only for people who weren't good at expressing themselves.
*
I got thumped less once we began to get homework. That
was because I helped the other pupils in the class with their
tasks. I never sat down and did school work with them -
that would have been far too boring, and I was frightened of
making friends. But it became more and more usual for me
to do my own homework first and, when I'd finished that,
to do the same thing once or twice more. It was these extra
answers that I could give away or sell for a bar of chocolate
or an ice-cream to one of the others in the class.
As a rule we could choose between three or four essay
subjects. When, for example, I'd written the story 'Almost
an Adventure', I'd get an itch to do the essay entitled 'When
the Lights Went Out' as well. But I wasn't allowed to hand
in both essays. So I could give one of them away to Tore or
Ragnar.
Helping Tore and Ragnar with their homework was a
good idea, because then they wouldn't beat me up. That
wasn't principally out of gratitude. I think they were
frightened I'd announce to the class that I'd done their
essays for them. Saying so wouldn't get me into trouble with
the teacher. It wasn't my fault we were only allowed to give
one answer each. And I hadn't handed in Tore's or Ragnar's
work. They had appropriated these essays themselves. It was
obvious.
I never went round touting such extra pieces of work, but
gradually classmates would approach me and ask if they
could purchase some assistance. A number of transactions
took place this way, and they weren't always done for
money or chocolate, but often for quite different sorts of
returns. It might be nothing more than a couple of obscene
words in a needlework class or a snowball placed on the
teacher's chair. I remember such homework help continu-
ing to the age when a task could be bartered with one of the
boys in return for the loosening of a female classmate's bra
strap. Only one or two girls in our class had begun to use a
bra, and they weren't the nicest ones. While such favours
remained outstanding the debtor was in danger, as I might
eventually feel myself obliged to tell the teacher that I'd
taken it upon myself to help �ivind or Hans Olav with his
homework.
Homework help wasn't limited to Norwegian. I could
offer written answers in geography, religious instruction,
local history and maths. All that mattered was that they
weren't too similar to my own answers. First, I'd do my
own maths homework without any errors. Thereafter it
didn't take long to work up a couple more sets of answers,
but this time I had to insert the requisite number of errors
in the sums. It wouldn't have been at all plausible for Tore
to hand in homework that was totally error free. Tore was
satisfied with a C+, so I had to prepare a C+ answer. If
someone else also wanted a C+ answer, it had to be of the
same standard, but obviously the mistakes couldn't be the
same.
It wasn't that uncommon for me to produce homework
for a D or D+. There was a market at this standard too.
I well understood why Arne and Lisbeth couldn't be
bothered to do homework when the results never produced
more than a D+ or a C-. However, I never took any
payment for D answers, there had to be a limit. I considered
it payment enough to do them. I was particularly fond of
producing answers with lots of mistakes. They required
more ingenuity than unblemished ones. They demanded
more imagination.
If I was really strapped for cash, and my mother and father
were on speaking terms for once and neither would grant
me more than my regular pocket money, I would occasion-
ally produce a B-A or even an A. I believe I once even
managed to deliver an A+ in geography for Hege, who was
a championship dancer at Ase and Finn's Dancing School
and was practising like mad for a samba and cha-cha-cha
competition. On such occasions I would often introduce a
small error into my own offering, and thus aim for a B+ so as
not to eclipse the other answer. Then the teacher would
write 'A little lacking in concentration, Petter?' � or some-
thing in that vein. It was all so amusing. Even then, in
the early sixties, a few teachers had introduced what later
became known as 'differentiation'. Maintaining that an
answer meriting a B+ was lacking in concentration was a
differentiated comment. Had it been Lisbeth's work, he
would have written 'Congratulations, Lisbeth! A really solid
piece of homework.' The teacher didn't know that I'd made
the mistake for fun. He didn't realise I'd cheated just to get a
worse mark.
The upshot was that Hege had to read her exceptional
geography task to the entire class. She hadn't reckoned on
that, but the teacher was adamant that she go up at once and
sit at his desk. He came down and took Hege's place, which
was next to mine. I sat at the third desk from the front in the
middle row, and Hege sat on my right, only now the teacher
was there. So Hege began to read. She was one of the best at
reading aloud, but now she read so quietly that the teacher
had to ask her to speak up. Hege raised her voice, but after a
moment it broke and she had to begin again. She glanced
down at me several times, and once I waved discreetly back
with my left index finger. When she'd finished reading the
teacher began to clap, not for her delivery, but for the
content of the essay, and so I clapped as well. As Hege made
her way back to her desk I asked the teacher if we could
watch her do the cha-cha-cha as well, but he said jocularly
that that would have to wait for another time. Hege looked
as if she were about to pull a face at me, but she didn't dare.
Perhaps she was afraid I might suddenly snatch glory away
from her by telling the class that it was I who'd gallantly
stepped in to do her homework while she practised so
intensely for a dancing competition. There could never be
any question of that, as Hege had been most punctual in
paying what had been agreed - I'd already got the two and a
half kroner. But this didn't seem to put her mind at rest. She
didn't realise just how often I helped classmates with their
homework. It wasn't the first time I'd sat listening as an opus
of mine was read to the class and, far from minding, I
relished it. I was the Good Samaritan. I helped the whole
class.
