Encircling 2

by Carl Frode Tiller

  “What—have you never seen people before?” Mona snarls.

  She’s getting herself worked up. Trying to offload her anger at her mother onto them. She knows she doesn’t have to worry when she’s with me, so she doesn’t think twice about venting her spleen on a couple of random passersby. And they speed up a bit, looking the other way as they hurry across the road and around the corner.

  “Christ, they seemed to be in an awful hurry,” Mona says.

  She wipes away the last of her tears. Looks at me and grins.

  “Must’ve had an urgent appointment somewhere,” I say.

  I grin back at her. Lay my hand on her shoulders again. My big hand. Hug her close as we walk on, cross Namdalsvegen and step onto the sidewalk on the other side.

  “Can’t we just get shit-faced?” she says.

  It comes kind of out of the blue. But I try not to look surprised. Raise one eyebrow and give a little shrug.

  “‘Course we can,” is all I say. We’re bound to get a drink at Ma’s and Grandad’s, and we can just take it from there when we get home.

  I look at her. The glow in her eyes, burning eyes. She looks so much in love when she looks at me with those eyes. And she is in love, of course. Not just with me, but with being the sort of couple that we are right now. The sort of couple we see sometimes in films. Free spirits, rebels. The kind that tend to do things on the spur of the moment and like to live more fiercely and intensely than most people do. I know how she likes to identify with all that. She fixes her eyes on mine. A moment, then she puts a hand on the back of my neck. Closes her eyes as she draws me to her. Wants to kiss me now. Wants us to kiss right here in the middle of the street with people walking by. Wants to show everybody how little we care. Like there’s nobody in the world but us. And I do what she wants. Kiss her.

  Namsos, July 6th, 2006

  Dear David,

  When I think back on the 80s, it sometimes strikes me that it’s not my 80s I’m looking back on, but the image of the 80s that’s presented on the internet and in films, on TV and radio and in the newspapers now, in 2006. When I sat down to write this letter, for example, what I thought about was Sky Channel and Pat Sharp on MTV. I thought about BALL sweatshirts and down jackets with leather patches on the shoulders, about Toto and Alphaville and Dire Straits and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. I thought about pastel colors and mullets and fountain ponytails and marathon dances in the gym at Namsos Lower Secondary. Even though none of this was any part of my life or Bendick’s in the 80s I sat down at the computer and thought of all this and a lot else that I knew little or nothing about back then and that I wouldn’t have known anything about today either if it weren’t for the fact that I once went out with a woman who tried to deaden her fear of getting old by refusing to let go of the 80s and still dressed in much the same way and listened to much the same music at the age of thirty-five as she had when she was a teenager.

  This fact, that I remember somebody else’s 80s better than my own, reminds me of the time when we celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of us finishing lower secondary. I hadn’t been planning to go to this party and I don’t think anyone else expected to see me there either, but the very fact that they didn’t, well, that brought out the devil in me and after a few drinks to give me Dutch courage I took a taxi to the Namsos Athenæum where the party was being held. And before too long I was sitting next to you, sipping a red-colored welcome drink, smiling happily at speeches full of references to Lacoste shirts, Levi 501s and red leather ties worn to confirmations. And shortly after that I was dancing to “White Wedding,” joining in the chorus of “Buffalo Soldier,” and laughing my head off at a sketch performed by a bunch from the A class, all about Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and the old Commodore computers.

  But the uneasy feeling that this wasn’t my 80s grew stronger and stronger. As if my ma could afford to buy me Levi’s or Lacoste shirts or gear from Busnel or Matinique when those brands were all the rage. Never mind video games or a computer or cable TV or one of those electronic games that you saw kids playing with in the playground. As if I ever listened to the Top Ten or got asked to parties where they played “Forever Young,” “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” and other hits from those days. That wasn’t my 80s. That was the 80s of all the well-off, clever, popular middle-class kids who came home to tables set for dinner every day and whose parents promised to pay for driving lessons if they stayed away from cigarettes. And yet there I was nodding and laughing and having fun, and this gradually began to make me feel that I was betraying the kid I had actually been in the 80s. Not only did I not object when our successful former classmates presented this garish version of the 80s, I actually almost fooled myself into believing that that had also been my 80s. I was in the process of erasing the boy I’d been back then.

