The Ballad of a Broken Nose

by Arne Svingen

I’m not the sort to feel sorry for myself. That just makes you sad. And does no one any good.

  I turn away and stand with my back to her. Because I have an idea of what kind of explosion could come next.

  I’ll be honest, I haven’t cried since I was really little. And if it’s going to happen again, it must not under any circumstance happen with a girl who I don’t know if I hate or like, but who I certainly don’t trust.

  “Are you all right?” Ada asks.

  If she had put a hand on my shoulder, I’m not sure the dam would have held. But luckily she’s at least three feet behind me and doesn’t move. The pressure at the top of my nose subsides. I manage to turn around again and say: “Yes, of course, I’m fine.”

  “I’m really sorry, Bart.”

  “It’s okay. And you don’t need to keep saying my name.”

  “Okay, but I really am sorry.”

  “Is that why you went home from school?”

  Now it’s her turn to nod and stare at the floor.

  “Did you tell your mom as well?”

  She snaps back her head.

  “No, I’ve just told her nice things about you. Not that I’d have anything horrible to say about your mom to anyone, but—”

  “Okay,” I interrupt.

  Then we stand there in her far-too-big room and hear all the sounds from far away. It doesn’t make the atmosphere any better, but I don’t think it makes it any worse.

  “Do you want to hear some of the music I like?” Ada asks.

  “Maybe.”

  She doesn’t have the world’s worst taste in music. I think possibly I do. I’d guessed it might be R&B or rap or hits that everyone likes, but she plays girls with acoustic guitars. The sort that sound kind of grown-up and are suited to dark autumn evenings and candlelight. In a way they suit Ada too. It’s just the house that’s wrong. A bit like we’ve snuck into the royal palace.

  I stay for supper. They don’t serve Russian caviar and sushi. We have tacos, and Ada’s mom makes a real mess.

  “Where do you live?” she asks with her mouth full of food.

  “In an apartment,” I say.

  “Apartments are nice.”

  My seventh chapter

  My posters are still hanging up on the wall when I get home. Mom is sitting at the table and has obviously just eaten. The bread, the jam, the cheese, the leftovers from yesterday—all that’s left is the packaging.

  “Hello, lovely boy. Will you help me tidy up?” she says.

  I find a bag in the cupboard and throw the trash away.

  “Mom, are we really going to move?”

  She looks out the window, as if she’s studying something in the far distance. I don’t normally ask questions like that. It never does any good. I can’t explain why I did just now, but I’ve got no intention of taking it back.

  “Of course we’re going to move, Bart. But we have to find the right place first.”

  “And that will take a while, won’t it?”

  “That sort of thing often takes a while.”

  “But it will happen at some point?”

  “I promise.”

  “Good. That’s all I wanted to know.”

  “Could you go down to McDonald’s and get supper?”

  She gives me some money and I put on my sneakers. Out in the hallway there’s a man reading my flyer. His hair is wiry and he’s got a few whiskers on his chin. He notices me and stabs at the poster with his finger.

  “You seen this?” he asks.

  “Eh, yes, sort of.”

  “Damn good idea. S’just what’s needed. Someone with guts to sort out this dump.”

  “It was, well . . . it was actually me who put up the poster.”

  “You’re joking? S’good. I’ll be there.”

  “Great.”

  “When?”

  “Sunday.”

  “What day’s it today?”

  “Friday.”

  “Two days. S’good. Got no board meetings on Sunday. Finish work early.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just kidding. Don’t work, y’see. But I’ll be there. I mean it. Cool dude, that’s you.”

  I feel my cheeks flush. I’m not so sure he’s a world champion at tidying up, but that doesn’t really matter. He liked my poster and says he’ll come. What if there are more like him?

  I go to the supermarket instead of McDonald’s, and buy more bread and things to put on it. When I get home, Mom’s fallen asleep in front of the TV. After I’ve had something to eat, I turn off the TV and go into the bathroom to sing. The pills in the medicine cabinet vibrate. The sink tap is dripping more than usual. Then I try to imagine Ada standing beside me holding my hand. And again, I manage to keep more or less on track.

