by Sjón
Sure enough, after a while I saw a shadow passing by down on the track.
What should I do?
Call the police or something? The man was wearing himself down. If he couldn’t stop himself, I had to help him. But I was reluctant to get involved in this strange affair. The shadow passed me again on its endless orbit. I slipped home.
I went to bed, but couldn’t sleep. My thoughts were running in circles. Chasing after that guy. Following him around the track. I tried to guess where he might be now: on the north or east side. Then it occurred to me, and all thoughts stopped in their tracks, he was running the wrong way. Everyone who usually worked out there ran with the sun. Was that why he couldn’t find his way out again? Perhaps there was some way for me to break his orbit.
I sat up and switched on the bedside lamp. I could put down a plank or two across the track to ease him out, without him fully realizing it. Maybe I should do something now, immediately. This was urgent. I thought I remembered seeing two suitable planks in the garage.
I jumped out of bed, quickly put on a pair of jeans and tucked in the large singlet I slept in. Then I rushed down the stairs and pulled the brown leather jacket off the coat hanger. I had a disturbing feeling that this was extremely urgent. As if it had something to do with me. As if it was a matter of life or death.
It was pitch black outside. The lamp post in front of my house was dark.
I fumbled my way towards the garage door, only to remember that we now used a remote. No pulling. I fumbled back in again for the remote. That did the trick. The door rolled up under the ceiling. It was so noisy in the silent night that it made me nervous. At night, when it is quiet, you have to listen. Hear everything that is going on. It is the only salvation.
The light came on automatically. And there they were. I pushed aside a few old pots of paint with brushes sticking straight up without support, and grabbed an old newspaper to brush the cobwebs off the planks. The planks were so long that they sagged in the middle when I lifted them. I hesitated very briefly, and then headed for the football pitch.
Of course, I had no way of knowing whether the man was still running, but, if he was, I had to try.
I have always been both night-blind and afraid of the dark, so this was no easy task. I hoped I wouldn’t come across anyone on my way. They might think the planks were a ladder.
I hurried until I neared the pitch. Then I walked more cautiously. But suddenly I ran into a fence—actually, I ran the planks into a fence and dropped them. I felt the burn of splinters piercing my palms. Cursing, I felt my way to the opening. Then down the stairs, along the barrier and over to where I knew there was a hole. I pushed the planks through and listened, stock-still. The quiet seethed in the darkness. Suddenly I heard something. I did. It was so dark there. I heard the breathing before I heard the footsteps of someone running past, panting. I felt the hairs rising on my nape.
The runner stumbled over the planks, groaned, got back on his feet and carried on running. I flinched in sympathy, but thought I had to give it another shot. Some time passed. Then I heard panting approaching again and once again he stumbled over the boards and fell on his face. He whimpered so pitifully that I immediately pulled back the planks and took them home. I threw them into the garage and closed the door with the remote. Getting any sleep tonight was out of the question, so I made coffee and sat down to mull things over. I was in two minds about the whole thing. In the end I was so exhausted that I fell asleep draped over the table. A crick in my neck woke me up, but my first thought wasn’t the pain or that I was late for work now.
I prayed that he had stopped that nonsense.
I rushed to work, passed the pitch; the man was running all the same. My stomach tied in knots.
“Stop it. Stop it!” I yelled silently. He looked up and I felt a jolt when our eyes met. This time he didn’t ask what time it was, he just gave me a pleading look. My eyes welled up. I had never felt more helpless.
I went to work, but couldn’t focus. My thoughts were spinning. I usually had every situation under control, but now it was all a mess. I couldn’t focus enough to sit still. I paced the floor.
Finally, work was over. I couldn’t remember a longer day. Usually, they were over before I knew it. There was only one thing on my mind: getting down to the pitch as quickly as possible.
I had a fierce battle with myself, but finally pulled myself together, turned around and walked up towards the bank. There was an art exhibition I had been meaning to see for a while.
