There is nothing to work out. We just have to wait and see what happens. But nothing happens. Soon two weeks have gone, and had I not been the person I am, I would have thought it was a ghost I had seen. I remember a time out in the country when almost everyone believed in ghosts. Someone had planted stories that spread all over the district like a nervous disease, and in the end Kari was so scared she joined something called Kløfta Parapsychological Association. Its members went off in droves to old abandoned farms and lay on the living room floors with tape recorders, keeping each other awake, rigid with fear, waiting for white ladies in lace frocks. But girls are girls, and what I believe is what I see when I see it. I have never seen any ghosts. The ones that haunt me do not glide around at night wearing lace frocks, howling with grief.
Perhaps I had got it wrong. But I had not, and then there is the accordion and what Leif said, although I don’t understand just why he went to Leif. Anyway, it was him. But what does he want? What is he waiting for?
I walk along Beverveien in the rain, turn up the collar of my reefer jacket and feel the rain running off my hair down my neck, and the sun breaks through, and even though it’s very low, it feels like spring, only colder. I could go into the woods now, take the paths from the top of Slettaløkka into the forest and on to Lake Alunsjøen and down around Lake Breisjøen to Ammerud. I often do that, it’s a fine route if you walk fast. I like walking fast. But that road is closed to me now.
Arvid is standing outside the Narvesen kiosk by the Metro station buying cigarettes. He has just got off the train after school and is still carrying his schoolbag. I lean against one of the columns under the bridge and wait until he has finished. After the long drive into the country, I have only seen him at school. We have barely spoken, which is quite unusual, and he smiles in a shy way as he turns and sees me standing there.
‘Hi,’ he says. ‘You weren’t at school today. Have you stopped coming?’
‘We were at the cemetery.’
He nods, and then I ask:
‘How did it go with the car door?’
‘Dad got all worked up, of course. But now it’s all sprayed and done.’
‘How much was it?’
‘A hundred kroner. But don’t worry. I said it was my fault, so Dad paid.’
‘No way. It was my fault.’ I pull my wallet out and take a hundred-kroner note. I’ve just been paid for the paper round. My mother will have to wait for her share. ‘Here,’ I say.
‘Bloody hell, Audun, you know you don’t have to pay.’
‘What’s right is right, or else everything would just be crap. Take the money, I’ll be all right, no problem.’ He takes the note folds it and puts it in his pocket.
‘So, you’re not quitting school then?’
‘That’s a whole other thing. Coming?’
‘Where to?’
‘Well, not the woods, that’s for sure. To town maybe, or Geir’s?’
‘Geir’s? I thought you hated the place.’
‘It’s early. None of the jokers are there yet. I feel like a beer. It has been one shitty day.’
Arvid giggles. ‘Why not?’ he says. ‘It is Friday and all.’
We walk into the shopping centre from the top level along the square towards the door to Geir’s. Arvid carries his rucksack in his hand. On his back, it would make him look like a schoolboy, and we open the door, walk in and sit down at a table right at the back.
‘I hate to tell you, I’m skint,’ he says, ‘but if I dig around I may have enough for one.’
‘Hell, it’s on me.’ I order two beers. There are some things with alcohol you must never do. You must never drink alone, never drink on Sundays, never drink before seven o’clock and if you do, it has to be on a Saturday. If you’re hung-over, you go for a walk in the forest, and you must never drink the hair of the dog. Do that, and you are an alcoholic, it’s common knowledge. If you are an alcoholic you’re out of control. If you have no control, you are finished. Then you spend the rest of your days walking through the valley of the shadow of death. You are the problem no one wants to solve. They give you a wide berth in the street, scurry behind the canned food when you’re in the shop to buy beer. The woman at the cash desk is in a hurry. And then you die and no one gives a shit.
It’s not Saturday, and it’s well before seven o’clock, but apart from that, we’re in the clear, and after the first sip I feel good. Arvid smiles and wipes the froth off his top lip.
‘That was good,’ he says. ‘We ought to do this more often. It’s a shame we don’t have money, then we could have a few more.’
‘You’ve got the hundred kroner,’ I say.
‘But of course I do,’ he says and grins.
7
I WAKE UP. I have been dreaming about Egil for the first time since the accident. In the dream we are standing on a log by the bank of the river Glomma, fishing with our new spinning rods. We got them for Christmas and haven’t tried them out yet. It’s Easter, perhaps. The silver reels glisten in the sun, and Egil looks the way he did last year. I know he is dead, but it doesn’t matter. It is absolutely still by the river. Straight ahead the water’s swirling and further up are the rapids, and yet we do not hear a sound. It is wonderful. Egil smiles and casts a long line, he is happy, and I smile back at him. I can’t remember ever seeing him so calm, his face so soft and smooth. He’s relaxed because he knows he is no longer alive, and there will be no more trouble. That calms me, too.
The rods are a joy to cast. The spinner flies out towards the middle of the river. I have never cast so far, it just glides of its own accord. I close my eyes and let the sun warm my skin. Suddenly Egil is shouting, his voice is thin. There is something on his hook, and there is fear in his eyes. The old scowl is back. I run over to help him: his rod is bent to breaking point, and I hold him from behind. But when I touch him his body is not the body of a fifteen-year-old boy. He is plump and warm: how strange, I think, and he is winding the reel like a madman. I grab the rod and wind with him. Then he shrivels and fades away, and winding alone is hard work. Suddenly it’s as if the river is boiling, and I see the bumper of the Volvo Amazon break the surface, and then the bonnet, and the car pitches like a huge fish with its belly in the air and then I see the windscreen and start to cry.
When I wake up it’s dark, and I am still crying. I feel a little sick, and heavy as I roll over and have look at the alarm clock. In half an hour I have to be up and on my newspaper round. I roll back, I want to sleep longer, but when I close my eyes, the car is back, it’s in my pillow, it’s on the wall, and I can’t escape it.
I get out of bed and dress and go down to the kitchen. It’s dark down the stairs, and the kitchen is dark and cold, and my body too is cold. My mother is asleep. I leave the light off and go to the stove and lift the lid of the hotplate. We still have it. The plate is set to three, and in the dark the element has a faint glow, you can light your cigarette on it. I turn and lean against the edge and let the heat drift all the way up to my neck. I turn back and give my stomach the same treatment. When we were just kids in the country, Egil always raced to be first down the stairs to the kitchen in the morning. He would pull over a stool and get up on it with his back to the stove and his bum out, and he had such a greedy look on his face. I remember how I didn’t like that face, it made me feel embarrassed, and I never tried to fight him for the stool, even though I too was cold in the morning. Now it’s only me, and I can stand here for as long as I like.