If I get there a bit later, sometimes she’s completely broken. It’s as if things become clearer for her, the longer she’s awake. As if the loneliness she lives with suddenly becomes real. Then she goes and lies down. Angry with everyone who isn’t there. I know that she’ll do it all again first thing tomorrow morning. Up at the crack of dawn, twittering and baking for those who aren’t there.
I decide to go and give her the Christmas decoration. I go on my own all the way down to her block of flats, the others go in twos to the houses near the church. She doesn’t come to the door at first. I think that maybe she’s asleep. Or dead. I consider leaving the candlestick outside the door. But just then the door opens cautiously. ‘What do you want?’ I hold out the candlestick. ‘I wanted to give you this.’ She opens the door fully. ‘It’s me, Eli the newspaper girl.’ ‘Boy,’ she says. ‘Boy, we can say boy. How are you?’ She doesn’t answer. We go into the living room. It smells old, not of food. There is nothing in the flat to remind you of Christmas. She seems different, more severe. Is this the evening version of her? She doesn’t look at the candlestick. I leave it standing in the middle of the table. Realise that she’s never going to use it, and that’s probably just as well as she might burn the flat down.
We sit there and I chat away for quite a while. She doesn’t seem to be particularly happy that I’m there. Suddenly she says: ‘My husband was fun, he was. He used to hide behind the door. And when I found him we laughed and laughed.’
‘What did you get?’ the others ask me later. ‘Nothing.’ ‘And you stayed there all that time. She must be mean.’
She wasn’t mean. She didn’t know who I was and who she was and that it was nearly Christmas, and didn’t even notice the Christmas decoration I’d brought. I have no idea what kind of person she thought I was, coming there and disturbing her peace. As long as she was whistling and singing again in the morning. I think I came at the darkest time of day.
‘Eli, listen, we have to talk about how you get on with yourself,’ Jonathan says. I’ve told him about yesterday evening. How I went to bed in the afternoon. How I live in one world when someone is here or when I’m out with people and how I live in another world when I’m by myself. The flat becomes a little bubble in space. And I float around without a mooring.
‘You have to start liking spending time with yourself. With the writer, the sports girl, the philosopher, the playful child in you. The angry person, the sad person. I think it’s something you can practise.’
‘Yes, yes, yes.’
‘What are they saying?’
‘They want to be part of it.’
‘Say no, they can’t. We’re talking now.’
‘I’ll give you half an hour later,’ I say.
‘Being on your own and feeling lonely are two different things.’
‘I want to die,’ I say.
‘You can carry on living and still be with the dead people inside.’ Maybe I can. He knows who I’m thinking about.
‘Look in the file. We’ve already gone through things you should do when you’re on your own. If you start to behave in a certain way, you should try to change tack.’
It’s not because I’m lazy that I can’t follow the plan. I put my hands to my ears. ‘What is it?’ ‘Nothing.’
So much of me is in my head. I force the voices back. Jonathan has someone to be with in the evenings. So how can he understand? He laughs and pats me on the shoulder. Looks at his watch. ‘Come on then!’ I know that I will come on then.
We’re going to make a film in the Junior Club. Super 8. None of us have made a film before. First we have to write the script. But when we go out into the forest where we’re going to film, someone has another bright idea: let’s film someone hanging themselves. Eilert gets the role. First we film him standing on the ground with a rope round his neck. His head is tilted to one side and his eyes are closed. We only film his upper body and the rope hanging from a gently swaying branch. Then Eilert hangs over the branch with his upper body and his legs dangling in the air. We only film his legs.
We send the film to be developed and we’re going to make the cuts for the film the next time we meet. We disagree about which clip should come first, the upper or lower body. In the end, it’s the lower body.
Arild is alarmed. The original manuscript was about someone who was saved. Terje and Filip are more enthusiastic and feel that we have at least understood something about what it means to make a film. I have understood something about what it means to make a film.
