The quickest way to cycle home was along the main road, but I jumped off on the way up to the path and began to push my bike uphill. As soon as the trees closed off the view of the main road behind me the scenery became rural and I liked the change enough to relish the extra minutes it took.
Then it was all forest, not a house or a road to be seen, there were trees everywhere, tall, broad-crowned deciduous trees, crammed with green leaves, full of chattering birds. The path, which was no more than beaten earth and bare rock face, was crossed in several places by huge roots resembling prehistoric animals. The grass growing alongside the bed of a stream was thick and lush, in the wilderness at the bottom there were fallen trees with smooth trunks, and many plants covered the bed between the dry, lifeless branches, which had been there for as long as I could remember, and behind them there was a ridge of stumps between the long grass and the new trees that had shot up. Walking down the first hundred meters of the path, you could imagine the forest was deep, indeed, endlessly deep, and full of mystery. It wasn’t hard to dismiss the thought that between the branches in autumn and winter you could glimpse the long, rocky slope down from the road that went around the estate or glimpse the orange roof of one of the houses. The problem is not so much that the world limits your imagination as your imagination limits the world. But this time I was not outside to play but to surround myself with nature and to cultivate the feeling of liberation Kajsa’s gaze had given me.
Kajsa, her name was Kajsa!
With my bike bumping along beside me, I trudged up the hills, across the gentle slope, then jumped on my bike again when I emerged on the road, just below the parish hall. Outside Ketil’s house the road teemed with kids playing soccer. His father sat in a camping chair on the terrace wearing shorts, with his belly bulging out of an open, short-sleeved shirt. Smoke wafted over from a barbecue not far away from him.
Oh, the smell!
On the other side, Tom was washing his car. He was wearing large aviator glasses and denim shorts with long, frayed threads hanging down his thighs, otherwise nothing. I recognized the music blaring out through the open doors, which made the car look like a small, plump airplane, it was Dr. Hook. Then I reached the hill and saw the distant blue of Tromøya Sound behind the green trees, and the white gas holders on the other side. The wind forced tears from my eyes as I hurtled downhill. Another crowd of kids was playing kids on the road outside our house. Marianne’s little brother, Geir Håkon’s little brother, Bente’s little brother, and Jan Atle’s little brother. They said hello, I didn’t say hello back, I jumped off my bike, and trundled it down the drive, where there were two cars. There was Anne Mai’s big Citroën and Dagny’s 2cv. I had completely forgotten they were coming, and a little shiver of pleasure went through me when I saw them.
They were sitting in the living room with Mom. She had baked a cake, perhaps there was a third left, and she had made coffee. Now they were chatting, wreathed in clouds of smoke. I said hello, they asked how I was, I said fine, I had been at soccer practice, had the school holiday started, they asked, I answered yes, and it was wonderful. Anne Mai took out a packet of Freia Ms.
“I suppose you’re too old for these now?”
“Not for Ms,” I said. “You’re never too old for them, are you?”
I took the bag and turned to go into the kitchen when Anne Mai said: “What on earth’s that on your back? Trauma?”
She laughed.
“His soccer team’s called Trauma,” Mom said.
“Trauma!” Dagny said. Now all three of them were laughing.
“What’s wrong with it?” I said.
“That’s what we work with, you know. It’s when something terrible happens. You can have trauma. It was quite funny to see it on your back.”
“Oh,” I said. “But that’s not what it means. It comes from Thruma, the old name for Tromøya. From Viking times.”
They were still laughing when I went to my room. I put The Specials on the cassette recorder and lay down to read while the last rays of sun were shining on the wall beyond the bed, and the estate outside was slowly draining of noise.
