Jim and Tommy came round the last bend on their way from Mørk on their bikes, along the gravel track and then on past Sletten’s house. He was sitting on a bench under the window with his accordion and a bottle of beer in his hand, watching them, he hadn’t mowed his lawn for weeks, it looked a mess, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He was in free fall, that man, on his way down into the great void because his wife had gone to Oslo and taken the children with her, there were two sisters and two brothers, Egil, and Audun, and Audun had been in their class, but even though he was a neighbour and the same age as Jim and Tommy, they weren’t friends with him. There was no room for anyone else.
And then Tommy caught sight of Siri and the police sergeant in the sunshine at the front of the house. The twins were sitting on the steps with their arms wrapped around their shoulders as though they were freezing cold and it was late autumn, but it wasn’t autumn, it was summer in all its glory, and the sergeant stood with his arms crossed and his shirtsleeves rolled up all the way to his armpits, and he was powerful, it was easy to see, which was the point, that it was for show. And he stood there waiting, he was waiting for Tommy, and Tommy understood right away it was him they were waiting for, all four of them, and he thought, I’m strong too, he may not be able to take me, not if I’m quick, I’m quicker than him. He could have stopped right then and headed off another way, but there was no other way, for Siri was there, and the twins. There was a car he hadn’t seen before parked by the road as well as the police car. The police car was a black Volvo, but this other one was red as a communist flag, a van with letters painted on the side, but neither Tommy nor Jim could read what it said. What’s written on that van, Tommy said, you’re long-sighted, aren’t you. Jim always sat by the large window at the back of the class. Sure I am, Jim said, but I can’t read it. I think maybe it’s a carpenter’s van, there’s a hammer painted on it. And a carpenter he was. He must have been new to Mørk because they hadn’t seen the van before, and if they had, they would have remembered it, being so red, and there was a yellow hammer painted on the doors at the back, he was definitely a communist.
Jim followed Tommy all the way down although his mother was out on the doorstep of their house staring at them as they cycled past, and then they braked and got off their bikes by the Berggren house and propped them against the dustbins, and right behind the bins stood the police sergeant with his sunglasses on. He slowly uncrossed his arms and dropped them each side of his hip and let them hang there, as a pistolero would, slightly apart from his thighs with only the index finger crooked forward into an unnatural curl. He was smiling, he had a broad belt with a large buckle round his waist, and on the gleaming silver buckle there was a skull with eyes of red glass in the sockets.
There were four bags on the front steps. The biggest was Siri’s, the next biggest Tommy’s and the two smallest were identical and looked like doll’s cases on the large flagstones. They were all so full they were bulging. Their schoolbags were on the grass. What’s going on here, said Tommy. You’re moving, said the sergeant. We can’t, this is our house. Oh yes, you can, the sergeant said, you can’t live here on your own, you can’t look after yourselves. Sure we can, Tommy said. Nonsense, the sergeant said, and anyway you have no rights in this world, you’re not sixteen yet. I’ll be sixteen in a very short time, Tommy said. You’re thirteen, the policeman said, do you think I don’t know how old you are, you’re in the seventh class, do you think I’m stupid. Two more weeks, Tommy said, and I’ll have finished school. For Christ’s sake, shut up, the sergeant said. Grab your bags and put them in the back of my car, and then we’ll go, no, not you two, he said to the twins, you take your bags and walk across the road. He pointed, and Tommy looked across the road. Herr and Fru Lien were standing on their front steps, they were waiting, they were watching what was happening, but stayed on their side of the road. We’ve spoken to them several times, and so has child welfare, they would like to have you, the sergeant told the twins. Hell, you can’t give my sisters away, Tommy said. From the corner of his eye he saw the carpenter standing by his van, he was smoking, he was leaning against the bonnet. One of the back doors was open, and his equipment was inside, a toolbox and a pile of boards, and the carpenter too was waiting and staring up in the air letting white wisps of smoke stream from his mouth into the sunshine. The twins lifted their bags and started walking. Hey, girls, hang on a moment, Tommy said, and they stopped and turned and looked at him and smiled. We can call you, they said. But for Christ’s sake, Tommy said, no one here has a telephone, that’s just something you’ve seen in a film, people calling each other, but they shrugged and made identical funny faces. That was also something they had seen twins doing in a film, but Tommy couldn’t remember which film. And then they set off again, down to the road and then across it and up the flagstones from the dustbins on the other side, and when they reached the house Herr and Fru Lien took them each by the hand and led them in and closed the door.
Is this all we’re allowed to take, Tommy said, we’ve got much more than this, he said, and the sergeant said, the people at child welfare say it’s best you start afresh somewhere else, they say there’s been too much going on in this house, and the police chief agrees, so it’s all decided, you just take what’s in the bags. It’s not decided, Tommy said and ran to the door and pulled it open and charged through the hall and into the living room where everything was spick and span, they had washed and tidied everything and they’d done it on Saturday when Tommy was well again. They had turned the house into a home, Siri and he had managed it all by themselves, they had aired the rooms and chased the cigarette smoke out, cleaned every single nook and cranny and made food and looked after the twins, and watched TV together in the evenings, no one could have been happier, and he ran up the stairs to their room and dived under the bed. There was the rounders bat back in its place, and he crawled out again, and on the shelf he found the book by John Steinbeck, it was a present from Jim but he hadn’t read it yet, and he went over to the window and flung it open and called to Siri, is there anything you want. My diary, she called. He went to her bed and took it out from under the pillow, where he knew it was, where she knew he knew it was. He had never read it although he could easily have done so. And then he went back downstairs.
When Tommy came out of the house with the bat in his hand, the sergeant said, no, no, no, that’s no good, not the bat, for Christ’s sake, are you stupid or what, he said, but Tommy wouldn’t let go of it, and the sergeant didn’t want to fight, not in the road where everyone could see, in case he lost. Hey, Tommy. Do you think it’s smart to take the bat, Jim said. I don’t know, Tommy said. Maybe not. But he wouldn’t hand it over. You two sit in there, the sergeant said, and Siri got in, and Tommy said to Jim, see you tomorrow. See you tomorrow,Tommy, Jim said, don’t be sad. I’m not, Tommy said, and he got in. He gave Siri the diary, and she took it and squeezed it hard to her chest. Thank you, she said. Where are we going, Tommy said. You’re going to Mørk. Will we be together, Siri and I. Are you stupid, the sergeant said, of course you won’t be together. You two living together, are you stupid, he said, don’t you get it, and he put the car in gear and set off slowly and then picked up speed.