“Oh, for heaven’s, Mona,” Anne says. “There’s no comparison. Look … listen to me. You’re my daughter. I gave birth to you, I brought you up, and I can’t bear to see you being treated like this … no matter what went on between your dad and me. And besides, you’ve got a little girl of your own. This isn’t just about you and me. It’s about Vilde as well. Surely you can see that. Has it ever occurred to you that you’re Vilde’s role model? Has it occurred to you that everything you accept from Tom Roger, everything he says and does to you, Vilde’s liable to accept from the future men in her life?”
“Don’t you go bringing Vilde into this,” Mona cries.
“But it’s not me that’s bringing her into it,” Anne says. “It’s you that’s doing that. I mean, you’re the one who’s living with a violent man.”
“Vilde has never, ever witnessed any violence, Mom. And, however much it may annoy you, she and Tom Roger are the best of friends. I know you’d like to believe otherwise, but Tom Roger is actually great with kids. Just as great with them as Olav is. He would never say or do anything to me or anybody else when Vilde was around.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Mona, how long do you think you can go on fooling that girl into believing that you walked into a door every time you have a black eye? Hmm? Don’t you realize it’s just a matter of time before Vilde figures out what’s going on? And don’t you realize the effect it could have on her in the long run? She’s going to grow up believing that that’s how men are. That it’s perfectly normal for men to hit their women, and that that’s just something we women have to accept. Don’t you realize that?”
Silence for a second or two.
Then: “Do you know what I think, Mom,” Mona says, and her voice has suddenly changed. She doesn’t sound all that angry now, instead there’s a kind of grim satisfaction in her voice. “I don’t think this is about Vilde or me,” she says. “The fact that you hate Tom Roger and the way you’re always poking your nose into our affairs, I think that’s actually all about you. All the things you’ve always dreamed of, I think you’re trying to achieve through us … all the things you wish you’d done when you were feeling most put upon, you’re trying to make those wishes come true through me.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, this is absolutely … I mean … Mona. Don’t you see that you’re trying to play down what Tom Roger does to you, you’re trying to convince me and yourself that what you have to put up with is actually perfectly normal, don’t you see that? You’re trying to convince us both that there’s no difference between what goes on between you and Tom Roger and what goes on between other couples. But there is a difference, Mona. There’s a huge difference.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes really … excuse me, he beats you. He tries to control you by means of physical violence.”
“Well, for one thing I don’t think you’ve any room to talk about controlling people, Mom. I’ve never seen you use physical violence, but I have seen you use loads of other methods. And for another I actually happen to think it’s less humiliating to be given the odd clip around the ear than to have Tom Roger screwing around the way Dad used to do.
“The odd clip around the ear,” Anne snorts. “My God. Even the words you use make it sound so harmless, honestly … Mona, you … you’re breaking my heart, you … you keep dodging the issue, you do everything you can to avoid talking about you and Tom Roger. Every time I try to talk about you and him you change the subject and start talking about me or somebody else,” she says. “But if we could just concentrate on you and Tom Roger for a moment, please … Tom Roger controls you, you can’t see it yourself, but he does … and not just by means of physical violence either, he controls you in other ways too … through the guilt he makes you feel when he hits you, for example. I can’t tell you how insecure you’ve become, Mona. You seem to have lost all your self-confidence. You may not see it yourself, but everybody who knows you can see it. And they all know why. They all know he makes you feel ashamed and guilty,” she says.
I raise my chin and look at the ceiling. Bitch, what the fuck is she saying? She’s fucking well saying that I’m to blame for all the guilt Mona feels. Un-fucking-believable. I mean, obviously I feel bad about all the pain I’ve caused Mona, but for fuck’s sake, if there’s one person who’s done more than anybody else to make her feel guilty and ashamed it’s Anne.
But she still won’t stop. “You’ve absolutely no reason to feel guilty, Mona, of course you haven’t,” she says. “But like so many other women in your situation you think it’s you there’s something wrong with and not the man who batters you. If he beats you up it must be because he has a reason to beat you up, right? There must be something about you that’s not good enough, right? That’s how you think. That’s how all women in your situation think. You’re being eaten up by guilt and shame, Mona. You feel guilty because he hits you and you feel guilty for letting him hit you … you’ve got to get out of this. Now! This minute!”