Kajsa was constantly on my mind over the following weeks. I had two recurrent images of her. In one she was turning to me, with her blonde hair and blue eyes, wearing the pink and light-blue clothes of the 17th of May. In the second she was lying naked in front of me in a field. The latter I saw every night before I went to sleep. The thought of her big, white breasts with the pink nipples made my body ache. I lay writhing while imagining various indistinct but intense things I did with her. The second image aroused something else in me, and at other moments: jumping from a cliff on the island, floating in the air with the sun on my face, I caught a glimpse of her and a wild cheer broke free from my innards, more or less at the same instant as my feet hit the surface and my body plunged into the bluish-green sea water, breaking my fall of several meters, and, surrounded by a rush of bubbles and with the taste of salt on my lips, I headed for the surface again with slow arm movements and a quiver of happiness in my chest. Or at the dinner table, while I was peeling the skin off a piece of cod, for example, or chewing a mouthful of hashed lung, which had such an unpleasant consistency, it swelled and filled my mouth at first, but when I chewed, my teeth went right through the mass, which only resisted at the last, when it stuck to my gums, then the image of her could suddenly appear and she was so radiant that everything else was pushed into the shadows. But I didn’t see her at all in reality. The distance as the crow flew between our two estates could have been only a few kilometers, but the social distance was greater and could not be covered by either bike or bus. Kajsa was a dream, an image in my head, a star in the firmament.
Then something happened.
We were playing a match on the Kjenna field, the spring season was actually over, but a game had been cancelled and moved forward, so there we were, running around the grass in the heat with the usual ten to fifteen spectators when from the corner of my eye I espied three figures walking along the touchline, and I knew at once it was her. For the rest of the match I watched the spectators standing on the slope as much as the ball.
After the match a girl came over to me.
“Can I have a word with you?” she said.
“Yes, of course,” I said.
A hope so wild it made me smile was lit inside me.
“Do you know who Kajsa is?” she said.
I reddened and looked down.
“Yes,” I said.
“She wants me to ask you a question,” she said.
“Pardon,” I said.
A wave of heat surged up inside me, as though my chest were filling with blood.
“Kajsa was wondering if you would like to go out with her,” she said. “Would you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Great,” she said. “I’ll tell her.”
She made a move to leave.
“Where is she?” I said.
She turned.
“She’s waiting over by the changing room,” she said. “Will we see you there afterward?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s fine.”
As she went away I looked down at the ground for a second.
Thank God, I said to myself. Because now it had happened. Now I was going out with Kajsa!
Was it true?
Was I really going out with Kajsa?
With
Kajsa.
Dazed, I began to walk along the touchline. Suddenly it struck me that I had a big problem. She was there and waiting for me. I would have to speak to her. We would have to do something together. What would it be?
On my way into the changing room I could either pretend I didn’t see her or just flash a fleeting smile because I had to go in and change. But when I had to go out again …
It was a mild evening, the air smelled of grass and was filled with bird song, we had won, and the voices rising from the changing room were animated. Kajsa was standing in the road nearby with two other girls. She was holding her bike and glanced at me when I looked over. She smiled. I smiled back.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” she said.
“I’ll just get changed,” I said. “Be out afterward.”
She nodded.
In the shed-like changing room I undressed as slowly as possible while feverishly trying to find a way to extricate myself with honor. To go off with her, unprepared, was inconceivable, it would never work. So I had to find a convincing excuse.
Homework? I wondered, loosening a shin pad, slippery with sweat on the inside. No, that would give a bad impression of me.
I put one shin pad in the bag and took off the other, staring at the lake through the small window. Unwound the bandage from my foot and rolled it up. The first boys had already gone out. “Jesus Christ, are you crazy or what?” John said to Jostein, who was smacking John’s face with a goalie’s glove. “Give it up, you bastard,” John shouted. I’m going out with Kajsa, I felt like saying, but I didn’t, of course. Got up and put on my light-blue jeans instead.
“What posh pants,” Jostein said.
“You’re the one with posh pants,” I said.
“These?” he said, motioning toward his red-and-black-striped trousers.
“Yes,” I said.
“They’re punk trousers, you jerk,” he said.
“They’re not,” I said. “They’re from Intermezzo, and that is definitely a posh shop.”
“Is the belt posh, too?” he said.
“No,” I said. “It’s a punk belt.”