Soon after this the Junior Club fizzles out. We’ve got new interests. In the end, the same people are Christian as when we started, more or less. Despite the fact that the youth workers have worked on our salvation every week. I concentrate on football and partying instead. My friend Lena, whose father is in prison, has had a baby at the age of seventeen. And the baby’s father is Arild. They get married. Move into her grandmother’s old house and have another child. Then get divorced.
*
Two friends and I decide to get drunk. We’ve got beer, vodka and some pills that I’ve stolen from Granddad. We sit out in the park. It’s still light. We’ve started early, it’s no later than five.
We sit on the swings and pass the bottles between us. The vodka tastes disgusting. I have to rinse it down with some beer. I cough and almost throw up. We take a break and compete to see who can swing highest. Then we sit in the sandpit and I take out the pills. The boys don’t want any. It’s Valium that Granddad takes for his nerves.
I take all thirteen pills and swallow them down with beer. At first I don’t feel anything. Sit there making a tunnel in the sand. Then things start to spin. It becomes hard to control my mouth. It’s as if I’m sucking my cheeks into my mouth. Feels like my face is twisted. I try to light a cigarette, but can’t inhale the smoke.
One of the boys has a moped. They want to go and all three of us get on. I’m at the back. I fall off straight away and start to run after them. I fall, get up and run a bit further. They disappear up the road. I have to pee. I squat down on the nearest piece of grass. Pull down my trousers. ‘What are you doing?’ says a voice. The janitor from primary school is standing in front of me. ‘Pull up your trousers,’ he says. I fall over when I try to stand up and lie there on the janitor’s lawn with my trousers down. ‘Oh, is it you?’ he says. I pull up my trousers and look drowsily at him. Hunker down and then fall over. He gets hold of me, shakes me. ‘Not you, Eli, no. You’re not going to be one of them. A drunk, a druggie. You’re the best football player in the school. I’ve seen you take a corner. Bend the ball in from the right with your sensitive left foot. Even the boys’ team is jealous of that foot. Do you understand? Come here.’
He drags me across the lawn and into the house. I sit on one of the kitchen chairs stammering. I tell him about the pills and the alcohol. I’m given a large glass of water that I drink in one go. Then I have to throw up. I run out into the hall. Where is the toilet? I stay in there for a long time and then wash my face. Look at myself in the mirror. Is my face all twisted?
I come out and we sit down on the sofa. I start to shiver and he gives me a blanket. The janitor isn’t as angry any more. But he says again that I mustn’t become one of them. I have to promise him that. He never wants to see me in this state again. I have so many positive sides. I’m going to be a great football player who the whole city will be proud of.
I sleep on the sofa for an hour. Then he gives me some hot chocolate and a sandwich before walking me home. He stops at the gate and gives me a timid hug. He understands that he can’t ring on the doorbell and talk to my parents. I have learnt my lesson. Or have I?
I have started to write in all earnestness. I’ve dropped the pensioner theme and write punk texts. Texts to be spoken. It’s the sound of the words. How they jostle each other and create new meanings. How they sing and rhyme. The rhythm. I sit in my room and read the texts out loud. I take pleasure from it, saying the same sentence over and over again.
I start to sew my own clothes. I’m tired of the princess dresses that Marit and Mum made. I will never wear a dress like that again. I have designed an outfit with a yellow and brown monk jacket and yellow and brown trousers with one leg in each colour; I’m going to wear it to a birthday party. Hild and Mum help me as much as they can. It’s in jumbo cord with knitted details.
I go to the party in my home-made creation. From the top of the hill I see the house and garden below and all the girls in almost identical summer dresses. Only for a moment do I think that I’ve made a mistake and should turn around. I was there last year and blended in perfectly. I take a step and then one more. I am absolutely certain. I am right and I am good. I am Eli, I am Emil.