  And if you ask me, that’s exactly what’s happening now, all over Norway. The popular, well-off, clever teachers’ pets that you and I went to school with are all grown up now, and just as Audun and Marianne took over the planning committee and turned that evening into a carefree, innocent, safe, candy-colored version of the 1980s, so all the pampered, successful thirty-somethings in the country have taken over all the influential posts and appointments. In TV program after TV program, radio program after radio program, newspaper article after newspaper article they talk about how they represent you, me and everyone else. And eventually we start to believe them. Eventually we start to believe that their version of both the past and the present applies to us as well.

  And exactly the same thing happened to our parents’ generation, you know. Think of being young in the late 60s and early 70s and you immediately picture grim-faced Marxist-Leninists demonstrating against the war in Vietnam or longhaired, hash-smoking hippies sitting in a park listening to Jimi Hendrix and saying, “Far out, man.” Everybody does it. Even my ma, although she probably doesn’t even know who Jimi Hendrix was. She doesn’t picture her own 60s and 70s, she pictures the 60s and 70s of the kids who were popular and good at school and well off when she was young, the kids who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths and sailed through their childhoods without a scratch and went on to become student radicals and academics. For decade after decade they have occupied their positions of power and presented their versions of the 60s and 70s and that is what Ma pictures. Even though she grew up in the small northern town of Namsos and has probably never seen a hippie in her life, even though she never went on a protest march and the closest she ever got to further education was sleeping with an asshole of a substitute teacher we had at Namsos Lower Secondary in the early 80s.

  So I promise you one thing: this letter’s not just going to be a fucking rehash of the version of the 80s we were presented with at that class reunion. Now that I’ve sat myself down here to help you “find out who you are,” as it said in the paper, there’s no fucking way I’m going to be tricked into writing Audun’s and Marianne’s story. I’m going to write about me and you and Bendik. I’m going to write about my tinker family and your family of hick farmers—and that story, our story, begins on the day that you and your mother moved in with your stepfather, a real sleazeball if ever there was one, notorious in the town for using his position as the local vicar to take advantage of single women.

  I don’t remember exactly when this was, but it was long before they pulled down the old fence separating the detached bungalows of the middle class from the public housing where Bendik and I grew up, so it was before I turned fourteen, at any rate. I was about eleven maybe, maybe twelve, maybe thirteen, I can’t say for sure, but it really doesn’t matter that fucking much. In any case, one summer’s day in the early 80s a blue and white moving van was parked outside the vicarage, and me and Bendik were hiding up on the mound of grass where your stepfather used to empty the wheelbarrow after he’d mowed the lawn. The plan was for us to dash out and grab some stuff from the van every time the movers carried something into the house. Guerrilla tactics, Bendik called it, obsessed as he was with sold
iers and war. Dart out, dart back, quick as lightning, dashing back and forth until we ran out of room in the old bike trailer we had left on the path behind us. We used to do little raids like that now and again because my grandad had a scrapyard and a junk shop and he bought just about everything we brought him, no questions asked, so it was an easy way to make some money.

  But when we looked down from the top of the mound of grass and saw that the men carrying in your belongings were Uncle Willy and Odd Kåre Hindmo we immediately ditched our plan, because there was always the chance that they would get the blame for pinching the stuff and we didn’t want that, obviously. So instead we lay there spying on them. They were puffing and panting, their faces shiny and running with sweat. Uncle Willy had taken off his shirt and was working stripped to the waist. He had a tattoo of an anchor on his forearm and a hairy belly that bulged and strained over the waistband of his trousers and jiggled when he walked.

