‘Yesterday I thought that if I opened the window I would throw myself out.’
‘But if we do it together?’
‘Just test it?’ I say. ‘No, I don’t want to. I don’t know. No, I don’t dare.’
‘Well, you can start by cleaning in here and changing the curtains. They’re very dark,’ Jonathan says. ‘I can help you.’
‘Okay, I’ll start by buying new curtains, then we’ll see.’
‘At least you’ve started to think that the window isn’t dangerous,’ Jonathan encourages me. ‘Maybe one day you’ll be able to open the curtains. There’s no rush, after all.’
I’m not at home on the afternoon when the minister does ring the bell. I come back from football training and don’t notice anything in particular before I’m standing out of breath in the hall. I’ve run all the way home. Am thinking about having a bath. Covered in mud from head to toe. It’s October and wet. Then suddenly I notice a pair of unknown shoes in the hall next to where I’ve kicked off mine. We never have visitors. There’s something in the air. I see an unfamiliar coat on the coat hooks. I listen to the house. Not a sound. It’s never silent in this house. There’s no one at home. Just a guest.
A thought charges through me, I don’t want to go up. I want to go back to the football pitch. I don’t hear the sobbing until I go upstairs to the living room. Mum and Dad, Granddad, Hild, Odd and Torvald are sitting there, and in their midst, the minister. It’s my little brother Odd who shouts out as soon as he sees me: ‘Marit is dead.’ I stop and stare at the others who all look down. He says it again: ‘Marit is dead.’
His voice is shrill. How can he know that? Little Odd. He can barely remember Marit, because she’s in Australia. Odd’s words cascade from my skull, through my head and straight through my body. The others are crying. I want to kick Odd. Why did he have to say that? It would be better if I’d never been told. I look at Torvald. He’s sitting beside Hild, who has her arm round him. He’s chewing his sleeve. I do what I normally do. I look for signs in Torvald so that I can react, but don’t see any.
But I knew. I already knew when I was down in the hall. No, I didn’t know. On the stairs? No, I didn’t know. I’ve known many times that something terrible might happen. Emil has warned me. I’ve been afraid that Mum and Dad would die, but not Marit. Marit will always be with me, there to explain things that are difficult.
‘Hi Eli,’ the minister says. I haven’t seen him since my confirmation. He’s wearing a dark suit and dog collar. He’s trying to tell me something with his body, sitting there on the sofa in the middle of my family. He doesn’t belong here. He reaches out his arm and wants to take my hand. He’s got nothing to do with us. He can go to hell. With his wife and forgiveness and the church and all. He doesn’t know Marit.
The minister sits there like a dark and dangerous island, like a misunderstanding between us that has made us cry. I want to run back down to the cellar. I want to hide. I don’t want to be with this sorrow. I scored a goal with a header today, why can’t I tell them that? There are coffee cups on the table. Who made the coffee, I think, and squeeze myself onto the sofa in my muddy clothes between my little brother and Granddad. He’s sitting there shaking. Odd is rocking back and forth.
I usually say that I have three siblings and a sister in Australia. Is that because I feel that Marit has already been taken away, in the way she has now? Thoughts can’t change things on the other side of the world. No one looks at me. They don’t look at anything.
‘What do you mean, dead?’ I ask in the silence. It’s the minister who answers. Mum sits with her head in her hands. ‘It was a diving accident,’ he says. ‘On one of the islands. We were told by the consulate. It will take a week for the body to get here.’ The body? Don’t I have a sister in Australia any more? Marit is the body. Marit, who hasn’t been home for three years. Who has sent us letters and postcards about everything she has done and experienced. She has only told us about the fun things. Not a word about anything else. She hasn’t had the money to come home again and we haven’t had the money to send her so she could if she wanted to. We haven’t had the money to go and visit her there.
Granddad stands up. He goes out into the hall to the toilet on unsteady feet. We sit and wait for him to flush. To come back so we can be together again. Only once in those three years have we spoken to Marit on the phone. We stood in a row and talked to her one by one. She spoke Norwegian with an English accent and everyone said hello but didn’t manage to say much more. I want to ring her up and say that she doesn’t have an English accent. I want to ask her not to go to the pub and to save enough money for a ticket home.
