Beatles (67 page)

The woman in white came with a photo for me one morning, when I was up, when I had been found.

It was of me. I was lying in the middle of a flock of sheep and thrashing around with my arms and legs.

New days. Old days. Ballooning nights.

I was given permission to go for walks in the area. An eye in every window. Cold. Time had disappeared. Hair hadn’t grown back. I saw the chimney close-up. The fence. I followed a path, downwards, someone was coming towards me, a huge figure, a slow-moving mountain of a man. I wanted to turn back, but it was too late. My mind began to buzz, my thoughts dissolved, one by one, a field of flashing lights.

He stood directly before me.

He blocked out the view. He was larger than ever.

‘Jensenius,’ I said, removing my hat.

His gaze fell on my skull.

He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. His eyes were pools of old fear. His tongue hung over his lips, big and motionless. He trembled.

Jensenius was a mute.

He pointed over his shoulder, towards the main building.

The green spire.

Then he produced a stump of a pencil and a slip of paper, wrote, gave it to me, turned round slowly and waddled back.

I read the note.

Get away. Before it is too late.

That evening I stopped taking the medication. I was terrified. I was ready. I was scared to death and dangerous.

September.

The sign of Virgo. I was Libra.

Mum: ‘Kim, you have to cooperate with them. You must get well for our sake.’

‘Can I trust you, Mum?’

‘Yes, Kim. Of course you can. But why don’t you want to talk to Dr Vang? He only wants to help you after all.’

‘What picture did Hubert paint for the Autumn Exhibition?’

Mum giggled.

‘A mussel.’

I chewed on a cigarette.

‘Mum, one day, could you bring me a stack of paper and something to write with?’

She looked at me in astonishment.

‘No problem. What are you going to do with them?’

‘And an envelope and a stamp.’

Yellow leaves gusting through the air.

Sat down in Napoleon’s office. The wig was immaculate. He looked at my hat and gloated with satisfaction.

‘Would you have preferred to go to prison?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said.

Conversation over.

On my return downstairs, Gunnar was sitting in the visitors’ room puffing away.

‘Let’s go to my room,’ I said.

The corridor.

I closed the door and listened.

Gunnar watched me.

‘The most recent opinion poll shows forty-three per cent against and thirty-six for,’ he said.

I sat by the window and lit up.

‘You know it’s exactly ten years since The Beatles recorded ‘Love Me Do’, don’t you?’ I said. ‘11 September 1962.’

‘Bloody hell. We were so young!’

Gunnar seemed to perk up, his muscles relaxed.

‘D’you remember the autograph I flogged you that autumn?’

‘The salt pastilles. You bastard! But you didn’t bloody manage to trick me over Comrade Lin Piao!’

We grinned. I thought of the leaflets in the drawer.

‘D’you remember that porn mag Stig brought back from Copenhagen?’

‘After the handball tour? Yes.’

‘Exactly.’

Gunnar seemed happy that he could talk so easily to me. Jesus!

‘Muck,’ he chortled.

‘And d’you remember that I got you out of a fix while you were on the bog?’

‘I’ll never forget that, Kim.’

‘And you shook my hand and promised me you would be there for me if ever I was in any trouble?’

‘Of course, Kim. Gunnar doesn’t forget that sort of thing.’

I fell on my knees before him, clenched my fists and beat the floor with them, stopped, listened.

‘You have to get me out of here! You have to get me out of here, Gunnar!’

Indian summer.

I sat in my room waiting.

Lukewarm slop on a plate. Everyone was talking about the killings in Munich.

Lying awake at night.

Mum: ‘What are you going to do with all this paper?’

I put it in my bag in the wardrobe.

‘The envelope and the stamp?’ I asked.

She passed them to me, too, and the biros.

‘Are you going to write a letter to Nina? She’s been here, hasn’t she?’

Yesterday I took the shutters off the window. The light surged into the House like a wave. There were dead insects on the sills. I was blinded, staggered around with my hands in front of my face. Spring came at me from all sides. May. Everything was transparent. The paper shone. The writing disappeared in the burning sun. I crept onto the balcony. My eyes adapted to the light, as though I had been blind for years and was slowly regaining sight. The fjord was full of boats. Sails. A cruise ship. A motor boat. Then I heard the sound. Someone was there. I slowly rose to my feet. She was sitting on the rock my great-grandfather had carried up from the quayside. Astride the two uneven black halves, with a big stomach bulging out from under her flowery dress.

Nina looked at me.

