I nearly get together with a boy called Thorkild. He’s the one who started the Erik fanclub. He’s made membership cards with a picture of me on them, which he gives to anyone who wants to join. He’s the quiet type and seems to admire me, to hold me in awe. He asks if he can be my boyfriend and I say maybe, then he doesn’t ask again. We’re in the same class and he sits beside me at mealtimes. We hang out with the same group in the evenings, the non-Christian group. I can’t really be his girlfriend properly, not as Erik. Thorkild doesn’t understand that I’m carrying too many secrets. I keep him on tenterhooks.
When I’m at home in the holidays, I steal my granddad’s tranquillisers. I keep them safe. I collect them. Need to take at least ten to have the desired effect. Preferably with hash, alcohol or glue.
I sing in the compulsory choir. One day I take ten tablets and smoke a little hash before practice. I stand in the middle of the choir and am fired with enthusiasm. I sing louder than normal and continue to sing when the others stop. I move my body to the music as if I was in Harlem and not in a free church school in the middle of Norway. I relish praising the Lord with my voice. It’s going to happen, I think. I can feel that I’m close to something sublime.
The singing teacher wants to talk to me after practice. I just laugh and can’t stop. My body is wonderfully woozy. I wave my arms in long arcs. He says that he’s heard a rumour that I take drugs. I deny it. He says that they are going to search my room and goes to get some more teachers. I’m absolutely certain that they won’t find anything.
When they find the pills, I say that they’re fluoride tablets. They wrap them in toilet paper and don’t dare to try them. Soon they find my hiding place in the corridor: a small lump of hash is nestling in the smoke alarm. Someone must have told them. I’ll be expelled from the school, me, who doesn’t want to be anywhere else.
They phone home. Granddad answers. The principal tells him that I’ve been caught high on drugs and alcohol and have therefore been suspended. Granddad obviously didn’t understand what they say because no one ever confronts me with it. Once I’ve packed my bags, I am driven to the station where I arrived seven months earlier. I cry for the whole train journey. When I get home, I open the back door which leads straight into the utility room where Mum is doing the washing. ‘I’m home,’ I say. ‘So I see,’ she replies.
The school let me go back after a month. I have to sign a paper that says that I won’t drink alcohol or take drugs. Not even in secret.
I don’t believe in God, but am scared he might exist. When the school year is over, it’s been one of the best years I’ve had. I don’t want it to end. The handsome teacher holds an end-of-year service outside on a beautiful May day. We won’t meet again. In a few hours, we’ll leave and go our separate ways to all four corners of the country. He says: ‘Thank you for this year together. We’ll meet again in heaven.’
After folk high school, I soon move away from home again. I move in with Hild who is living in Granddad’s empty flat in the centre of town. I get the big bedroom. Hild sleeps in the old maid’s room behind the kitchen. The room is dark and you can barely fit the bed in. She lies there for days on end. I’ve got friends and football, think it’s exciting living in the city and can’t understand why she just stays in bed.
I start sixth form college. I’m elected as the class representative and then as the spokesperson for the student council for the whole school. I focus on Operation Day’s Work, go round all the classes and talk about collecting money, which is going to Eritrea this year. I’m happy, talk a lot in the classes, ask questions and make suggestions as to how to improve the teaching.
One day the principal comes to the classroom and wants to talk to me. ‘I don’t think you really fit in here. You’re too disruptive. Perhaps you should go to a Steiner school. You need extra resources that we don’t have. I’m afraid you can’t continue here.’ I, who thought I was getting on particularly well here.
I decide to study for my end of school exams independently. The problem is that I can’t read. I contact an adult education college, but the principal says that I’m too young and immature. All my life I’ve been told that I’m immature. It was in my school report at the end of Class One. Immature, lacks concentration and unmotivated. Mum got angry and complained to the teacher. ‘Eli might be immature and lack concentration, but she is certainly not unmotivated.’ In fact, I was perhaps a little too motivated.
I go to various classes at the adult education college, sit right at the front of the room. Say to the teacher that the principal has said that I can join halfway through term, but that I have to sit my exams independently.
