Beatles (66 page)

‘Think we’d better scram,’ said Seb.

We did. We ran as far as a park. There we sat on a bench and opened our make-up bags. Seb had an attack of the giggles and started powdering his sallow face.

‘Have to glam ourselves up!’ he whinnied.

And we did look quite glamorous as we rang the Jensen family doorbell. Mascara, powder, lipstick, perfume and hairspray. Suddenly Ola was in the doorway, his mouth agape. We were men from the moon. We threw ourselves on him and he sank to the floor. He wrestled himself free and staggered back against the wall.

‘Who is it, Ola?’ we heard from the sitting room, must have been the wife.

Ola was unable to utter a word. We opened the door wide and there were three people sitting in the room with lamps and
embroideries
on the wall, coffee and cakes on the table. Their mouths dropped. They stiffened like statues over their coffee. Ola arrived behind us gesturing with his arms.

‘This is S-S-Seb and K-K-Kim from Oslo,’ he explained maniacally, pointing in all directions. ‘And this is K-K-Kirsten and her p-p-parents.’

‘Where’s Rikard?’ Seb screeched.

We shuffled into the bedroom and there lay a chubby body in a Moses basket. The moment I saw him, the pink sleeping head, I was as clear and transparent as glass and a diamond carved fear right through me.

‘He’s wonderful,’ I whispered. ‘Wow, he’s wonderful.’

I placed a finger on his forehead and Rikard began to scream. Kirsten charged over and lifted him up, rocked him quietly and gently. I couldn’t stop myself gulping. Ola stood there, proud and frightened and unsure what to do. Kisten unbuttoned her blouse and Rikard put out a hand for her breast.

‘Think we should go into the s-s-sittin’ room,’ Ola said in a low voice.

That was where things went downhill. Every time the mother or the father opened their mouths Seb howled with laughter. He sat bent double in his chair spluttering cake everywhere. The atmosphere was taut. Ola crushed a cup between his fingers. In the end, Seb was rolling around on the felt carpet, holding his stomach and laughing till the tears came, smudging the powder on his face. I wiped off the make-up and the sweat and Kirsten came back, her face hardened. Ola sat on the sofa like a mussel.

I felt obliged to give an explanation.

‘We’ve just come from a carnival,’ I smiled weakly. ‘At Oslo university. The semester’s over. That’s why we, that’s why we… are like this.’

Noticed all of a sudden that I couldn’t do it any more, that I was unable to lie. They didn’t believe me. I picked the guffawing Seb off the floor and dragged him to the door. Ola followed and we were alone in the hall.

‘Sorry,’ I said in a soft voice. ‘Sorry. Hope we haven’t ruined anythin’.’

‘Should have s-s-said you were comin’.’

Ola looked away.

‘I envy you,’ I said. ‘Baby and all that.’

‘What are you g-g-gonna do now?’

‘Go home. All the best from Gunnar.’

I gave him the pillowcase with the leaflets. Seb was vertical again and leaned over Ola.

‘Good thing you’re only stammerin’ again,’ he grinned. ‘Trondheim dialect really cracks me up! Ever heard an Arab speaking with a Sørland accent, have you?’

I shoved him into the stairwell and patted Ola.

‘Say hello to Rikard,’ I said. ‘In fifteen years’ time he’ll be playin’ the drums for The Snafus!’

Ola didn’t say anything, but his eyes spoke volumes. I pushed Seb down the stairs and heard a child crying as we stepped out into the sobering June night.

‘For Christ’s sake! Did you have to piss about when the in-laws were there!’

‘Couldn’t help it, Kim. It was too much for me.’

‘You twat!’ I shouted into his face. ‘You twat!’

There was nothing else for us to do in Trondheim. I had enough money to buy a ticket home. The train left at ten and we caught it.

‘Are you comin’ with me to see Stig?’ Seb asked, standing in the corridor and watching the lights whiz past like shooting stars.

‘Nope.’

‘Hell, you’re not angry with me, are you?’