I just stand here listening to what she’s saying. This is un-fucking-believable. She’s trying to get herself off the hook. That’s what she’s doing. Trying to pin the blame on me for everything she’s done. A second, and then I feel a surge of anger. Rage. Because if there’s one thing I can’t be blamed for it’s making Mona feel guilty. Far from it. In fact I’ve done all I could to boost her self-confidence, I’ve done my best to rebuild everything that that fucking mother of hers has destroyed.
“Sounds like you know what you’re talking about,” Mona says with a faint sneer and that same note of grim satisfaction in her voice. “You’re never going to tell me that’s how you felt when Dad was screwing around? You’re never going to tell me that back then you thought it was you there was something wrong with and not him? That he screwed around because you couldn’t give him what he needed or something?”
“Mona, would you …”
“There, you see, that’s just what I’m saying,” Mona says with a scornful little laugh. “This is all about you, isn’t it. Not me, not Tom Roger, it’s about you and Dad.”
“No, Mona. No. I just don’t know what to do. I’m so worried about you. And I’m worried about Vilde and I … I don’t know what to say, but if your dad and I have had our problems too … and if there’s any similarity between the way things were for me and how they are for you now, then … anybody might think I could give you some advice, anybody might think you’d do well to listen to what I’m saying.”
“I am listening to what you’re saying.”
“Yes, but not properly,” Anne says. “He’s destroying you, Mona. He’s breaking you down. Just the way you talk to people now, that snide, smart-alecky tone you’ve adopted … this need you seem to have to drag people down into the dirt just so that you can feel better about yourself, all of this … it … it reeks of self-loathing. He’s done this to you … he’s made you more and more like himself. Do you realize that?”
Fucking cunt, she just won’t let up, she’s still blaming me for Mona’s low self-esteem. Blaming me for what she’s done. Well, that fucking does it. I’m not going to stand here and listen to this. I have to be man enough to take responsibility for my actions, but no fucking way am I going to take the blame for all the things that cunt has done to Mona. I take a big gulp of my beer, slam the can down on the table and walk up to the kitchen door. Stand in the doorway. Smiling. I’m raging inside, but I’m smiling. I look straight at Anne. See her eyes widen when she sees me, wide eyes in that pasty, powder-caked face, see how surprised she is. But then she collects herself. Twists her face into a sneer.
“What the hell? Have you been hiding in there?”
“Yeah,” I say, staring straight at her, giving her a cold, hard smile. “I’m so ashamed of what I’ve done that I didn’t dare to show my face right away,” I say. Say it straight out, still smiling.
“Yes, well, you’ve every right to be ashamed,” Anne says. “Christ, what a gutless little bastard you are,” she snarls,
raising one pale pig’s trotter of an arm and pointing at me. I see the gold bracelet slip down to her wrist as she does it. “You are …”
“Stop it,” Mona cries, breaking in.
“No,” Anne shouts, spinning around and stamping her foot. There’s a little thud as the sole of her shoe hits the floor, a muffled thud. She glares at Mona. “You’re far too good for this loser, Mona,” she shouts. “He doesn’t deserve you and I don’t mind telling him so.”
She turns to me again, stares at me.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I say, still smiling. It pisses her off that I’m smiling. Because it makes me look like I mean exactly the opposite of what I’m saying. But I don’t. I really do mean what I’m saying. But I’m smiling anyway, I can’t help it. It’s this anger inside me.
“Well, then do the right thing, damn you,” Anne shouts, glaring at me. “Get out of my daughter’s life.”
“Mom,” Mona cries, leaning towards her. I see her long, fine hair slide off her shoulder and fall forward, curtaining her furious face. “Would you fucking shut up, would you just leave us alone. It’s not Tom Roger who needs to get out of my life. It’s you,” she yells. “It’s you!”
