You didn’t hear that question. The grown-ups and everything to do with the grown-up world could never be allowed to intrude into our fantasy world, because if they did it might instantly fall apart. But you had suddenly caught sight of something extraordinarily interesting on the ground. A really unusual insect, maybe. Or some sort of stone that you’d never seen before. It could have been so many things, you were bound to find something if you rooted around in the dirt a bit.
But Karoline wasn’t to be put off.
“Hmm?” she said, and all of a sudden she had that lopsided grin on her face, the one that always made us seem so much smaller than her, even though we weren’t.
She was really starting to piss you off, I could tell by your face. But then she did a complete about-turn and suddenly she was the Karoline we liked again. There was no way she would ever dare to pick raspberries here after hearing that, she told us, or at least not on her own.
Your face immediately lit up.
Oh well, it wasn’t as if she’d be on her own up here very often anyway, because we were almost always here, we just didn’t always let on that we were.
That was comforting to know, Karoline thought.
We were glad to hear her say that, you and I, and for a little while we just picked raspberries for her and life seemed sweet. But time passed and no matter how good life in the forest might be I still had to be home by five o’clock, because dinner would be on the table.
“I suppose I’d better be going,” I said.
“Oh, no,” Karoline said, tilting her head to one side. “Can’t you help me to finish picking first?”
I wavered for a moment.
“Okay, bye, then,” you said. You were keen to get me out of the way so that you could have Karoline all to yourself for a while, I knew that.
“Oh, please, Ole,” Karoline said. “Just until the bucket’s full.”
I wavered a moment longer, this was so unexpected and so wonderful, to have her begging me like this, and even though I had a suspicion that she was only doing it to annoy you and make you jealous, I was already looking for excuses for not being home in time for dinner.
“Yeah, I think maybe I should be getting home as well,” you said, probably hoping that she’d beg you to stay too, and then you looked at your watch, to show Karoline that you didn’t have all the time in the world.
But then Karoline did another about-turn and was suddenly cool and careless again.
“Oh, all right,” she said with a shrug. “Bye, then,” she said to us both, then she turned away and carried on picking.
Silence. Neither of us wanted to leave, so now we were in a fix. But you had the answer, because what was that: Shh! You shaded your eyes with your flattened hand, peered in the direction from which the sound had come.
“Did you hear that?” you whispered to me.
“Yes.”
“What?” Karoline asked, she hadn’t heard anything, because she wasn’t used to be being constantly alert and on her guard like us, half-savage as we were.
“They’re back,” I said.
“Caramba, I left my spear in the tepee,” you said softly. “We’ll have to think quick.”
“Is it the Husvik?” Karoline asked.
“Shh,” you said, putting a finger to your lips. “This way, but hurry,” you whispered, nodding towards the grottoes.
“But what is it?” Karoline asked. She didn’t budge, but there was a faint glow in her eyes now, and this filled us with joy and awe.
“Yep, it’s the Husvikings,” I said.
“But we can’t stand here talking, there’s no time to waste,” you hissed. “Come on!”
So we ran. You first, then Karoline, then me. Oh, this was how it was supposed to be, just like this. My heart pounded with delight and excitement as we ran, bent double, along the path. We were old hands at this, you and I, and we were at constant pains to share our knowledge with Karoline: on no account should she step on dry twigs, and she had to watch that no raspberries dropped out of the pail because if they found raspberries on the path they would follow the trail and then we were done for. This was it.
“In there,” you said when we reached the top, pointing to an opening under the big rock, and we bent down and ducked inside. “We’re safe here, they’ll never find us here,” you said. For a while there was total silence. But then I let out a fart and Karoline giggled. Neither farts nor fits of the giggles were appropriate at such a critical moment and I could see that you were annoyed at us both. You didn’t say anything, but you kept a straight face and reminded us of the seriousness of the situation by getting up and scanning the path downhill. Silence again.
“So is this where you hide when the Husvikings come?” Karoline asked.
“Yeah, nobody knows about this place but us three,” I said.
“Not any more.”
“No, but you have to promise not to tell anybody else about it.”
“What if I won’t?” she said. She had that lopsided grin on her face again, that grin that made us feel smaller than her. I never knew what to do when she was like that, it confused me.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” you said, turning round and sitting down again.
But Karoline didn’t look the slightest bit scared, she was still wearing that lopsided grin and she looked you straight in the eye, defiantly.
“Oh, is that so?” she said.
You glared at her. But then her mood changed again and she was back to being the Karoline we liked.
“Imagine if that rock were to fall in on top of us,” she said, a fearful look coming into her eyes. She glanced up at the glistening, black, dripping rock above our heads. “Imagine if there was another landslide and a rock landed on top of that rock—we’d be squashed to death.”
“That’s a risk we’ll have to take,” I said. “We’ve got no choice.”
But there was no great risk of that, you said. Landslides were pretty rare in the middle of summer. They were usually caused by water freezing in the cracks and crevices in the mountainside, because then it expanded, shattering and loosening the rock.
“How come you know things like that?” Karoline asked in amazement.
You shrugged and said oh, you really couldn’t say.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Karoline said. “You know everything, so you do.”
