At last he seemed to get what I was driving at. ‘You mean there was supposedly a connection between, that … No, frankly, I hadn’t thought of that.’
He almost turned around in his seat, trying to convince me how wrong I was. ‘Listen, Veum. Firstly, Randi and Trond, Sidsel and I have been best friends for years, we’ve been on holidays together, we’ve shared dinners and breakfasts, been on school trips and goodness knows what else. Trond and I are mates; we share everything. If his car conks out, he borrows mine. If mine’s in for repairs, I can borrow his. But not our wives; we’ve always kept them to ourselves. Randi and I could have driven to the southern tip of Italy together, we could have slept in the car or in camping chalets together, but it would never even have occurred to me to go to bed with her!’
‘Really? She’s not that unattractive.’
‘That’s not what I’m talking about either! But she’s Trond’s wife, don’t you see? We’re mates!’
‘And your wife and Trond, do they have such high ideals too?’
‘Sidsel and Trond? If it’s that Whitsuntide trip you’re talking about, Sidsel was in poor shape, and anyway, she’s never been all that keen on driving, and Trond had gone hiking somewhere. I don’t remember exactly. Secondly, Veum, Sidsel and I split up after many years of wear and tear. There was no single event that triggered it off. It was just a gradual realisation, mainly on my part, that she and I had reached the end of the road, no mistake about it. We were way beyond the last warning sign, if you see what I mean. Proceed beyond this point at your own risk. From then on we were up the creek without a paddle. And thirdly, nothing of this has anything whatever to do with what happened to Torild!’
‘Apart from what you said yourself,’ I added, ‘that, because of this, of the new family situation, you no longer had any control over her.’
He threw up his hands. ‘And I stand by it. If I’d been at home, this wouldn’t have happened.’
I made no further comment on that particular point. To protect their own egos, everyone needed to come up with their own explanations. This was Holger Skagestøl’s version. His wife would have hers. My own experience told me that the truth lay somewhere in between.
I tried another tack. ‘So … Not that it’s any of my business actually, but who left whom?’
‘Exactly. Not that its any business of yours!’
After a few moments, he felt unable to leave it at that, all the same. He half turned towards me and demonstratively beat the left side of his breast. ‘A heart of stone, you see. There are far too many idiotic deserted men out there with visiting rights to their children once a week.’
‘Tell me about it!’
‘You won’t catch me in that brigade, Veum. I never look back. Never!’
‘“Never” is a strong word to use, Skagestøl. Too strong for most of us.’
He snorted, turned aside and looked out of the window.
The plane was making its approach to Stavanger’s Sola Airport now. As instructed, we fastened our seat belts, and the plane dipped down through the clouds. The sea lay beneath us, grey and surly, with the look of dishwater. The bathing beaches were deserted and slightly reminiscent of the bones of gigantic corpses picked clean.
Holger Skagestøl leafed idly through one of the papers, apparently irritated with himself for what he had said. We landed not long afterwards.
It might perhaps have been natural for us to share a taxi into town, since, despite everything, we had got to know one another a little. But neither of us made the necessary preliminaries, and eventually, he took a taxi in solitary splendour, while I took the airport bus into town.
Thirty-eight
WHEN YOU TRAVEL by plane from Bergen to Stavanger you just have to accept that you’ll spend longer on the bus and in your car than in the air, even when the traffic flows as smoothly into the centre of Stavanger as it did on the day I was supposed to die.
The fields round the city were sallow and bare, and the tops of the trees waved in the wind. Yet even now you could already feel why spring came earlier here than anywhere else in the country. There wasn’t a snowflake to be seen, only a few scattered patches up on Ryfylke moors. The sun sliced through the clouds at a sharp angle, cut through the windows of the bus and lay there smouldering on your skin. But when I got out of the bus, the blast from the sea was like the scratch of a dirty claw on my cheeks, and it sent a shudder down my spine. Winter still had the upper hand.