Granddad flushes the toilet now. MP comes back. Bent back and thin, so his clothes hang off him. It could have been him who died. I wonder if that’s what he’s thinking. He bumps me when he sits down. It feels like punches to my body. I expect to start crying. The screaming and bird noises from when I was little. Nothing comes. Why don’t I get up and smash something? The lamp over the coffee table. I hit it. Only Odd sees. He moves his head as he follows the moving lampshade.
What comes instead of tears is a big solid lump of fear. My leg starts to shake. It’s not true. Nothing is going to happen. I’ll go to bits if Marit is just a body that will be returned in a week. I say: ‘No, no, no.’ I talk to the voices. After all, Emil has promised to save me from death. ‘Is Marit dead?’ I say. ‘Yes,’ Hild replies, irritated, as if I’m slow to understand. I know now, I think. I know now. No, I don’t know. I only know it with my head, so I don’t believe it.
I hear some strange sobs coming from Dad. Is that how he cries? Mum doesn’t lift her head from her hands. Has she noticed that I’ve come back? She should maybe hug someone, but doesn’t. Doesn’t hold anyone’s hand. Doesn’t touch anyone. Everyone is crying alone. Something makes me realise that it’s just us now. Everyone except the minister, who might get up at any moment and go out into the warm rain and disappear.
Suddenly Mum reaches out a hand and grabs a coffee cup. She takes a gulp, swallows it the wrong way and starts to cough. Dad has to pat her on the back. Dad, who doesn’t take anything seriously, is totally serious.
Marit got straight off the plane and went out onto the street and was run over and died. ‘It’s Dad’s fault,’ Emil says. She never really made it to Australia. You can be away for years and then really disappear. She hasn’t been there in the meantime. The minister asks if we should sing a psalm. ‘Sing?’ Dad says. Mum nods through her tears.
It’s my first funeral. I’m wearing the same clothes that I wore to my confirmation, only I’ve got football boots on my feet. Everything has a meaning. I had to wear football boots in order to survive. To be who I am.
Lots of Marit’s old friends are in the church and it said in the paper that they should wear colourful clothes. When we walk up the street to the church, I think that Marit could just as easily be in any of the houses that we pass. Or still in Australia. Gone so long and then gone forever.
I talk to Emil a lot. He says that I’ll cope. But I don’t. He says that it’s him and me and Espen now. It feels lonely. I sit beside Hild in church. We each have a red rose in our hand. Mum passes down tissues and throat sweets. All my tissues are wet. My lap is full. My eyes just keep running and running. I can feel it in my throat as well, that my crying will come out as hiccups. Hild moves closer. I think that Hild is my big sister now. But Hild is not the same. She’s not as safe as Marit. If Marit had been here now she would have made decisions and sorted everything out. She would have told Mum and Dad what to do.
Mum has got up. She thanks everyone for coming in a loud, clear voice. The whole of Marit’s old class is here. She wants to say to the young people: ‘Look after each other.’ Then her voice breaks and she sits down.
‘I’ll look after you,’ Emil whispers. I squeeze Hild’s hand and wonder who will look after her. The funeral finishes with those of us who were closest to Marit going up to the coffin and putting our
flowers on the already flower-bedecked coffin. While one of Marit’s favourite songs by the Rolling Stones is being played on the organ.
My new life begins. I’ve moved away from home. I don’t have much in my tiny room. Travelled to the school on my own by train. A cassette player, a football and a few clothes. I’m sixteen years old. No one knows how I am here on the edge of this small town. No one knows who I am.
The pupils sit side by side on chairs in a big hall. It’s eight o’clock in the morning. The register is called. Row by row. If any chairs are empty we have to say, along with the number of the person who’s missing. Everyone has a number. I’m number forty-three. Forty-four is my corridor neighbour. I saw her on my first day at school. She didn’t say what she was called or hello, didn’t nod or hold out her hand. She shone like the sun. Looked me straight in the eye and started our friendship by saying: ‘I have been given a thermos by God.’