Most of the images portrayed the same thing: the dim outline of a man and a door opening to darkness. One differed. It was just a door, which was closed.
The images unsettled me.
I couldn’t resist any longer, I ran down to the pitch. The weather had been nice in the morning, but now it was windy with sleet. I was soon drenched, but there was nothing for it. My legs were shaking when I finally came to a halt, panting.
My heart sank to the bottom. His gait had changed. He was dragging himself along like an old man.
I built up my courage and approached the barrier.
“Please stop that!” I implored him, when he passed by.
“I can’t. Don’t know how to,” he gasped and his blue eyes were brimming with tears.
I gripped the barrier so hard that my knuckles went white.
The next time he passed, I heard him say: “Some men run in shorts, although they own trousers.”
It sounded apologetic, as though he knew that he was inconveniencing me.
I went home, dragging my feet along with me.
I fixed myself something to eat, but felt like I was chewing paper.
“Stop it, woman. Stop it!” I shouted and startled myself.
I lay down in bed and fell asleep. When I woke up, it was pitch black.
I checked my watch. Two thirty. I had slept enough. I got up, wrapped a blanket around myself, took a CD and put it on. I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes and tried to enjoy the music, but was interrupted by beats, which weren’t supposed to be there. My heart was pounding in my chest and blood was boiling in my ears. Thump. Thump. I listened: that wasn’t just my heart. There was also a knocking at the door.
Who the hell could that be, disturbing people in the middle of the night? I ignored the knocking, but whoever it was, it was not someone easily discouraged. It sounded as though someone was pounding on the door with both fists. I flicked on the light and stood up. I could make out a shape through the pane in the front door. I didn’t like this one bit. I wanted one of those peepholes. I wrapped the blanket tighter around me.
When I unlocked the door, there he was.
I felt immensely relieved, and took a deep breath. He finally stopped. I gave him a tender look and sighed.
He looked exhausted. His face ashen, dark circles under his eyes and drenched in sweat. He was trembling. He had worn out his shoes and his toes were sticking out. I suddenly realized that he was running on the spot. He could barely lift his feet, but he was running. Behind him snow had started to fall.
He tried to say something, but couldn’t speak. Then he cleared his throat a few times.
“Can you lend me your thoughts, so I can escape this?” he asked hoarsely with pleading eyes.
“Yes. If that’s all it takes, then, by all means, do take my thoughts.”
He stopped dead, thanked me and left, and I have to admit that since then I haven’t had a single thought.
But I have taken up running.
TRANSLATED BY MARITA THOMSEN
1974
FRODE GRYTTEN
IN THE SUMMER OF 1974, my mother fell in love with a man named Lars Paalgaard. On Midsummer Night’s Eve he showed up at our cabin in a white, open Ford T-Bird. He took us on a drive along the coast, over the bridges and out towards the ocean. My brother and I sat in the back seat, staring at this man who had unexpectedly come into our lives. He was dressed in a black suit and white shirt. Around his neck he wore a string tie
with a silver heart. He smoked Winston cigarettes and sang along to the music on the car radio. Mother explained that Lars Paalgaard loved convertibles; he almost always drove with the top down, never mind the wind and weather. She said he wanted to see the sky above him, feel the hot or cold air, inhale the scent of the ocean. Or the smell of shit, Paalgaard added, turning halfway around towards us. I love the smell of shit, he said.
We drove out into a landscape I couldn’t remember ever having been in before. We whizzed up hills and alongside meadows, past small holdings that sprawled into inlets and coves. There were new houses here and there with gardens and lawns that hadn’t yet been sown. A sweet aroma rose from the car seat, so different from our Opel. This car didn’t even have a seat in the back, it was more like a couch. Now and then mother pushed her sunglasses up on her head—she wanted to show the driver that she was watching him. Her blonde hair fluttered in the wind; she tried to get it under control with a blue shawl. She no longer looked like our mother. I could hear the noise of the tyres and feel the warmth of the evening air against my face. My little brother sat with his mouth open, like he was singing along too. I asked him to shut up, he looked like a retard.
