My Struggle: Book 3 (46 page)

That same autumn our band finally became a reality. The name I chose won the day, it was to be Blood Clot we wrote on our jackets and satchels, and we practiced in the basement of the new chapel. Dag Magne had arranged it, his mother did the cleaning for a doctor who was also on the church committee. He was also the only one of us who could play or evince anything that was redolent of musical talent. He played the guitar and sang, I played the guitar, Kent Arne played the bass his mother had bought for him, Dag Lothar played the drums. At the end-of-term Christmas party we were lined up to play in the gymnasium. Yngve had taught me the chords for
Forelska I Lærer’n,
The Kids’ big hit,
In Love with the Teacher,
and even though playing that song of all songs was like sucking up, at least for me, it was the easiest song Yngve knew, and probably the only song in existence that was simple enough for us to play. Although the band came apart at the seams in the process, everyone played at their own tempo, and Kent Arne started tuning the bass in the middle, and although most of the audience was critical, even the fourth-years ventured a few remarks, and rightly so, we couldn’t play, the feeling among us afterward, standing in the school playground, dressed in ripped jeans and denim jackets, and with scarves around our necks, could not be surpassed. We were in the sixth class, would soon be in the
ungdomskole,
and we were in a
band.
The fact that the band split up straight afterward, as neither Dag Lothar nor Kent Arne wanted to continue, was a setback, but Dag Magne and I carried on as a duo, for as long as it lasted, recording songs in his house, listening to music, dreaming of a breakthrough, for example at the locally famous Saga Nights, which would be in Arendal during the summer and at which new bands were allowed to play. I went up to see Håvard, who played in the town’s only punk band, was five years older than us, and lived by Tromøya Bridge, and asked him if he could help us to get in. He couldn’t promise anything, but he would put in a good word and we would have to wait and see.

That spring, at a school parents’ evening, we performed two songs, Dag Magne on guitar and me on snare drums, first of all one I had written myself, “Tramp på en Soss,” Stamp on a Snob, and then Åge Aleksandersen’s “Ramp,” Riff-Raff. Before we played, I gave a little introductory talk about punk to the parents.

“In recent years a completely new form of music has sprung up in the English working classes,” I explained. “Some of you may have heard about it. It’s called punk. Those who play punk are not great musicians but rebels who want to rebel against society. They wear leather jackets and studded belts and they’ve got safety pins everywhere. You could say the safety pin is their symbol.”

I gazed enthusiastically across the assembly of hairdressers, secretaries, nurses, house helpers, and housewives. I was twelve years old and before every Christmas and summer for the last five years they had seen me standing on the stage, either as Joseph in the Nativity play or the mayor in
Borgmester I Byen,
and now here I was again, this time as a spokesman for punk and a member of Blood Clot.

“We’re going to give you a sampler of this type of music. We’ll begin with a song we wrote ourselves. It’s entitled ‘Tramp på en Soss.’ ”

Then Dag Magne, who had been standing beside me with his twelve-string guitar over his shoulder, started to play while I hit the snare drum when the whim took me.

Our next performance was in a lesson. We played the same two songs. After we had finished, most of the class whistled and the teacher, the red-bearded Finsådal, went over to Dag Magne and said his guitar playing was beginning to take off.

That hurt.

In response, in the deepest secrecy, I sent a letter to NRK, who broadcast a program where children could perform with their idols, and I wrote that I would like to play “Ramp” with Åge Aleksandersen.

For a long time I lived in hope, but no answer ever came, and slowly the dream of overnight fame as a pop star faded while another appeared: our coach, Øyvind, gathered us together at the end of a training session and said that we might be playing the pre-match game before IK Start versus Mjøndalen. For me, who, the year before, had been at the League Cup Final in Kristiansand Stadium and had seen Start win the match in the dying seconds, who had charged onto the field with several hundred others, stood under the building where the changing rooms were, singing and cheering and paying tribute to the players and even getting my hands on Svein Mathiesen’s shirt, only to have it ripped from my grasp by a grown man with piggy eyes a second later, for me, who every alternate Sunday over many years had been to all the home games and whose uncle Gunnar actually knew Svein Mathiesen a little, enough to get an autograph for Yngve, for me, playing at Kristiansand Stadium, with the opportunity to be seen not only by the whole of the immense crowd but also by the players themselves, this was charged with enormous significance. The team I played for was one of the region’s best, we won most matches by several goals, and had won the league every single year I had been involved, and I always thought my being one of the worst players in the team, slow and without much skill, was a temporary state of affairs,
actually
I was good,
actually
I could do everything as well as the others, it was just a question of time before it would become evident. I felt like this because
in my mind
I could knock in goals from every conceivable and inconceivable angle, like John, and steam past whoever was on the wing, like Hans Christian. All I needed to do was align my actions with my thoughts, making them one and the same, and then it was done. Why couldn’t that happen during a pre-match game at Kristiansand Stadium just as easily as at a training session in Hove? Was it not the case that I always got
better
over the weeks in the autumn? In fact, from out of nowhere could I not actually ghost past one player after the other?

Yes, that was how it was. It was all in my head. And despite the fact that I still hadn’t shown any of what I hoped for, strangely enough, I still had a regular spot in the midfield. Early that spring we had played our first practice match on the shale field outside the new Tromøya Sports Hall above Roligheden School, and when I was brought off at some point during the second half, my eyes were full of tears as I left the field. Even though I was looking down, the trainer realized and ran after me as I headed for the changing room. I should have stayed to see the rest of the match, but partly I was so disappointed to have been taken off that I couldn’t be bothered, and partly I didn’t want anyone else to see me crying.

“What’s up, Karl Ove?” he said.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Is it because you were taken off? Everyone has to have a go, you know. It doesn’t mean you’ve been dropped from the team. It doesn’t. It was just for today. It’s a practice match.”