I pressed my face against the window and felt it vibrate. I leaned harder. The jolts banged against my head.

‘Goin’ to Nesodden,’ I said.

Seb jumped off in Oppdal. I went on to Oslo. I saw Fred’s mother standing in the window. I had early morning dew in my eyes.

In Munchsgate the heat was unbearable. The town awoke like a listless lion. I was broke. I couldn’t even afford the Nesodden ferry. I lay on the mattress thinking things through. Later I went out. The sun was high in the sky. Up the street, outside the bakery, a few young shavers were playing football. I ran over to them and latched onto the ball intending to show them some tricks. They were annoyed and dribbled circles round me and shouted at me. I slouched off. I had to get some cash before I could go anywhere. I had a plan. I ambled back to Svolder and let myself in. The smell of holiday. Curtains filtering the light. The dust. Rugs over furniture. I collected all my Beatles LPs, put them in a bag and hurried out. The street was empty. A wind blew sand past me. A gull screamed behind me. I went down to the shop in Skippergata and showed the greedy old hag what I had to offer. With bony fingers, she pulled out the discs, squinted at them and blew.

‘They’re worn,’ she whispered. ‘Scratches. Stains.’

I didn’t answer.

‘Ninety kroner,’ she snapped.

She already had the money in her hand. I took the notes and ran out, stopped for a few seconds, hours, then I walked up Karl Johan. My conscience began to prick. I had sold myself. There was a table free at Sara. I ordered a beer, rolled two tenners together and stuffed them in my back pocket so that I would be sure to be able to get on the boat. I didn’t need to go until the evening. I scanned
the restaurant for familiar faces. I finished my beer and went back into Karl Johan. People streamed towards me like slanting,
toppling
columns, dressed in black in the heat, with white dusty faces. I reached Studenterlunden Park. Someone put a leaflet in my hands. It was Peder with Slippery Leif. HAVE YOU SAID NO TO THE EEC? read a big poster. I threw the paper away and ran on, then came to an abrupt halt. They were all sitting together on the yellow benches under the trees with the green light casting its rays over them like silent rain. My guts rose into my mouth. There was Nina with a syringe in her arm. There was Fred, dripping wet, thinner than ever. There was Dragon with his imploded face and the
bleeding
remains of a devoured arm. And Jørgen, fat, thinning hair, with a blue cut down his cheek and lifeless eyes. I ran as fast as I could. I heard a car slam on the brakes. The park was deserted. I knelt down in the grass and threw up. The palace was being redecorated.
Scaffolding
. I sat in the shadow of a tree. A guardsman woke me up and told me to clear off. I walked slowly back down to Karl Johan. No one was sitting on the benches. The green light had turned darker. The parasols at Pernille looked like over-sized amanita mushrooms. Then they came towards me again, the crowds, slanting, toppling columns. I turned on the spot, sprinted towards Club 7. Closed. I had to go down to the harbour. The clocks on the City Hall tower struck. I walked across the concrete graveyard, stopped, looked around, noticed the sky. I remembered the old Vika district and felt a sudden steel-like spasm in my back. I screamed, I screamed, it was the scream I had been waiting for, it had returned, I screamed, and the windows around me broke, I stood in an avalanche of glass, and in every shard I saw the gleam of a red sunset.

I awoke slowly from a pain searing up my arm and settling in my chest. A woman in white laid a cloth on my forehead. Further back was another woman who resembled my mother. She came towards me, stooped over my bed.

‘Does it hurt, Kim?’ I heard weakly.

‘Where am I?’

The woman in white raised my hand with care and placed it over the duvet. That was where the pains were coming from. Bandages. Mum was still there.

‘What happened?’ I whispered.

‘You smashed a shop window,’ she said softly. ‘They had to stitch you up at casualty.’

I was given a glass of water. The nurse supported my head with a strong yet gentle hand.

The room was small with bare, light green walls. Some clothes hung in a wardrobe by the door. My tweed jacket. Confirmation suit.

I looked at my mother.

‘Where am I?’