  I’ve never been to the opera. I once saw a man singing opera in the street, but Mom dragged me away. So I can hardly say that I’ve experienced any opera. But you don’t need to have seen fat ladies and men in weird costumes to know that you like it. I found something on YouTube, but it was just some guy with crooked teeth from an Idol-type program in England. I haven’t learned the difference between Mozart or Beethoven or Wagner or Puccini. There’s a whole load of other composers too, but most of them were dead before even my grandmother was born.

  I look at the top of my head in the mirror. I only need a few more inches. I don’t want to be a giant.

  When I come out of the bathroom, Mom’s woken up.

  “Can you get me the remote control?”

  “Here you go,” I say, and put it in her hand.

  As Mom turns on the TV, the doorbell rings. My first thought is that it’s Ada standing outside. Mom makes some head movements to indicate that I should go and find out. The face I see through the peephole is wrinkly and familiar. I tiptoe back to Mom on the sofa and whisper: “It’s Grandma.”

  Mom looks at me in horror.

  “She wasn’t supposed to come today. I told her I was working Friday and Saturday evening. Don’t let her in.”

  “But it’s Grandma, Mom.”

  There’s another ring on the bell. I notice beads of sweat on Mom’s forehead. With Mom, stress often comes out as sweat.

  “Get me a blanket. I’ll pretend I’m sick,” she says.

  I give her a woolen blanket and then open the door.

  “There you are, and you’re both here,” Grandma says. “You certainly took your time opening the door, given how big the apartment is.”

  “I had to help Mom first. She’s not well,” I explain.

  Grandma comes in with a suitably big plastic bag.

  “I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d come by with this,” she says, and puts the bag down. The contents are well packed. “Are you having a big birthday party this weekend?”

  Grandma doesn’t mean to be spiteful with her questions, but they’re often hard to answer. I always have to think twice before saying anything to her. Mom and I have mostly agreed what we’re going to say beforehand, but sometimes I get a bit confused about what we’ve told her.

  “I’m going to have a birthday party with my friends next week,” I lie. “But I hope that you can come on Sunday.”

  “Of course I’ll come.”

  “But I have to tell you that there’s going to be a big cleanup here on Sunday.”

  “Yes, I saw the poster, Bart. I’d be more than happy to help.”

  “Oh, that’s great.”

  Grandma turns to Mom and asks one of her awkward questions. “Funny, isn’t it, that you work in Telenor, but your phone doesn’t work?”

  “Oh, there’s been some trouble with the . . . network,” Mom says.

  “Better that it happens to the staff than the customers,” I add.

  “Yes, I guess it is,” Grandma agrees with one of her strange looks.

  In the cupboard over the stove, there’s a magic box. Mom puts all the bills in it. And once they’re in, they rarely come out again. It’s almost like they get sucked into a black hole. But only almost.
A blocked cell phone proves in a way that the bills still exist.

  Grandma does the dishes and tidies up a bit. Like she always does. She never asks what’s wrong with Mom. Instead, she makes coffee and asks if I need help with anything.

  Grandma is pretty much everything that Mom isn’t. That doesn’t mean that everything Grandma does is perfect. She smokes those cigarettes you roll yourself, and according to Mom, she’s had more boyfriends than most people have pants. I think she’s done with men now, because she lives on her own with a chatty parrot called Gudleik. She talks to him like they were married. We never go to visit her because Mom says she’s allergic to birds, but I’m not sure that’s true.

  “Got any further with moving?” Grandma asks.

  “Within a month or so,” Mom replies.

  I want to say it’s not true. That Mom’s lying and that we won’t be moving in the near future. I don’t know if Grandma believes anything we say anymore, but she seems happy enough with Mom’s answer.

  “Oh, won’t it be nice,” she says with that strange look on her face again.

