Encircling 2

Home > Other > Encircling 2 > Page 13
Encircling 2 Page 13

by Carl Frode Tiller


  “Look!” she cried, “look at that!”

  “Hmm?” Dad said, looking up from his newspaper.

  “Look at all the birds!” Berit cried.

  Dad turned around slowly and looked at the currant bushes.

  “That’s not all the birds,” he said, totally deadpan, then he disappeared behind the newspaper again.

  Silence for a couple of seconds.

  And then all four of us burst out laughing.

  Oh, I remember plenty of incidents like that from those days, incidents that testify to how happy Dad and Berit were together. And obviously this happiness somehow transmitted itself to you and me.

  And of course the fact that Dad did his utmost to make you feel welcome must also have had something to do with your sunnier frame of mind. Not only was he better than ever at suggesting things for us to do together—us menfolk, as he said. And not only was he a bit more expansive and easygoing than usual, he also did all he possibly could to treat you and me exactly the same. We weren’t living in the same house, I know, and the story still was that you and Berit were living in the cottage because it was more practical, what with her working at the farm. But the fact that we were actually becoming more like one big family was clear from the way he assigned us both much the same chores and accorded us much the same rights. We both had to muck out the barn and tramp silage and help out with all the other jobs on the farm, and we were both given pocket money and other forms of payment for this, always the same amount for each of us and always as often. Looking back on it, I almost find it a bit strange, admirable even, that he didn’t make more difference between us than he did. He could, of course, have succumbed to the temptation to give me preferential treatment because I was his son, but he could also have gone so much out of his way to make you and hence Berit feel welcome that he ended up treating you better than me. But he did neither. This strategy even extended to him calling the two of us “my boys.” In the Community Center Café in Namsos on a Saturday, for example, and other places where no one knew us he always referred to us as “my boys”: “And coconut buns and fruit drink for my boys,” he’d say. Or: “They’re a bit boisterous, my boys, but if they’re making a nuisance of themselves just let me know.” That’s how he went on. There was one time, I remember, when he took it so far that I actually felt a little bit jealous. We had gone to pick Dad up after he’d been on maneuvers with the Territorial Army and one of the other TA soldiers started talking about you and me as his two sons. Not only did Dad say nothing to correct him, but when the man pointed to you and said you were the spitting image of your father—the exact same eyes, he said—Dad actually said: “Aye, he struck lucky there, the boy!”

  But I wasn’t normally jealous of you, not at all. We got on extremely well and I thought it was brilliant that I always had someone to play with. You were the brother I had always wanted and it got so I could hardly do without you. If, for instance, I happened to get up very early in the morning I wasn’t supposed to wake you, but I would either go out and start up the lawnmower or find something else to do that would make such a racket you’d wake you anyway and come on out. I simply couldn’t wait, we had so much fun together: we made bombs that we let off behind the barn, shot at targets and hunted squirrels and crows with air rifles; we played pranks on Erik’s brother Albert and on Johanna Mørck, the classic ones such as ringing their doorbell and running away and rubbing their windows with Styrofoam; we made bike trails through the forest, played football on the lawn and as I write this I’m looking at the old pouf in which I used to keep all the Legos that we still enjoyed playing with.

  But what we liked best of all was to be up at the camp with the other Indians.

  One day: warm and sunny, the occasional breeze sweeping through the forest and making lovely rustling sounds in the tall birch trees.

  So, still perfect.

  But suddenly a scream pierced the air.

  “The Husvikings!”

  It was Per. He was up on the hilltop, keeping watch, and he had spotted someone coming up the path from the housing development. It was the Husvikings. “They’re coming!” he cried. “It’s really them! The Husvikings are coming!”

  Uproar in the camp. War cries and calls to arms and urgings to fight to the last man. “Charge!” you yelled, brandishing your spear above your head. And one of the little kids, the one that had picked crowberries and made warpaint from them, smeared three red stripes on each of his cheeks and muttered that it was now or never.