She turned away.

‘Gaustad.’

I smelt turpentine and went back to sleep.

The next time I awoke several people were there, Dad had come, Mum, the woman in white, and a small, dark man sitting on a chair by my bed. He held his hand inside his jacket, his face came closer, burning eyes, glistening black hair. It was Napoleon. I screamed. I heard lots of voices and Mum stood over me telling me fairy tales. The doctor took my pulse and the woman in white brought me a
glass. Dad stood with his back to me. Think the sun was shining through the window. I heard a bird.

‘Why am I here?’

‘Now you just rest, Kim,’ the small man said. ‘You’re here to rest and we’ll help you, all of us. Do you understand?’

There was something else. I could feel it, there was something about my head. They had done something to my head. I felt with my good hand. Bald as a coot. Smooth. Noticed the bump where the skull had healed.

‘What’ve you done to me?’ I shouted. ‘What’ve you done to me?’

‘We’ll talk to you later, Kim,’ said the small doctor. ‘You’re too tired now.’

The nurse rolled up my sleeve and the people disappeared. I was tiny and sat in a keyhole. On one side of the door it was pitch black. On the other, a white sun moved across the floor.

I heard the sound of keys.

Mum was with me almost every day. My hair would not grow. Asked her to bring me a hat. The cold corridor outside the room. The
footsteps
. The canteen with all the grey faces and the revolting, tasteless meals. I couldn’t eat. Pills in the morning. And in the evening. The visitors’ room with the old radio, the magazines and the tin ashtray. The visitors sitting stiffly clutching their terror and disgust. Someone running amok. The solitary confinement. The muffled screams. A boy who threw himself out of the window. And lay bleeding on the brown earth. The bathtubs, the green chipped enamel. Getting undressed while people in white ran the water and made jokes. Standing there, an emaciated carcass, a laughing stock. Refused to remove my woollen hat. Refused point blank. They had a good laugh. I was not allowed to lock the toilet door. The door to my room was locked from the outside. The view: a dark spruce forest nearby. The other side: the main building. Straight ahead, over the fence and across the road: a field and a clearing, green, open, sun-dappled.

Mum: ‘How’s it going, Kim?’

I looked at her. She had braced herself. I couldn’t detect any weakness in her eyes.

‘Do you talk to Dr Vang?’ she went on.

Napoleon. I called him Nap. In my cremated mind. I had to go up to his office in the other wing every third day.

‘How do you like it here?’ he always asked, as if it were some tourists’ hotel in the mountains.

Never answered.

He soon lost his patience. A hyper little man.

‘You’re not very cooperative, Karlsen,’ he said with a smile. ‘You don’t even talk to your mother.’

I became more and more convinced that he wore a wig. It lay flat on his head and the parting was one woolly line.

He was always the first to get up.

Didn’t dare say anything. Couldn’t lie any more.

The nurses were decent enough. They discussed the EEC and one of the oldest nutters stood on a chair and screamed that the EEC was the beast in the Book of Revelation, the Treaty of Rome was the work of the Antichrist and the winds of doomsday were already blowing around our ears. What a palaver there was. For the most part I stayed in my room. It was quiet there. I looked out of the window. Summer. Had only one thought: Will I be here for ever? Didn’t know why I was there.

Sometimes I watched TV. The clock. The white second hand going round. If I closed my eyes and had a daydream, I timed the dream, and when I opened my eyes, only half a minute had passed, and I could swear I had been sitting there for several hours. A nutcase who played patience the whole day, of all things, the Idiot, could never finish a game, he sidled up to me.

‘Don’t let the TV fool you,’ he whispered, shuffling the cards quickly and nervously peering round. ‘Have you seen the sports programme? When they replay the goal? The goalkeepers always save it then. In the replay!’

Went to my room. Night always came without my noticing. The line between sleep and day was slowly eroded by a remorselessly conscientious nurse.

Mum: ‘Why don’t you say anything, Kim? We were able to talk together before.’

‘Were we?’

