The Wolves of Eternity, page 21
‘Quiet?’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise.’
‘I’ve known stones more talkative.’
‘Stones are silent, not quiet.’
‘Same difference.’
‘Silent as a stone means not letting on about something. Quiet’s what mice are.’
‘So what are you, then? Quiet or silent?’
‘I punched a player from the other team during our match yesterday.’
‘Seriously? Did you get sent off?’
I shook my head.
‘The ref didn’t see it.’
‘What made you hit him? It doesn’t sound like you at all.’
‘That’s just it. I’ve no idea. He was giving me verbals all the time, I got sick of it and punched him in the guts.’
‘What did he say to you?’
‘Nothing, really. At least, not enough to excuse me hitting him like that.’
‘Come on,’ said Dag, smiling at me. ‘He must have said something to get you going!’
‘But that’s the thing. It didn’t get me going at all. I just felt I had to hit him.’
‘What did he say?’
I shrugged.
‘The usual stuff you say to any opponent. He called me ugly, that kind of thing.’
‘Ah!’
‘But it didn’t bother me! That wasn’t it at all.’
‘Obviously.’
‘It’s true.’
‘So how come you hit him, if you weren’t bothered?’
‘That’s what I don’t know!’
We’d got to the petrol station and could see the bridge that spanned the river, the new estate on the other side.
A snot-green car was parked slightly away from the pumps. A girl in a white down jacket, blue jeans and black clogs got out of the passenger side.
It was Lisa!
She crossed over the forecourt and went into the shop.
‘Let’s just go over to the petrol station a second, eh?’ I said.
‘The film starts in . . . seventeen minutes,’ said Dag, checking his watch.
‘I just want to get some chewing gum. Anyway, there’ll be ten minutes of adverts first.’
‘OK,’ he said, and went with me over the road.
‘You can wait outside, if you want,’ I said. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
‘No, I think I’ll get something as well.’
‘What do you want? I’ll get it for you.’
He gave me a funny look.
‘I can do these things on my own, you know.’
I shrugged again.
‘Just trying to be helpful.’
He shook his head and went in. Lisa was standing in line by the counter holding a bottle of cola and a bag of peanuts, waiting her turn. Dag took a packet of Ms off the shelf and went and stood behind her. I went up beside him, my heart thumping.
Unaware of me standing there, she put her items on the counter when her turn came, asked for twenty Prince Mild, got her money out of her pocket and paid.
‘We meet again!’ I said.
She spun round to see who it was.
‘Small world,’ she said, and headed for the door, stuffing her cola in one jacket pocket, her peanuts and fags in the other.
Dag looked at me quizzically, I gave him a smile and went after her.
‘How are you doing?’ I said. ‘All right?’
‘I was doing fine until now,’ she said, opening the door and going back outside without the slightest indication she was going to pause for a chat.
‘Aren’t you going to give me your number?’
‘Not likely,’ she said with a snort.
She went towards the car.
‘Go on!’ I said. ‘Please?’
I folded my hands and gave her my best impression of a begging look.
She opened the car door.
‘You’re such an idiot,’ she said.
‘Idiots are people too. Some are even quite nice. Go on! I’m not asking for much. A few digits, that’s all!’
She got in the car shaking her head.
‘You could at least tell me your surname!’
The guy behind the wheel peered out at me. He had an unlit ciggy in his mouth and long black hair.
‘Dønnestad,’ she said, and slammed the door.
The guy revved the engine and and tore the few metres to the exit.
Dag came up behind me.
‘What was all that about?’ he said. ‘Who the hell was she?’
‘Lisa Dønnestad,’ I said. ‘Shall we get going? We don’t want to be late for the adverts!’
* * *
*
I got myself so worked up thinking about her during the film that I was exhausted by the time it was finished and we walked back to the car. It was Sunday, everywhere was closed, and Dag was working the next day anyway, so there was no point in hanging around town, even if going home was the last thing I wanted.
‘Well, that was crap,’ said Dag.
‘She wasn’t bad, though,’ I said.
‘Not my type.’
‘So you’d turn her down?’
‘Too cold for my liking.’
‘Not bad, but too cold?’
‘That’s about right.’
‘So you’d rather have someone hot who wasn’t not bad? Ha ha ha!’
‘Ha ha.’
He hadn’t asked who Lisa was yet, but I knew it was only a matter of time, he was a nosy bastard who loved a bit of gossip, he just didn’t want to come across that way.