Dad wants to help me. I go home nearly every day. He gets fired from work at the same time that I’m kicked out of college. We’ve got all the time in the world to improve ourselves. He is convinced that I can be what I want to be, which is a writer. We lie on his and Mum’s big bed and he reads the history books to me. We read about the French Revolution. Dad puts the book down and tells me about what was going on in Europe at the time. I ask questions, listen, and enjoy learning. I’ve got a good memory and find it easy to see the big picture and put two and two together, you have to be good at that if you find reading hard. The French Revolution comes up in the exam and the words just flow out of me. I get top marks.
I wake up bright-eyed. Unusually well rested. Light, as though sleep had never come. Even though I have a sheet with all my routines for the whole day written down, it’s really only in the morning that things go automatically. If at all. Sometimes I slope back to bed as soon as I’ve finished my morning routine. Or I just lie there and don’t get up at all.
I run out into the kitchen and put on the coffee. Go back into the bedroom and get dressed. Don’t shower. I shower after I’ve done my training. Go back into the kitchen and pour the coffee into a thermos. Go back to the bathroom and wash my face. Rub in some face cream and put on some rouge. Have a coffee and smoke a cigarette. Make up two slices of bread. Eat.
Can I write today? I think I’ll go to my workspace early. Light a candle. It’s November. I turn on the radio, it just whines. ‘Take a step to the side,’ Emil says. I think about what Jonathan has told me. ‘I’m eating,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll do it later.’ ‘Get up,’ Emil says. I stand up, take a step to the side, then sit down again. ‘Do it again.’ I do it again. ‘Do it again.’ I do it again. ‘Do it again.’
‘That’s enough.’ Jonathan has said that we have to share the space. Then I pick up my bag, tie my shoes and walk to my office. It’s dark outside. The shops haven’t opened yet. There is no one else around when I get there. I turn on the computer and go out to the kitchen to make some more coffee. I look at the kitchen clock. It’s one o’clock. One o’clock in the morning.
I’m not early and I’m not late. I’m wrong, I’m out of time. No one will be here for hours.
I can’t stay here alone all night. I have to go back home and sleep.
I walk back through the city. Feel confused. Agitated. I could do with talking to someone but don’t dare to phone any of my friends in the middle of the night. They might think that I’m ill again.
Espen keeps his eyes trained on the ground as he walks. He always finds things. ‘I found, I found something.’ He sees things that no one else sees. He picks things up, takes them with him and I make collages or small glued things. But I don’t always let him stop. As I would never get anywhere then.
He’s found something again now. I can’t face it. It’s a great find. It’s a stop sign. ‘Ach, no, throw it away,’ I say, ‘it’s just rubbish.’ ‘It might well be, but I’ll keep it with me,’ he replies, and I pick up the sign and carry it home. ‘You could use it as a tray, or a sideboard on the balcony,’ Espen says, happily. I throw the sign into a corner in the hall. Take off my clothes and go back to bed.
‘You know that you must never trust the people at the hospital,’ Erik says. ‘They make you ill.’ I try to close my eyes but it’s my ears that are
the problem. Can’t sleep. ‘They make you ill,’ Erik says again. ‘They’re tricking you. The people you know there who you like so much. They’re tricking you.’ Then Espen starts to cry. I dry his tears on the duvet cover. ‘Get up and make something with the sign,’ he says. Then Emil says that Espen is a crybaby.
I have to talk to someone else. ‘Don’t phone,’ Erik says. But I do phone the ward. It’s the young German nurse who answers. He sounds happy. Always happy. It’s different every time, depending on who answers. Sometimes they are strict: ‘Go to bed. We can’t help you.’ ‘I just want to talk a little.’ ‘Not now. Goodnight.’ Click.
But tonight the mood is open and easy. I say: ‘The voices are telling me that I shouldn’t trust you.’ ‘It’s the voices you shouldn’t trust,’ he replies. ‘We only want what’s best for you.’ And when he says that, I know he’s right, that he’s telling the truth. They only want what’s best for me.
I don’t know how I should use my good marks. University perhaps. In which case I could imagine studying things like politics, followed by training in the foreign office and a career in the diplomatic service, in embassies around the world. I am of course still going to be an author, but you’re only ever that on the side.