I got off at the cathedral, nodded discreetly at the statue of Alexander Kielland and surveyed the scene. The last time I’d been in Stavanger it had been a modern Klondike, a frenzy of activity, its sudden wealth sending prices through the roof. Now everything seemed to have calmed down again. The place had finally got used to its new status, a place where Neil Young, head held high, could sing ‘After the Gold Rush’ without being booed off the stage.
Stavanger was one of those places God forgot. Perhaps that was why so many chapels had been built there, in a vain attempt to make contact again. When they had eventually given up, they sold their souls to Mammon instead, even though the old neon letters proclaiming that jesus was the light of the world still shone like a monument from another age over Breiavatnet Water.
Stavanger was a city I’d felt ambivalent about over the years. From 1966 to 1969 I’d attended The School of Social Affairs there. To start with, I lived in rather miserable lodgings way out beyond Banevigå. In the year above there was a girl the same age as me from Jørpeland, a place opposite Stavanger. Her name was Beate Larsen, and in a colourful get-together at a sort of collective somewhere out towards Egeland, we ended up in the kitchen like two self-obsessed stand-up comics, oblivious of what was going on around us. The following day we took the bus out to Sola and walked hand-in-hand along the beach even though it was September and summer had long since departed south; and when we got back to town, she invited me up to her room, where we deepened our new acquaintance further. With her white thighs on either side of my head and my face deeply anchored in her fjord, I heard her Rogaland accent like a distant eenie, meenie, miney mo in the air above me: Oh yes, yes, oh yes, Varg!
Not many months later I moved into her considerably larger lodgings in Wessels Street. When she finished her course six months later she went to Bergen ahead of me, where she had got a part-time job at the Social Welfare Department, while I carried on commuting backwards and forwards for the rest of the time I was in Stavanger. In the May of my final year we got married, and two years later Thomas was born. Neither of us had even heard of Lasse Wiik then.
Stavanger had been the scene of some of my happiest years, and I could never return to the place without being reminded that happiness is fleeting, and about as easy to hold onto as a moonbeam.
♦
The Salvation Nursing Home was just outside Bjergsted. In a modern glass and concrete building, looking out over Byfjord, I asked the way to reception and was sent three floors up and right. ‘The door’s locked, it’s the Senile Dementia Department, but just ring the bell, and they’ll let you in,’ the lady in reception called out to me helpfully as I was on my way up the stairs.
I followed her advice, and a little dark-haired nurse with a bright round face and great blue eyes showed me in to Kathrine Haugane, asking: ‘Are you family?’
‘No, I’m an acquaintance – of her son.’
‘You mean Birger?’
‘Yes. Do you know him?’
‘No, but my brother was in the same class at primary school,’ she said with a sudden hint of melancholy as though to emphasise how long ago that was.
‘They were obviously older than you.’
Her face brightened up again. ‘Yes, they were actually. Here we are.’
Kathrine Haugane already had a visitor. On the edge of the bed, with some knitting in her hands and an open magazine beside her, sat a woman in her forties, already grey-haired and with a face upon which life had left its imprint all too early.
‘You’ve got a visi
tor,’ said my companion with a cheerful smile.
The woman in the bed gave scarcely a flicker of her eyelids. The other woman stood up surprised. ‘Oh?’
I gave a friendly smile. ‘It’s …’ I hesitated for a moment. ‘Veum from Bergen. Varg Veum. I’m an acquaintance of Birger’s.’
‘Oh.’ She put out her hand. ‘I’m his sister: Laura Nielsen. Pleased to meet you.’
‘Me too.’
She was a little dowdily dressed, in a red shirt blouse, a brown skirt and a plain white knitted cardigan almost like a raffle prize from the last church bazaar. She wore no make-up and no jewellery. Her eyes were pale blue, almost colourless, and were red-rimmed, as if she was suffering from some sort of eye trouble. There was nothing about her to remind one of her brother, but from what I remembered of the notes in my inside pocket, there was nothing to suggest that they had the same father, quite the reverse in fact.
‘You are … Was it Birger who asked you to come and – visit us?’
