Beatles (19 page)

We crossed towards the Colosseum cinema and Majorstuen.

‘Must be bloody cold standin’ like that,’ Seb said.

‘Let’s go to Urra Park,’ Gunnar said.

The church clock shone yellow like an extra moon. Soon be eight. Down on the skating rink the children were playing tag. Ola wasn’t there, of course he wasn’t. Where could he be?

We padded down to Briskeby. The wooden walls of Albin Upp Gallery creaked. The Man on the Steps had closed. Time was passing. It was beginning to be critical.

‘If they’ve harmed a hair on his head,’ Gunnar said. That was all he said. ‘If they’ve harmed a hair on his head.’

Then I saw something. Halfway down Farmers’ Hill. I pointed.

‘Look,’ I whispered.

We stopped dead and stared. They were coming towards us. One big, broad-shouldered figure and a small, squat one. We stared and stared. It was Ola and Klara.

‘It’s Ola and Klara!’ we all shouted, sped round the corner and hid in the entrance to the butcher’s.

It took a while, but then they walked past. Ola and Klara. They were holding hands. Or Klara was holding Ola. And we held our breath.

‘He’s been kidnapped!’ Gunnar said when they had passed. ‘We have to set him free!’

We held Gunnar back, waited a little and crept out onto the pavement. Ola and Klara had disappeared in the driving snow.

We let them go.

‘I’d never have believed that,’ Gunnar said.

We shook our heads and walked home in silence.

And home was a hive of activity. Dad was revising for his driving test, had been swotting since Christmas, in the sitting room with a pile of books in his lap, drawing traffic signs and crossroads, red-faced and very irritable if you went too close and asked too many questions. I enquired when we would have a car, but I didn’t even get an answer to that. Mum said ‘shhh’ and we went into the kitchen and closed all the doors after us. Everyone was being secretive, but as usual I wasn’t told a thing, I have always been the last person to twig what was going on.

Fred Hansen’s star took another tumble. Fred the seal was forgotten, he was standing by the blackboard mumbling, mumbling through a closed mouth, he had it all there, it just would not come out. Written tests were not a problem for him, but oral tests, that was where the barrier came down. In Norwegian classes Kerr’s Pink stalked round him trying to teach him to speak, for we didn’t say ‘ours’s’ or ‘theirs’s’ or ‘his’s’, we didn’t talk like that. Fred’s ears were glowing and he crumpled over his desk lid, feeling so small that he could have crawled into the ink well.

And in the breaks they were after him. A whole gang collected, not only from our class but also all the silks from Skarpsno and further west, and one day one of the spoilt brats kicked his packed lunch into the air showering the yard with cervelat and goat’s cheese. Gunnar’s jaws began to clench and unclench and we went over to the fence where Fred stood clinging to the wire netting.

The spoilt brat looked at us.

‘We’re teaching the nigger manners,’ said the boy who had delivered the kick.

‘Scram,’ Gunnar said.

The brat seemed surprised.

‘Are
you
telling
me
what to do,’ he enquired.

‘You’ve got it,’ Gunnar said. ‘Scram. Now.’

The brat looked around. Suddenly there was room to move his elbows.

‘And if I don’t? What then?’

Gunnar is not quick. But he is accurate. His right hand came out of his pocket, his arm stretched out full and the silk collapsed with
a sob. The other grubs began to push and shove, but it was half-hearted, they had seen Gunnar’s right arm in action. Then we took Fred to the shed and we each gave him a sandwich.

That day Fred waited for us after school. He looked a bit sheepish and asked if we wanted to go home with him. Of course we did, and we trudged after Fred through the town. It was quite a hike because he lived in Schweigaardsgate, the other side of Oslo.

I was the first to put my foot in it.

‘What does your brother do?’ I asked as we passed Oslo East station.

Fred stared at me for a long time, assuming the wise expression on his face that made him look twenty years older, as though he had understood everything.

‘Haven’t got a brother,’ he said.

‘You haven’t got a brother?’

He gave a wan smile, looked down at his clothes and flapped a trouser leg.

‘Mum buys clothes at Elevator,’ Fred said.

‘Elevator?’

‘The Salvation Army. They sell second-hand clothes.’

