Encircling 2

Home > Other > Encircling 2 > Page 31
Encircling 2 Page 31

by Carl Frode Tiller


  I’d known before I went, of course, that that’s what it would be like. Which is why I really hadn’t been planning to go, you know? I mean, it’s not a whole lot of fun to be the kind of guy that everybody looks at and thinks, “Well, at least I’ve done better than him,” because I know that’s what people thought when they saw me. Oh yeah, and not only that, a few of the girls came up to me and said things that made me realize they hadn’t expected to see a loser like me there at all. “How nice that you could come,” they said, with the stress on that “you.” Or: “Well, if it isn’t Tom Roger,” they said, looking at me like I’d just risen from the dead. Bendik and Janne and all the others who knew they didn’t stand a chance in the great competition to see who was the most successful had had the sense to stay away and these girls simply couldn’t understand why I hadn’t done the same.

  Those same people probably weren’t quite as surprised to see you there. Well, after all you had spent half a lifetime at university and that in itself was more than enough to move you up from the division in which Bendik and Janne and I were still stuck, right? But, like I said, this meant that you were regarded as a young man who hadn’t lived up to the great expectations people had had of him. And if anybody didn’t feel sorry for you for that, well, when they heard that you weren’t an academic of any kind but a hotel receptionist you could see them thinking that nothing had changed. You’d really fooled them for a while, stayed on at school, gone to university and forged ahead, but your past and your background had finally caught up with you and now you were back where you belonged in the social pecking order.

  Your way of dealing with this was to act as though this fucking receptionist job was just something you were doing to make money. At first you said you’d applied for a post at the University of Science and Technology in Trondheim and fully expected to get it, but then, once you’d had a bit more to drink you started telling people that you meant to be writer and that you were actually working on a novel. But what a lot of people knew, and what you didn’t know that they knew, was that you were mentally ill and unfit to work. I happen to know a little bit about this because I heard about it a while later from a guy who had been in the parallel class to ours at school. Although he didn’t know all that much either. You’d spent some time in a mental hospital, he said, and you hadn’t been able to finish your university course.

  Well, anyway, the point is that we both began to feel more and more out of place. We had tried to have fun and fit in but we had gradually drifted farther and farther away from the other partygoers until eventually we couldn’t take it any more. You’d asked the DJ to put on AC/DC’s “Back in Black” because, amazing though it may seem, we had spotted it when we glanced over the side of the booth at his collection of CDs, but Brian Johnson didn’t even get to scream his way through the fucking chorus once before those assholes who had once been the rich, preppy kids in class started shouting “oh, come on” and “turn down that racket” and when the aforementioned jerkoff-in-chief, Audun, took charge and ran up and asked the DJ to put on something else we just walked out.

  Like I said at the start of this letter, that wasn’t our 80s, that wasn’t our party. It took a little while for us to realize this, but once we did we could hardly wait to get out of there. Or at least, before we left the building we made a point of locating the main fuse box, pulled out all the fuses and pocketed the two backup packs. And even though it may have been a pretty feeble protest, still it felt so good to hear Bonnie Tyler’s gravelly voice die out right in the middle of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

  It was only a little before one in the morning. I asked you whether you wouldn’t like to come back to Ma’s and Grandad’s and carry on partying there. Ma had invited some of her women friends over and that lot really knew how to put it away, so if we were up for it we had hours of fun ahead of us. You’d like to, you said, but you were afraid you were kind of tired and would rather just go back to your hotel and get some sleep. A few days later somebody told me that they’d seen you sitting in a corner in Uncle Oscar’s Bar later that night. You’d been drunk and drowsy, sitting there half-asleep with your chin on your chest, this guy told me, and there was a big dark patch around the crotch of your suit trousers so it looked like you’d either pissed yourself or spilled your beer. I was a bit disappointed, I remember, to learn that you’d chosen to round off the night like that rather than come back with me to Ma’s, especially because I felt we had got on so well together at that fucking reunion, it had been quite like old times. But the reason we had got on so well was, of course, that we were both so pissed off with the rest of the people there. I wasn’t stupid, I realized that. So I wasn’t sad or anything, not exactly, that’s not what I mean. We’d had our day, I knew that.

  Ma really went downhill after the split with Peder Raade. It’s not like she cared for the guy, that I don’t believe, but he had given her a taste for the good life and it wasn’t all that easy to have to move back into a scrapman’s house after two years in a villa up on the hill at Høknes, if you know what I mean. And it didn’t exactly help that Grandma never stopped reminding her that she had thrown away her one big chance in life.

