The old man grunted, apparently a laugh.
‘Tell me what it’s like,’ Johnny said. ‘To be old. I mean, when the body is as worn out as yours. You hardly ever eat. Just sit here sleeping. Hardly ever talk to anyone, just me and Mai Sinok.’
‘You mean I’m near the edge of my grave.’ He stroked his hair away from his forehead. The room’s heat made him sluggish and drowsy. ‘You too are on the edge of the grave. Perhaps we’re all on the edge of the grave.’
‘I’m just seventeen,’ Johnny said. ‘I’ve got a full life ahead of me.’
‘That’s what we like to believe. Otherwise life would be impossible.’
‘Tell me what it’s like,’ Johnny repeated. ‘Can you feel death getting closer? Can you feel your heart and everything else work more slowly? What’s it like to live in slow motion?’
‘Oh, it’s all right. It’s like bobbing in the surf, against the shore and out, against the shore and out. From morning to evening. You’ve just got to let yourself go.’
‘You’re lying,’ Johnny said. ‘Bobbing in the surf, you say.’
Again the old man grunted a laugh. With his spiked club-hands he made a slight wave, gave Johnny a clumsy caress. ‘I’m feeling quite well, lad.’
‘But I want to know what it feels like,’ Johnny insisted. ‘Is the light different? Or the sound?’
Henry sighed. ‘I see the same things as you. Every person lives his life on the edge. The view is the same. To say anything else would be a lie.’ Then he added: ‘Where have you been today? What have you been up to?’
Johnny made himself comfortable on the footstool. In spite of his modest weight, the plastic cover and the nails holding it together cracked.
‘Not much. I went to a cafe. I ate a vanilla pastry and perused the newspaper.’
Clearly they’ll get me, he thought.
Sooner or later. That’s all right. While I wait for them to get me, I’ll have fun. I like this game, I always win. But if I were to meet my match, then that would be all right. I won’t sulk and complain. It was fun while it lasted, and I’ve made my presence known.
He stayed with Henry for several hours. They read the newspaper and discussed this and that, but for long stretches of time they just sat in comfortable silence. Close to each other in the hot room. When he finally got up to leave, he caught sight of Else Meiner through the window, and when he was in the garden, she also caught sight of him. She straddled her blue Nakamura bicycle, and it appeared to be fixed. The tyres were brand new. He started the moped and put on his helmet, then slipped on to the road. She waited. Her face was one big grin. He thought about something his grandfather had once said. That a person who teases you was often a person who, deep down, was attracted to you, possibly even in love. So he studied Else Meiner extra carefully. The little girl’s pointy face with the large front teeth. Was she in love with him? Deep down? He continued on the road slowly. This time he didn’t look away, down at the handlebars or up at the sky. He stared directly at her. She didn’t flinch. He had never really looked at that smile, he realised, and it was actually a bright and cheery smile. She knows I was the one who slashed her tyres, he thought, that’s what she’s trying to say. That’s why she’s not shouting at me like she normally does, because we’re even now. We’re finally even! He gunned the throttle and raced ahead, across the road. As he passed her, she raised her middle finger.
‘Frogface,’ she called out.
Her laughter crackled like ice cubes rolling across a table.
He was so furious that the heat rose in his cheeks.
‘Stupid little girl,’ he shouted. ‘You’ll get it! Tonight!’
He remembered it was Thursday. That meant the band would practise at the Hauger School gymnasium, and Else Meiner would blow her trumpet until her cheeks puffed out. I’ll use the army knife, he thought.
I’ll puncture both your lungs.
Then there will be no more sounds from your trumpet.
Later he got to thinking about the Hauger School Band. That Else Meiner would leave on her bicycle, her instrument stowed in a little case over the back wheel. With others she would sit in the gymnasium for two hours, blowing her trumpet. Or an hour and a half. He didn’t know how long band practice would last, but he planned to watch through the window. Before he left, he scavenged in his chest of drawers — looking for a little surprise for Else Meiner. He didn’t want to be unprepared. Then he slipped his hand into Butch’s cage and patted him gently on the back.
‘No country for old men,’ he whispered.
He went outside.
It was late summer, and all the vegetation had begun to dry up. There was no colour or freshness, none of nature’s optimism, none of its strength. It was as if someone, a spirit or a giant, had swept through the entire Askeland housing estate and left its considerable mark. Don’t you rise again. It’s getting cold now, and dark. Johnny Beskow looked at each house as he passed, as was his routine. You could buy heroin at Askeland; twice he’d been stopped and offered some. No thanks, he’d said with a superior smile. He put enormous stock in being clear-headed, and he was agile and fast and sharp. The addicts who hung around Askeland reminded him of sleepwalkers.
He stopped when he neared Hauger School, hitting the brakes and quickly surveying the area. The bike shed was crammed with bicycles. A few cars sat in the car park. A rope slapped against the flagpole like a whip. He heard a drum, drumsticks pounding steadily against the tight skin, in an even, definite rhythm. He knew that it was the bass drum, the heartbeat of the march. The band had already started, with percussion and horns. A piccolo whined shrilly above all else. Because he didn’t want Else Meiner to hear him, he pushed the moped the final stretch towards the bike shed; you never knew with her, she was awfully sharp. When the moped was parked, he plodded about in the playground, glancing around. Hopscotch patterns, both flyer and niner variations, were painted directly on the black asphalt. Though he didn’t have a marker, he couldn’t resist the urge to hop through the patterns. I don’t weigh much, he thought, as he hopped, and I’m limber. I’m one hell of a jumping troll. His light gymnastics made his heart race; blood raced through his thin body.
He sized up the playground. Straight ahead, behind a red-and-white metal barrier, he saw a bike path; he’d walked that way many times before he’d got his moped. Narrow and paved, it was called the Love Trail. Else Meiner had also come that way, he was quite certain, for she lived at Bjørnstad. And when she went home to Rolandsgata, after band practice, she would again ride that trail. On the blue Nakamura bicycle. At any rate, this is what he was counting on to carry out his vengeance, which he’d plotted so carefully over the past few hateful hours of the afternoon. Energised by these thoughts, he began walking with urgent steps towards the barrier. It would be easy to push the moped past it. He could wait for her there on the trail, hidden behind some bushes — because he noticed they were thick, good hiding places. Now his heart was beating even faster. He was filled with this honey-sweet thing called revenge. For a while he stood near the barrier and considered, glanced right to left, studied the dry, dense vegetation. Then he walked back to the school building. Sneaked down to the basement window and peeked into the gymnasium. The conductor was standing in the middle of the room energetically waving the white baton, his entire body pushing the band forward in the march: pointed elbows, a bend in the knees, eager jerks with his bearded chin. On the left side of the gym were the woodwind players. One of the clarinets had a squeak to it. The percussionists were in the back. And there, in the front right, sat the brass players, Else Meiner and her trumpet among them. Her cheeks were puffed out, exactly as he’d imagined. But she could really play; she was the only one who played pure notes, the only one who kept the rhythm.