There was a strange smell in the entrance hall of the block where Fred lived. I wasn’t quite sure what it was. It just didn’t smell like home. There was an empty bottle of booze on the letterboxes. The paint hung off the walls like withered leaves. He lived on the ground floor and kept his key on a piece of string around his neck. After a good deal of fumbling he produced it from under his sweater and almost broke his neck opening the door.

There was no one at home. We removed our shoes and had a look around, holding our breath. Everything was different, the furniture, the air, the light. Fred said nothing. He let us look. After a while he said, ‘Mum and I live here.’

Now I knew what the smell was. Old clothes, like in the loft in Nesodden.

‘Where’s your d-d-dad then?’ Ola asked straight out.

‘Haven’t got a dad,’ Fred said.

‘You haven’t got a dad!’ Ola looked bewildered.

‘No,’ Fred said.

Seb tried to warn off Ola, but it was too late.

‘Is he d-d-dead?’

‘Don’t know,’ Fred said.

We wandered into his room, a tight fit with loads of pictures of swimmers on the walls. We sat down on the bed, a mattress covered with a faded green rug.

‘D’you swim a lot?’ Gunnar asked.

‘Torggata, a couple of times a week,’ Fred said.

We didn’t say a lot more, just sat grinning and joking about the teachers. Fred seemed calm and happy, staring at us as though we had done him a great favour. Then, however, the floor began to quiver, the panes in the window rattled and the mattress bounced up and down.

‘What’s that?’ I shouted.

Fred checked his watch.

‘The Stockholm train,’ he said.

We ran to the window. Right outside, only a few metres away, ran the train lines. Straight after came the Trondheim train, we could see into the carriages, illuminated in the dusk. People sat reading, playing cards, lifting suitcases, just like in a film, lots of yellow images, one after the other, coming to an abrupt end, the sound faded, but the floor continued to quiver.

‘I suppose trains go all over the world from here,’ I said, impressed.

Fred nodded.

‘In our place they only go to Drammen and Sørlandet.’

‘They go to Moscow from here,’ Fred said with pride.

‘Moscow! Is that true?’

‘Every Friday. The Trans-Siberian railway.’

The Trans-Siberian railway. My head sang. That was not quite the same as a goods train to Skøyen.

‘What does it look like?’ I asked.

‘It’s blue. With loads of carriages.’

All of a sudden his mother was standing in the doorway, a small lady in a large grey coat, thin, transparent hair. She looked at us in surprise, then smiled and we said our names and she put out a hand, a large, gnarled hand that was much too heavy for her small body.

Then Villa Farris sparkling wine appeared, with a bun for
everyone, and she chatted on forever, about Fred who was going to the
gymnas
, he would be the first in the family to take university entrance exams, about how good Fred was at swimming, and if he got even better and did more homework then perhaps he could go to America and study there. America. Fred stared out of the window, his neck thin and tense, staring out into the distance, and his mother told us she would have to wash stairs round the clock, but it didn’t matter for Fred was her future, and she talked about the great golden future in such a reedy voice, but there was not a speck of doubt to be detected in her tired grey eyes.

‘Rehearsal for The Snafus tomorrow,’ Gunnar said as we got off the tram in Solli Plass.

Ola looked away.

‘C-c-can’t make it,’ he said.

‘What do you mean by that?’ Seb asked.

‘C-c-can’t make it,’ Ola said.

We eyed him up.

‘Better be a good excuse,’ I said.

‘K-K-Klara.’

On my return home Mum and Dad were sitting in the dining room waiting for me. The table was set with tall glasses and heirloom crockery and there were flowers on all the windowsills.

‘Where have you been?’ Mum asked.

‘With a boy from the class. Fred Hansen.’

Dad sat on his chair in a dark suit like a statue with beads of sweat on his nose. Then he took out a small green thing from his inside pocket and waved it in the air. Driving licence!

‘Congratulations, Dad!’ I said and was allowed to flick through it.

‘You can congratulate him again,’ Mum said in a formal tone.

‘Can I?’

Mum nodded.

‘Congratulations, Dad,’ I said. ‘What for?’

Dad was tongue-tied, Mum had to take over.

‘Dad’s been promoted to bank manager.’

That didn’t mean a lot to me. But it sounded good.

‘When will that be?’ I asked.

‘After New Year,’ Mum said.

‘Will we get a car then?!’

Dad nodded slowly. He was the King of Svolder now.

