I shower, splash and make a lot of noise, and as I turn the water off I hear the front door slam. I’m in no hurry, and when I come downstairs to the kitchen, she is alone, standing by the stove, looking out of the window with her mind somewhere else. I sit down at the table and look at her. She is forty-three years old. Then she turns and looks at me.
‘When did you get home last night?’ she says. Not a word about the man who has just left.
‘I don’t know, twelve, maybe half-past. I don’t know. Anyway, you weren’t up.’
‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘Of course you weren’t.’
She blushes, but refuses to say anything about the man who has left. ‘You were at Arvid’s, weren’t you?’ I nod and help myself to what’s left of the bacon and a slice of bread.
‘Isn’t he supposed to be in Denmark? I heard his grandfather had died.’
‘He didn’t want to go there. I guess that’s his business.’
My mother shrugs, I eat and then the telephone rings. We have a telephone now. She answers it cautiously. ‘Hello?’ she says.
‘It’s Arvid,’ she says. I get up from the table, still chewing, and take the receiver.
‘Hi,’ I say, and chew a little slower for it is hard to make out what he’s saying, but I understand that he wants me to come over. ‘OK, I’ll be right there,’ I say and gently put the receiver down, and as I am doing so, I hear his voice again and I lift it quickly, but then it’s the dialling tone.
‘I have to rush,’ I tell my mother and grab another piece of bread and eat it going into the hall and put my jacket on and my shoes.
‘Didn’t you say you would stay home today?’
‘I never said that,’ I say, and know full well I said so yesterday. I open the door and turn, and she is standing in the light from the kitchen window and is no more than a silhouette and that makes it easier.
‘What about letting me know if more than the two of us will be living here?’ I say, and I am outside before she has the time to answer.
5
I WALK UP Beverveien towards the Metro station by the shopping centre. It is twelve o’clock. Over the rooftops I can hear the bells ringing after church. It’s still cold, but the sky is all blue and the sun is thawing the mud on the road, and it leaves grey-brown stripes on my shoes, and outside the station there are shards of glass and blood-stains on the tarmac. They are pink and pale after the night. On the corner in front of Stallen, which used to be Glasmagasinet, people are looking at the display they have seen a hundred times before. They’re pretending to be out for a Sunday stroll. But I know them and know they are circling the centre waiting for Geir’s bar to open at one. They just can’t stay at home any longer and keep their fists in their pockets to hide their shaking hands. I feel like yelling at them, for Christ’s sake pull yourselves together, and stay out of my way! I know they won’t pull themselves together, it’s too late. They are old, their days are over, everything they have known is gone, all the things they could do, and now here they stand, scraping their feet against the ground, letting the clock tick them closer to their first gulp, and then they’ll sit and drink until their bodies calm down and will talk rubbish about everything being so wonderful, and when evening comes, they have to go home, and so they fall asleep early and hope their dreams won’t be too bad, and then they wake up the next morning as always.
I open my jacket at the neck, I suck in the air and expand my chest to its limit, and then I walk round to the lower side of the shopping centre and along Grevlingveien to Veitvetsvingen and down to the house where Arvid lives.
I knock first, and then I ring the bell, but there is no answer even though I wait for about five minutes, so I turn the handle, and the door is open, and I step into the hall.
‘Arvid?’ I call, not too loud, and there is no response. I walk on into the living room and see that he has thrown up in the middle of the floor. Luckily for him there is lino down and not the wall-to-wall carpet almost everyone has now. I go into the kitchen and fill a bucket of water, find a rag and wash the floor and pour the crap down the sink and flush it with hot water so it will all go away. That’s no easy job. What’s left I have to remove with a paper towel and throw in the waste bin. I take the bin bag from the stand, tie it up and put it in the hall ready to be carried out. The smell is not the greatest, so I open the door.
I wash my hands and go back to the living room and head for the stairs. At the foot of the stairs there is a bookcase with Tolstoy and Ingstad and Gorky and Jack London and all the others. It belongs to Arvid’s father, from before the war, but Arvid took it over long ago. It has rose carvings along the front at the top and women’s bodies and men’s faces down the sides, and the wood is dark with oil and not like anything else in the flat. I run my fingers over one of the female bodies, then go upstairs, the steps creaking as they always do, and I can hear Arvid groan inside his room. I look in and there he is, lying flat on the bed with his clothes on and his head over the edge, talking into a bucket.
‘Interesting conversation,’ I say, and walk straight in and open the window because the air is thick and bad for his health.
‘Comedian,’ he gurgles into the bucket. On the floor is the ashtray we used last night, full of dog ends. I pick it up, empty the mess down the toilet and wash it in the sink. The bottle beside the bed was half full when I left last night. It’s empty now.
‘Have you heard the news on the radio?’ I ask.
‘No, Goddamnit.’
‘Nixon’s announced a full withdrawal.’
‘What!?’ He yanks his head up from the bucket. ‘Is that true?’
‘No, but you could do with a shower. It’s not beyond you.’
‘Idiot!’ He tries to stand up, and his face goes all white and he has to sit back down. He swallows and struggles with something stuck in his throat.
‘Come on,’ I say, but he is resting his head on his arms and looks as if maybe he’s crying. I go out and find a towel in the cupboard by the bathroom and toss it through the door. It hits him on the forehead.
‘Pull yourself together. Get into that shower, and then we’re out of here.’ I go downstairs and sit down in the living room and roll a cigarette. At first it is quiet up there, and then I hear him shuffling across the floor, and at last the shower starts, a trickle at first and then stronger, and I go to the balcony door and stand in the sun, smoking. It’s nice and warm against the sunny wall, and I close my eyes and finish the cigarette and flick the butt on to the lawn. Back in the living room, I go to the bookcase, run my fingers over the spines and stop at the centenary editions of Tolstoy from 1928 and wonder if Arvid’s father has really read them all. I pull out the first volume of Anna Karenina, read the first sentence I have read many times before:
‘All happy families resemble each other; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,’ it says, and Arvid turns off the shower. I put the book on the shelf and slump into a chair and wait. It takes him ten minutes to come down, still pale, but he is clinging on.