  “Fuckin’ hell!” he wheezed, taking off his gloves, picking up a bottle of beer that was sitting on the trash bin next to the wooden fence and knocking back the last of it in one big gulp. “Don’t you think it’s hot?” he asked, looking up at Odd Kåre in the body of the van. Odd Kåre didn’t answer. He looked dead beat; big, dark, heart-shaped patches of sweat had formed on the front and back of his white T-shirt. He stopped what he was doing, took hold of the hem of his T-shirt, pulled it away from his body and flapped it, airing himself. “The sun’s nearly down and it’s still hot as hell,” Uncle Willy gasped. Odd Kåre just turned around, grasped the arm of a sofa and dragged it right out to the front, then he tramped off to the back again. “It’s nigh on unbearable,” Uncle Willy mumbled, then he set the empty beer bottle down on a little table that was standing in the driveway. Odd Kåre lifted a rolled-up carpet off a pile of boxes. “Christ Almighty, you’d think it was the middle of the fuckin’ day, it’s that hot,” Uncle Willy said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Odd Kåre growled.

  “Eh?”

  Odd Kåre heaved the carpet onto the sofa, took a fresh bottle of beer from the crate and handed it to Uncle Willy.

  “You don’t have to make excuses,” he said.

  “Fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Uncle Willy said, sounding mad now.

  “Aw, gimme a break,” Odd Kåre sighed. “Yesterday it was because you’d eaten salt herring. What’ll it be tomorrow, I wonder.”

  “What the fuck are you insinuating?”

  “Cut it out, I said! Open your bottle, drink up and then get on wi’ your work. I’m knackered and I’d like to get this done and out of the way.”

  Uncle Willy eyed Odd Kåre for a second.

  “Who the hell d’you think you are?” Uncle Willy shouted.

  Odd Kåre sighed and shook his head.

  “Eh?” Uncle Willy shouted again. “Who the fucking hell d’you think you are?”

  “Aw, please. I don’t feel like arguing with you. You can drink as much as you like just so long as you do your work.”

  “So long as I do my work?” Uncle Willy stared at Odd Kåre, his mouth hanging open. “So long as I do my work? Are you saying I don’t do my work now? First you insinuate that I drink too much, then you tell me I’m not doing my work. You’ve hardly been working here a fucking year and now you’re talking to me like I’m a damn fucking errand boy.”

  “Save it!” Odd Kåre snapped.

  Uncle Willy gave a bark of angry laughter.

  “You’ve got a fucking nerve!” he cried.

  Odd Kåre put his hands on his hips, looked down at the floor of the van and shook his head.

  “I never said you weren’t doing—”

  “I’ll tell you one thing, you great turnip!” Uncle Will bawled, cutting him short. He slammed the unopened bottle of beer down on the table next to the empty one and took a step closer to the van. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said again, pointing up at Odd Kåre. “I tell you, you and those stringy goddamn arms o’ yours don’t lift half as fuckin’ much in a day as I do. Do you realize that? Eh?”

  Odd Kåre took a deep breath, about to say something, but then he flapped his hand at Uncle Willy and sighed. Uncle Willy licked his lips, looking madder and madder.

  “Not even half,” he said.

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s right,” Odd Kåre said. “I’m weak and bone idle.”

  “Yeah, you bet your fucking life you are.”

  “Hmm,” Odd Kåre said, opening his eyes wide and smiling sarcastically at Uncle Willy. “But d’you think we could get back to work now?”

  Uncle Willy just stood there gawking at Odd Kåre for a moment or two, then he snorted, picked up a box of ornaments and set off up to the house. Then he suddenly stopped, turned and came back to the van.

  “Oh, by the way, how was that daughter of Arthur’s?” he asked with a snide grin.

  Odd Kåre looked a bit taken aback.

  “Oh aye,” Uncle Willy said, nodding triumphantly. “I saw you the pair of you.”

  Odd Kåre didn’t say anything.

  “For fuck’s sake!” Uncle Willy crowed. “As if screwin’ minors wasn’t enough, now you’re havin’ it off wi’ your own friend’s daughter. It’s like I said, you’ve got a fucking nerve.”