‘Well, I … only if I had time. And I just happened to be on this side of town.’
‘He hasn’t been here for two years!’ she said, salivating so much that she had to swallow.
‘Hasn’t he?’
‘Not that I don’t see his point, mind you! She’s hardly going to have much to say.’ She nodded at her mother, and I followed her eyes.
Kathrine Haugane lay on her back, the eiderdown tucked right up under her chin so her neck could hardly be seen. Her face was thin and wrinkled, the most prominent feature being her nose, sharp and pointed. Her chalk-white hair was parted in the middle, and her skin was grey and sallow, as if it had lain there gathering dust for far too long and no one had bothered to brush it off. Had it not been for the barely visible movement of her lips, you might have thought she was dead.
‘Has she been like this long?’
‘It’ll be eight years this summer. Completely gone.’
‘So, isn’t she ever awake?’
‘Yes, she is, but when she speaks, its just confused babbling. Not a sensible word to be had from her.’ She sat down and took up her knitting again. Then she nodded towards the other chair in the room as a sign that I could sit down now that I’d called.
I glanced at the other bed. It was empty.
She followed my gaze. ‘Martha Lovise Bredesen. She died two days ago. They’re expecting a new patient tomorrow.’ She cast off a few stitches and muttered, almost to herself: ‘Oh well, at least they won’t be troubled any more …’
Strong white daylight filled the room. On the wall above Kathrine Haugane’s bed hung a number of private family photographs. One of them showed a woman sitting with two small children in front of a dry-stone wall in such strong sunshine that it must have been the height of summer.
I nodded at the pictures. ‘Is that you two?’
She looked up at it almost shyly. ‘Yes, it is … It was one summer, must have been in about 1950, we were at Nærbø.’
‘Birger’s the eldest,’ I remarked.
‘Yes, he is – never been any doubt about that.’
‘So was your name Bjelland as well, then, before you married?’
‘No, er – I’ve always been called Haugane, I have.’
I looked through the window towards the islands on the other side of the fjord. ‘But … do you have a different father, then?’
She pursed her lips and nodded.
‘And Birger’s father, was his name Bjelland?’
‘No, it wasn’t …’ She looked down at her mother, lying there with eyes closed and quivering eyelids as though she was dreaming – or just pretending to be asleep.
Laura Nielsen lowered her voice. ‘Birger was born in December 1945. Nobody ever found out who his father was, though there were rumours of course, and the general gossip was that he, that his father was, well, German, d’you see?’ A bitter look came over her face as she remembered it. ‘Mother was working as a waitress in a café at the time, where she obviously met decent people as well as other sorts … So it could just as well have been one of the better-off people in town, couldn’t it?’
I nodded at her reassuringly. ‘Yes, of course it could.’
‘So when Birger was almost grown up and moved heaven and earth to find out who his father was, it could just as well have been – it could just as well have been the chap he singled out. And anyway, he was already dead, so who could deny it?’
‘No, I …’
‘Both Birger and I copped it at school because of this, I can tell you. But mostly Birger. “Nazi bastard! Nazi bastard!” they would shout, running after him. Now and then he’d come home with a bloody nose after a fight. And it never stopped. It’s not surprising he got out of this town as soon as he could. Stavanger’s a small town, let me tell you!’
‘Bergen’s no metropolis either.’
‘No, I suppose not – but there was no one who knew him there, was there?
I raised my hand, nodding at her mother. Kathrine Haugane had suddenly opened her eyes. She was staring at the ceiling with a stern look. ‘Birger! Don’t do it! Roger! Oh no …’ Then her eyelids closed again, as if operated by some hidden mechanism.
I glanced at Laura Nielsen.
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘That’s one of her standard lines. One of the scenes she plays again and again. It was clearly some awful thing Birger got up to, which she goes over time after time!’
‘Any idea what it was?’
‘Not the faintest!’
‘But what was it she said … Roger?’
‘Roger … It was one of Birger’s pals at the time. There were probably up to something together, tearaways both of them.’