“Ha, ha, no, not everything, nobody can know everything,” you said, you could no longer resist her flattery and your voice bubbled with pleasure.
“Well, you know more than anybody else in the class!”
Aw, you said, you weren’t so sure about that, although there might be some truth in it, but …
“Oh, but you do!” said Karoline.
Silence again.
Then Karoline said: “Okay, I’d like to get out now,”
We told her it was better to wait a while, the danger wasn’t over yet, but she wouldn’t listen, she wanted to get back to the raspberry bushes. All right then, we said, but she wasn’t to come running back to us saying we hadn’t warned her. And we got up and crept back out of the cave.
“Hang on,” you hissed. “I heard something—shh,” sticking a rigid arm out behind you, signaling to Karoline and me to stay still. Then: a rustling in the bushes further down the path.
“I heard that too,” Karoline said.
“Shh,” you said again.
Oh, this, this was real, so real that I was almost trembling with excitement and suspense.
“Hand me one of those stones, Ole,” you snapped, motioning with your head towards some pebbles lying around the mouth of the cave. Quick as a wink I picked some up and handed them to you. You took them, aimed and threw one of them far down into the bushes.
“Oh, God,” Karoline whispered fearfully, “what if you hit one of them in the eye?”
This was only a diversion, you explained. You had thrown it way beyond them, to make them think we were down there and head off in that direction instead!
“Boy, you’re so crafty.”
We were in too tight a spot for you to bask in her adulation. Instead you put your finger to your lips again. We stood there, listening, all three of us. All we could hear was the chattering and squawking of the thrushes, the occasional distant sound of a dog barking and the steady drone of an excavator down on the building site.
“Either they fell for your trick or it was just a cat,” Karoline said.
“A cat? No way that was a cat!”
And this time you were right.
“Is this where they are?” a voice said. And who should appear but Eva, Per and someone else who had been on a motoring holiday to Østersund in Sweden and must just have got back. It was Hauk.
“Oh, hi, Hauk!” Karoline said.
How was Østersund, we wanted to know and we began to wander down the hill while Hauk told us all about his vacation. Oh, yeah, the zoo had been great. Yeah, and they had all these different fizzy drinks that you didn’t get in Norway and most of them were really good, loads better than orangeade or limeade anyway. And ice cream was called “glass” in Swedish, and Donald Duck was called “Kalle Anke,” and say they wanted a slice of bread with chocolate spread, did we know what they asked for? “Gås.” “Gås” like in “goose”? Uh-huh! We all had a good laugh at that. And Hauk had lots more to tell: about the Swedes at the campsite who swore all the time and went around in clogs and tracksuits, and how brilliant it was to have smoked bologna for breakfast, and about the minigolf course he had played on. He told us about Swedish guys with long yellow hair who drank beer from the can and made such a racket at night that the other campers couldn’t sleep. He had brought a slice of a foreign country back to Norway and now he was bursting to share it with us. And everybody except you and I was laughing and happy and all ears, saying wow and oh my God every now and again, and since none of them had ever been to Sweden they were really interested in knowing what the Swedish was for this, that or the other. And oh, Per wanted to know, was it right that down there you could buy a quartz watch with a built-in stopwatch and an interval timer? Course you could. Was it cheaper to buy it there? Oh, yeah, everything was a lot cheaper in Sweden, Hauk said. And on and on he went: the road signs in Sweden were yellow and there were some roads where you could drive up to ninety miles an hour.
“Ninety,” Karoline gasped.
“Yeah.”
“The cheetah can run faster than that!” you butted in.
“Huh?”
“The cheetah can do a hundred and ten!”
Karoline rolled her eyes.
“Aw,” she said. “Away you go and hunt for the Husvikings.”
“Shut your trap,” you said.
“The Husvikings?” Hauk asked.
“David and Ole and Per have been fighting the Husvikings, you see,” Karoline said, smirking.
“Oh, yeah, I don’t think!” Hauk said.
“Think what you like,” you said, trying to look as if you didn’t care whether they believed us or not, but you were furious, everybody could see that. Oh yes, you were in a dangerous mood now. Suddenly a grin flashed across your face. You sidled over to Karoline and then, as you passed her, you knocked the pail of raspberries out of her hands.
“Oops,” you said, grinning.
At first Karoline was speechless. She stared at the berries lying scattered on the path like a scarlet rash. But then she turned to you.
“Fuck!” she screamed, “I’ll get you for that.”
“God, how can you be so childish,” Eva said.
You laughed right in her face and then you turned to Hauk and eyed him coolly through half-shut eyes, looking alarmingly unafraid. You stood like that for a moment, but he didn’t do or say anything, he didn’t dare. Two seconds. Then you turned to Per and me.
“Come on,” you said, making sure to tramp on the raspberries as you walked off.
Neither Per nor I did that. We shrugged and eyed Karoline and Eva apologetically, but we were loyal warriors who stuck with you through thick and thin and so we both wandered back to the camp with you.