It’s the first prayer meeting of the day. We’re pupils at a Christian boarding school. It’s the last year of the seventies. An extremely charismatic teacher starts the term by saying: ‘Cast aside your prejudices and stand naked before God.’ He has seductive brown eyes under a dark fringe. I’d like to have those eyes close to me so I could see them properly. So that they saw me. I am open, but am trying to close myself again. I’m about to let go, but then decide that if there’s anything I should keep hold of here, it’s my prejudices. The prayer starts. The words God and Jesus pierce me. I know that there are others here who don’t hear. Who just let it pass. Who have heard this since they were a baby. I haven’t. Only at the Junior Club, but it’s more penetrating here. More dangerous. I can’t keep the words out. I’m used to taking words seriously. They gnaw and scrape. I have to feel it. I have to understand. Why else have I come here? I need something. No, I mustn’t let go.
I sneak out. Instead of going to my room, I go up into the loft above the hall. There I lie down on the floor, in the dark and dust, and I listen to each word from down below. I cover my ears, but the message of God’s mercy finds resonance in me. The words ‘The Lord sees you always’ vibrate under my skin. Am I a sinner? What does that mean? I want to be small and not know anything. We can only know one thing about God. He is what we are not. If God exists, he has already punished me. If God exists, he has taken Marit from me.
I hear singing from the hall below. They are together. I am alone.
Then another voice starts to speak inside me. ‘You are not Eli. It’s me, Erik, that’s who you are. I’m sixteen, like you, and a rebel. An irresistible strong rebel. I can fool anyone and physically I can do anything. I’m the one you’re scared of and that you miss. I’m going to frighten you and give you strength. Fill the void, otherwise God might get in there. Sneak down from the loft. Go to the woodwork room and find the thinner.’
I sit on the floor in the woodwork room and sniff thinner on a rag. I’m pulled into a dark tunnel, like a ghost train at the fair. Scary, masked people jump out in front of me. ‘We’re going to get you. We’re going to eat you. Believe in us.’ I’m sweating and the hairs stand up on my body. I start to shake. The nerves under my skin start to move. Someone shouts for me in a horrible scream. It sounds hollow.
At the other end of the tunnel is hell. I know that it exists. I belong to hell. I’m on my way. ‘You don’t want to go there,’ shouts Young Espen. ‘Yes,’ replies Big Eli in Erik’s voice. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Absolutely sure.’ I want to have a look. I want to be tormented.
I ask Jonathan if Erik came to save me from becoming a Christian.
‘If it was to save you, he certainly did that. I think he came because he was needed. But he’s no longer needed. The most important thing now is that he no longer decides. He can be there, but it’s you, Eli, who makes the decisions. You have to take the reins back from your voices. They can be there, but they can’t dominate. They are part of the problems and conflicts you had back then. We’ll work towards allowing them more limited space in your life.’
‘Yes, yes, yes.’
‘What are they saying?’
‘It’s Erik, he wants to fight.’
‘You have no reason to fight.’
‘Yes, I have to show that I’m strongest.’
‘There is strength in not doing it.’
I’ll break something when Jonathan has gone. I’ll bang my head on the wall. Or should I just not do it?
As the weeks pass, I pray to God to not become religious. ‘Dear God, please don’t let me become a Christian.’ I lie with my eyes closed and my hands folded under the duvet. Am I wasting energy going around not believing in something that doesn’t exist? It’s Erik who gives me orders. His deep, almost grown up voice cuts through. He rules over Espen and Emil as well. He keeps them at bay. These are new times. I’ll soon be grown up. I’m in the process of deciding who I am and who I want to obey. It’s we who decide, Erik and I.