  “If you’d played your cards right, you wouldn’t have had to worry about all that,” she’d say when Ma was sighing over the mounting pile of bills or complaining about something that we needed but couldn’t afford. Ma would lose her temper completely and snap at her that Peder Raade had just about beaten her to death, but that cut infuriatingly little ice with Grandma. She would simply turn away with a little smile on her face, muttering something about there being some things you just had to put up with if you wanted a worry-free life—and anyway, Peder must have had his reasons for hitting her and Ma would never make her believe any different.

  Grandpa wasn’t as bad as Grandma as far as this was concerned, but it was years before he stopped hinting to Ma that she ought to get in touch with Peder again. The fact was, you see, that once, when they were having a drink together, Raade had promised Grandpa a job as a manager in his plumbing firm and Grandpa had never got over this. To hear him talk you’d have thought that strutting about with a pen in his breast pocket, issuing orders and bossing people about was his big dream.

  I don’t know, but I think that all Grandma’s and Grandpa’s nagging and complaining made Ma feel obliged to find herself another Peder Raade. And I’m sure she would’ve liked that too, but if it hadn’t been for them always going on at her I don’t think she would have wound up in all the hopeless relationships she got into after that: one smarmy geezer in a suit after another, most of them married and promising to leave their wives soon—not that any of them ever did of course, they were just out to have a little fun and a bit of an adventure and as soon as they’d tired of the fun that Ma had to offer away they went. And every time this happened and she was left alone again Ma got a little bit older and a little more worn and haggard, which obviously reduced her chances of getting lucky next time around. Eventually she realized, of course, that her days as a femme fatale were over and from that moment on it was almost as if she made up her mind to let herself go as much as possible in as many ways as possible. Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but at any rate she did nothing to hide or to gloss over her decline. She ate so much that in less than a year she was as fat as a pig. She looked awful; she got sloppy, stopped bothering about her personal hygiene or her clothes. It was like she was trying to show everybody how little she cared that she had never become the grand, elegant businessman’s wife she had once dreamed of being.

  Your mother’s efforts to rise above her hick existence and become the grand, elegant vicar’s wife weren’t that much more succesful than Ma’s attempts at social climbing. True, she stayed married to Arvid till the day she died in 1987, but half the town knew that for the last few years it was a dead, empty marriage. Well, what could you expect? I mean, of course people can escape from their background and adapt to new surroundings and new people, the way
your mother tried to do when she was living with the vicar from hell, but only to a certain extent. You can put a horse in a pigsty, but no matter how fucking long you leave it there it’s never going to turn into a pig, if you know what I mean. According to Erik your mother realized this after only a short time in the town. Her marriage to Arvid had been one huge mistake and Berit was totally incapable of living the way he and all their churchgoing friends did. The problem was, though, that she was far too proud to admit it, or so Erik said. She had staked so much on this new life and she did everything she could to convince herself and everybody else that it was absolute bliss compared with the old one, so to suddenly go back on this, to have to admit that her new life wasn’t all she had dreamed it would be and that she was actually living a lie, that was more than she could cope with. So she simply had to stick it out, and that’s what she did until the day she dropped dead.

  I’m not quite sure why I’m finishing this letter by talking about our mothers. Maybe it’s because I’m writing this at home in my old room and because Ma is always fucking there; because I can see her lying flat out on the chaise lounge right outside my window, and because every now and again I can hear her gabbing on her mobile. That could be it. Or maybe it’s just a half-assed attempt to gather together all the loose threads and finish off all the little stories I’ve started to tell you in this letter. That too is possible. But mostly I think it’s just that my ma’s and your mother’s stories have something relevant to say about us, you and me. Exactly what, I’m not sure, to be honest, but it probably has something to do with that vague sense of having been hard done by and looked down on; with feeling ashamed of where you come from and who you are and trying to do something about this. These were major forces and motivations in our mothers’ lives and the lives of everybody who came from the same background as us and maybe it’s because I’m afraid that these forces and motivations will lead us to make the same mistakes as them that I’m finishing by writing about them. What the fuck do I know.

  Paula

  Otterøy care home, July 4th, 2006. Talk of the devil

  DEAR, OH DEAR, the filth they print in the newspapers these days. I shake my head. I’m so sick of it, it’s just about all they write about, filth. I don’t know, I really don’t, why can’t they find something nice to write about for once? I turn to the next page, run my eye down it. Well, would you look at that—isn’t that Harald Hansen? Aye, it’s him right enough, what’s he doing in the paper this time, I wonder—the Pensionist Party and Age Concern, is it? Oh aye, of course, calling for a new senior citizens’ revolt, it says. Harald Hansen the pensioners’ champion lashes out at politicians, it says, and there’s Harald Hansen shaking his fist. Aye, well he’s persistent is Harald, you’ve got to hand it to him. Although, I think maybe he rants and raves a bit too much on behalf of us old folk sometimes, the old dog forgets that it was once a pup. According to Harald it’s beyond belief how awful young people today, it’s outrageous how little respect they have for us old folk, how immoral they are and how much better things were in the old days. Mind you, he’s right in a lot of what he says, there’s no getting away from it.