I go to jumble sales and buy strange hats. I go to school in my creations and Hild and Mum sit at the kitchen window and watch me go, scared that I’ll be bullied. ‘I would never dare to stand out like that,’ Hild says. And she never stands out. She’s barely noticed. That’s her strategy.
I’m not bullied. Not that I notice anyway. I start a hat trend and get several of the girls in the class to go to jumble sales and find old things instead of buying expensive brand names. I feel like I’m starting to grow into myself, create myself, be myself along with the boys’ voices, and they are happy.
Slowly the thought that I am no longer a child grows in me. It’s frightening. I look at my body in the mirror. I am slim and curveless, with small breasts, one slightly larger than the other. Breasts can wait, I think. I’m not ready. I don’t even know if I want to be a woman. I need more time. I hide myself in the boys’ voices.
‘Be yourself,’ Espen sniffs, who doesn’t want to play football, but is happy to play with the doll’s house. Then Emil also wants to play with the doll’s house and that confuses me. ‘You are me,’ he says. I write Emil on all my school books in big, far too childish letters.
Jonathan rings the doorbell. I haven’t slept for two nights. We sit down by the kitchen table, and I tell him how things are.
‘Okay, go into the bedroom then,’ he says. I get up and go into the bedroom. What is he going to show me now, I wonder. Another ball? He follows me in. ‘Lie down under the duvet,’ he says. I lie down under the duvet. What is he trying to tell me? ‘I’m going to turn off the light,’ he says. ‘Then I’ll lock the door and drop the keys in through the letter box.’
‘No, don’t go.’ I sit up in bed. He leaves. I lie down again. Listen to the silence in the building. I had been looking forward to a break in the silence. I lie there wide awake. What am I doing here with my clothes on? And it’s not even just any old clothes. I’m wearing pink stripy trousers with zips everywhere. A tight pink top with a thick polo neck. Pink, which was once my most hated colour, has now become my favourite colour. It has changed from being an expression of helplessness to being an expression of strength.
I don’t want to be alone. That’s the hardest bit. Because that’s when the boys come, the violent fantasies. Sleep won’t come. I know that. I wanted to sit in the kitchen talking to Jonathan.
I’m in Class Eight and have written a piece with the self-chosen title of ‘Free Will’. It’s so good that the teacher reads it out loud. She wants to use it in other classes and thinks I should send it to a paper. But the text runs red with corrections. She writes institutitution up on the blackboard. Asks me to come up and rub out letters so that it says ‘institution’. I don’t manage. I read the syllables in my head, but can’t see from the word where it should end. The teacher sighs. I sigh, but it’s not as deep. I will never learn to spell. I understand that. But it doesn’t matter. I can write, and there are so many other people who can spell so I will always get help.
When I am fifteen, I want to get a moped licence. I have to have an eye test. I have to look at rows of letters on a board. Can only see the first row.
‘How have you managed?’ the optician asks. ‘I manage fine, I just need to get my licence,’ I reply. The optician goes to get his father who is also an optician. They put various lenses in the strange frames and with great effort I manage to read the second row.
‘But your eyesight is damaged. We can’t correct it with lenses. It seems that you’ve got a congenital defect in your optic nerve. It hasn’t developed normally. We can’t correct that. It’s like trying to get a glass of water to jump. The basic prerequisites just aren’t there. You can only see with one eye at a time and no depth perception.’ ‘Can anything be done about it?’ ‘Not now. It should have been done before you were ten. I’m sure they’ll give you a mobility allowance instead of a licence.’
I shake my head and run out. I have to manage. And I, who thought it would all resolve itself once I was older. I have to be even older. I have to run even further. I don’t want to have glasses. I don’t want to have damaged eyesight. I just have to decide.
I only get confirmed because Torvald is getting confirmed. I pretend to myself that it’s because I don’t want to sit at his party watching him get presents. But in reality it’s because I’m curious. I have too many feelings and need to invest them somewhere. I think of religion and alcohol as more or less the same thing. It makes your body tingle. It makes your head spin and makes you warm under the skin. A bit like scoring a goal.