“Good,” he said. “But your pants are definitely pretty posh.”
“I am not posh,” I said.
“But you are a bit of a jessie,” John piped up.
A jessie? What did that mean?
“Ha ha ha!” Jostein laughed. “Come on, Jessie!”
“What did you say, you daddy’s boy?” I said.
“Is it my fault my father has a lot of money?” he said.
“No,” I said, zipping up the blue-and-white Puma top.
“Bye,” I said.
“Bye,” they said, and I went out to Kajsa, without having prepared anything.
“Hi,” I said, stopping in front of them, with my hands around the handlebars.
“You were so good, all of you,” Kajsa said.
She was wearing a white T-shirt. Her breasts bulged beneath it. Levi’s 501 with a red, plastic belt. White socks. White Nike sneakers with a light-blue logo.
I swallowed.
“Do you think so?” I said.
She nodded.
“Are you coming back with us?”
“In fact, I don’t have a lot of time this evening.”
“No?”
“No. I really should be going now.”
“Oh, that’s a shame,” she said, meeting my eyes. “What have you got to do?”
“I promised I would help my father with something. A wall he was building. But can’t we meet tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
“Where then?”
“I can go to your place after school.”
“Do you know where I live?”
“Tybakken, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
I swung a leg over my bike.
“Bye!” I said.
“Bye!” she said. “See you tomorrow!”
I cycled off, casually to the observer, until I was out of sight, then I stood on the pedals, leaned forward, and began to pump like a wild man. It was absolutely fantastic and absolutely awful. Go to your place, she had said. She had known where I lived. And she wanted to be with me. Not only that. We were
going out.
I was going out with Kajsa! Oh, everything I wanted was now within reach! Though not yet. What would I talk to her about? What would we do?
When I turned into our drive half an hour later, Mom was sitting on the terrace behind the house reading the newspaper with a cup of coffee on the camping table in front of her. I went over and sat down.
“Where’s Dad?” I said.
“He’s gone fishing,” she said. “How was the match?”
“Good,” I said. “We won.”
Brief silence.
“Has something happened?” Mom said, looking at me.
“No,” I said.
“Something on your mind?”
“No, not really,” I said.
She sent me a smile and went on reading the newspaper. The sound of a radio wafted over from Prestbakmo’s. I looked up. Martha was sitting, like Mom, in a camping chair with a newspaper spread out in front of her. Nearby, next to the stone wall facing the forest, Prestbakmo himself was bent over a bed in the vegetable garden with a trowel in his hand. Then a movement on the path made me turn my head. It was Freddie, I saw at once, he was an albino and his white hair was unmistakable. He was in the fourth class and had an archery bow on his back.
I looked at Mom again.
“Do you know what a
jessie
is, Mom?” I said.
She lowered the newspaper.
“A jessie?” she said.
“Yes.”
“No, not really. But it is a girl’s name.”
“So, like a girl?”
“I suppose so. Why do you ask? Have you been called a
jessie
?”
“No, not at all. I just heard it after the match today. Someone else was called it. I just hadn’t heard it before.”
She glanced at me, I could see she was on the point of saying something, and I got up.
“Oh well,” I said. “Better bring my soccer gear in.”
After supper I went into Yngve’s room and told him what had happened.
“I got together with Kajsa this evening,” I said.
He looked up from the school books spread over his desk and smiled.
“Kajsa? I haven’t heard her name before. Who’s she?”
“She’s at Roligheden. In the sixth class. She looks really good.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Yngve said. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But there’s just one thing … I need some advice …”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know … Well, I don’t know her at all. I don’t know … what should we do? She’s coming over tomorrow, and I don’t even know what to say!”
“It’ll be fine,” Yngve said. “Just don’t think about and it’ll be fine. You can always make out instead of talking!”
“Ha ha.”
“It’ll be fine, Karl Ove. Relax.”
“Do you think so?”
“Goes without saying.”
“OK,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“Homework. Chemistry. And then geography.”
“I’m looking forward to starting at
gymnas
,” I said.