‘Hiya, Kim,’ she shouted with a gentle wave.

She ran with light, wary steps towards the gate.

I wanted to run after her, but had no strength.

She turned and smiled, holding her bulky stomach.

I waved with my injured hand.

‘I’m waiting for you!’ she shouted.

And then she was gone, down the steep path.

Behind me the apple trees were in white blossom.

It was the night of the referendum.

25 September 1972. I was twenty-one years old.

I sat in my room. An excited orderly burst in gesticulating with his arms.

‘The noes have it!’ he yelled. ‘The conservatives are looking down in the mouth already!’

He left just as quickly. Heard the noise on the TV. Clapping. Cheering.

Drowned the solitary confinement.

Looked out of the window. Soon be night. Bed. The bare walls.

The woman in white brought in supper. She put the tray of pills on the table and rested her hand on my shoulder.

‘It’ll be a Yes, anyway, Kim. The votes from the towns are coming in now.’

‘Can I be excused the pills tonight?’ I asked. ‘I wasn’t allowed to vote. I would’ve voted for No.’

She was impatient and tense.

The noise from the TV.

‘It’s my job,’ she said quickly.

‘Go and watch the box,’ I said. ‘I can swallow them on my own.’

She gave me a squeeze and scurried out.

Heard the door lock.

I crushed the pills and scattered them under the bed.

Heard the shouts and the groans from the room where the white coats were sitting round the TV set.

The weather was unsettled.

The wind outside. Shadows on the wall.

Then she was back again.

‘Aren’t you in bed yet?’

I sat on the sheet. She took the empty tray.

‘Bratteli’s been on TV. It’s going to be a Yes.’

I lay on my back and she tiptoed out. The key. The lock. Footsteps.

Woken by gentle taps. I looked around in the dark. The tapping continued. The window. I peered between the curtains and saw Gunnar’s mug in the light of a torch. I waved and he switched it off. I got dressed. Took out the bag with the pens and paper and the letter. It surprised me that it was so easy to open the window when the door was locked from the outside. I wriggled across the windowsill and Gunnar caught me. We ran half-bent over the slippery ground, climbed the fence, for there were no holes in the fence round Gaustad, and there, at the side of the road, was a Volvo PV with the engine running.

Gunnar pushed me in, Ola pressed the accelerator to the floor and we sped round the bends.

Seb was sitting at the front and passed a bottle of white wine back to me.

I was on the verge of tears.

‘Bloody hell, boys. Shit!’ That was all I could say.

‘We won!’ Gunnar shrieked in my ear. ‘We won!’

‘Eh?’

Ola sat over the wheel like a goalkeeper.

‘Drove down from Trondheim when the arrow was on Yes. Six hours. A record!’

‘Was it a No?’

‘Yes!’

It was party time in the car, Seb played a happy blues on the harp, Gunnar sang, we raced towards the city centre and Norwegian flags had been hoisted in the wind. Some retard with a Europe sticker on the rear window was in our lane. Ola passed him on the outside and forced him into the ditch. We stuck out our heads and gave him three straight fingers and one crooked one.

‘Stick that up your arse, you clod!’ Seb yelled, and he was left way behind.

Ola parked in the middle of Karl Johan. The university square
was crammed with people. They were dancing and jumping around with flags and bottles and fireworks. The clouds in the sky cleared and we threw ourselves into the mayhem, we were carried away, delirious with happiness. We turned cartwheels and were the conquerors of the world.

Then I turned my back on the euphoria and the chaos and left them to it, posted a letter to my mother in the box next to Hotel Continental and continued on down to the quay. The City Hall clock struck six. Soon the first ferry from Nesodden would arrive.

I stood on the deck all the way there.

LARS SAABYE CHRISTENSEN
is Norway’s leading contemporary writer. He is the author of twelve novels as well as short stories and poetry. His international best-selling novel
The Half Brother
has been published in nearly thirty countries. It won the Nordic Prize for Literature as well as the Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize, was shortlisted for the 2005 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and was chosen as one of the twenty-five notable titles of 2004 by the American Library Association.
Herman
was shortlisted for the 2006 YoungMinds Award, and
The Model
was shortlisted for the 2008 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Lars Saabye Christensen lives in Oslo.

DON BARTLETT
lives with his family in a village in Norfolk. He translates from Scandinavian literature and has recently translated, or co-translated, novels by Roy Jacobsen, K.O. Dahl, Jo Nesbø and Ingvar Ambjørnsen.