  On Sunday it’s my birthday. I’m going to be a teenager. And I’m sure I’ll see the world in a whole new way.

  * * *

  “I’ve been thinking about the boxing,” Mom says when Grandma’s left and it’s almost time for bed. “Perhaps it’s not the right thing for you after all?”

  Mom has turned off the sound on the TV. She only does that when we’re going to have a serious talk. Maybe the coach has called her.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, there’s another sport that’s made up of all the skills you need to survive. Mixed martial arts. It’s like boxing, wrestling, and kickboxing all rolled into one. You learn to throw, punch, and kick, and evidently it was an Olympic sport in the old days.”

  “I dunno.”

  “Think about it, you’d be able to defend yourself no matter what your attacker does.”

  “I might not be attacked that much.”

  “They teach you to have no fear. I saw something about it on a morning show.”

  “Is it okay if I do some research first?” I ask as I get out the computer and log on to the neighbor’s network.

  Some swift googling reveals that it’s a sport that allows almost everything except biting and poking someone in the eye. Luckily, competitions and fights are banned in Norway and it’s hardly going to be taught to boys my age.

  “It says here there’s a movie about it called Fight Club. Maybe we should watch that first?” I suggest.

  “Yes. Oh, that reminds me, I borrowed a movie about boxing that I thought we could watch this evening. Look.”

  She holds up a cover of a boy leaping in the air. The movie’s called Billy Elliot.

  “Have you read the back?” I ask, skimming the text.

  “No, but Cheap Charlie said that it was about someone who did boxing.”

  “It sounds like he would rather do ballet.”

  “Really? Ballet?”

  She snatches the movie from me and reads the back. Mom always tries her best, but it doesn’t always turn out the way she thinks. A movie about a boy who does boxing but would rather do ballet might well be good. But it’s hardly going to make me any keener on boxing.

  “Hmm, that’s not right, then. I’ll go down and ask him if he’s got anything else.”

  She’s soon back with a movie called The Fighter. She’s been told that it is definitely about a boxer who doesn’t want to do anything else.

  It’s not Mom’s evening. The boxer in the movie doesn’t want to do anything else, but it’s mainly about his brother, who’s as high as most of the people in our building. And there’s a mom in the movie too, and she’s nothing like my mom, but a bit similar all the same. It’s so hard to explain things like that. Mom doesn’t really like the movie, and that means that I don’t really enjoy it either. And in any case, people getting beaten up is not really what I need today. It doesn’t feel like the movie’s going to have a happy ending, but you never know.

  We eventually switch to a prime-time talk show on television before the movie is finished.

  “Sorry,” Mom says.

  “It was good,” I reassure her.

  * * *

  The good thing about Saturdays is that there’s no school. And the good thing about days off is that you can do whatever you like.

  The only thing I don’t have is something sensible to do.

  Mom gets up before me. She mixes some muesli with water and lots of jam and sugar for breakfast.

  “I was thinking about working two days in the supermarket this week,” she tells me.

  “Very good,” I say.

  “And I’ve been thinking about your tidying-up project.”

  I look up from my cereal.

  “Yes, and I thought I could maybe be a kind of project manager.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “You do know that it’s . . . well, highly likely that no one will come?”

  “I met someone on the stairs who said he would come.”

  “Yes, but some of them talk nonsense.”

  “I trust him,” I say, and look down at my cereal.

  Mom sits down on the sofa after breakfast and turns on the TV. I go into the bathroom to sing. Halfway through the song I half open my eyes and catch half my face in the mirror. Every time I meet my own eyes, my voice rasps off-key. As soon as I close my eyes again, I’m back in tune. I’ve read about hypnotism on the Internet. Maybe I could trick myself into believing that I’m standing in our bathroom when I’m actually performing in front of hundreds of people?

  I go out and plop down next to Mom. It’s a repeat of Charter Fever. I’ve never taken a vacation to another country, but if the people in the program are anything to go by, it looks a bit wild. But I do think I’d like staying in a hotel. It looks clean.