Hege was in the same set as me when we started grammar
school and in the first year we had an amusing wager. Laila
Nipen, one of our teachers, had won a load of money on the
lottery and she'd spent it buying a brand new Fiat 500. I
think I was the one who suggested that some of us boys
might carry the tiny car through the double doors of the
school entrance and set it down right in the middle of the
assembly hal
l. Hege thought it was a great idea, but she
didn't think we'd got the nerve. I saw my chance and
suggested she swear a solemn oath to come on a romantic
trip to the woods with me if Laila's Fiat made it to the
assembly hall within the week. If it didn't, I'd do her maths
homework for an entire month. A couple of days later
the car was in the hall. The entire operation took just ten
minutes, during a break when we knew there was a staff
meeting. We even had the temerity to tie an outsized, light-
blue ribbon round the little red car to make it look like a
proper lottery prize. For its part, the school never found out
who'd been responsible for that mischievous little prank, but
Hege was now honour-bound to take a trip to the woods
with me. She didn't try to overlook the obvious subtext in
'romantic'. Hege was no fool, she knew just how scheming I
could be, and after all, I had helped to carry an entire car into
the hall just for her sake. Anyway, I think she liked me. We
found a secluded, unlocked shack. It was the first time I'd
been with a naked girl. We weren't more than fourteen, but
she was fully developed. I thought she was the loveliest
thing I'd ever touched.
Now and then I used to help the teachers too. I was
constantly feeding them amusing ideas for essay titles and
other homework. A couple of times I offered to help the
teacher mark our maths work. On other occasions I might
ask for further, or more detailed, information about a subject
the teacher had touched on in class. If we'd been learning
about the Egyptians in a history lesson, I would exhort the
teacher to tell the class about the Rosetta stone. Without this
stone, scholars would never have been able to interpret
hieroglyphics, I explained, and so we'd have known very
little about how the ancient Egyptians thought. When the
teacher told us about Copernicus, I asked if he could touch
on Kepler and Newton too, because it's well known that
not all Copernicus' suppositions were correct.
I was widely read by the time I was only eleven or twelve.
At home we had both Aschehoug's and Salmonsen's
encyclopaedias which came to forty-three volumes in all.
According to motivation and mood, I had three different
modes of approaching an encyclopaedia: I might look up
articles on a particular subject, often related to something I'd
been pondering for some time; I might sit for hours and dip
into the encyclopaedia at random; or I might begin to study
one entire volume from start to finish, like Aschehoug's
volume 12 from Kvam to Madeira or Salmonsen's volume
XVIII from Nordland Boat to Pacific. My mother had dozens
of other interesting books in the living-room bookcases. I
was especially keen on comprehensive works that covered
all the knowledge on a particular subject, for example The
World of Art, The World of Music, The Human Body, Francis
Bull's World Literary History, Bull, Paasche, Winsnes and
Hoem's The History of Norwegian Literature and Falk and
Torp's Etymological Dictionary of the Norwegian and Danish
Tongues. When I was twelve, my mother bought Charlie
Chaplin's My Autobiography, and despite its lack of objectiv-
ity, it too became a kind of encyclopaedia. My mother was
always nagging me to remember to put the books back on
the shelves, and one day she banned me from taking more
than four books into my room at once. 'You can't read
more than one book at a time, anyway,' she declared. She
didn't seem to realise that often the whole point was to
compare what was written about a particular thing in several
different books. I don't think my mother had a very sharp
eye for source criticism.
After we'd learnt about the prophets in religious instruc-
tion, I asked the teacher to look up the prophet Isaiah,
chapter 7, verse 14. I wanted him to explain to the class the
difference between a 'virgin' and a 'young woman'. Surely
the teacher knew that the Hebrew word translated as 'virgin'
in that verse actually only signified a 'young woman'? This
was something I'd chanced on in Salmonsen's encyclopae-
dia. But, I went on, Matthew and Luke appeared not to
have studied the underlying Hebrew text carefully enough.
Perhaps they had contented themselves with the Greek
translation, called the Septuagint, which I thought was such
a funny name. Septuaginta was the Latin for 'seventy', and
the first Greek translation of the Old Testament was so
named because it was made by seventy learned Jews in
seventy days. I elaborated on all of this.
The teacher didn't always welcome my contributions to
his lessons, even though I took great care not to correct him
when he said things that were factually wrong. When I
ventured to attack the very dogma of the virgin birth by
referring to what I considered was a translation error in the
Septuagint, he was further constrained by church doctrine
and the school's charter. He tried to hush me up, too, when
I pointed out something as innocent as the way Jesus' public
ministry lasted three years in John's gospel, but only one
year according to the other Evangelists.
