Siri lived in a house in the centre of Mørk with a family I did not like at all, and they certainly didn’t like me, they said I was a bad influence, and not only on her, was the general opinion, and they wouldn’t even let me near the house. The Lydersens they were called. If I crossed the road from the Co-op and went between Mørk Machinery and the Old People’s Home and over to the picket fence around the garden in front of the house, the old man would come out on to the front steps and shout: Get lost.
I couldn’t understand why child welfare thought this was a good house for Siri to live in. They were model Christians in there, that must have been it, and everyone they knew was as Christian as they were, together they formed their own layer of the Mørk population, and they never spoke to anyone else unless they had to. They had even moved Siri to a different school, more than fifteen kilometres away, to Valmo, and so she went on a different bus from the one we had always caught from our neighbourhood. But I spoke to her anyway, behind the Co-op and the post office in the evening, maybe twice a week for as long as summer lasted and the days were long, and when autumn came, I cycled alone to Mørk in the cold and dark, and the frost had settled, you could feel it on the tarmac, how the tyres sang a different song, and the only lights I could see were the lamps lit in the windows of houses along the road and the shine of the lanterns in the courtyard of farms up against the forest, and they all made the road even darker.
When I got there I turned into Lysbu’s BP station, he wasn’t retired yet, and I waited there with my bike against a pump. Sometimes when I got there early, I went in for a chat if it was his shift that evening, and most often it was. He thought that was all right, he liked me, I think, and he didn’t nag. He knew well why I turned up so late, and that was fine by him, it was no less than right and proper for us to come together, he said, you’re brother and sister for Christ’s sake, why the hell should you not, and he didn’t say a word to anyone, why the hell should I, he said.
When Siri came down from the house, through the alley by the crossroads, I walked out and took her bike and put it behind the petrol station, and we walked down and sat on the slope towards the lake, where no one could see us. It went like a dream. I mean, she wasn’t locked up or anything.
SIRI ⋅ NOVEMBER 1967
NO, I WASN’T locked up. Tommy had given me the rounders bat to use in my hour of need, and don’t think twice about it, he said, or he will make you suffer, and I put it under the bed, as he had done when we all lived together in our old house, but things were different here. I didn’t have to protect myself, not in that way, and Lydersen wasn’t the kind to creep up on me when I was in the shower or unexpectedly come into my room when I was about to go to bed. But Tommy wanted to look after me and often came in the evening to make me feel safe and give me comfort if he thought that was what I needed, but the fact was I had no problem looking after myself. It was a new thing. At home it had always been Tommy and me.
We sat on the slope behind the Co-op on our separate rocks, one year had passed, and it was autumn now, and cold, we had our caps on and warm jackets, I had already started smoking, outside, in secret, and chewing Toy gum on the way home. I blew the smoke and my frozen breath out over the lake and said:
‘When I’m sixteen I’m going to sea.’
That upset him, and he said:
‘But who shall I talk to when you’re gone.’
‘You’ve got Jim,’ I said.
‘That’s true,’ Tommy said. ‘I’ve got Jim, but that’s not what I meant.’
‘I know.’
‘I like having sisters,’ Tommy said.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But you’ve got the twins.’
‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘But they do their own thing, they just smile and wave and say hi Tommy when I walk past them on my way to Jonsen’s, and then they go back to their weird little games that never made any sense to me, and I could have been any neighbour, and then they run to the Liens to have their dinner. Even when I sit watching films with them I could be anybody. But they’re doing fine. I think they’ve forgotten how it was at home with Dad, how it really was. They don’t even remember Mum.’
‘But, they were so small when she left. I can barely remember her myself,’ I said.
‘Of course you remember her.’
‘Yes, but I don’t want to.’
‘It was winter,’ Tommy said, ‘just before Christmas. Hell, there was so much snow. The school bus could barely get down the road. Don’t you remember. We shovelled and shovelled every single day to keep the snow from our door.’
‘No, I don’t remember that.’
‘I remember everything,’ Tommy said. ‘Everything.’ And then he went quiet and I couldn’t see his face, and when he didn’t say anything, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I just waited. I already felt sorry for him because I knew what he would say when he eventually did say something, and finally he said:
‘But how will you manage without me.’
And that was it.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I will probably be OK,’ I said, ‘don’t you think I will.’ But then he started to cry, he had just turned fifteen, and I said, but, Tommy, I said and put my arms around his shoulders and pulled him to me and said, but, Tommy, what is it, Tommy, but he wouldn’t answer me, and we sat there, me with my arm round him, and really, it should have been the other way around, that was why he had come to see me, he was the big brother, he was at the helm, that was how it ought to be. But I had never seen him cry before, cross my heart, and when he stopped he cleared his throat and got off his rock.
‘I’m a little tired,’ he said, taking two steps into the darkness, up the hillside, and then I couldn’t see his face any more and didn’t know what he looked like.
‘Well, I can’t come tomorrow,’ he said.
‘Another day then, Tommy,’ I said.
‘Wednesday, maybe.’
‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘Wednesday. I’ll look for you.’
‘OK,’ he said.
And he climbed up the hill without waiting for me as he usually did so we could walk hand in hand around the Co-op at the top and over the crossroads to the petrol station and go our separate ways from there, and I said:
‘It will be difficult without you, Tommy,’ I said, ‘Maybe I can’t do it,’ I said, and I was sure there would be a flicker of a smile then, because that was what he wanted to hear, and then he would say, You can do it, Siri, you’ll be fine, I’m sure you will, but if he did smile, I couldn’t see it, and neither did he say anything. He just kept climbing and was gone around the corner of the Co-op on his way to fetch his bike, and maybe Lysbu was still behind the counter, in the light inside, and then push it out between the pumps and pedal off into the night with six long kilometres ahead of him. I took another cigarette from the soft pack of 10 unfiltered Carlton, and sat on the rock by the lake smoking, and when I had finished I stood up to clamber up the hill. It was easy to see in the dark now, every tree stood out, every rock, and when I stepped into the bright light beneath the street lamps at the crossroads, I had to close my eyes.