“Mona,” Anne says, her voice shaking, faltering for a moment. “If I could just get a word in here. You don’t know what’s best for you, so if I could just …”
“Would you stop saying that,” Mona suddenly screams, thrusting her head forward as she screams. Her red face, her arms thrown back, rigid, a bit like a longjumper preparing for takeoff. “It’s not true,” she screams. Her eyes wide, the big vein in her throat, blue veins expanding when she screams. “I do know what’s best for me, I’m not stupid,” she screams, “I’m not stupid,” she screams, screaming as loud as she can, a cold, shrill voice, a voice that breaks on the last word.
And I look at her, smiling.
“Take it easy, Mona,” I say. “Anne’s right, and we both know it. You’re far too good for me.”
I walk up to her, quietly, put my hand on her shoulder, her bony shoulder. And then I turn to Anne. Look her straight in the eye and smile. And she looks at me. That thoughtful look in her eyes. She’s sizing me up. Trying to work out where she has me now. She’s confused, thrown by what I’ve just said. And by my smile. I can tell by her face that she’s confused, thrown. I get a bit of a kick out of that. I go on smiling at her, just for a second, then I look at Mona again.
“And don’t you start going on again about how I’m plagued by self-loathing,” I tell her. “And how I’ve got such a low opinion of myself that I can’t believe you could actually love me, and that’s why I say I don’t deserve you. Because it’s not true,” I say. “It’s perfectly true that I don’t deserve you. You come from a respectable and unusually well-off family, and I come from a family of drunks, benefit scroungers and petty criminals, so I never could deserve you either.”
Then I pause for a moment. Still smiling. I look at Anne, two thoughtful eyes in a pasty, powder-caked face. Look at Mona, she seems confused too now, thrown, two little bird eyes, fixed. She probably wasn’t expecting this, she was probably expecting me to back her up, to tell Anne to butt out of our lives. I’m kind of surprised myself. I wasn’t expecting to say all this either.
Silence. Broken only by the sound of the rat in its cage, a soft scrabbling.
“And you know something, Anne?” I go on, turning to her again. “That’s exactly why Mona wants to be with me. Mona’s not living with me because she loves me. She may think that’s why, but it’s not. She’s living with me because that’s the best way of rebelling against you,” I say. I hear what I’m saying, feel more and more surprised to find myself saying this, I’ve never even seen it this way before. “Mona can’t stand all your expectations of her and all the demands you make on her,” I say. “I don’t know how many times I’ve seen her crying her eyes out and complaining about how hard it is for her because you’re never satisfied with her, with who she is or what she does. In your world, yours and her dad’s, a person can never be clever enough or perfect enough. There are always new goals to set for yourself, always something else to aim for. You never get to a stage where you can relax and feel satisfied with yourself. And that’s what Mona’s trying to rebel against. She can’t handle it and she doesn’t want to be part of that rat race. She says so herself and I’m sure it’s true, I mean it’s surely no accident that she’s had problems with bulimia,” I say, mentioning her bulimia now, there’s nothing Mona dreads more than the thought of people knowing that she’s suffered from bulimia, but I say it anyway, look at Anne and smile. “There’s no way Mona can ever live up to your ridiculous expectations of her, and to save herself from being swallowed up by feelings of inferiority and self-loathing she’s trying to show that she doesn’t give a damn about your expectations or your demands. She’s trying to show that she wants nothing to do with your ambitions and your social climbing,” I say. “And what better way to do that than by shacking up with a man fourteen years older than herself who has done absolutely nothing with his life. And has no ambition to do anything with it either,” I add with a little laugh. “Nothing could get up your nose more than to see Mona take up with somebody like me,” I say. “A drunken waster, on welfare, with rotten manners and a police record,” I say. “But I’ve had it. Mona can rebel against you all she likes, but I refuse to be part of it any more.”
I hear what I’m saying. I don’t know where all this is coming from, I can’t remember ever thinking anything like this before, but it’s true what I’m saying, it’s absolutely true. I turn to Mona, gaze at her. Her thin penciled eyebrows are arched slightly and she gazes back at me, shaking her head. She looks almost frightened.