I get a job as a cleaner at a fire station. Do a newspaper round before I start at eight. I write. I have to get away. Can’t live with Hild when all she does is stay in bed. The whole flat is dark, full of Granddad’s furniture, and steeped in the past and passivity. I’ve got ants in my pants.
I’ve been headhunted for one of the country’s best women’s football teams. I go from being the best of the worst, to the worst of the best. I, who’s used to taking all the corners and free kicks, have to sit out. We’re going to Taiwan in the autumn for a football tournament. Just when I’m about to start training for a place in the A team, I dive from the seven metre board and hurt my back. No football trip. I go to Copenhagen instead and stay in a squat. It doesn’t turn out the way I thought it would.
I’d seen part of a film on TV about young people living together and they made soup and ate happily round a big table. I want to be part of that sense of belonging. Where I end up, confused children and teenagers lie on mattresses on the floor and sleep off their high. They’ve run away from home. There’s plenty of drugs and no one can be bothered to make soup. I try to talk to them without much joy. I tidy discreetly. We’re wading in rubbish.
Older people who don’t actually live in the squat come by and preach politics. ‘You have to go underground. Get rid of your ID numbers so the authorities can’t trace you.’ One day the house is raided by the police. They ride down the street on police horses, with shields and batons and helmets with visors. We’ve made an underground tunnel from our house under the road and up into a house on the others side. Some people manage to escape through the tunnel. Not me. I’m standing by the window ready to jump when the police storm the flat. My whole body is shaking. I, who has always thought that the police are something good that’s there to protect us, am terrified. I’ve never felt so frightened and helpless. How can I get away? I’m on the wrong side. I haven’t recognised the gravity of what I’ve done. I’ve got a lump of hash in my pocket.
I’m whacked across the back with a baton and fall to the floor. Two policemen are immediately on top of me. I’m as small as a sparrow in their enormous hands. I try to hit the visors. My punches sound like tapping. They quickly catch my arms and twist them up behind my back. Put on handcuffs. Am I a terrorist, a thief, a criminal? I don’t understand. I’m just frightened. I’m carried down the stairs with the imaginatively painted walls. Into a police van which is already full of other young people. ‘Deny everything, keep schtum, don’t say your name.’ The words of the older anarchist leaders echo in my head.
I tell them everything. I shake and cry when I’m being questioned. I’m locked up on my own in a cell. Feel like a tiny child and put my thumb in my mouth. My name is Espen. I want someone to come and get me, but don’t know who. Someone I don’t know. At home they think I’m on holiday in Denmark and staying with some friends.
I lie on my own in the cell all day and the voices are not good company. Erik is threatening and says things that frighten me. I’m never going to be able to see a policeman again and feel safe. ‘Bang your head against the wall.’ I bang my head against the wall. No one comes.
On the second day, a prison officer comes in with some magazines. One is a literary magazine which makes me curious. I read modern Danish poems that I don’t really understand, but like. They give me the energy to think. I only know the old Norwegian poets who rhyme. And in amongst all the poems I see an advert. It’s for a writing course at a Nordic folk high school in Sweden. I’ve never heard about writing courses before. I find a piece of paper and write down the address. I write ‘important, contact them’ on it and stuff it in my pocket.
I’m released on the third day. I’ve barely managed to eat, just been lying there in a fog of fear. Imagined that they would nail me to the wall, crucify me. Imagined that I wouldn’t get out of that cell for years. Imagined that some huge policemen would stamp all over my fingers. Erik sneers and Espen cries. Emil tries to think of as many riddles as possible. I solve them all straight away and once again time is silent and threatening.
On the boat back to Oslo, I am so relieved. I will never go near another squat, amphetamines or lumps of hash. I sit up on deck. The wind blows through my hair. I can’t get home soon enough. Once I’m back at Hild’s, everything is as before. She lies in bed all day and I do my paper round and clean the fire station. My back is better but not good enough for me to start football training again. One day I find the note in my trouser pocket: ‘important’. I don’t remember why or what it is. But it says that it’s important, so it must be. I write a letter and get an answer.
