A new term entered the Norwegian vocabulary in the 1990s: child robbery. Gangs would board the underground in the east, cross the city centre and emerge in the west. It was boys against boys, kids against kids. And the kids of Ris had lots of things the kids from the satellite towns wanted. The worst thing was when the gangs decided you were ‘indebted’. There was nothing for it but to pay up. A debt often arose out of thin air, or on spurious grounds like ‘You looked at me. Now you owe me.’ One of the gang might give you a shove and say you were in the way, and as a punishment you would have to pay.
Nobody squealed to the police. You didn’t dare.
It was best to cross to the other side of the street when you saw certain Pakistanis or Somalis in a bunch, or get off the underground at the next stop if they were patrolling through the carriages.
The Norwegians got called potatoes.
Fucking darkies, they shouted back.
Yogurtface!
Bloody Pakis!
Anders felt most at home with the brownies.
One day, Morg tagged the windows of the headmaster’s office at Ris with spaghetti stripes. Knut Egeland, who demanded almost military discipline of his pupils and often came to school in uniform, was determined to reprimand him. The headmaster came into the classroom where Anders was sitting at his desk before a lesson and punched him in the chest. It was a blow with some force to it. Anders got to his feet and asked if he shouldn’t return the punch.
‘Hit me if you dare,’ replied Egeland. It took a little while, as if Anders were thinking it over, and then he punched the headmaster in the chest, right on his pacemaker. Egeland rocked backwards while the teacher and the other pupils looked on in shock. The old man recovered and hissed, ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ before walking out of the room.
Respect, that was what that punch gave Anders.
The little kids in Skøyen looked up to Morg; they knew that ‘last night Morg was here, and here, and there’. He had style, he had attitude. His letters were pointed at the top, rounded at the bottom and had forward-sloping shadows. Great shapes, the younger boys thought. Morg used loads of colour, often lots of different ones, at least three or four, and he favoured soft, pastel shades.
The colours varied, depending on the spray cans available. Among the taggers, the rule was that the paint had to be stolen. They stole it from petrol stations and building suppliers, especially from the big chains, not from the little shops – that was seen as uncool. The boys crept into the stores like thin, hooded shadows, prowled along the shelves and made sure a can or two fell into their rucksacks before coolly going to the counter to buy a cola, or they might simply grab a couple of aerosols and run. The spray cans were expensive, about a hundred kroner each. You needed at least three to four to create a decent piece, not even a particularly big one. Some walls took more paint than others: old stone walls soaked up the spray paint like mad, but for smoother surfaces like buses and trams you didn’t need as much.
Anders didn’t want to steal. He wanted to buy. Go to the checkout and pay.
In Denmark the spray cans were a quarter of the price. Morg, Spok and Wick made a plan to catch the ferry over to Copenhagen; they would only need to be away for two nights and they told their parents they were staying over at each other’s. Altogether they bought almost three hundred cans, lugging heavy bags home with them on the ferry. As the ship pulled out of the harbour, the fourteen-year-olds’ names were called over the loudspeaker system. There was nothing for it but to report to the captain. They spent the rest of the night sitting on the bridge, under arrest.
It was Spok’s parents who had suspected something was up, and it did not take many phone calls before they worked out what was going on. They rang the ferry company, which immediately found the boys on the passenger list.
What’s all the fuss about, Morg’s mother said when Spok’s father told her they had found the boys on the ferry from Denmark. He thought her irresponsible; she thought he was overreacting. Spok and Wick found their parents waiting on the quayside in Oslo the next morning. Nobody had come for Anders.
Spok’s parents did all they could to get their son out of what they saw as a negative environment. Spok started playing football as a cover, but continued to juggle the two worlds, the straight and the crooked, and went on tagging.
Anders was the one driving him on. He was running his own race and had systems for everything. His mother had now moved into a terrace of flats in Konventveien, where he stacked all the dearly acquired aerosol cans along by the wall under the veranda. He arranged them by number and colour codes in long, shining rows. He hoarded more of some colours and those cans protruded further out from the wall than the rest. Green. Orange. Yellow. Silver.
Inside the flat, beyond the spray cans, there was another war, sometimes cold and sometimes hot. The neighbours could hear the exchanges through the thin walls. Elisabeth’s teen rebellion had arrived with a vengeance. Doors slammed, glasses and saucepans went flying and hit the walls. The girl had years of anger to vent.
As a rule, Anders vanished into his room whenever his mother and sister were arguing, and only appeared in the kitchen for meals. Then it was Elisabeth’s turn to leave the room. She refused to eat with her mother and half-brother, and usually sat in her room on her own with a plate on her lap.
But outside the home, Elisabeth blossomed. She was attractive and popular, witty and amusing. And she wanted to get away. Away from her mother, away from Silkestrå, away from Norway. When she was eighteen, she went to America as an au pair. California was the place for her. Now she was saving up to go back; for good, she hoped.
While Anders was at secondary school, Wenche started going out with an army officer. Tore and Anders got on well with each other. He was a warm person and easy to be with. For a few years he was a sort of father figure for Anders, though he didn’t hide the fact that he thought Anders was a bit of a weakling, clumsy and awkward at men’s jobs like hammering in nails and mending bikes.
Once Anders was in his teens, he was able to go by himself on his bike to his father’s place in Fritzners gate when he was invited to dinner. They sometimes played Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit, and his father helped him with his homework. On one occasion his father invited him on a trip to Copenhagen. But theirs was never a close relationship. Jens was basically dissatisfied with his son and annoyed by his habits. He stayed in bed late and when he finally got up, he prepared himself about ten slices of bread to eat in front of the television, his father complained. He found him lazy and unenthusiastic, apathetic and taciturn. He wasn’t very curious or eager to learn, his father remarked. No, the boy liked the easy life and being waited on, Jens thought.
Anders’s father did notice, however, that he sometimes seemed vulnerable and sad, as if there were something troubling him. But Anders never shared any problems with him or said what the matter was.
The boy was craving love and attention, and it was as if he longed for something that was missing in his life, his father later admitted. But he was incapable of meeting the boy’s needs. He remained aloof and never made Anders feel loved.
The first time Anders was caught tagging, the police rang both his parents. His father was outraged that Anders had committed a criminal act. He threatened to cut off all contact with him.
The second time it happened he reacted coldly.
Anders promised not to do any more tagging. His father contented himself with that.