Otterøya, July 2nd, 2006. A pink onesie
I TURN ONTO THE NARROW DIRT ROAD leading down to the farm. Torstein’s sheep are lying down by the old milk-churn stand and I slow right down, nudge the car through the flock, rev the engine to get them to move, but the sheep just go on lying there basking in the sunshine. They look at me, blink weary eyes and show no sign of moving. I rev the engine a bit harder several times, and this time they start to bleat, a bell tinkles faintly. I rev up again and suddenly they all jump up and trot off into the field. I sit and watch them for a moment or two, then I release the clutch and drive on, loose grit scrunching nicely under the wheels as I do so. I roll slowly over the little hilltop and down to the farm.
Oh, to see the farm lying there at the end of the pale-green birch avenue, freshly painted and well-kept, with the sparkling blue sea beyond, it does my heart good. To see the house and the cottage and the barn lying there bathed in sunlight, it makes me so happy. There’s no place I’d rather live, this is where I belong, on the farm that my great-great-grandfather started. Like Knut Hamsun’s Isak Sellanrå, he came here. With his own hands he felled the trees from which he cut timber, with his own hands he built up this farm and it’s been handed down from my great-great-grandfather to my great-grandfather, from my great-grandfather to my grandfather and from my grandfather to my dad, and every one of them has prided himself on making sure that the farm would be in as good if not better shape when he passed it on than when he took it over. And that thought, the thought of how much hard work has been put into this farm over the years, fills me with respect and gratitude; it encourages me to work even harder and put up with that much more. Because now it’s my turn to carry on the family tradition and make my mark on the farm, now it’s my turn to develop the business and bring it up to date. Just as my great-grandfather invested in a reaper and later in a tractor, and just as my grandfather started breeding mink and foxes, I’d like to be remembered for switching to fish farming. And it won’t end with me either, I’m glad to say, one day it’ll be Daniel’s turn, one day he’ll take over and live here with his wife and children. Or, at least I hope he will, although obviously there’s no guarantee, but as long as we make sure that he thrives and is happy here I can’t see why he wouldn’t. I mean, it’s actually such a great gift, to be able to grow up on and spend your life on a farm like this, simply to grow up knowing that you’re part of this line that doesn’t stop with you. If you ask me that alone is worth every bit as much as the countryside, the fresh air and the peace and quiet, because being a part of such a line, it makes you feel sure of who you are and who you should be, it gives your life direction and if you ask me that’s what Jørgen lacks and what he needs more than anything else, it’s because he doesn’t have all this that he’s so restless and aimless, I’m certain of it.
I glance across at him and smile, but he doesn’t look at me, just sits there doing his best to seem laid-back, so I look away again, drive with one hand on the wheel and the other dangling out of the window. The plumber’s here already, I see. The white pickup truck is parked alongside the steps of Mom and Dad’s house with the new washing machine in the back, well tied down and wrapped in plastic. I park next to the pickup, reach round behind me, grab the state wine store shopping bags and get out of the car, set the bags on the ground and stretch, then I pick up the bags and stroll across the yard to the house.
“Don’t forget we’ve got a deal, Jørgen,” I say. “It’s work for you on Monday, right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, sounding a bit pissed off again, maybe he feels he’s being dictated to after all, maybe I didn’t quite manage to make him feel he had a choice. I stop on the steps and stand there watching him, he leans his skateboard up against the wall, kicks off his shoes and opens the door. “I’m goin’ up to my room to lie down,” he mutters.
“Now?” I say.
“I’m tired, for fuck’s
sake,” he snaps.
“Hey, no problem, I wasn’t getting at you,” I say with a disconcerted little laugh.
“Yeah, right,” he says. “Is this something new you’ve started?”
“What?”
“Everything you say to me sounds like an accusation,” he says.
“Aw, Jørgen, come on,” I say. I put my head on one side, look at him. “Now you’re being unfair,” I say.
“You see—now you’re accusing me of being unfair,” he says, raising his voice. He stares at me, pauses for a moment. “I just don’t know why you can’t stop remarking on every single thing I say and do. I don’t know why you can’t just leave me alone. I don’t need you keeping me right all the time. Show a little faith in me, for Christ’s sake.
I raise my eyebrows, gaze at him in astonishment.
“But Jørgen, I just offered you a job. If that isn’t showing a little faith in you I don’t know what is.”
“You haven’t offered me any fucking job,” he says. “You just blackmailed me into working at your goddamn fish farm, that’s not the same thing at all.”
“Jørgen,” I say, running a hand over my head and sighing, “I made one condition, that’s all …”
“You know what,” he says, breaking me off. “When I’m at my dad’s there’s nobody trying to keep me right all the time, and you know what, when I’m there I behave pretty much the way you’d like me to behave. But here, here it’s nothing but nagging and nitpicking and snide comments the whole fucking time, and then I certainly don’t feel like behaving properly.”
I look at him, and I’m just about to say that maybe Tom Roger doesn’t interfere because he doesn’t care as much as he should, but I bite my tongue—I might as well tell Jørgen that his father doesn’t really love him, and that wouldn’t be right of me. I scratch the back of my head, look at him, then drop my hand and sigh.
“But Jørgen,” I say, lowering my voice so no one else will hear. “You know I have to react to the fact that you’ve been selling hash again, you know I can’t stand idly by when you do something like that?”
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