I want to test everything there is. Euphoria, kick, salvation. Torvald is getting confirmed because you should and it’s what other people do. Torvald’s goal is to be normal. Granddad says he can only cope with one confirmation party, so we’re doing it at the same time.
I want the minister and his wife to see me. We have meetings at their house. I want to be seen by everyone. Seen by someone. Before I go in, I drink a quarter bottle of vodka. I want to smell of it. Want to be thrown out and discovered and people to feel sorry for me, to be reprimanded. I want to be judged and not get what I so long for. Security. I slur my words and say I can’t read the Bible.
‘You can’t read?’ the minister’s wife says. ‘But you’re in eighth grade.’ She doesn’t say that I smell of alcohol. I ask if God can see us and she says yes. But God doesn’t say anything about what he sees and I can’t borrow his eyes even to read the Bible. Torvald promises not to say anything at home. But the minister has noticed. As we’re leaving he takes me to one side. He does not have a warm voice. He doesn’t want to know the reason why I’ve done it. He says: ‘If you’ve been drinking next time, I won’t let you into my house. Do you understand?’ I am only trying to be visible. Not even the minister sees with eyes that want to save me.
Next time I go, I am sober and ask questions they can’t answer, and the minister is forced to say that we don’t have time for so many questions, because then we won’t get through the study material. We talk about morals. ‘Christ does not judge himself, he is the judge,’ the minister’s wife says, and I don’t understand. I want to know if Hell exists, but that’s not part of what we’re supposed to learn. The strange thing is that I’m not too worried about Hell. It’s the present that matters, because everything will be easier for me later, when I’m grown up. At the same time I don’t want to be grown up yet, because I don’t think I’m ready with being little. But I am convinced that things will sort themselves out. That I will be like Torvald. That I will be normal.
What about Heaven? It seems unreal. I think about Gran who gave her whole life to faith. Who lamented the fact that Dad and those around her were not believers. She sang and prayed for us. But when I went to see her when she was nearing the end and should have benefited from her faith, I could see that she had started to doubt. She said that she suddenly had a strong feeling that nothing existed. She was filled with a great fear of death. She no longer found comfort in the comforting songs she had always sung. After a life of deep faith, she became an atheist two days before she was able to let go and die.
There are examples of the opposite. I think about the thief who was sentenced to death on the cross. He embraced God at the moment of death. Imagine if it’s true that there’s salvation and eternal
life. That it was possible to go around your whole life doubting, to live like an idiot and even deny God. And then, when it really counts, whimper a yes. How much a tiny second, one single small decision can mean. I believe in will. But is it free?
*
On the day we’re going to be confirmed, Mum suddenly notices my shoes. They’re small brown men’s shoes. They’re Emil’s shoes. ‘You can’t wear those. The only thing you can see under the confirmation gown. And now that we’ve bought lovely new clothes as well.’ Mum stops in the middle of all her preparations for the party. She looks at me in a way she doesn’t normally look at me. ‘What’s going to happen to you, Eli?’ she says, with a little sigh. Then she turns around and takes the cups out of the cupboard. She counts the cups out loud.
I wear the neighbour’s shoes and we get confirmed and the meal is successful with Granddad MP sitting at one end of the table and Torvald and I at the other. MP holds a long and incomprehensible speech about the good old days. He’s ninety-five now, and sees no future. Mum holds a speech for both of us and we each get an unchipped plate from the plate rack in the living room, the only two that survived our wild behaviour when we were younger. Torvald and I who are so unalike are bound together. Mum is so proud of what we have become and wishes us all the best on our journey onwards in life.
Jonathan and I are standing in my bedroom. We look at the dark curtains that have been hanging in front of the window and not been opened for a year now. The window has not been opened and the room aired in all that time either.
‘Do you think it’s time?’ I ask.
‘What do you think?’
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