“I feel used, Mona. Do you realize that?” I say, still smiling. I stare at her, she’s looking more and more frightened, she opens her mouth and goes on shaking her head, stares at me with wide, frightened eyes, frightened bewildered eyes. “I feel used,” I say again. “You’re fourteen years younger than me and when you’re as old as me you’ll find it impossible to believe that you could ever have wanted to get mixed up with someone like me,” I say. “When you finally manage to cut loose, more or less, from your mother’s apronstrings and start to feel a little more sure of yourself, you’ll do exactly what she says you should do. And not only that. You’ll actually want to do it. You’ll be glad to move away from Namsos, you’ll go to college, meet some guy of your own age who’s also gone to college and before you know it you’ll be living in a house with paintings on the walls and a library with those huge Chesterfield sofas in it, just like the ones your mom and dad have,” I say, talking a bit faster now, faster and louder. I stare at Mona. Something’s breaking loose inside me, this great, heavy surge of rage, breaking loose. “You don’t love me, Mona,” I say. “You’re just using me as a stepping-stone to get where you’re going. Maybe that’s why I hit you, what the fuck do I know. I’m not trying to excuse or belittle what I’ve done to you, and I am ashamed of myself, I truly am, but … to be used by a spoiled brat who was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and coddled and God knows what all, it’s … it’s so fucking degrading … and it makes me … so mad,” I roar.
I let out this roar. A wild roar, a roar that comes from somewhere deep in my stomach. And Mona and Anne both flinch, take a step back. And this great heavy weight, this surge of rage, it sweeps through me like a landslide. And I stare at Mona. Feel my eyes widening. Feel like my eyes are about to pop out of their sockets. “The way you drag me into this play-acting of yours,” I shout, my voice deeper than normal, rougher. “Because that’s what it is,” I say. “The fact that you choose to live with me and the way you’re always trying to talk and act like you’re in Wild at Heart or True Romance or one of those other films that we’ve always thought were so great. It’s really all just an act that you put on for yourself and your parents,” I say. “Well, not for me it isn’t. You may be playing at being white trash, but I’m not. For me this is no act. It�
��s real. I can’t just go back to my nice posh life when I get fed up with the way I’m living now,” I say. I stare at her. At her big, wide eyes. Frightened, sad, bewildered eyes.
“No,” she says, says it without making a sound. Shuts her mouth and opens it again. “No,” she says again, shaking her head as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing, doesn’t want to believe it. “I love you, Tom Roger,” she says, her voice thick with tears, broken-hearted.
I look at her, shake my head, and then I start to walk away.
“Tom Roger, don’t go, please.”
But I keep walking.
“Let him go, Mona,” Anne says.
“Tom Roger,” Mona says, crying my name.
But I grasp the doorhandle and open the door, walk out. Don’t know where I’m going. Just know that I have to get away from here. I hear Mona roar as I step out into the backyard, her voice furious, she’s so furious with her mother, screaming that she’s going to kill her. “Get out of my life or I’ll kill you,” she screams. And I walk away.
Namsos, July 10th, 2006
In the autumn of ’85 we stole so many mopeds, motorbikes and boat engines that Grandad was hard put to get rid of them all. He felt it was too risky to sell everything we brought him in the same district that it had been stolen in, so we either had to scale down our activities drastically or find ourselves another middleman because he didn’t dare to go on the way we were going. We were getting too greedy.
But we didn’t scale down. Anything but, in fact, because around this time Uncle Willy and Odd Kåre Hindmo started using the moving van to deliver liquor for Erik, and the motorbike club in the Oslo area that bought and resold his booze was only too happy to buy and resell the stuff we pinched, so we ended up stealing even more than before. Not only that but, when Bendik asked, the bikers confirmed that they also had the odd thing to sell and since it seemed a waste of time and money to drive all the way back to Namsos with an empty van, we started taking their contraband and stolen goods back north with us. Usually it was just cigarettes or a batch of quality wine and spirits that we sold to restaurants and bars on the way north, but sometimes we also carried watches, sunglasses, jewelry, perfume and other stuff, and whatever Uncle Willy and Odd Kåre didn’t manage to shift Grandad took it upon himself to flog.
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