We got into the car. Dag pushed a tape into the cassette player and a moment later the car was filled with Dag music. Tinny stuff for the world-weary. The Clash, U2 and Big Country, bands he’d been trying to get me into for ages.
‘What’s this we’re listening to, then?’ I said as we pulled out onto the road.
‘Imperiet. Blå himlen blues.’
‘Ah. The world-weary Swedes.’
There was hardly any traffic once we got out of town, the motorway was almost deserted. The odd speeding car on a long journey, a few lorries.
‘I heard you had a good talk with my dad the other day,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘It can’t have been easy, your dad passing away when you were that young. I’ve never really thought about it that much since. Should I have done?’
He glanced at me.
I laughed.
‘It’s a bit late to start now,’ I said. ‘No, not at all. I’ve never thought about it much myself, to be honest.’
The darkness above us had something of the greyness of summer nights, that was how it seemed, lighter now than only a few weeks before. But maybe I was imagining it.
‘I found out something weird,’ I said. ‘About my dad, I mean. I found his passport, he had a Soviet visa. I think that’s what it was, anyway. There were some Russian books in among his things, too, and a letter in Russian. Have you any idea what that might be about?’
‘Didn’t he take the Russian course at the intelligence school?’
‘You mean you knew too?’
‘Yes. Didn’t you?’
‘Not until a couple of days ago, no.’
‘I’ve always known that.’
‘Joar has as well. No one’s ever thought of telling me, though. It makes me wonder what else I don’t know. What else I ought to know. My mum’s been holding back information.’
‘Hardly holding back, surely? You make it sound like a conspiracy.’
‘Not far off, though. I’m going to tell you something now. Can you promise you won’t mention it to your mum and dad?’
‘Yes, what is it?’
‘You promise?’
‘I just said, yes! Mention what?’
‘Dad was involved with someone else before he died. He wanted a divorce. He told Mum and everything. Only he died before he could do anything about it.’
‘Are you having me on?’
‘Of course not. Mum told me just before the weekend.’
‘That’s a shock.’
‘Do you think Einar knows?’
‘Dad? No, I don’t think so. Or rather, I wouldn’t know. It’s not the sort of thing he’d have told me about, really.’
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
‘Who was she?’ Dag said after a bit.
‘Who? The girl at the petrol station?’
‘No, you idiot. The woman your dad was involved with.’
‘Oh, her. Ha ha. I haven’t got a clue. Mum didn’t know. And there’s no one else I can ask.’
We went quiet again.
Then Dag laughed all of a sudden. I looked at him.
‘The girl at the petrol station!’ he said.
‘What about her?’
‘Why would you think I was asking about her? Because you can’t stop thinking about her. Am I right, or am I right?’
* * *
*
The house was still and dark when I stepped into the hall. The sound of Dag’s car disappeared into the distance. I cut myself a slice of bread in the kitchen and headed for my bed.
‘Syvert?’ Mum said from her room.
‘Yes?’ I said, and opened her door.
‘I’m staying off work tomorrow. Can you get up with Joar and see him off to school?’
‘Of course I can. Is it your back again? Do you want me to drive you to your physio tomorrow?’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Is there anything you need?’
She shook her head slightly.
‘All right, then,’ I said. ‘Goodnight!’
‘Goodnight,’ she said.
I wound up my old alarm clock, set it for seven and put it down on the floor over by the wall on the other side of the room so I wouldn’t just turn it off and go back to sleep.
When it did go off, it felt like I’d only just got my head down, and my first thought was that I must have set it wrong, but the room was light and the air outside busy with the sound of cheeping birds, so there was nothing else for it than to get up.
Lisa Dønnestad!
At once it was as if all fatigue evaporated.
Tra-la-la-la-la, I sang as I went to get showered, knocking hard on Joar’s door when I was finished, finding him with his cheek pressed into his pillow and one arm dangling down from underneath the cover.
‘Rise and shine!’ I said, pulling his curtains aside. ‘It’s gone seven o’clock!’
Without lingering to gauge his reaction, I skipped down the stairs and into the kitchen where I got some coffee on the go, fried some eggs and bacon and heated up a couple of Mum’s frozen baps from the supermarket.
With the table set and everything ready I went out into the hall and looked Dønnestad up in the phone book. There were more than twenty people with that name, five of them in the area I was sure she was from. It wasn’t a problem, I could just phone them one by one and ask for Lisa.
‘Breakfast’s ready!’ I shouted up the stairs.
I could heard Joar thudding about, but nothing from Mum’s room.