  After a couple of hours in front of the TV, I say to Mom: “I think I’ll go out for a bit.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just for a walk.”

  “Well, don’t go too far, then.”

  “I won’t.”

  Sometimes Mom and I step on each other’s toes on weekends. So it’s good to get away for a few hours.

  At school, they’re always talking about how important it is to use your body. Maybe I should suggest it to Mom, but it might seem like I was making fun of her.

  My posters are still hanging there. At the bottom of one, where I’ve written Please leave this up, someone has added in very wobbly letters: dammit come.

  I laugh to myself and go out. As the door closes behind me, I see three familiar faces in front of me. I stop abruptly. Some of the people I meet five times a week, but never on a Saturday and never here, are standing out back. Of all the people I don’t want to meet in the backyard, I think these three rank highest.

  “What are you doing here?” just pops out of my mouth.

  An invisible hand is squeezing my stomach. Because August, Gabriel, and Johnny are standing there. Three boys from my class. Three boys who never just happen to be in my neighborhood. I could have saved myself the question, since I already know the answer.

  “We wanted to see if it was true,” August says. “Is this your slum?”

  What do you answer to that? No, this is someone else’s slum.

  “Is that your dad?” Gabriel asks, pointing to some drunken bum who’s struggling to open the door.

  I could of course say, No, he’s not my dad. But getting an answer is not the point. They want to laugh at me. In exactly the same way that they’ve laughed at Bertram for years. Bertram, who’s now called Femmer’n and is going to rap at the end-of-year concert, Bertram who’s emerging from the darkest recesses of the playground.

  “Can we see your mom?” August asks.

  I really have nothing to say. There’s no way out of this. I don’t know that I even want to explain anything at all. But the worst thing is August asking about Mom. As though she were s
ome freak at a sideshow.

  August is the biggest kid in the class and the arm-wrestling champion. I do boxing and the coach has said that it’s about time that I started to pack a punch.

  He’s right. I know he is.

  The trio have closed in on me. August is smiling. For a brief moment it almost looks like a nice smile.

  But it’s not.

  My balled fist flies through the air. On its way toward August’s cheek. The strength, the curve, the direction, everything’s perfect. A punch that Muhammad Ali would have been proud of.

  But my fist carries on past August’s face, as though I’m dancing, not boxing.

  Just when I manage to stop the movement, it hits. It feels like something exploding in my face. My head is thrown back and I feel my legs buckle. I can’t see August and the others anymore. I can see the sky. A lot of sky. And a bit of roof.

  August, Gabriel, and Johnny bend down over me. They say something to each other. Someone has put a whistle in my ears. I can’t read their lips.

  The boys disappear from my sky. Something runs down my cheek. It’s not raining.

  I didn’t just stand there and take it. I hit back. It’s maybe hard to believe, but I’m actually quite proud of myself.

  “Whoa, are you okay?”

  Another face leans in across the sky.

  “What did those assholes do that for anyway?”

  The guy who read my poster and said he was coming on Sunday helps me sit up. I gingerly touch my face. My fingers turn red. The guy takes off his T-shirt and pushes it into my face.

  “Ow,” I cry.

  “Sorry, kid. Think you’ll need something done with your nose.”

  “My nose?”

  “Think it’s broken.”

  My eighth chapter

  It could have been worse. I could have smashed my head on the ground and gone out like a shooting star. Mom would have been left on her own. She couldn’t have coped with that.

  “How unlucky to fall and hit your face against the banister,” Mom says, and rubs my back.

  The guy with the T-shirt just nodded when I told her about my incredibly unlucky fall. Before we went to the hospital, he whispered in my ear: “Next time I’ll help you get the bastards.”

  I’m sitting in front of the TV now with a nose that has been snapped back into place and bandaged to keep it in the right position. Both my eyes are purple. It feels like my whole head is swollen. My skull is certainly very heavy to carry around.