After driving for half an hour, Lars Paalgaard slowed down and pulled over on the roadside. There were several cars parked along the road and a man wearing white shorts waved the T-Bird into place. On the gravel pitch down by the shore, I could see merry-go-rounds and a Ferris wheel. I heard shouts and laughter. It wasn’t until we came closer that we discovered how jam-packed it was. People bustled back and forth, ran around aimlessly or stood in groups and in lines. Children walked around holding balloons and candyfloss in their fists. Fathers tried to fish up prizes with small metal clamps. Some tried their luck on the wheel of fortune, others shot air rifles or threw balls at cans. Shouts came from the merry-go-rounds, and over by the roller coaster there was a sign that read: Do you dare?
You have to take some chances in life, Lars Paalgaard said and tickled my mother’s ribs flirtatiously. Not in a million years, she said and pulled free. She took her wallet out of her handbag. Why don’t we meet back at the car in an hour? she asked and gave me a five-dollar bill. I accepted it and didn’t know whether to thank her or give the bill back. My parents had never given me so much money before. I want to ride the bumper cars, my little brother said and stuck to me like glue. Fredrik was six years younger than me. He’d been born prematurely and that was probably why my mother had made him her favourite; she’d told me that she’d been sure she would lose him. The summer weeks we were at the cabin, Fredrik always latched onto me. He trotted behind me, always had to know where I was. He was teased by the older boys because he was tiny and thin. I boxed and was a loudmouth, nobody dared mess with me. At the fair the roles were switched: I trotted after Fredrik, I let him do whatever he wanted. A lot of girls made eyes at me and giggled, but I didn’t have the strength to think of anything except whether my father knew about this deal with Lars Paalgaard. I refused to believe it. Father was at home in Odda working and the plan was that he would come join us next weekend.
When we walked back up the gravel road an hour later, Lars Paalgaard and my mother were leaning against the T-Bird. He looked relaxed, had his hands in his pockets and a smoke in his mouth. She waved a huge teddy bear at us. Just before we reached the top, I noticed Paalgaard checking his fly. He tugged at the zip and laughed with my mother while he whispered something into her ear. She leaned against him, giggling in a way that seemed wrong to me. At that moment I understood that I was not in any sense out of danger. I could be hurt or injured in a way that would be fatal, not just because of my own actions, but also because of the bad decisions of others.
Mother asked if we’d had a good time and if we’d spent the five dollars. I didn’t answer. Fredrik said that we’d gone on the Kamikaze, where we’d been shot 20 metres up into the air before it dropped us down again. We got into the car without saying anything else. The last of the evening sun tinted the T-Bird pink. Paalgaard stepped on the gas and the car pitched into the twilight. I turned around and looked back at the fair where the blinking lights were now just starting to appear. At different places along the highway, out on headlands and down on beaches, people had lit bonfires. The T-Bird slid mightily away. It bore no resemblance to any cars I’d ridden in previously. The wind was hot against my face, even at 70–80 kilometres an hour. It was around eleven by the time we turned into the road to the cabin. People were still outside, nobody wanted to go to bed and maybe miss the most beautiful night of the summer. The sound of the usual gang rose up into the night like a yellow wave. They sat smoking outside the cabins; they were playing football over on the grass; but most of them had gathered around a bonfire down by the fjord. On the days before Midsummer Night’s Eve, we’d gathered up branches and kindling left by the loggers, we’d even got hold of an old rowing boat. We were outsiders, but always had to have the biggest bonfire in the village.