  Odd Kåre’s face was like stone, his eyes bored into Uncle Willy’s.

  “Oh, dear, what’s the matter?” Uncle Willy sneered. “Did you eat something that didn’t agree with you?”

  “You’d better watch yourself,” Odd Kåre said coldly and softly.

  “I should watch myself?” Uncle Willy said. He stared at Odd Kåre for a second, then he put down the box he was holding and jabbed his chest with his finger. “I’m to watch myself. Me? Well, I’ll tell you this much, you’re gonna be in bi-ig fuckin’ trouble if Arthur gets to hear about it, because you’ll wind up right back in the slammer. You do realize that, don’t you?”

  Odd Kåre kept his eyes fixed on Uncle Willy’s, saying nothing.

  “And you’re telling me to watch myself,” Uncle Willy said again.

  “Aye,” Odd Kåre said, then he paused. “Well, I don’t know if you remember anything about Friday night, but would it ring any bells if I said that there’s an Audi lying at the bottom of the fjord and that both the police and the insurance company are wrong if they think it was stolen?”

  Silence for a few moments.

  “A-ha … now who’s worried?” Odd Kåre grinned, leaning forward slightly and staring at Uncle Willy. “It’s like I say, you drink way too much and you’d better watch out. It’s easy to give too much away when you’re drunk, you know. There’s plenty of folk have got their fingers burned that way!”

  They glowered at each other for a couple of seconds, then Odd Kåre turned away and started dragging furniture towards the front. Uncle Willy picked up the unopened bottle, pulled a tin of snus from his back pocket and flicked the cap off the bottle with a little pop. White foam gushed out of the neck and a little beer ran down the sides of the bottle and over his big fist. “Fuck,” he mumbled, slurping up most of the foam and shaking his hand, sending drops of beer flying.

  Suddenly a voice called from the veranda: “Excuse me!”

  It was your mother, Berit.

  She was standing with her arms crossed, looking down at Uncle Willy with a faint smile on her face.

  “I was wondering if you’d mind not drinking beer while you’re working here. There’s a child in the house, you see,” she said and she raised her hand and pointed to an open window on the first floor. And there was a tall, skinny boy of my own age. He was standing perfectly still with his arms by his sides, gazing down solemnly at the drive.

  That was you.

  There was silence for a couple of seconds.

  Uncle Willy took the bottle away from his lips and stood there holding it out stiffly in front of him. He shot a surprised look at Odd Kåre and Odd Kåre looked back at him in equal surprise. Then they both turned and looked up at your mother. No one said anything for a moment or two, then Od
d Kåre and Uncle Willy looked at one another again. Odd gave a little snort of laughter, Uncle Willy sniggered and shook his head, then he put the bottle to his lips, tipped his head back and took a long swig on it while you and your mother looked on. “Aaahh,” he sighed, then he set the bottle on the ground, drew the back of his hand across his mouth, sauntered over to the van and began to lift off some of the stuff that had collected at the front. Your mother stood and watched him for a moment or two then she just turned and went back inside.

  “There’s a child in the house, you see,” Odd Kåre said, mimicking her and making a face.

  Uncle Willy grinned. “Who the fuck does she think she is?” Odd Kåre went on. He pulled his T-shirt over his head and tossed it onto the grass. “Eh?” he said. “And who the hell does she think we are? Does she think we’re gonna talk or act any different just because there’s a goddamn vicar in the house?”

  “People like her, they’ve never broken a sweat in their lives, I’m tellin’ you,” said Uncle Willy. “They’ve never lifted anythin’ heavier than their wallets and however heavy they may be it’s not quite the same thing. They don’t understand that it’s thirsty work lifting and carrying.”

  “Gimme half an hour wi her an I’d make her sweat,” Odd Kåre grunted, clutching his balls.

  Uncle Willy gave a dirty laugh.

  “Aye, I bet that’s just what she needs,” Odd Kåre went on.

  “Yeah, you could be right,” Uncle Willy laughed.