“Rewind,” she said again and again, and the fireman did, goddamnit, and she turned to stone.
I really don’t feel well. The cold crawls from my feet to my hips and I start to tremble, my teeth chatter, my forehead shudders against the glass as it does when you sit on a bus with your head against the window, gazing out, and the diesel engine makes everything vibrate. I think I am going to be sick, but I mustn’t be sick here. People go by on the pavement, and it can’t be Sunday because I hear from their voices that they are young, students from the business school next door, and as they pass me they stop talking, and I will not turn and look at them looking at me. I look down at my shoes. They are scuffed, my shirt is hanging out of my trousers below the unzipped jacket, and I see my belt dangling in front of my half-open flies. They were not like that yesterday. When did those trousers come undone? Perhaps I have been raped. Perhaps someone dragged me into a doorway on my way past Bislett stadium or into a changing room at Bislett baths and grossly abused my butt while I was out of this world. I close my eyes and concentrate, hunting for traces all through my body; some remnant soreness, and what I do discover is that I feel wretched. It isn’t easy to say what is what. I have to see a doctor. I may test positive. There are people in this town who would not blink twice at planting a seed in my blood, a virus that will tick and go deep inside what is me and one day after several years, when I least expect it, explode like a time bomb, one day when my life does not look as it does right now, a day when I have the sun on my face.
I take a deep breath. The pain in my side damn near makes me jump. It’s my lungs, I had forgotten. I groan. Someone behind me stops and says something I do not want to hear. I stand very still, waiting, and then I hum a bit, and the someone walks off again. I raise my right hand to feel whether my hair is wet. It is bone dry and feels as stiff as a doormat and far from clean. I could do with a shower, a shower and a steam bath. I like steam baths these days. I did not before. I always dreaded the walk from the bus stop to Torggata baths and then up the stone steps to the cloakroom and the showers, and it was cold in the changing room and in the shower room before the water was turned on, but when the warm water ran through my hair and down my neck, over shoulders and stomach, it felt good, and I closed my eyes and wanted to go on standing there. It was fine, for a moment everything was just fine.
“Open your eyes and come along,” he said and opened the door to the steam bath and I went in, because nobody had told me that you could say no. I went in and there was a blazing creature with a power that sucked each breath from my throat much faster than I could keep up with, and very soon I was empty, and fighting for air.
“It’s important to sweat all the shit out,” he said, “turn your insides out and really cleanse yourself,” but I could not sweat. I stood in the steam, dry and thin, and saw the naked men along the benches, heads in hands, glistening, panting, with their big stomachs on their thighs and their big cocks, and none of them could speak because the creature had swallowed the air and pushed against the walls, and there was no space left for anything else. And I could not sweat. I was eight years old, my skin burned, and I did not know it was important to be cleansed, that the inside of my body was not clean, where my thoughts lived, and the soul.
I walked unsteadily across the floor to the trickle of water running from a tap on the wall and into a porcelain sink, and I drank and drank, and when I had finished he came over, filled his hands with water and let it run over the stones so the stove spat loudly and fresh steam poured forth, and the men on the benches grumbled. He laughed and bent down, put his hands flat on the floor and swung himself up into a handstand, stretched his legs up together and with his heels lightly touching the burning wall he smiled upside down and started to do push-ups with his head tapping the floor and his legs straight up. His cock bounced against his flat stomach with a sound I could have done without, his muscles swelled under his shiny skin, and sweat poured down his chest. He could breathe where no-one else could, and I counted to myself half aloud: ten, eleven, twelve and on as I always did when he did that kind of thing. I kept my eyes on his body, up and down, up and down, and knew I would never look like that if I lived to be a hundred, not that graceful, not that solid, and I remember the hospital chapel where we had to fetch the coffins many years later. They were ranged in a line along the wall, and outside, the long black cars waited in line on the drive. We could see them through the windows, the cars stood quite still with their back doors open, and one driver had his back turned and his elbow against the bonnet, smoking and looking down at Holberggate, and the man from the undertakers cleared his throat and said: “First, I ought perhaps to say that the coffins probably are not as heavy as might be expected.” He ran a hand through his hair, looking desperate, and we glanced at each other, my brother and I, and then we bent down, took hold of the handles and lifted, and we just stared straight ahead when we realised he was right.
I am so tired. I lean my whole weight against the door. I could fall asleep now, and maybe I am asleep, and dreaming, or maybe remembering a dream. I am in the apartment at Veitvet. My mother and father are there, and my two younger brothers. I know they are dead, and I know that they know, but we do not talk about it. I try to figure out how they could have come back. Suddenly I cannot remember where their graves are, but it can’t be far away, maybe on the lawn by the hedge beside the road. The apartment looks as it did then, in May of that year; half-empty bookshelves, a pile of pictures on the coffee table, cardboard boxes on the floor. The clock on the wall has stopped. They go around helping me, giving me things they think I should have, and I find books I imagine my daughters would like. I take a few small things for myself and sneak them away, put them in the pocket of my jacket, and then I feel bad because I am cheating my brother, so I take them out again. All the while I can hear them talking softly in the living room. I go up to the next floor and into the room that once was mine. I open the window and put my head out. On the balcony below me, my father is standing in the sun. He stands quite calmly, his eyes closed and arms crossed. He fills his shirt completely. It is quiet, he is fine, but I don’t like the neighbours to see a dead man standing on the balcony sunning himself. I close the window and go down again. At the bottom of the stairs is the old wooden bookcase with carvings along the top and the sides. I sit on the floor and lean my head against the middle shelf as I have done so many times before. I press against the books and then everything broadens out and I can look in. There are rows of books in many layers, it is a whole room with yellow light streaming in from a window I have never seen before, and it fills me with wonder, and yet everything is familiar. I take hold of Tolstoy with one hand and Nansen with the other and pull myself right in. It closes behind me and the whole time I hear them talking softly in the living room.
I straighten up, my face lets go of the door and I stand without a foothold in the world, listening. I hear no steps from either side and then I undo my jeans and push my shirt down as well as I can as fast as I can, and try to do up my flies. It’s not easy, my empty hands are stiff and have hardly any feeling, and the buttons are obstinate. One of them gets into the wrong buttonhole, but I get it done eventually. I try to do my jacket up, but the zip is ruined, it’s hanging loose, several teeth are missing at the bottom so I can’t fit the ends together. Maybe someone has tried to tear it off. I think about the dream and remember I had it several years ago, that I wrote it down, that I put it away somewhere. So I have not been asleep. I look around me on both sides. It is all quiet on the street. I take a few steps along the big display window, the glass glitters, it is spring sweeping in from the fjord and brushing my neck as it passes, and the latest books are behind the glass. Rick Bass has brought out another collection. I have been waiting for it. I like his stories, they are full of landscape and air and you can smell the pine needles and the heather a long way off.