  I bend my head over the paper, screw up my eyes, trying to read what it says, but it’s no use, I can hardly see to read now, the print’s so small that I can’t read much except the headlines. Oh, well, what can you do? He’s coming here today, Harald is, to play the accordion for us, so I suppose I’ll get to hear then what it says in the paper and what he thinks. Oh aye, no worries there, he’s not usually one for keeping his opinions to himself, not Harald.

  I close and fold the newspaper and glance around the dayroom. It’s so quiet in here and almost deserted, Sylvia and I are the only ones here and she’s asleep in the pink leather armchair and I just sit here and the moments go by, but it must be coffee time soon, surely, doesn’t that clock say ten past five, yes, it most certainly does, so it must be coffee time soon, I mean we’re supposed to have afternoon coffee at five o’clock. I turn and look at the door. Ah, yes! Yes, yes! There’s that new assistant coming down the hall, I can see her through the new glass doors. This nice young fellow was here a while back to fit these lovely glass sliding doors, a skinny, red-headed Namsos fellow; a real character he was, and so funny, had relatives over in Skorstad, he said. And now the new assistant’s coming into the dayroom, she’s carrying a tray and on the tray are a cup of coffee and a plate with a slice of cake on it, what sort of cake is it today, I wonder, ah, almond tart again. It’s a bit on the dry side the almond tart they have here, I feel. They usually buy it at the Co-op, I know. Well, I don’t suppose they have time to bake it themselves, and anyway they might not know how, I doubt there’s many folks do their own home baking these days. Ah well, it’ll go down okay, I suppose, it usually does, oh aye, no worries there.

  Now the new assistant’s coming over to me. “Here you are, Paula,” she says, bending down and setting the tray on the table in front of me, but what’s that smell? Is that drink on her breath, well I never, it is drink. I look at her and she straightens up and stands there looking at me, and then she smiles. “Thank you,” I say, and I smile back at her and I nod, and then she turns and goes over to Sylvia.

  So it’s true what Therese said, after all. She said she saw the new assistant sneaking a drink down by the lockers. She’d caught a glimpse of a bottle containing some clear liquid as she came around the corner, she said, but I wouldn’t believe it, well, you like to think the best of folks, don’t you, and anyway it doesn’t do to take that Therese too seriously, she tends to look on the black side and always see the worst in people. But there you go, it was true after all. Oh my, that’s just tragic, so it is, dear me, it’s terrible the things that go on, such a lovely young girl too, and at work at that.

  “Sylvia!” I hear the new assistant say. She’s trying to wake Sylvia, she’s got her hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently, but Sylvia’s sleeping so soundly, she doesn’t wake up. She sits there with her head back and her mouth open, sits there in the pink leather armchair looking like a hungry baby thrush with its beak open. “Oh well, we’ll just let her sleep a while longer,” the new assistant says, then she turns and looks at me and smiles, and I look at her and smile back.

  “Well, he who sleeps does not sin,” I say, and there’s silence for a second.

  “Hah, well in that case it’s time you were in bed.” I look around and see Therese making her way over, her blue-white claws clamped around the handles of her walker and her slippered feet shuffling across the polished floor. She stops next to me, puts out a hand and picks the newspaper off my table, she doesn’t ask if I’m finished with it, I can hardly see to read and I’m not interested in hearing about all the filth they print in it, but all the same, I think she might ask if I’m finished with it, but no, she doesn’t, she’s not made that way, Therese, she simply picks up the paper and carries on. She’s heading for the armchair on the other side of the room, shuffling straight towards it. “Aye, it’s bedtime for you,” she says. “If that’s what it takes to be free from sin,” she says. I glance at the assistant and smile, and the assistant smiles and raises her eyebrows, because there’s no point getting upset about it, Therese is Therese, there’s no one like her. Aye, she’s a one-off is Therese.

  “Can I get you some coffee, Therese?” the assistant asks.

  “Get me coffee—you?” I hear Therese say scornfully and then she snorts. “God, your hands are shakier than mine,” she mutters. I duck my head at her words and stare at my coffee cup, a white coffee cup with a light brown band running around the rim, and I pick up my cup, because the new assistant mustn’t know that I heard this remark, it’ll only be more embarrassing for her if she realizes that I caught it, so I’ll just have to act like I didn’t. I raise my cup to my mouth, pucker up my lips and blow, making little ripples on the glossy black surface.

 

‹ Prev