, then we flew up to Tromsø, where we changed to a propeller plane for the last bit.
The terrain beneath was wild and deserted, there was barely a house or a road to be seen, and when we reached the airport there was no pilot announcement of a slow descent, no, the plane simply swooped down like a bird of prey that had seen its victim, I thought, and the moment the wheels touched down on the runway, we braked and were hurled forward towards the seat in front.
The passengers filed out of the plane across the tarmac to the tiny terminal building. It was cold and overcast, the countryside was white with a scattering of shiny black patches where the rock was too steep for snow to settle.
Dad stood waiting in the arrivals hall. He was formal and tense. Asked us how the trip had been, didn’t listen to the answer. His hands shook as he inserted the key into the ignition and let go of the handbrake. He was silent for the whole journey through the vast misty desolate terrain to the town. I observed his hand, he rested it on the gear lever, but as soon as he raised it, it shook.
The building he parked under was outside the centre, facing the sea, on an estate that must have been built in the 1970s, judging by the shape of the houses. They had rented the whole of the upper floor and had a big balcony outside the living room. The windows were rough, I supposed the salt from the spray had caused that, even though it was several hundred metres to the sea from there. Unni met us in the doorway, smiled and gave everyone a hug. A boy who must have been Fredrik was sitting in a chair watching TV and got up and said hi.
He smiled, we smiled.
He was tall, had dark hair and was a distinct presence in the room. When he sat down again I went into the hall for my rucksack and caught a glimpse of dad as I passed the open kitchen door. He was standing by the fridge and knocking back a beer.
Unni showed us where we would be sleeping. I left my things there. On my return the first bottle was on the table while he was attending to the second. He belched quietly and put the bottle down next to the first, wiped the froth from his beard and turned to me.
The tension was gone.
‘Are you hungry, Karl Ove?’ he said.
‘I suppose I am,’ I said. ‘But there’s no hurry. We can eat when it suits you.’
‘I’ve bought steaks and red wine today. We can have that. Or shrimps. They’ve got good shrimps up here, you know.’
‘Both fine by me,’ I said.
He took another beer from the fridge.
‘It’s good to have beer in the holidays,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You can have some later, with the food,’ he said.
‘Great,’ I said.
Yngve and Kristin had sat down on the sofa. They were looking around the way you do when you are somewhere new, discreetly absorbing their surroundings, constantly aware of each other, not necessarily with their glances but in the total way that lovers can be when everything is about the two of them. Kristin was a miracle of joy and naturalness, and that rubbed off on Yngve, he was fully open to it and wore an almost childish glow that he only had when he was with her.
Fredrik sat in his chair on the other side of the table and shyly answered the questions Yngve and Kristin asked him. He was a year younger than me, lived somewhere in Østland with his father, played football, was interested in fishing, liked U2 and The Cure.
I sat down in the chair beside him. On the wall above the sofa hung the blue picture by Sigvaldsen that dad had taken with him after the divorce, on the two longer walls there were more pictures we used to have at home. The suite of furniture in the other corner was the one dad had always had downstairs in his office, one of the carpets on the floor came from there too. I recognised the furniture from Unni’s flat.
Dad sat down on the sofa. He put one arm around Unni, in his other hand he held a bottle of beer. I remember thinking I was glad Yngve and Kristin were here.
Dad asked Yngve a question, which he answered briefly but not in an uncivil tone. Kristin slowly tried to bring harmony to the situation with questions about the town and the school where they worked. Unni answered.
After a while dad turned to Fredrik. His tone was light and good-natured. Fredrik’s body language was dismissive, it was obvious he didn’t like dad, and I could understand why. Only an imbecile would not have heard the false ring to dad’s voice, as though he were talking to a child, and not realised that he was doing this for Unni’s sake.
Fredrik gave a surly response, dad stared into the middle distance for some seconds, Unni said something kind but reproachful to Fredrick, who writhed with discomfort.
Dad sat motionless, drinking. Then he got to his feet, hitched up his trousers and went into the kitchen, where he started making dinner. We stayed in the living room chatting with Unni. By the time the food was on the table, at about eight, dad was drunk, he wanted to pour oil on troubled waters but his efforts were too bumbling and he made a fool of himself. Fredrik in particular suffered. We were used to dad, we had nothing else, but Fredrik had lost his mother to this idiot.
Dad sat silent for a long time with a stupid disgruntled expression on his face. Then he got up and went into the bedroom. Unni followed him, we heard their voices, they came back as though nothing had happened, chatted about the holiday they’d had and the dispute they were having with their travel company. It transpired that dad had collapsed in Gran Canaria, fallen over in the room, and had been driven to hospital by ambulance. He said it was heart failure. At any rate he had sued the tour operator because there had been several incidents — rows with the reps, rows with other tourists at the hotel — and now they reckoned that everyone had been against them, indeed bullied them almost, and that had led to dad’s heart problem. He had been kept at the hospital for two days. He showed us photos, and some of them were an unpleasant sight: we saw photos of a couple on a terrace, the camera zoomed in, the couple got up, shook their fists and walked towards the camera. What were they doing? See how cross they were, dad said. What fatheads. They’re as bad as Gunnar. What’s wrong with Gunnar then? Yngve said. Gunnar? dad repeated. OK, I’ll tell you. For a whole summer he was snooping round the flat in Elvegate. He was supposed to be keeping an eye on me, you know, making sure I wasn’t drinking. He’s so self-righteous, that brother of mine. He told me so too, that perhaps I ought to cut down, can you imagine? Is he his brother’s keeper? I was an adult when he was only knee-high to a grasshopper. Can’t a man have a beer in his own garden? He really went too far. And just look how he ingratiates himself with grandma and grandad. He’s after the cabin. He’s always wanted the cabin. And he’ll get it in the end. He’ll inject them with his poison as well.