Usually I was totally engrossed by these stories, without giving them a thought, the whole point of course was that you didn’t think, at least not with your own thoughts, you just followed the action. That afternoon, however, I quickly put the comic to one side, for some reason I couldn’t sit still, and it wasn’t much later than five o’clock, so I decided to go out again. I stopped at the top of the stairs, not a sound, she was still down below. What was she doing? She was hardly ever there. At least not at this time, I thought, bending down for my shoes in the hallway and tying the laces. I knocked on the door to Dad’s study. That is, the door leading to the corridor into which three rooms opened: the bathroom, the study, and the kitchen with the little box room at the end. In fact, it was a self-contained flat, but we had never rented it out to anyone.
“I’m going out!” I shouted. “Up to Geir’s!”
That is what I had been told to do, to tell them if I was going anywhere and say where.
Nevertheless, after a few seconds of silence, Dad’s irritated voice sounded from inside the study.
“All right, all right!” he shouted.
A few more seconds of silence passed.
Then Mom’s voice, friendlier, as if to compensate for Dad’s.
“That’s fine, Karl Ove!”
I shot out, closed the door carefully behind me, and ran up to Geir’s. I stood outside, called a few times until his mother came around the house. She had gardening gloves on, and was otherwise wearing khaki shorts, a blue blouse, and a pair of black clogs. In her hand she was holding a red trowel.
“Hi, Karl Ove,” she said. “Geir went out with Leif Tore a while ago.”
“Where did they go?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
“OK. Bye.”
I turned and walked slowly down the drive with my eyes glazed with tears. Why hadn’t they called at my house?
I stopped by the barrier between the two roads. Stood for a moment stock-still, listening. Not a sound. I sat down on one of the barriers. The rough concrete chafed against my thighs. Dandelions grew in the ditch below, all gray with dust. There was a grid next to it, rusty and with a sun-faded cigarette packet stuck between the bars.
Where could they have gone?
Down to Ubekilen?
Down to the pontoons?
To the soccer field and the play area?
Had Geir taken Leif Tore to one of our places?
Up the mountain?
I scanned the mountain. No sign of them there anyway. I got to my feet and started to make my way down. At the crossroads by the cherry tree there were three ways to choose among, if you were going to the landing stages. I chose the one to the right, through the gate, along the path covered with soil and twigs beneath the deep shadows from the tops of the enormous oaks, down to the field where we usually played soccer even though it sloped on both sides and the grass was knee-high, trampled from very early spring, there were also sapling trees growing on it, past the cliff with its grayish crags, generally bare but with some low scattered cover, and on through the forest to the road. Beyond it there was the new marina, blasted out of the rock, with three identical quays, all with wooden gangways and orange pontoons.
They weren’t there, either. I walked along one pontoon anyway; a double-ender had just moored at the tip, it belonged to Kanestrøm, and I went over to see what was happening. Kanestrøm was alone on board and peered up as I stood by the bow.
“So it’s you who’s out and about, is it?” he said. “I’ve been doing a bit of fishing, as you can see.”
The sun glinted on his glasses. He had a moustache, short hair, a little bald patch on top, and wore denim shorts, a checked shirt, and sandals.
“Would you like to see?”
He held up a red bucket in my direction. It was full of thin, slippery mackerel with bluish, glistening skin. Some were twitching, and the movement seemed to spread to the other bodies lying so close to one another it was as though it were one and the same creature.
“Wow!” I said. “Did you catch all of them?”
He nodded.
“All in the space of a few minutes. There was a huge shoal just offshore. Now we’ve got enough food for several days!”
He put the bucket down on the narrow gangway. Lifted an old gasoline canister, and put it down beside the bucket. Then some fishing lines and a can of hooks and lures. Humming an old song all the while.
“Do you know where Dag Lothar is?” I said.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” he said. “Are you looking for him?”
“Yes, sort of,” I said.
“Would you like to sit at the front here?”
I shook my head.
“Not really. In fact I’m a bit busy.”
“All right,” he said, and stepped onto the pontoon, bent down, and grabbed his gear. I hurried off so as not to have to walk alongside him. Ran across the stony car park and balanced on the high curbstone all the way up to the main road, where a rather steep path plunged down into the forest. It led to the Rock, the place where everyone on the estate went swimming, where you could dive off a two-meter-high rock and swim across to Gjerstadholmen, on the other side of a maybe ten-meter-wide channel. Even though the water was deep and I couldn’t swim, I sometimes went along because so much happened there.
Now I could hear voices from the forest. A high-pitched child’s voice and a slightly deeper youth’s. A second later Dag Lothar and Steinar came into view between the sun-flecked tree trunks. Their hair was wet and both of them were carrying towels.
“Hey, Karl Ove!” Dag Lothar shouted, catching sight of me. “I saw an adder on my way down here!”
“Really?” I said. “Where did you see it? Here?”
He nodded and stopped in front of me. Steinar also stopped and adopted a posture that made it obvious he had no intention of chatting, he wanted to be on his way as soon as possible. Steinar was in the eighth class at Dad’s school. He had long, dark hair and a shadow on his upper lip. He played the bass and had his room in the cellar with its own entrance.
“I was running down,” Dag Lothar said, pointing along the path. “As fast as I could, pretty much, and as I was charging around the bend there was an adder in front of me, on the path. I almost didn’t manage to stop!”
“What happened?” I said.
If there was anything I was frightened of in this world it was snakes and worms.