If you’d walked past our cabin a summer night in 1974, I’m sure you would have wanted to be with these people, have a beer with them, and you would have talked bullshit with them and sung songs around the fire together. You would have wished that your mother was as beautiful as my mother. You would have stood there and thought that now everything was perfect, this had to last forever.
On the night we climbed out of the T-Bird, Lars Paalgaard shook my hand and thanked me for the trip. I’m glad to have met you finally, he said, then repeated the same thing when he shook Fredrik’s hand. I remember I thought he was a kind of gentleman: he shook our hands as if he wanted us to understand that he really meant it. After we watched the tail lights of the car disappear between the trees, I went straight up to the cabin. My mother called after me, asking if I didn’t want something to eat, a hot dog or a steak. Fredrik came running after me too, but I wanted to be alone.
Inside the cabin it seemed as if nothing was standing still. Everything was spinning around, I didn’t know whether I should lie down or stay seated upright. I couldn’t remember ever having been so angry before. I took out all my cassettes to choose one in particular that would drown out the sounds of laughter and jabbering from outside, but the tape got tangled up in the player, and I ended up on my feet trying to fix the cassette until finally I pulled out the tape and threw all of it on the floor. After a while my mother came. She knocked on her own front door, as if she were unsure about how I would react. She said that Marita had asked about me, she was down by the bonfire. Are you going down to see her? my mother asked. I didn’t answer. Don’t you want to go down with Marita? she asked. No, I said finally. Are you all right? my mother said. No, I said. Have I done something wrong? she asked.
I walked right past her and out of the cabin. I started walking down the steep hill that lay like a natural amphitheatre facing the shore. Fredrik came up beside me, but I shoved him in the shoulder. He stumbled and ended up lying on the grass. He shouted my name. I’d decided to tell Marita that I was screwing the director’s daughter. Keeping my mouth shut would be the same as cheating on her, I had decided. I hadn’t said anything earlier this summer; I thought that it was none of her business because we weren’t going out together. We just hung out every summer—she worked over there in the store and that was where I’d seen her the first time. Everyone assumed that we were going out, or at least that one day we would be a couple.
She was sitting a little way away from the others when I got down there. I sat down without saying hi. Where’ve you been? Marita asked. At the fair, I said. She sat with her hands folded around her knees. There was something in her eyes that made me think she already knew, that she had seen through me this entire first week. I couldn’t take her gaze and looked away. Over by the bonfire I caught a glimpse of shadows moving beside the flames, potatoes in tinfoil and beer bottles being passed from hand to hand. I heard glasses clinking against glasses, and people shouting “cheers”. Some bratty kids came running up behind us and teasing, they howled: Sweethearts, sweethearts. What’s wrong? Marita asked. Nothing, I said, everything’s fine. I hardly recognize you, she said. Me neither, I said. We sat in silence. A guy over by the bonfire had pulled out a guitar and was singing. Everyone sang along. Do you want to go for a walk? Marita asked. I stood up with a soft sensation of amazement in my body.
When we had come a little bit away from the bonfire, Marita took my hand. She looked back, towards the light from the cabins and the buildings that made up the tiny hub of the cove. I could smell a faint scent from her skin and felt her hair tickling my face. She pushed up against me. Her mouth searched for my own. I stroked her on the back, looking at her bum. She took me into the woods, held my hand and pulled me towards her. She turned around quickly. I saw her pale face between the dark pine trees. She pulled her dress down off her shoulders, so I could caress her breasts. I laid her down on the ground and lifted up her dress. I heard her crying as I came carefully inside her.
After we’d slept together, I thought that she was everything I’d ever wanted, and now I’d lost her. She must have known this too when she brought me here. This wasn’t the way to do it. This was a way to end it. We lay there on the moss in the densely wooded forest. She kissed my cheek, I stroked her throat, but there was a definite feeling that was spreading through my body and which penetrated all of me, pumping out into my hands and fingers, into my tongue, making my skin prickle.
In the morning I could see from the cabin window that many people had slept outside. They were lying on lawn chairs and on a green couch that somebody had dragged outside. The smell of grilled meat still hung over the place when I sat down on the steps. The morning sun hit everything they’d abandoned the night before: bottles, glasses, plates, plastic bags. The seagulls squabbled over the leftovers in the meadow between the cabins. Sometimes I would get up early, run through the dewy grass and push the rowing boat that belonged to the smelting works out into the fjord. I loved pan-fried coley for breakfast. This morning I went inside again to pick up and read a newspaper, but ended up sitting there, turning the pages without knowing what I’d read.
Mother came down from the second floor dressed in a bathrobe. Aren’t you going fishing today? she asked. No, I said. Why not? I answered that I didn’t feel like it. Mother went to make coffee, but from the corner of my eye I could see that she was watching me. She stood expectantly, holding the bag of coffee in one hand and the measuring spoon in the other. I could hear her breathing. I didn’t move, I waited for her to turn around and continue. When she’d made the coffee, she came over and stood in front of me. Sometimes you have to do things that are wrong just to feel like you’re alive, she said.
She said it in a way that made me think that this was something she had practised saying, as if she’d lain awake and figured out exactly this sentence, because she knew she had to come up with some kind of defence. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to give her anything back. It’s not what you think, she said. I still didn’t answer. She sat down at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette. It’s not what you think, she repeated a bit more faintly. And how do you think I think it is? I asked.
She said that Lars Paalgaard worked in the oil industry. He had money, he could help her start up the beauty parlour she’d dreamed of. She wanted to work in her profession. With a beauty parlour, she could make her own money. Completely by chance Paalgaard had dropped by the clothes shop where she worked. He had driven through Odda and had pulled up outside Prêt-à-Porter to buy lingerie, a gift for the woman he’d been seeing at the time. She said that she liked the guy, he was the type who made things happen around him—he got other people moving. She smiled. That is a bit his style, isn’t it?
What do you think? my mother asked. Isn’t it a good idea? What’s that? I asked. The beauty parlour, she said. Sure, I said, without really having thought about it. But I understood her: my mother was beautiful and slim, with a sense of humour; she was always the centre of attention at parties, her laughter was infectious. When Mother danced, or simply walked across the floor, the needle on the record player at home skipped. She wanted something more. She wanted everything all at once. She had met my father in Bergen, she had cut his hair a couple of times, and later he had asked her out. Finally he’d convinced her to come with him to Odda. She hadn’t wanted to move, she thought it would be lonely living at the end of a fjord. At that time, though, she must have been in love; she must have thought this was a normal life. That was before she acquired this aura that beautiful people often have, as if they bear a grudge against everything around them because the world has failed to keep the promise beautiful people think it has made them. This was before my father’s rage, before he started drinking seriously. It was before he started destroying different rooms at home. Always late, always drunk. He used to limit the damage to one room at a time, so that when we woke up in the morning, before our parents had got up and had the chance to clean up, we could see where his anger had found its particular expression in the course of the night.