  Ah, but there weren’t as many Husvikings as we might have imagined, no horde, not nearly as many as there were bison on the prairie. In fact there were only a couple of them and what’s more they came in peace.

  “Can we play too?” one of them asked when you were standing right in front of them, fearless, arms folded. I don’t think you took too kindly to them showing up like this and then refusing to be your enemy, but at least we had shown that we were prepared for the worst and not to be trifled with, so you decided to be magnanimous and show them mercy. Yes, of course, they could stay, you announced, after consulting Per and me, we three being ten years old and the elders of the tribe. There was plenty of room, they could park themselves over by the big rock covered in green moss. Go right ahead. The two Husvikings were very happy about this and they showed their gratitude by raving about what a brilliant place we had up here. “Aw, jeez, what fantastic shelters—especially yours, David,” they said, keen to butter up our chief. And it was very wise of us to have a lookout post and stockades, they went on, because Grim had been saying that some day, if the mood took him, he might just come up and tear down our camp.

  “Let him come,” you said, seizing this golden opportunity to show what you were made of. And the rest of us were eager to do the same:

  “He’ll get a welcome he won’t forget in a hurry,” I said.

  “He’s got no idea what he’s got coming to him,” you said, looking as though you couldn’t help but laugh at the thought.

  “Oh yeah?” one of the Husvikings said, grinning at you expectantly. “So what does Grim have coming to him?”

  But then your mind seemed to wander for a moment.

  “Hmm?” the Husviking said, not to be put off.

  You scowled at the little pest.

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” you growled, not about to give anything away.

  But this particular Husviking was a right little pain in the butt. “Grim could beat the shit out of everybody up here with one hand tied behind his back, so what were you thinking of doing? Were you going to set a trap for him?” he said. “Hmm? Was that the plan?”

  That did it, your patience snapped. It was bad enough him going on and on at you like some fucking woman, but then he had the nerve to suggest that you couldn’t run rings around anybody who came along. That was going too far. Beat the shit out of you with one hand tied behind his back, he had said. And in front of the girls, at that. In front of Karoline. You couldn’t help but shake your head and laugh, it was so ridiculous, but I knew right away that you wouldn’t be content with that. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before you found a focus for your fury because it stood to reason of course that these Husvikings had been sent here to infiltrate our camp—you’d seen that straight away.

  Huh?

  Aw, it was no use playing the innocent. Why else had he been so keen to hear all about our plans and strategies, if you might ask?

  But …?

  Ah, see, he had no answer to that.

  The Husvikings protested their innocence, they swore they were innocent, but innocent or guilty, they had been found out once and for all, and the mood in the camp was heated now.

  Scum!

  Dirty dogs!

  They’d pay for this, you told them and you gave orders for both Husvikings to be marched over to the totem pole and tied to it.

  We had dreamed for ages of getting hold of an anthill and placing it right underneath the totem pole, but so far we’d had no luck with
that, so the Husvikings could actually think themselves lucky, we informed them. Okay, so we did throw tomahawks and shoot arrows at them while they begged for mercy, but at least they were spared being eaten alive by ants.

  They’d have had to be pretty hungry ants in that case, one of the Husvikings declared.

  Two short grunts of laughter from the other Husviking.

  Silence.

  You looked at them.

  What had we here? A couple of tough guys? Well, we’d see how cocky they were when we were finished with them, you said.

  You dealt one of them a little slap on the back of the head, gave us the nod and we dragged the Husvikings over to the totem pole. Now they were going to get what was coming to them.

  “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes,” I said.

  But the Husvikings still weren’t scared enough for our taste. They neither begged nor pleaded for mercy, and when it turned out that we had run out of rope and had nothing to tie them to the totem pole with, they actually looked at one another and laughed, calling us amateurs. They shouldn’t have done that, because if you hadn’t been furious before you certainly were now. Okay, so we could either make them run the gauntlet or scalp them, you declared, and when, after a careful head count, we came to the conclusion that there weren’t enough of us to make them run the gauntlet, the time had come for a bit of scalping.