Every summer my father drove us to Skånevik, and then we stayed there until a couple of weeks before school started. It was the smelting works that owned the cabins and the employees could use them for free. They were called sports cabins, though I never understood why, there was nothing sports-like about them. The cabin we always stayed in was made of logs and painted red. It was located at the top of the hill that started by the highway and sloped down towards the pebble beach. During the summer weeks the entire area was filled with the dynamite-kids whose fathers were unionized under Chapter 5 of the Norwegian Chemical Workers Union. Everybody knew everybody else and it was like a part of Odda had been moved a few miles further south, to a place that smelled better, looked better, and where it stayed light until much later in the evening. We dived and jumped off the dock by the store. We went fishing and played ball all day long. We boys chased the local girls, the ones who didn’t know us already and were still curious about who we were. The girls from Odda who were here on vacation with us had long since understood we were trash.
The mothers usually stayed throughout the summer, while the fathers drove back and forth, showing up when they had a long weekend or vacation. At this time I had begun to understand that not all the fathers, not even my own father, were necessarily all that interested in making a beeline for Skånevik. Home alone, they could drink at the general store, sleep late, be free of nagging and scolding, kids and the wife. For my own part, that spring I’d started sleeping with the daughter of the director of the works, and I just longed for home. She was two years older than me and there were all kinds of rumours about her in Odda. She had called me one afternoon to invite me up. I’d no idea she even knew who I was, but I didn’t give the rumours in circulation a second thought. I had a shower and took the path leading to the villa at Toppen.
Even so, I didn’t dare touch her or do anything at all until the next time she called and I wandered up the same path. Then she put my hand on her right breast; it was buried beneath a layer of sweater, blouse and singlet. She didn’t say anything that afternoon, just led me up to a bedroom on the second floor. She didn’t stop me or barter with me—I can’t go along with this or that—the way other girls carried on. Afterwards, she said I had to hurry and leave before her mother came home and found us. I gathered up my clothes and shot a glance at her before I went out into the hallway. She lay half-naked with her panties on her thigh. She was slender with light brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She had thick lips and her eyes were almost closed. Downstairs I stood looking out of a window with a view over Odda.
Every time I went up to the house to sleep with her, I justified it by deciding it was her fault. She was the one who’d called me. She was the one who wanted this. But I couldn’t stop. I wanted to hear her breathing when she was transformed from being someone everyone saw to someone I imagined only I was allowed to see. I wanted to hold her and be with her and do all this even though I didn’t know what it was. She was so different, she was a place beyond shame or sin, her desire was without in
hibition. Don’t stop, she said to me. Don’t come yet, she said. Don’t do it like that, she said. Do it like this instead, she said and showed me. In the evenings I stood in the room I shared with Fredrik. I looked up at the lights that were on in the villa at Toppen. I stood there and waited for her to call.
If you’d walked past our cabin a summer night in 1974, I’m sure you would have wanted to be with these people, have a beer with them, and you would have talked bullshit with them and sung songs around the fire together. You would have wished that your mother was as beautiful as my mother. You would have stood there and thought that now everything was perfect, this had to last forever.
On the night we climbed out of the T-Bird, Lars Paalgaard shook my hand and thanked me for the trip. I’m glad to have met you finally, he said, then repeated the same thing when he shook Fredrik’s hand. I remember I thought he was a kind of gentleman: he shook our hands as if he wanted us to understand that he really meant it. After we watched the tail lights of the car disappear between the trees, I went straight up to the cabin. My mother called after me, asking if I didn’t want something to eat, a hot dog or a steak. Fredrik came running after me too, but I wanted to be alone.
Inside the cabin it seemed as if nothing was standing still. Everything was spinning around, I didn’t know whether I should lie down or stay seated upright. I couldn’t remember ever having been so angry before. I took out all my cassettes to choose one in particular that would drown out the sounds of laughter and jabbering from outside, but the tape got tangled up in the player, and I ended up on my feet trying to fix the cassette until finally I pulled out the tape and threw all of it on the floor. After a while my mother came. She knocked on her own front door, as if she were unsure about how I would react. She said that Marita had asked about me, she was down by the bonfire. Are you going down to see her? my mother asked. I didn’t answer. Don’t you want to go down with Marita? she asked. No, I said finally. Are you all right? my mother said. No, I said. Have I done something wrong? she asked.