‘Roger … what?’
‘Er … Hansen, I think. He died many years ago.’
‘Oh …’ I didn’t want to press her any more. It was probably nothing important anyway. ‘But after Birger was born … what sort of life did she have?’
‘She was an outcast. Even if his father wasn’t German, the child was illegitimate, and in Stavanger then – well, that was almost as bad! So she went on public assistance, lived in a home for mothers run by the church for a while, they were certainly good to her there, but the rules and regulations were horrendous for a woman in her thirties, after all!’
‘But when you were born …’
‘Well, er … by then she was in service down at Nærbø, on a farm, and she met a seaman from the locality. Well, he gave her a child and went off on a long trip and didn’t come back till two years later, and how could he know it was his child she’d given birth to? Then she moved back into Stavanger, and we’ve lived here ever since.’ She sighed. ‘But I can’t complain. I’ve a good husband and manage fine. Time is working in our favour. Soon there’ll be no one left who remembers either Kathrine Haugane or her Nazi bastard any longer. So you can give Birger my best regards and tell him it’s just as well he stays away! No one here misses him!’
‘Birger? Is it you, Birger?’ Her mother had suddenly sat up in bed.
‘No, mother,’ said Laura Nielsen. ‘It’s not Birger, you can see that!’ She looked at me apologetically. ‘This happens every time she hears a man’s voice. It’s the same when Ove comes with me. She certainly doesn’t forget him!’
Kathrine Haugane looked in my direction with her pale-blue, watery eyes. It was almost as though she was looking straight through me. ‘Birger! I haven’t breathed a word! Not to a soul! You were at home the whole day! The whole day: right, Birger?’
‘Yes, yes, mother!’ She raised her eyes. ‘It’s the same old thing over and over again! Lie down and rest now, mother!’ She almost forced her mother back down into bed and gave a sigh of satisfaction when she saw the despairing eyes close again.
She looked at the other bed. ‘If only she’d been able to find peace too … Oh, perhaps one shouldn’t wish something like that for one’s own mother, but sometimes … may God forgive me, is it an un-Christian thought?’
‘Un-Christian … Bu
t it must … it must be quite an important event if it’s left such a lasting impression on her?’
‘Yes, I’ve no idea what she’s babbling on about!’ She bent down to tuck the blanket tightly under her mother’s chin, who looked to have calmed down again completely. ‘So now you can return to Bergen and tell Birger what life’s like for us here! As if he could care less.’
‘Yes, Birger … Do you know what it is he does in Bergen?’
She looked at me in surprise. ‘What he does … Business, isn’t it?’
‘But – what sort?’
‘Oh, er … All I know about him is that … he could have joined the Salvation Army for all I know!’
‘Is that likely?’
‘Well, yes, actually. You see, when mother came back to Stavanger from Nærbø and the second great disappointment in her life – at least, as far as I know – she was saved.’ Bitterly she said: ‘It was probably a travelling preacher who saw her as his Mary Magdalene, I’m afraid, but saved she was, at any rate, and so much so that both Birger and I spent more time at chapel than we did at home from when we were six years old till we were well into our teens. Well, Birger right till his military service. I broke away earlier, but by then mother had started to flag, so it wasn’t such a big step.’
I glanced at the clock and stood up. ‘Well, I don’t think I ought to take up any more of your time now.’
‘You weren’t! On the contrary, it’s made a change. In spite of my harsh words, please remember me to Birger when you see him.’
Not without a pang of conscience, I said I would do so before leaving mother and daughter in a sort of silent symbiosis: one lying in bed eyes closed, the other staring vacantly at the other bed and the hope it represented.
Once out in the corridor, I stopped a nurse on her way past with a bedpan. ‘Excuse me but … I spoke to a nurse a little while ago, small, dark-haired …’
‘Trude Litlabø?’
‘Yes, I don’t know …’
‘Try at the office.’ She pointed towards an open door near the end of the corridor.
The Writing on the Wall Page 21