And almost always it is Jussi Björling. There is a signed photograph of him on the living-room wall. How she got hold of that, no one knows, but it has always seemed impressive, has given her records some extra meaning, and it was on the wall of our house in the country. My father couldn’t stand it, he did not like opera, he liked tango and anything else was for people with thin blood. On his own accordion he could play the tango, and people said he was pretty good.
‘Jussi Björling? Hell, he looks like a pen pusher!’ he used to say, and once, when he was in a drunken haze, he smashed some of her records.
‘We were lucky the neighbours called the police,’ Kari says. ‘Things could have got out of hand. You were only two years old, for Christ’s sake. He was so drunk. He was always so goddamn drunk. Was I happy when we moved at last.’
We talk about him as though he, too, were dead, we do that every time we talk about him. It’s not often. But he isn’t dead.
We walk down Trondhjemsveien. Flaen and Kaldbakken are on the lower side where many from my class live. Among them is Venke. I know exactly which window is hers. I have been there with her, kissing on her bed with my hand up her skirt and her hand down my pants, and with her mouth against my neck she whispered: ‘I think maybe I love you, you’re so strong.’ That really scared me, so I took off.
These houses seemed so important before, but now they look like something from a cartoon, compared with the high-rises at Ammerud. Rødtvet is on the upper side, and behind it is forest and more forest, for hours and days if that’s what you want. You can go in there and keep wandering and come out again far into the countryside.
‘It took him five years to get here,’ I say. ‘He must have fallen asleep on the way.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘He’s here now. I saw him just over a week ago, at the end of my paper round.’
‘Who’s here now?’
‘The person we’re talking about. Dad.’
What a word! Dad. But there is no other.
‘He was standing there, at the top of that hill.’ I point to where the footpath slopes down from Trondhjemsveien, by the Metro bridge. ‘The man in the black suit. The man with the shiny pistol. I wonder if he still has it. Perhaps it’s in his rucksack. And it was definitely his rucksack.’
‘You must be kidding! Are you sure?’ Kari grabs my arm and walks a bit faster to leave our mother further behind.
‘Of course I’m sure. Do you think I have forgotten what he looks like?’
‘Have you told her?’ Kari tries not to turn round, but doesn’t quite succeed.
‘What would be the point of that? I don’t want to move again. Not now, at least. I’m not scared of him.’
‘Oh no?’ She looks at me, and I know as well as her that I am scared to death. He is the only person who really scares me. Everything else is child’s play.
‘I’ll kill him,’ I say.
‘Shh, don’t talk like that. But what does he want? What do you think he wants? We’ll have to work out something. It’s too bad I have to go home on the bus tonight.’
‘To your car spray hotshot?’
She blushes. ‘You mind your own business!’
‘There’s nothing to work out. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.’
We stop until my mother has caught up with us so we can walk together down Grevlingveien. She is not crying any more, and Kari slips her arm under hers, and she smiles at us.
My mother is small and fair-haired, quite slim, and if you are not standing too close and can’t see the lines around her eyes and mouth, thirty-six is not the first age that springs to mind. I suppose you could say she is attractive, I don’t know, it’s hard for me to say. Once, around where we used to live, I saw her turn a man’s head on the road, but maybe she had smudged her lipstick or had a black eye that day. She had one from time to time. So did I. When my father was home for long enough, we all did.
She has always wanted curly hair, but it is straight as a waterfall, just like mine, and it seems to me that fair-haired people are not as curly as dark-haired people. Anyway, she has tried curlers and tongs and once she saved up to have a perm. When she came home she stood crying in front of the mirror because the curls were compact and tight and not what she had pictured and dreamt about, and, to be frank, she did look terrible. For almost an hour she stood over the basin trying to smooth her hair out again, and she stayed indoors for several days. So much money down the drain. What she does now is fill the kettle, put it on the stove, and when the water boils she hangs her hair over the gushing steam, and then the tips curl and give her what she calls a natural wave.
Since we moved, she has really had only one good friend. His name is Robert, but he calls himself Roberto, and he rented our spare bedroom the first difficult year in Veitvet. Now he lives in a smart one-room flat in Majorstua on the west side. He drives a white MGB, digs opera and is a homo. That doesn’t seem to bother him much, and it doesn’t bother me either. Sometimes he pinches my bum, but that’s just teasing, to show he knows that I know that he isn’t actually pinching my bum. Or something like that.
Every Wednesday afternoon Roberto drives to Veitvet from Majorstua to listen to opera with my mother. The white car floats down Beverveien with the roof rolled back, round the curve, and Roberto waves his hand to the boys standing along the road and the boys wave back, and it doesn’t seem to bother anyone that he is a homo. But I may be wrong there.
As we go up the steps in the tower and along the Sing-Sing gallery he is standing outside our door with a bouquet of flowers and a plastic bag in his hand, even though it’s only two days since he was last here, and I think that maybe homos have a feel for that kind of thing, like girls do. Anyway, my mother smiles and pulls herself together and is happy. Now there is someone to share the opera with, and I’m happy too, because I don’t have to stay at home and be a comfort. Some days it makes me feel claustrophobic and today is one of them.
I go up to my room and change into normal clothes, hold up my checked trousers before I go for the Wranglers instead. Before I leave, I play Bob Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ to cleanse my mind. It’s unbeatable. It is so full of hatred it makes me want to lie down on the bench and pump iron, but it will take too long. I can’t be indoors now, not with Kirsten Flagstad and Maria Callas howling in the next room.
On my way out, I hit my foot against something sticking out from under the bed. It’s the accordion. I sneaked it indoors and up to my room when my mother wasn’t there and have hidden it. I have a KEEP OUT sign on my door to make her stay away. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone, only Arvid knows, and sometimes I feel an urge to take it out, hold it in my arms and play a few notes. But I am afraid it will make me remember too much. I push it back underneath with my foot.
I walk through the living room. Roberto is standing by the old record cabinet waving a new recording of Tosca, and he winks at me, and I pat my bum, and my mother says, ‘Well, put it on, then.’
The first notes come thundering down the stairs as I leave the building. She plays music louder than I do, and yet I am the one who gets a hard time. I guess I appreciate Jussi Björling more than she does Jimi Hendrix. The only singer for her after 1945 is Elvis. I couldn’t give a shit about him. But maybe Elvis reminds her of the days when the future was still open and she sat around in old American cars necking with my father, dreaming behind the dashboard with Kari in the back seat wrapped in nappies, and was about to marry this man that she wanted. What a kick in the teeth.
It’s raining outside. Heavy, gusting rain, and the concrete walls of the houses turn sticky and dark. It makes me feel so out of place, and suddenly I long for thatched houses and log walls and attics and birch trees right outside your window and meadowland where the wind and the rain sweep across the tall grass in one long, surging swell and make you think of films you have seen and of walking barefoot, and then it painfully passes and is squeezed into a funnel with only one narrow way out.