  “Down in the dirt, where you belong,” you snapped and you grabbed one of the Husvikings, hurled him to the ground and sat on his back. He was a year older than you, but even though he wriggled and squirmed and struggled to break free he didn’t stand a chance. “Ole, gimme your sheath knife,” you said. I promptly handed you the knife and, while Per and two of the little kids held back the other Husviking, you began to hack off your victim’s hair. He howled and screamed, no longer taking it like a man, but you were blind with rage and beyond showing mercy. You said not a word, let the knife do the talking for you.

  Silence.

  “Look, he’s got a bald spot,” Per said after a while, looking at me wide-eyed and pointing to the Husviking.

  “Yeah,” I said. “He looks like that guy that drives the school bus.”

  Laughter from everybody all around.

  But you weren’t laughing, you grinned and let the knife do some more talking, then you stuck your hand in the air, holding up the Husviking’s scalp for all to see.

  Wild whoops from all the warriors.

  Then it was the other Husviking’s turn. He could no longer see the funny side of this either, but he could have saved himself all his tears and curses, because you were out for blood, hell-bent on revenge and soon you were waving another scalp in the air for the whole tribe to see.

  Once more the forest rang with wild whoops. Then a hush fell again.

  “Now get out of here,” you told the two Husvikings. “And let that be a lesson to you.”

  And the two Husvikings slunk off home. Per and I and some of the little kids followed them down the hill a little way, leaping and dancing around them, and they had to put up with a fair bit of jeering and sneering for having lost their hair and grown middle-aged from one second to the next. Oh, how they sobbed and wept, those two. They were devastated.

  But immediately afterwards, when we returned to the camp, it was my turn to feel devastated, because there was Karoline, gazing at you in awe and being so nice to you. Oh, my stomach knotted at the sight. She had never looked at me like that, never, not even when I worked myself half to death building a shelter for her.

  “Had you any idea what you were doing when you got so mad earlier on?” she wanted to know.

  “We-ell,” you said, wagging your head.

  She just didn’t know what had got into you, she said, you were like a wild beast, she had almost been scared herself, seeing you like that.

  Really? Oh but she didn’t need to be, you said, you could never hurt her.

  “No?”

  “No, of course not, what do you take me for?”

  Your eyes met and held for a second or two, then Karoline blinked and looked at the grass, just the way she should. She waited a moment, then she looked up at you again and smiled. Oh, how it hurt to see this. I had a good mind to break in with a question, any question, whatever came into my head, but I didn’t. It was time I stopped kidding myself, there was nothing I could do and there never had been, I had no wild beast inside me, like you had, and a brave who has no wild beast inside him will find it hard to get a squaw to share his tepee.

  And to a great extent this was, of course, what it was all about, I see that now. The camp was our training ground, where we learned to become real men, that’s true, but it was also where we learned about becoming family men, about making a life for ourselves with a house and wife and children and all the other things that go along with this. We didn’t know it then, of course, but the more I think about it, the more certain I am that that is how it was.