I smiled through my tears.

“It’s nothing,” I said. “It’s OK.”

“Sure?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling fresh tears building up.

“Good,” he said.

After that I wondered perhaps if I would be allowed to play because he felt sorry for me, or if he didn’t want to repeat the experience. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but actually being on the team meant a great deal to me, my shortcomings notwithstanding.

We trained and played home games at Kjenna, a ground immediately below the big estate in Brattekleiv and most of the boys I played with came from there.

That was when I saw her again.

The beginning of June, blue sky, not a cloud in sight. We played between cones placed in the middle of one half of the field because around the goals and in the center circle the grass was already cut up and the soil eroded, and even though the sun was low and the shadows from the trees stretched across the field it was so hot that sweat ran down my face and neck as we ran around after the ball. Birds sang in the trees on both sides of the field, gulls screamed, the occasional car roared past, somewhere in the distance the drone of a lawnmower rose and fell, and down by the makeshift changing rooms came squeals and laughter, a group of children in the hot, brown water of the Tjenna, all while we panted and puffed and kicked and the ball thudded between us. I was in the best team this season, playing with boys a year older than me whereas, because of how my birthday fell, I would be doing the same next year as last year, playing with boys a year younger. We were on top of the league by some distance, and in a month’s time we would be going to the Norway Cup again, not without some hope of going all the way and playing the final in Ullevål Stadium. I had white Umbro shorts and a pair of Le Coq Sportif boots, which I polished after every session and could still turn round in my hand and admire with immense pleasure and satisfaction.

This evening four girls jumped off their bikes at the end of the field, pressed down the kickstands, and strolled laughing and chatting over to the side by the rocks, where they sat down to watch us. Girls did sometimes come and watch us like this, but I had never seen her there before. For it was her, there was no doubt. This time she was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt.

For the rest of the session my awareness of her never left me for a moment. Everything I did, I did for her. When we had finished playing, done our stretching exercises, and the XL1 bottles had been passed around I sat down on the grass below them with Lars and Hans Christian. They shouted some insults up to the girls and received laughter and more insults in return.

“Do you know them?” I said as warily as I could.

“Yes,” said Lars, bored.

“Are they in your class?”

“Yes. Kajsa and Sunnva. The others are in HC’s class.”

So she was called either Kajsa or Sunnva.

I leaned back with my hands behind my head on the grass and my eyes squinting into the rays of the orange sun. One of the others ducked the whole of his head into a bucket of water by the touchline. He straightened up and tossed his head. The drops of water formed a glittering arc in the air for a brief instant before dissipating. With prong-like fingers he plowed both hands through his wet hair.

“I’ve seen one of them before,” I said. “The one on the far right. What’s her name?”

“Kajsa?”

“Oh, really?”

Lars glanced at me. He had curly hair, freckles, and a slightly cheeky expression, but his eyes were warm and always had a glint.

“We’re neighbors,” he said. “I’ve known her since I learned to walk. Are you interested?”

“No-oo,” I said.

Lars bored a rigid finger in my chest a few times.

“Ye-es,” he grinned. “Shall I introduce you?”

“Introduce?” I said, my mouth suddenly dry.

“Isn’t that what it’s called, you who knows everything?”

“Yes, I suppose it is. No. Not now. That is, not at all. I’m not interested. I was just wondering. I thought I had seen her before.”

“Kajsa’s nice, she is,” Lars said. Then he whispered: “And she’s got big breasts.”

“Yes,” I said. I turned without thinking and looked at her. Lars laughed and got up. She looked at me.

She looked at me!

I got up too, and followed Lars down to the changing rooms.

“Can I have some?” I said.

He threw me the XL1 bottle, I leaned back and squirted the greenish liquid through the long, narrow plastic pipe and down my throat.

“Are you going for a shower?” he said.

“No, I’ve got to go home,” I said.

“Perhaps Kajsa will be in the showers, too,” he said.

“You think?” I said. He eyed me. I shook my head. He smiled. Behind us the others straggled in. In the changing room I just put on my T-shirt, tracksuit top, and shoes, then I placed my bag on the rack of my bike and cycled home along the old gravel road through the forest where the air soon cooled in places the sun hadn’t been shining for a while, and I had to close my mouth because these cool, gray pockets buzzed with large swarms of insects. The sun shone on the ridge close by, still bare after a fire the previous year, before it disappeared where the hills began and tall, dense spruce trees lined both sides of the road like a wall. My bike was the same one I’d had since I was small, a DBS kombi, with the seat and the handlebars raised as far as they would go, which made it look like a kind of mutant, a bike’s first, clumsy transition from a bike. I sang at the top of my voice as I raced between all the bumps and potholes and sometimes skidded sideways with a static rear wheel.

That was the opening track on the
Abbey Road
LP, “Come Together,” or at least how it sounded to my ears. Well, I knew it wasn’t exactly what they sang, but what did it matter as I whizzed down the hill in the forest, absolutely throbbing with happiness? Down at the crossroads I braked in front of a car, then picked up speed and pedaled as hard as I could up the gravel on the other side. I swallowed a midge or two and tried in vain to cough them up, crossed the main road at the top of Speedmannsbakken, and followed the cycle path down to the Fina station, where a gang of kids was sitting at the tables outside and not, as in winter, in the café. Their bikes and mopeds were parked a little way from them. I wasn’t frightened of going in there anymore, the worst that could happen was that someone might make a comment, but I still didn’t like it, so when I passed them it was on the other side of the road. There were three from my class with them this evening, John and I also saw Tor and Unni, and then Mariann from the parallel class. I had been out with her. No one took any notice of me, if indeed they saw me at all.