When I came out the sergeant was standing by the car. He was leaning against the open door. His eyes were closed.
‘Hi,’ I said. He opened his eyes and looked at me and closed them again. I didn’t know what was wrong with him, but there must have been something, he wasn’t like that before. Suddenly I felt very sorry for him. It just came over me. I went all warm. There were tears in my eyes. It’s true.
‘Are you not well,’ I said.
He opened his eyes and looked at me. He ran his hand through his hair and sighed.
‘Hell, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t understand it. But there’s got to be something. I’m so damn tired all the time, even though I sleep and sleep.’
‘But, have you been to the doctor.’
‘No, but I guess I’ll have to.’
‘It would probably be a good idea.’
We stood like that for a while. Him with his eyes closed. Me with my hands in my pockets, examining his face. He was just over thirty, thirty-five, maybe. That wasn’t very old, but he didn’t look well. He looked older, forty, or more.
‘Do you want me to drive,’ I said.
He opened his eyes. ‘Maybe you should,’ he said. ‘Actually, that would be great. I am so tired,’ he said, and then he walked round the car and got into the passenger seat, and I got in behind the wheel and turned the key. The car started straight away, and we drove on to the road from the police station, and the Volvo was such a thrill to drive I felt excited, elated, I almost laughed sitting there. Fifteen minutes later I parked by Jonsen’s postbox, which was my postbox too and had been for four years, and through the window I could see Jonsen sitting at the kitchen table smoking and looking out on the road, his one hand under his chin and the other holding the cigarette.
I slipped the lever out of gear and let the engine run with the handbrake on, and then we got out on either side, the sergeant and I, and when he came round the front grille and was about to get in behind the wheel he said:
‘Oh hell, am I stupid or what. You don’t have a driving licence, do you.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t. I won’t be eighteen until autumn. In November.’
‘Christ,’ he said, running a hand through his hair. ‘Am I stupid or what.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone.’
‘I won’t tell.’
‘I appreciate that,’ he said. ‘Christ, I’m so tired,’ he said.
‘Perhaps you should go and see a doctor,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think I’ll have to,’ and he pushed the lever into first gear, and the car left the village as slowly as it had arrived a couple of hours before.
I went up the steps, into the hall and into the kitchen where Jonsen was sitting at the table smoking.
‘Were you driving,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Wow.’
‘He’s not well,’ I said.
‘You’re probably right,’ Jonsen said. ‘He didn’t look at all well,’ and then he said: ‘What did the police chief have to say.’
‘He asked if I had set fire to the house.’
‘And what did you answer.’
‘I said I hadn’t.’
‘Right, that’s it then. You take the floor and I’ll take the sofa, and then we’ll be off to the mill in an hour.’
SIRI ⋅ 1970 ⋅ 1971
JIM STARTED THE third class when I was in the first. It was after the summer of 1970. He was still living in the neighbourhood with his mother and caught the bus from there up to Valmo gymnas. Halfway there I also got on, when the bus went through Mørk. Which it always did. I had taken this bus for several years already, to primary school for one year, and then to secondary school. Lydersen moved me there, from Mørk to the school at Valmo. Or child welfare did. It was probably them. To keep me away from Tommy. And that was a success.
It felt special that I saw so much more of Tommy’s friend than I saw of Tommy himself. Or perhaps not special, perhaps strange, wondrous.
I saw Jim every day. We talked several times a week, and once I asked him if it was Tommy who had set fire to our house, and he said that in fact he didn’t know, but I was sure he did, or at least believed that Tommy had done it. I did, too. Who wouldn’t. Apart from that I never asked him about Tommy, and he never told me anything. I am sure we could have said things to each other, about Tommy, about what he was doing or not doing and what we thought about it, but Tommy was part of Jim’s private life, and Jim was a part of his. At least I assumed they were, but Tommy was not part of mine. Perhaps this should have hurt me, when you think how close we had been, how close we had been to each other, but it didn’t hurt me, it felt more strange, bewildering.
The first time Jim kissed me was one September afternoon that autumn. He had got off the bus after school at the stop by Mørk railway station where I also got off, instead of him staying on until the last stop in the neighbourhood where the bus turned round and drove back to Mørk, empty, and then he had to walk the whole way home, it was quite a distance, but he was happy to do it, he said, it took only an hour, and then he could buy Orientering, his favourite left-wing magazine, at the station kiosk. I didn’t know anyone else who read that paper. He bought it every Friday and the old lady at the kiosk sat behind the window all dolled up and ready, with her make-up on, waiting for the good-looking Jim at the same time every week, but this was a Thursday, and to be honest, it was the other way around, it was I who kissed Jim.
There was something about Jim. You saw him as soon as you came into the playground, his long, blond hair, the reefer jacket he always wore now, with its gleaming brass buttons, and the tobacco pouch tucked into his armpit while he rolled his cigarettes, only he did it that way, and he always smiled when there was a discussion going on, and there was something about his eyes, they were unusual, nervous, but not in a foolish way, an unpleasant shifty way, instead they made you curious, you wanted to know more about him, you wanted to hold his hand and walk him home, you wanted to kiss him and close those eyes, if only for a second. That was what I wanted to do from the moment the school year started, and it caught me off guard. I had seen so little of him since I moved to Mørk, and now he was around me all the time and was the old, familiar Jim and then a new and altogether different Jim, and he stood out more when he wasn’t with Tommy.