This was hard to take, she tensed the muscles in her face, but in her eyes there was no weakness, only sorrow.

‘What did we do wrong!’ she burst out.

She clung to my arm for the rest of the visiting time.

‘I miss Nesodden,’ I said. ‘I long for Nesodden.’

Nap wanted me to speak. He walked around me with his hands against his back and was pathetic. His room smelt of sweat. In his dark eyes I could see another, a more dangerous, Napoleon than the one he purported to be.

Kept my mouth shut.

Had no appetite and became ever thinner. A doctor arrived to remove the stitches from my hand. There were scars everywhere. My mangled finger was the worst. During the evening the anaesthetic wore off, it burned itself out. It was good to feel some pain. Then they arrived with supper. The pills. Chlorpromazine. Phenthiazine. I don’t remember all the pet names they had. Don’t remember all they said. But it was all for my own good, they kept saying.

Mum: ‘Uncle Hubert’s come home!’

Couldn’t understand how she could drink the coffee.

‘He’s had a picture accepted for the Autumn Exhibition!’

I turned to the window.

‘Do you think crime pays?’

She immediately got frightened.

‘You haven’t done anything bad, have you, Kim?’

‘Why am I here?’

‘They want to help you, Kim. You’ll soon be well again. You’ll soon be out.’

‘Will there be a lot of apples this year?’

‘Yes,’ said Mum.

Sleep.

One day I was allowed to go for a walk. We were a scruffy lot trotting up to Lake Sognsvann, past the fields. Two orderlies walked at the front and two at the rear of the pack. Summer was in its last phase.
Weary. Worn out. Had to be August. Legs were leaden. We dragged ourselves along the road. Then I saw them. They were coming towards us. Four boys with rods over their shoulders and big fishing bags. They slowed down and were quiet as we passed them. I turned. They were whispering and looking at us.

That night I couldn’t sleep.

The wind rose, rattled the windows.

Shadows on the wall. Processions.

Close by someone was playing a tune on a saw.

The following day I had visitors. Gunnar and Seb sat in the visitors’ room chain-smoking. I went to see them with my hat pulled well down. They didn’t try to tear it off.

Sat down on a wobbly chair.

They were shitting themselves, didn’t know what to say.

‘How was it at Stig’s?’ I asked.

Seb was tanned and had acquired biceps.

‘Alright,’ he whispered. ‘Been diggin’. Gonna move there this autumn. You can have my room,’ he added quickly.

‘Don’t think I’ll need it.’

We went into my room.

‘Been searchin’ for you all over town,’ Gunnar said. ‘Your mum said you were here. We didn’t bloody believe her!’

Didn’t say anything for a while. They rolled cigarettes and smoked.

‘What happened?’ Seb asked, studying the floor.

‘Don’t know. Got rabies.’

They tried to laugh. Sounded terrible. Couldn’t look me in the eye.

‘What are they doin’ to you?’ Gunnar asked abruptly.

‘Dopin’ me up.’

‘Shi-it!’ Gunnar leapt to his feet and stood by the window. ‘Christ! Spit the crap out! Spit it in their faces!’

‘Can you hear the shouts?’ I said.

They were silent and listened. Screams. As if someone were screaming with a muzzle over their mouth.

‘Solitary confinement,’ I said.

Visiting time was over. I accompanied them to the exit.

‘George wasn’t playin’ the solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”,’ I said. ‘It was Clapton.’

Seb gave me a strange look, nodded. Then they had to go.

Sat as quiet as a mouse for the rest of the day.

Rain.

Mum: ‘I wanted to be an actress once. I had lessons. Have I told you that, Kim?’

‘Why didn’t you continue?’

‘Life doesn’t always turn out the way you imagine. You’ll have to realise that some day, too.’

My hat made my forehead itch. Took it off. Mum liked seeing me like that. She caressed my shiny skull and smiled.

‘Can I trust you?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ Mum said. ‘Always.’

‘Whatever happens?’

‘Yes, Kim. Whatever happens.’

Rain. Pills. Water.

