It was a quarter to eleven.
I got up and went to the payphone, inserted forty kroner and dialled Linda’s mobile number.
‘How was it this morning?’ I asked.
‘Terrible,’ she said. ‘Absolute chaos. Uttterly out of control. Heidi clawed John again. Vanja and Heidi had a fight. And Vanja had a temper tantrum on the street as we were about to go.’
‘Oh no. Oh no,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘And then when we got to the nursery Vanja said. “You and dad are always so angry. You’re always so angry.” I was so upset! So unbelievably upset.’
‘I can understand that. It’s terrible. We’ll have to sort this out, Linda. We have to. We have to find a solution. It’s no good what we’re doing. I’ll have to pull myself together. A lot of this is my fault.’
‘Yes, we must,’ Linda said. ‘We’ll have to talk about it when you come home. What drives me to despair is that I only want us to be happy. That’s all I want. And I can’t do it! I’m such a terrible mother. I can’t even be alone with my own children.’
‘No, that’s not true. You’re a fantastic mother. That’s not what this is about. But we’ll get there. We will.’
‘Yes… How was the trip?’
‘Fine. I’m in Kristiansand now. Off to the university soon. I’m dreading it. I really hate this. I can’t think of anything worse. And then I go and do it again and again.’
‘It always goes well though.’
‘That’s a qualified truth. Sometimes it does. But I don’t want to keep grumbling. It’ll be fine, and I am fine. I’ll ring again tonight, OK? If there is anything, ring my mobile. It’s OK for incoming calls.’
‘All right.’
‘What are you doing now?’
‘Walking in Pildamms Park with John. He’s asleep. It’s nice here and I should be happy. But… this morning has shattered me.’
‘It’ll pass. You’ll have a nice afternoon together. Linda, I’ve got to go. Bye!’
‘Bye. And good luck!’
I hung up the receiver, collected my bag and went out for a last cigarette.
SHIT. SHIT, SHIT, SHIT.
I leaned against the wall and looked at the forest, the grey rock face between all the yellow and green.
I was so sad for the children. I was so angry and irritable at home. It took nothing for me to tell Heidi off, nothing to shout at her. And Vanja, Vanja… When she had her bouts of defiance and not only said no to everything but also shouted and screamed and punched, I shouted back, grabbed her and threw her onto the bed. I was completely out of control. Then came the remorse afterwards, the attempts to be patient, kind, nice, friendly, good. Good. And that was what I wanted to be, all I wanted to be, to be a good father to the three of them.
Wasn’t I a good father?
SHIT. SHIT. SHIT.
I tossed the cigarette away, grabbed my bag and left. As I had no idea where the university was, nothing like it had existed when I lived here, I took a taxi all the way. It went from the car park with me on the back seat, alongside the runway at first, then over the river, past my old school, which I couldn’t care less about, up and down the hills and past Hamresanden, the campsite, the beach, the hills with the estate behind, where most of my classmates had lived. Through the forest to the Timenes crossroads, where we followed the E18 to Kristiansand.
The university was on the other side of a tunnel, not so far from the gymnas I had attended but completely isolated from it. It lay like a little island in the forest. Large attractive new buildings. There was no doubt that money had flowed into Norway since I lived here. People were better dressed, their cars were more expensive and building projects were under way everywhere.
A bearded bespectacled lecturer-type met me at the front entrance. We shook hands, he showed me the room where the talk was to be held and went about his business. I made a beeline for the canteen, stuffed down a baguette, sat outside in the sun, drank coffee and smoked. There were students everywhere, younger than I thought they should be, they looked more like they were attending a gymnas. Suddenly I had a vision of myself, an ageing man with sunken eyes and a bag, sitting on his own. Forty, I would soon be forty. Hadn’t I almost fallen off my chair when Hans’s pal Olli had once told us he was forty? I hadn’t believed it at first, but then his life appeared in a very new light, what was that old boy doing with us?
Now I was the same age myself.
‘Karl Ove?’
I looked up. Nora Simonhjell stood in front of me with a smile on her face.
‘Hi, Nora! What are you doing here? Do you work here?’
‘Yes. I saw you were coming. Thought I would find you here. Nice to see you!’
I got up and gave her a hug.
‘Grab a seat!’ I said.
‘You’re looking so good!’ she said. ‘Tell me what’s new in your life.’
I gave her the edited highlights. Three children, four years in Stockholm, two in Malmö. Everything OK. She — I had first met her at a department party at Bergen University the night they were celebrating having finished their main subject, and then bumped into her in Volda where she taught and I wrote my first novel, which she read and was the first to comment on — had lived for a while in Oslo, worked in a bookshop and at Morgenbladet, published her second collection of poems and got a job here. I told her Kristiansand had been a nightmare for me. But a lot must have changed in the intervening twenty years. And it was one thing to go to a gymnas and another to be employed at a university.
She loved it, she said. Seemed happy. She had hung up her quill, but not for good, you never knew what might happen. A friend came over, she was American, we talked a little about the differences between the old country and her new one, then went up to the auditorium. The talk was due to start in ten minutes. My stomach hurt, my whole body did in fact, everything ached. And my hands, which had been trembling subconsciously all day, now really were trembling. I sat down at the desk, flicked through the books, looked up at the entrance. Two people in the hall. Me and the lecturer. Was it going to be that kind of day?
The first time I read in public, a few weeks after my debut novel had come out, was in Kristiansand. There were four people in the audience. One of them, I saw to my great satisfaction, was my old history teacher, now the headmaster, Rosenvold. I went over to chat with him afterwards. It turned out that he had almost no memory of me, but he had come to listen to and meet the second of the evening’s debutants, Bjarte Breiteig.
So much for the homecoming. So much for revenge over the past.
‘We-ell, I think we can begin then, can’t we?’ the lecturer said.
I looked along the rows of chairs. Seven people sitting there.
Nora said she was impressed when it was over, an hour later. I smiled and thanked her for her kind words, but I hated myself and my whole being, I couldn’t get away fast enough. Fortunately, Geir had turned up twenty minutes before we had arranged. He was standing in the middle of the large foyer when I came downstairs. I hadn’t seen him for more than a year.
‘I didn’t think you could lose any more hair,’ I said. ‘But I was wrong.’
We shook hands.
‘Your teeth have gone so yellow the dogs are going to flock round you in town,’ he said. ‘They’ll think you’re their king. How was it?’
‘Seven people came.’
‘Ha ha ha!’
‘Never mind. Otherwise, it went well. Shall we go? Have you got your car outside?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
Considering he had buried his mother the day before, he was in an astonishingly good mood.