There are only terraced houses along the road, and a few years ago I thought maybe it was posher to live here rather than in the tenement blocks, until I realised that the blocks were just two terraced houses on top of each other, and inside they were identical. At the bottom of the hill, on the left, there is a terrace of eight flats. Arvid lives in the one next to last. It’s the only house with balconies, and in the old days Arvid was nervous it would make him upper class, because nobody we knew lived in a house with a balcony. But I didn’t reckon three and a half square metres of balcony was enough to make him upper class, especially since his father worked night shifts at the Jordan brush factory. Arvid was happy to hear that. Under no circumstances did he want to be upper class, and as far as that goes, we both stand firm.
I walk up the flagstone path and round the back of Arvid’s house. There are four subscribers here. His father is not among them, but as I pass I stop at the kitchen window and peer in. It’s dark inside, so he is not home from the night shift yet. I turn at the end of the house and on to the road again, and look up at Arvid’s window on the first floor, pick up a pebble and throw it against the pane. I hear it hit the glass and Arvid is there at once. I don’t know anyone who’s such a light sleeper, and he is often tired at school. He sticks out his dark head, I roll up a newspaper tight and skim it at an angle like a boomerang, and it makes a perfect arc, and Arvid snatches it out of the air before it hits the window frame. We have done this before.
‘Latest news from Vietnam,’ I say.
‘I guess they’re bombing Hanoi again.’ He yawns and runs his hand through his hair which is curly and very thick.
‘You bet,’ I say. Arvid is in the National Liberation Front group at school. He can go on for hours about it. I am a passive member, I have too many other things on my mind.
‘I’ll read it later,’ he says, ‘I have stuff to do. I’ve got to go.’
‘What sort of stuff?’
‘You’ll see it when you see it.’
‘See you at school,’ I say and he salutes me with a clenched fist behind the window. I walk towards the barrow and then turn on my heel, but he is gone and I grab the handle and trudge round the bend back towards Grevlingveien.
Morning is coming, but there is not much light yet, it’s October, after all, and the early risers are coming down the road towards the Metro. I say hello and one of them looks at my hair and another one at my trousers and is annoyed because I am late, but I splay my hands and say it’s not my fault, and then a few papers tumble to the ground. The man looks up, rolls his eyes, and I mutter a silent curse.
Old Abrahamsen comes out on to the step and angrily slams the door behind him. Every day he does this and has done so for as long as I can remember. He works at the harbour and is carrying his rucksack. He used to live in Vika, not far from where he worked, straight out of the door, past Oslo West station and there he was, but they demolished Vika and now he has to travel into town every morning, and even though it’s fifteen years since he had to move, he is still fuming. The Metro is too newfangled, so he walks up Trondhjemsveien and takes the number 30 bus as he has been doing for almost two decades.
‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Just in time for the paper — read it on the bus,’ and he smiles and says:
‘Well, you know, Aftenposten is really not my thing, but you have to keep up to date.’
I know, he is a socialist, but he is so stingy he has literally weighed the Aftenposten and the left-wing Arbeiderbladet and found that with Aftenposten he gets more kilos for his money. He puts the paper under his arm and all of a sudden is a much happier man and is off down the road, the rucksack bumping on his back.
I am seriously late now and pick up the pace and stop greeting people. The road narrows, the last houses are at the edge of Dumpa, where Condom Creek flows through, and on the other side, the ground rises in a steep arch up to the women’s prison at the top. Heavy and sombre, it faces Groruddalen valley and the ribbon of morning light that’s stealing in over Furuset, and only a solitary lamp burns in the prison courtyard. It seems cold, the light, and I go cold myself, for the mere thought of so many women locked in behind those thick walls is painful, and I wonder what they recall when they wake up in the morning, what they speak about over dinner, what they think about when they go to bed at night. I picture people in chains, and know it’s not like that, but what do they see when they look out the windows?
Fru Karlsen is standing on the steps as I come round the corner to the very last house. She is smiling and I know she has been waiting for me. She often does. She is holding an envelope in her hand, and when I pass her the newspaper she puts the envelope in my jacket pocket and says: ‘I was away for your birthday, you know, but better late than never. Many happy returns.’
I didn’t know she had been away, but she has found out when my birthday is and made a point of remembering it and now she is giving me a present. It feels awkward. Only my mother gives me birthday presents and that’s the way it’s always been. And then this lady. She smells nice. She can’t be a day over forty, she’s good-looking, too. I feel my pulse racing, and the words I was going to say fall back into my mouth and are gone. But she smiles and has a good look at my checked trousers and my hair and smiles even more and then she strokes my cheek before she closes the door. My cheek burns and I am not able to say thank you, or anything else for that matter, just stand there looking at the door where it says Karlsen. I know she has a husband, but I have never seen him. He is probably an idiot. The heat from my face spreads down my neck to my chest.
I open the envelope and there is a hundred-kroner note inside. Hell, a hundred kroner, that’s too much. My legs start to itch, I have to get out of here. I dare not turn round. She might be standing behind the curtains watching, maybe expecting some sign from me.
Grevlingveien is a dead end street, but a footpath at the end leads up to Trondhjemsveien, alongside the Metro track. I leave the barrow and walk up far enough to be out of Fru Karlsen’s sight and lean against the wire mesh fence by the path, take the tobacco from my jacket, roll a cigarette and light it. Behind the fence the hill rises sharply, and there is a white house on the top where the prison governor lives, and the fields beneath have always had that smell of burnt withered grass in the spring. Now they smell of damp and mould. I shudder and take a deep drag and after a while I feel better. But a hundred kroner, that’s not good.
I finish my cigarette and kill it with my shoe on the gravel, shoot a glance up towards Trondhjemsveien before I have to go back down, and there he is. There are maybe thirty metres between us, and I have not seen him for five years. But I know him at once. The black hair, the snappy black suit he seems to have slept in, the nondescript grey shirt without a tie. His suntanned neck and grey stubble; the unnaturally blue eyes I can’t make out just now, but I know they’re looking at me without even blinking. I cannot move, and he is standing stock still. I try to think, but nothing comes to mind, and he takes two steps down the footpath, and then I shout:
‘STOP!’ He stops, grabs the straps of his rucksack and waits. He is so dark, and as slim as a blade and not like anything else. Behind him, I can see the high-rises in Rødtvet and behind them just the forest and more forest and I know that’s where he has come from. Had I been standing close to him now, I would have caught the smell of bonfire and pine trees and tobacco, and something more that could only be him. But I’m not standing close, and he scratches his chin, shakes his head, and I realise he hasn’t recognised me until now. That’s no surprise. I am much taller than when I was thirteen, I wear different clothes and my hair is different. He raises his hand as if to salute me, like an Indian would, and walks on a few paces, and I’m almost certain he’s smiling.