  Otterøya, July 3rd, 2006. Paralyzed

  MY EYES FLUTTER OPEN, close and flutter open again, the bedroom window is wide open and outside the birds are singing. Suddenly I notice that Helen’s not there. I lie for a moment and then a wave of panic washes over me, she’s not in bed and she hasn’t been here either, her duvet is untouched, as smooth and unrumpled as when I came to bed. I sit up, stare at her duvet, and my stomach churns, it knots. I sit like this, rigid and tense, then I lay my hand on my head, sit like this for another moment or two, waiting. Okay, that does it, I’ve turned a blind eye to a lot of things, I know it’s not that easy being her and I’ve tried to be as patient as I can, but I’m not putting up with this, I refuse to be that much of a doormat. I swallow, shake my head, and feel this bitter resentment, this rancor, well up inside me. Moments pass and all of a sudden I smell bacon. I look at the clock on the bedside table, it’s only a little after half-eight, so it can’t be Jørgen who’s frying bacon, he’s never been up this early on a Saturday as far as I know, so it must be Helen. I swing my legs over the end of the bed, place my feet on the floor, get up and walk over to the door, stop and listen. Just as long as Per’s not here, I can’t cope with both of them right now, I simply can’t. I stand quite still for a few seconds, but there’s no sound of anyone talking, all I can hear are faint sounds of movement down in the kitchen, the occasional rattle of cutlery and the sound of a cupboard being opened then closed again, so she must be alone. I grab my jeans off the back of the chair, get a T-shirt out of the wardrobe and get dressed, then I walk out of the bedroom, down the stairs and along the hall. And there’s Helen, pouring coffee into the coffee jug. Looks like she’s just had a shower, she’s in her dressing gown with her hair wrapped up in a white towel.

  “Hi,” she says, looking at me and smiling, standing there looking as if nothing has happened. She humiliated me in front of an old friend and now she’s acting as if everything’s hunky-dory.

  “Hi,” I say shortly. I don’t smile back, don’t even look at her, walk straight past her, pick up the newspaper from the kitchen table, walk through to the living room and sit down where I can see into the kitchen.

  “Did you sleep well?” she asks, still acting as though nothing has happened, bustling about the kitchen as she’s talking as if this was any ordinary morning. I wait a minute before answering, let her know that I’m mad, that I’ve every right to be mad, and she’s well aware of that, I know she is.

  “Yes,” I say, flicking over a page of the newspaper, I wait another minute. “And you, did you sleep well?”

  “Absolutely,” she says, looking anywhere but at me and still talking as if everything was perfectly normal.

  “Oh, and where exactly did you sleep?” I ask, with a little edge to my voice.

  “On the sofa,” she says with a little laugh. “I sat down to eat the last of the pizza before I came to bed and I nodded off. I must have been a bit drunk.”

  “Yeah, you must have been,” I said.

  Silence.

  My eyes are fixed on the newspap
er, but I’m not taking in one word of what’s on the page. Moments pass, then Helen starts to hum, like she’s in such a good mood now. She knows it’ll be harder for me to be mad and have it out with her if she’s feeling cheerful. But she’s not getting away with it, not this time. I’ve got a right to know what went on last night and this time I’m not backing down.

  “So, did you sit for long?” I ask, with that edge to my voice, not taking my eyes off the paper.

  “Not very long,” she says. “A little while, I’m not sure what time it was,” she adds and then she yawns, as if it’ll sound more credible if she yawns while she’s talking, sound more convincing, that’s why she’s doing it, I know it is. “There’s only so many awful jokes you can take,” she says and she gives another little laugh, like she’s inviting me to put down Per too, wants to have a laugh at his expense, so I won’t think she likes him as much as she appeared to do last night. That way it’ll seem less likely that anything happened between them, that’s what she’s thinking, I know it is, but I’m not going to play her game, I could say a lot of things about Per, but I won’t, I’m not dumb enough to fall for that. “Aw, he was all right, really,” she goes on, toning it down a bit now—well, I mean she wasn’t exactly unfriendly to Per last night and she knows it’ll only defeat the purpose if she bitches about him too much, knows it will seem suspicious.

  I don’t say anything, just keep my eyes fixed on the newspaper and after a few moments I feel a great sense of weariness creep over me. My body feels as though it’s wilting and I realize how sick and tired I am of this game, of carrying on the way we’re doing now, it wears me out, it drains all the energy out of me and I can’t take it any more. A moment more and then I lower the newspaper onto my lap and stare at her. I don’t quite know why I do this, I just do it. There’s total silence. Helen knows I’m staring at her, but she doesn’t let on, she takes the pepper shaker down from the spice rack and sets it on the table, crosses to the stove and starts to turn the bacon, still trying to pretend that this is just a morning like any other. Then she suddenly turns and looks at me, just by-the-by like.

 

‹ Prev