‘Congratulations, Dad,’ I said for the third time and before I knew it I was standing with his hand in mine and it was all a bit too solemn. The King of Svolder arose, Mum shed a few tears and at last it was dinner, a banquet with chicken casserole and wine, and Coke for me. Dad thawed, melted, he was flowing. How far would
I
go when he had achieved so much with
his
modest start in life? My future was staked out there and then, like a world championship skiing race through Nordmarka with a rock-hard piste and red ribbons on every second spruce tree. Business School. Norwegian Institute of Technology. Construction industry. Banking. The seventies would be the decade for practical, realistic men, Dad said. Perhaps I ought to study abroad. England. Germany. America! The heir presumptive of Svoldergate had already begun his career. There were simply no limits.

‘What was the name of the boy you were with?’ Mum asked.

‘Fred. Fred Hansen.’

‘Where does he live?’ Dad asked.

‘Schweigaardsgate,’ I said.

Mum and Dad exchanged glances, invisible threads, right over my head.

‘Schweigaardsgate, you say,’ Dad said calmly. ‘That’s a long way.’

‘Yes, it is!’ I said with animation. ‘The trains from Oslo East run past there. We saw the Trans-Siberian railway!’

‘The Trans-Siberian railway?’ Dad gaped.

‘That’s right. Wouldn’t mind living there!’

There was a sudden silence. Dad’s eyes fell to his plate. Mum stared at me with a look I didn’t recognise.

‘Kim!’ came the stinging reproof. ‘You mustn’t say that. You must never say that again!’

I fiddled with my food, feeling the blood rush through my head in my confusion.

‘No,’ I said meekly.

‘And you must
never
go there at night! Do you hear?’

I heard. I studied the tablecloth and the stain that had spread into a bizarre shape, like a disfigured face or a troll, a sinister hybrid. The
silence around the table lingered, I thought about Fred who didn’t have a brother after all, who didn’t have a father either, I thought of his mother’s big red hands. And I thought of the future Fred bore on his shoulders, twice as heavy as mine.

‘I think I’ll go for a Saab,’ Dad said.

In the evening we went to the Colosseum and saw
The Sound of Music
. It must have been there I lost my interest in films. We sat in the first row of the Colosseum and saw
The Sound of Music
and whenever I turned round I saw two thousand people with white handkerchiefs. It was like birds nesting on a cliff. Yes, that was where I lost any interest I had in films. I know that now. I should have realised before.

And the days passed with more snow, more homework. On a radio request programme I heard the signature tune of
Zorba the Greek,
my stomach went heavy and I felt the taste of apple on my palate. Mum said that soon I would be allowed to go with her to the theatre. That was obviously a big deal and I was already beginning to dread going. I lay awake at night unable to sleep no matter what. People just pretending, I thought. Fiction. Film. Theatre.

And I delivered flowers all over town. One day I bumped into Guri in Jacob Aalls gate. She looked emaciated, ravaged, a fledgling picked clean, with a gaze that resembled the snow around her. Felt like stopping and having a chat, but she floated by without looking up. I didn’t stop her, for there are a great many things like that which you know you should have done but you never do.

That was, incidentally, the day I received fifty kroner from fru Eng, just one fifty kroner note, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Because I was never any bother, she said. The best delivery boy in Oslo, she said.

Fifty kroner.

I would save it for the spring, when I went to Copenhagen!

The best defensive player in Oslo.

At Easter only Seb and I were left in town. Ola was in Toten. Gunnar was in Heidalen, they usually rented a cabin there. And Granddad was at the home. We went to visit him. He was sitting by the window with a checked rug over his legs and an unshaven face, watching the cars tearing across Alexander Kiellands plass.

‘Here comes the express to take me,’ he said giving us an unhurried look and without any particular sign of terror.

‘Don’t talk like that,’ said Mum, fussing around him and putting oranges on his bedside table.

‘I can already hear it,’ he continued. ‘I can already hear it.’

There was an oval picture of Jesus on the wall. A dark cross over his bed. On the windowsill stood an angry cactus.

‘I’ve seen the Trans-Siberian railway,’ I said into his ear. Granddad turned towards the sound.

‘You don’t say,’ he said. ‘That’s wonderful. I’ve never travelled any further than Sweden. But that was during the war and far enough for those times. Was it very expensive?’