I sit through the morning register and prayer. You can close your eyes, but not your ears. There are no eyelids for the body. The teachers take turns in talking. I don’t believe them. But something else in me says that you can never be sure. I am filled with unease. With longing and defiance. Because I haven’t decided. Maybe you can take a peek? Stand on the threshold? I want to have some of what they claim to have. I want to know what it means to believe in something greater. Not to have all the answers yourself.
‘You have decided,’ Erik says. ‘You’re on the outside. Full of voices, but not God.’
Soon I start to tell the other pupils that I’m called Erik. They call me that straight away, and start an Erik fanclub. The teachers continue to call me Eli. I cut off my hair, which has grown long again, and dye it red and green. I stick a needle that has been frozen on ice straight through one ear and put in a silver ring next to the other one. Now I’ve got two earrings in one ear and none in the other. I wear an old tuxedo waistcoat with badges that say Punk Rules OK, and on the back of my leather jacket it says Nuclear War is Bad for Business. I’m elected as spokesman for the pupils’ council.
I have a blue book with a skull on the cover where I write down all my thoughts. I think a lot about writing, how I write, and that by formulating and expressing myself in a certain way I am the person I want to be. I think the others relate to things that have already been written. I talk to myself, can barely read, an unopened treasure. Dress myself up consciously, with clothes on the outside and words on the inside.
I understand that I have to be who I am. Otherwise something terrible might happen. I realise that I could fall apart. But who’s going to fill the hole? ‘I found, I found something.’ I want to be taken home in big hands. I want to do something with this year, but I don’t know what. I might fall. I might... I fall asleep to the Clash on the cassette player. I might fall deep and pull myself up and go even higher.
‘I don’t want to give up my world.’
‘You don’t have to give up your world, you just need to take more control,’ Jonathan explains. ‘You might have needed the voices then, but you don’t need them any more.’
‘It’s not me who decides. They want me to change sex. I can’t get rid of the thought. It’s the others, society that has decided which sex I should be. It doesn’t come from me.’
‘The question is whether it would make you any more secure. I don’t think it’s the answer,’ Jonathan says.
‘That’s what everyone says.’
‘You have to let Eli come forward first. The more you do that, the more confident you’ll feel about who you are and what you need.’
‘Everything’s too fast. I’ve started to question the voices and say no and to say what I’m doing instead. Who I’m talking to and why I can’t speak to them.’
‘Good.’
‘But they just harangue me when you’ve gone instead. At night when I’m alone.’
Jonathan gets up. ‘It will be a long journey.’
I ask Dad if he will drive me back to the folk high school. I’ve been at home for
the autumn break. Absolutely not, is his answer. Then he wakes me in the middle of the night because he’s changed his mind.
I pack a whole lot of things. A poster of Marx and my slalom boots and skis. We stop at a petrol station in the middle of the night. Dad doesn’t manage to pay using the machine. He gets stressed and nervous. I stay in the car and do nothing to help. I see Dad pulling faces and trying to feed in the notes. Finally, he gets into the car, swears and suddenly starts the car, then drives off with the pump still in the tank. He brakes abruptly and jumps out. He’s filled the car with diesel. I’d noticed but didn’t say anything. I thought that it would probably be okay. I know nothing about cars and petrol. I should have thought. I should have taken responsibility. After all, I’m with Dad.
We only manage to drive a kilometre from the station. The car starts to cough and then comes to a complete standstill. Dad tries, but it won’t start again. ‘Is it okay to use diesel?’ I squeak. ‘Diesel?’ he says. ‘No, doesn’t work.’ I have to get out. He’s angry. He’s not going to any folk high school. He’s going home. He’s going to sit down and paint in the dawn light until the rescue services come. We’d spotted a telephone kiosk further back, so he’s going to go there and call them.
It’s still dark. I drag my luggage with me along the country road. I try to hitch a lift, but there are practically no cars at this time of night. I eventually come to a train station. The first train is not for a few hours. I collapse on a bench and fall asleep.
The other pupils try to save me and pray for me. But I am Erik and I hold on to my prejudices. I try to get them to join a green organisation called Framtiden. I don’t do very well, but do well all the same. I like staying at the school and am surprised to find I don’t miss home.
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