When we were doing human biology I told the teacher
that I thought his use of the word 'winkle' for a certain
bodily member was utterly risible, at least in the context of
propagation. I told him that the term 'winkle' had fallen
completely out of fashionable use, especially in matters of
sexuality. 'Which term do you think I should use instead?'
he asked. The teacher was a sympathetic chap, a powerfully
built man and almost six foot six into the bargain, but now
he was completely at sea. 'I haven't a clue,' I replied. 'You'll
just have to try to find something else. But do try to avoid
Latin,' I said by way of a parting shot.
I never gave pieces of advice to the teacher during the
class. My aim wasn't to demonstrate that I was cleverer than
my classmates or even, from time to time, cleverer than the
teacher. It was always in the schoolyard or on the way in and
out of the classroom that I gave the teacher friendly tips. I
didn't do it to make an impression on him, or to feign a
greater preoccupation with school work than was really the
case. The opposite was nearer the mark. I would sometimes
pretend to be less interested than I was, which was much
more fun. So did I do it out of pure, unalloyed benevolence?
No, that wasn't true, either.
I'd regularly feed the teacher good bits of advice because I
found it fascinating to watch his reaction. I enjoyed watch-
ing people perform. I enjoyed watching them disport
themselves.
*
Each Saturday I'd listen to Children's Hour, and I wasn't
alone. Every child in Norway listened to Children's Hour. In
later life, I saw an official statistic that said that in the period
1950 to 1960, 98 per cent of all Norwegian children listened
estimate.
We lived in what social scientists call a homogenous
culture. Everyone with any self-respect listened to The Road
to Agra, Karhon on the Roof and Little Lord Fauntleroy. Every-
one read the Bobsey Twins, Nancy Drew and the Famous
Five books. We were brought up with Torbj�rn Egner and
Alf Proysen. We also had a shared experience in the long
weather forecasts from the Met. Office, the arid Stock
Exchange prices, Saturday night from the Big Studio at
Marienlyst, Family Favourites, that now dated mix called
Music and Good Motoring and Dickie Dick Dickens. Every
Norwegian of my age shares the same cultural background.
We were like one big family.
Children's Hour was accompanied by a 50-ore bar of
chocolate, a small bottle of fizzy orange and either a packet
of alphabet biscuits, a small box of raisins or a bag of peanuts.
On the rare occasions we got both raisins and peanuts, we
mixed them. The Saturday treat was almost as standardised
as school breakfast. For school breakfast the education
authorities supplied milk, crispbread with cheese, and
bread with liver p�t�, fish paste and jam. It was during
school breakfast that I would sometimes take soundings to
find out what the others were given for Children's Hour. It
appeared that everyone got exactly the same as me. I found
it eerie to discover that there was some unseen parental
conspiracy in operation. This was before I realised just how
deep a homogenous culture could sit.
Sometimes we were given a krone so that we could go to
the sweet shop and choose our own Saturday treat. Of
course, this was far better than the usual mix of peanuts,
raisins and alphabet biscuits. A krone would buy us ten mini
chocolate bars, but with ten ore you could also get one jelly
baby or two salt pastilles or one piece of chewing-gum or
two five-ore chocolates or four fruit pastilles. So, for a full
krone you could buy three mini chocolate bars, two jelly
babies, two salt pastilles, one piece of chewing-gum, four
five-ore chocolates and four fruit pastilles. Or you could buy
a 25-ore bar of chocolate, a 25-ore sherbet lemon and, for
example, two mini chocolate bars, two jelly babies and a
piece of chewing gum. I was good at making my money go
a long way. Sometimes I would also filch small change from
my mother's coat pocket, when she was getting ready in the
bathroom, or having an after-dinner nap, or late in the
evening when she was sitting listening to La Boheme. Taking
a small coin or two didn't give me a bad conscience, because
I only did it when I hadn't used the phone for days. Four
phone calls cost one krone - I was already a very businesslike
little person. But for my mother's sake I was careful to avoid
any jingling of keys or coins when I stuck my hand into her
coat pocket. Metre Man often stood watching me, but he
wouldn't tell. An extra krone or 50 ore made selecting the
Saturday sweets much easier.
Not everyone had a state-of-the-art radio, but my mother
and I did. We had just traded in an old Radionette for a brand
new Tandberg Temptress. The set stood on a teak shelf in the
living-room and banana plugs attached it to two loudspeak-
ers. These gave far better sound quality than the cabinet
radios. The shelf below the radio set and record player
contained all of mother's records: an impressive number of
old 78s, but also a lovely collection of modern LPs and
singles. Once I'd bought my supply of sweets for Children's
Hour, I'd perch on the Persian pouffe right up close to one of
the loudspeakers and lay out all my sweets in one long row
on top of the radio. If I had more sweets than my official
means dictated, I'd make a secret little row of chocolates and
jelly babies down on the record shelf as well. In such
circumstances, I'd always consume the lower row first.
The grown-ups also bought themselves treats to go with
their Saturday coffee. I'd made thorough investigations
about this too during school breakfasts, and the impression
I got concurred almost uncannily with what I'd observed in
my own home. The grown-ups ate large 25-ore crystallised
fruits, little liqueur chocolates, chocolate orange segments or
The Ringmaster's Daughter Page 4