Elvis offered my father a long drink and a pack of cigarettes. They spoke to one another. Without warning, my father ploughed the glass into Elvis’s face. When the guy lifted his hands to protect himself, my father grabbed his hair and smashed his face against his knee in one swift movement. He repeated this movement several times with great force, until the guy collapsed on the grass. I don’t really know whether I heard any sounds, but later I imagined that on that night I heard Elvis’s face crack.
My mother started yelling and screaming. She chased me into bed. You go upstairs, she said and pointed towards the second floor. You go now! I did as she said. I didn’t want to be confronted with my father when he was so furious, I knew what he was capable of. I lay in bed listening, trying to put together what was happening from the sounds. I heard voices that got mixed up in one another, loud and excited, but I was unable to distinguish one from the other or make any sense out of them. The view from the tiny window on the second floor faced the grove, away from what was happening out front. I stared over at Fredrik and wondered whether I should wake him. This clearly involved him too, but he was sleeping calmly and I thought it was best to let him sleep in peace.
Ten minutes later I heard a car outside, more voices, arguing and shouting. There was a revving of a car engine and then silence. I must have fallen asleep, because the sound of loud voices arguing down in the living room yanked me awake. I heard my mother say that she was a grown woman. Why can’t you behave like a grown man? she asked. I heard a man sobbing. At first I thought there had to be a third person down there, someone who was with my mother and father, and that it was the third person who was crying. But I tiptoed over to the door, opened it a crack and looked down. I couldn’t see my mother. My father was hiding his face in his hands and when he took his hands away, I saw that he was crying. I had never heard or seen my father cry before. I crept back into bed and put the pillow over my head.
The next morning my father was sitting out on the steps reading the newspaper. He was smoking. I saw that they were Winston cigarettes and I wondered if they were Lars Paalgaard’s. My father whistled while he read, as if everything was fine. Good morning, he said. Did you get any sleep? Yes, I said. I went to get a glass of water. I sat on a rock with my back to the cabin. Jesus, my father said and started reading out loud from the newspaper. It was an article about an American politician who’d been caught red-handed with two prostitutes in his car. People want to have a whole lot of things for nothing, my father said, have you thought about that? I’d never thought about that, so I didn’t reply. Without looking up, my father said that people cheated on their taxes, people stole and made promises and lied and tricked each other. He said there was a clear line between right and wrong in this life, and that I must never decide to study law, because the job of lawyers was to mess with that line. I had to promise him that I would never study law. As if I had ever even considered it.
I didn’t understand what he was babbling about and I felt restless. I didn’t know what it was then, but I do now. Something was taking shape inside of me, in my own life, something that was going to explode inside of me when the time was right. Where is Mum? I asked. She drove off at five this morning, my father answered. Why were you crying? I asked. When? he asked. Last night, why were you crying? Grown-ups cry sometimes, he said, it’s OK. He finally looked over at me. Don’t be disappointed about what your parents do, he said and waited for me to answer. Do you love your father? he asked. He said my name twice. Yes, I said. Do you think I will take good care of you? he asked. Yes, I do, I said. I will take good care of you, he said.
I read somewhere that 1974 was the year with the greatest number of working-class people in the world. After 1974 the percentage of people working in industry started going down. In 1974 Odda had its historical moment—when social democracy reached its peak, all visions were within reach, the working class had civilized capitalism, and the welfare society was as close to reaching fruition as it ever would be. After that, things didn’t run on their own steam any longer, and a few years later the world changed direction with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Even Jürgen Sparwasser defected to the West when he retired in 1988. He had been promised a car, a house and heaps of money for his goal against West Germany. He got nothing.
In the year 1974 my father started attacking his own family. In 1974 I waited for phone calls from a crazy girl who I knew was going to drop me the minute she got tired of me. But that’s how it is, that’s how you lose a city, and it’s only afterwards that you can write the story. When you’re in the middle of it, you think everything will stay the same, everything will remain the way it is, just a little bit different.
Then you’re standing there one day on the empty street when you’ve come home after having been away for a long time, and you meet people you don’t know, or people you don’t recognize. The grey factory buildings and the grey mountains are the same as they have always been. But everything has changed and the workers don’t walk through the gate to punch the clock any more. That’s how it happens: first your best friend moves, then you move, then they shut down the smelting works, then there’s a whole gang of men nobody needs, and then the radio stations don’t play the records you like any longer. Then they ship the entrails of the factory to Poland, China and Argentina, and then they start arguing about what’s going to happen to the shells of the buildings that have started falling down. The benches are empty, there’s no longer water in the fountain outside city hall, and the neon lights on the cinema have stopped working.
There used to be something here, something beautiful and disturbing all at once, and it seemed important, a sparkling future that perhaps nobody fully believed in, but which was ingrained in you—this is your city, this is your time, this is what you are. And look now: I can’t even remember everybody’s names. That’s why I decided to create this little booklet with a list of all the people who used to be at the cabins in Skånevik for those weeks of the summer every year. I have written short biographies of people, made copies of photographs of them and tried to piece together what has happened to everyone.
After that summer I was sure that I would never go up to the director’s residence again. We weren’t going to sleep together any more. It was best to avoid one another or not speak to one another ever again. But I longed for her, I dreamed about her, how she took my hand and stuck it in between her legs. How she took my foot and put it between her thighs and then started moving on top of me until she came. How she shoved my head down towards her crotch and whispered for me to show her what she had taught me. My parents were like children that summer, consumed with trying to find one another anew. My mother had come crawling back and asked for forgiveness. They spoke in soft, secretive voices and I tried to interpret everything they said, but pretty soon they were yelling at one another again, loudly and without consideration. They had disappointed one another too much; neither of them managed to live up to what they had been when they’d first fallen in love. I wanted to get away, I wanted to be free. I slipped up the path to the director’s residence every time she called. As soon as I was inside, she fumbled with my belt, then she pulled off my trousers. I wondered whether there was a name for this. And if it didn’t have a name, was there a way out of it?