Nap wanted to talk to me again. I sat in his room. I studied his hair.

‘It’s a shame to have to say this, but you are treatment-resistant, as we say. You would like to stop taking the medicine, wouldn’t you. But of course we can’t let you do that, if you won’t cooperate in other ways.’

He thumbed through some papers on his desk.

‘And we can’t keep you here for an eternity, can we.’

I thought about those senile apparitions in the canteen, they no longer had an age.

‘How long is an eternity?’ I asked.

His face shot up with a look of surprise at hearing my voice.

‘When you got up to these stunts, Kim, had you been drinking or smoking? Or did you just decide to do it of your own accord, of your own free will?’

My mouth dropped. Napoleon stared at me.

‘I have plenty of time today. Take all the time you need, Kim.’

‘What stunts?’

‘You know very well. The skeleton, for example.’

Mum must have told him. Mum. Now there was no one I could trust. I kept my mouth shut. I would never open it again.’

Nap waited.

Then he couldn’t wait any longer.

‘Don’t you feel any shame for robbing your father’s bank?’

I was feverish, yet I was clear, clear and cunning and wary like a hunted Red Indian.

I saw it. The letter I had carried around myself when I was called up for the military medical.

It lay open on Napoleon’s desk.

At first I was happy. Mum hadn’t told tales.

Then I made my decision. I leaned forward as if I were going to tell him something in confidence. Nap sent me an expectant look. But instead I swept his reading lamp onto the floor, snatched the letter and made a leap for the door. He followed me down the stairs, I tried to read as I ran, but I was too weak, I didn’t have the strength, I was seized from behind, lashed out with my left hand, just caught sight of his wig falling off before I fell myself, with incredible speed, down into a white, imageless darkness.

Late summer sun. Clear, crystalline air. Could count spruce needles at a distance of ten kilometres.

Mum: ‘I’ve knitted you a new hat.’

I tried it on. It was a good fit. Soft. Black.

‘Thank you.’

‘Dad sends his love.’

‘Why didn’t he come?’

‘You mustn’t do things like that any more, to Dr Vang.’

‘What do you all know about me?’

She put the old hat in her bag.

‘Isn’t it time we got to know each other better?’ she said slowly.

Strange words.

‘Yes, it is,’ I said.

The bell rang.

Couldn’t keep up with the days. Couldn’t keep up with the nights. A
line of marbles. The view from the window. It had to be getting on for autumn. Glass. A yellow leaf.

Then I remember one day after all. Never forget it.

There was a visitor for me in my room.

Nina.

She was sitting on the chair with big heavy eyes, thin, scrawny, long black dress. Mouth.

Sat on my bed, hid my face in my hands, felt alive for the first time for ages.

She sat down beside me.

‘Kim,’ she said, one shoulder close to me.

‘When did you come?’ I asked. ‘To Oslo?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Yesterday?’

‘Yes. Going to stay here now. We live in Tidemandsgate. Do you remember?’

I covered my eyes.

‘Are you clean now?’ I whispered.

‘Think so. It’s over. There are other things to live for. Aren’t there, Kim?’

‘Yes, but not here.’

‘You’ll soon be out.’

We fumbled into each other’s arms, somehow, our gaunt bodies, I leaned over her, she was under me, crying or laughing. I pulled up her dress and she held me tight around the neck.

‘Be careful,’ she said, she begged.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ I mumbled. ‘I’ve had mumps.’

It happened so fast. We were two grindstones rubbing against each other, she helped me into position, it hurt her and she cried, then we were frenzied, and the moment I felt a searing pain in my dick, the door opened. I twisted my head round and yelled, and there was Cecilie, paralysed, in the doorway, Cecilie, she spun round and was gone, like a dream and an alarm clock.

I rolled over, fell, crawled over the floor. Nina was mute, crying without a sound, pulling on her clothes. A nurse charged in. I could hear more footsteps. Then I just remember I was in an avalanche, dogs were barking, I felt sticks poking me all over my body, but no one started digging where I was.