2
My name is Eli. I found, I found a new country. I am twenty-one years old. Have moved to Sweden to do a writing course at a Nordic folk high school. I had to send in a piece of writing to get in. I was late, they had probably filled all the places. I think that the most likely reason that I got in is that I’m from Norway. I am the only non-Swede in the class. I’ve been at the school for just over a month. It’s been a bit of a roller-coaster. I’ve never met other people who write before. Who talk about poetry, literature and film. As well as the new and terrifying joy of hearing someone talk about your writing, I’m surprised by how little Norwegian the other students understand. I dress like a punk and they ask me if there are rock bands in Norway. I have Nationalteatern, the Swedish TV series Learning for Life, ABBA, Ebba Grön, Cornelis Vreeswijk, Bellman, Bergman and Astrid Lindgren in common with all of them. But they have nothing Norwegian in common with me. I point out that Karius and Baktus, the tooth trolls, come from Norway. One guy says that his dad used to tell him that all the old bangers in Bohuslän in summer in the sixties and seventies were Norwegian. A lot has happened since then in a country that was one of the poorest in Europe only a century ago.
But now I am in the country of true legend. My parents have always revered Sweden. Mum because of the ‘Swedish soup’ that was given to schoolchildren in Oslo during the war. It came on the train from Karlstad every morning. In Sweden, children get food in school. Everything is slightly better there. And now I’m here.
*
Three days ago I drank a half bottle of vodka and smoked hash. Haven’t slept since. I haven’t come down yet. I went to Norway to see everyone. I met a Samí at a party who saw straight through me. I was more frightened of him than the police. The next day I hitchhiked back to Sweden with some Finnish construction workers who were drinking vodka in the car. When it got dark, we discovered that the lights on the car didn’t work. I didn’t have a krone to my name and couldn’t just get out.
Today I’ve been at school and spent hours throwing darts at a dartboard. I walk around my room at night. I’ve seen top ice hockey players moving around on the wall. A match between Canada and S
weden. Red and Yellow. It’s over now, but the players continue to move around outside in the dark between the trees by the student accommodation.
A school friend grabs hold of me and asks how I am. ‘I haven’t slept,’ I say. ‘Have you tried going to bed?’ he asks. I think so. I’m shaking. ‘I think it’s best if we go to hospital,’ he says. I don’t want to. I get scared. He promises that it will be quick, that I’ll just get something to help me sleep. He orders a taxi to the psychiatric clinic.
I can’t explain what I’ve done or how I am. A whirlwind of questions storms out of the doctor’s mouth. There’s a paper tablecloth between him and me, which I tear into tiny, tiny pieces. I concentrate on the white pieces. I want to make them as small as possible. Everything else is unclear. The school friend who brought me here, the doctor, the nurses. They have thrown their bodies into the air. Like the ice hockey players around the houses. They are ghosts, transparent and at odd angles. They talk to me from far away.
Is there really someone sitting opposite me? Which of the bodies are real? The doctor asks about alcohol and drugs. I grin. I’m nearly falling from the chair, I’m so tired. ‘Tell, tell me.’
This is new territory for me, talking to someone I don’t know. Only single-syllable words come out and they are meant for no one but me. I say: ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ I’m talking to my little boys. Slowly my head splits into two pieces. I jump between the two.
The doctor asks if something has happened. I don’t know. ‘Tell me.’ My thoughts stack up. I can’t get the words out. Don’t know what’s significant. The person who is Eli isn’t really here. I’ve ended up outside myself. Just want to sleep. Disappear. Gather myself.
When I was at home in Norway this time I saw what I had left behind. The Samí’s serious eyes and words tumble around in my head. Does someone know something about me that I don’t know? About lines and curves on my hands, about a whole load of wounds and breaks. He had dark, dangerous eyes and claimed to have knowledge that I didn’t understand. He threw out words like fate, judgement, prophecy, blame, demons and pain. In the Samí’s eyes, I felt like I was wearing my inside on the outside. I had no story about myself to retaliate with. I was like a new-born, in the present with a big hole on either side.
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