I went up and knocked on her door, then put my head round.
‘How are you feeling?’ I said. ‘Do you fancy some breakfast?
She looked up at me. There was no sign of a smile, not from her lips, not from her eyes.
‘Not good?’
‘I think I will go to the doctor’s, after all,’ she said.
‘Now?’
‘Sometime today, if I can get an appointment.’
‘Of course. But you’ve got your physio later on. Maybe that’ll help. You could go to the doctor’s after that, if it doesn’t. What do you think?’
‘I’d forgotten all about the physio. Perhaps you’re right.’
‘Do you want some breakfast? Or can’t you manage the stairs?’
‘I don’t think I can.’
‘Shall I bring you a tray? Breakfast in bed?’
A faint smile passed across her face.
‘That’d be nice.’
I cut a bap in two, put a slice of cheese on one half and a slice of salami on the other, lifted an egg onto the plate and some of the bacon that was nice and crisp – getting it crisp is easy when you know how, just turn the heat up high without any butter or oil or anything – and then poured a mug of coffee, put some milk in and put everything on a tray I then carried up the stairs for her.
‘Where do you want it?’ I said. ‘If you sit up, I can put it on your lap. Wait a minute, I’ll get you a cushion.’
I went back down into the living room and picked up a cushion from the sofa. She managed to pull herself upright, I slipped the cushion behind her back and put the tray on her lap.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Go down and see to Joar now, will you?’
‘Of course,’ I said.
Joar was sullen, the way he often was in the mornings, he wasn’t touching his eggs or his bacon.
‘All the more for me, then,’ I said, and gave him a smile. ‘Cheers for that.’
‘Isn’t Mum coming down?’
‘She’s not feeling too well. I’ve taken her breakfast in bed. But listen, little man, you’ve got to eat, you know.’
‘So I can grow up big and strong?’
‘Exactly! You’re growing every day at your age. But you’ve still got to eat properly.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You will be without your breakfast. How about I make you a good packed lunch? Then you can have a glass of milk, at least, and maybe a banana, too?’
‘I don’t like bananas.’
‘An apple, then.’
I went into the living room and took an apple from the fruit bowl, put it down on the table in front of him and poured him a glass of milk.
He drank a couple of mouthfuls and left the apple untouched.
I looked at him. His pale face, the skin under his eyes almost blue, his dark hair with its unruly tuft. Dark, dark eyes.
‘I’ll eat it on the way,’ he said.
‘That’s the idea,’ I said as I piled some bread slices onto my own plate. ‘What do you want in your sandwiches?’
‘Anything. Salami, maybe.’
‘Salami in all of them?’
‘Salami in two. Then two more with cheese.’
‘Coming up,’ I said.
He started playing with his fork, moving it around the table, backwards and forwards, while I buttered his sandwiches. He pushed some of the breakfast things out of the way and ran his fork between them.
‘What are you doing that for?’ I said after a bit.
‘What?’
‘With your fork.’
‘It’s a tractor harrowing the field. That’s the hill,’ he said, indicating the bread basket. ‘This is the rock sticking up. Here’s our house. And the road and the river are here.’
‘How old did you say you were again?’ I said.
‘I’m twelve.’
Was he being ironic?
No, the look he gave me was serious.
‘I’m only pulling your leg,’ I said. ‘I know how old you are, of course I do.’
He carried on driving his tractor through his little landscape while I got the greaseproof paper.
‘I dreamt about Dad last night,’ he said without looking at me.
‘Did you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened?’
‘He came up the stairs. I was sitting on the floor and he went past me into the bedroom.’
‘Was that all?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Like Dad.’
‘Did he look happy? Sad? Angry?’
Joar shrugged.
‘He looked like he was very busy.’
I tore off a length of the greaseproof paper and tore it into four smaller pieces to wrap his sandwiches in.
‘Do you dream about Dad a lot?’
He shook his head.
‘I think it’s the first time. But I can’t remember everything I dream.’
‘No, of course not. How did it make you feel?’
‘Feel?’
‘Yes. Did you feel anything when you saw him?’
‘No.’
I wrapped the sandwiches as neatly as I could and put his finished lunch down next to his apple.
‘There you are,’ I said. ‘What time do you normally get going?’
‘Quarter past.’
‘Are you going to brush your teeth, then?’
‘In three minutes,’ he said with a look at the clock on the wall.
* * *
*
As soon as he was gone, I went upstairs to check on Mum and collect her breakfast tray. She’d fallen asleep with the big cushion in her back and the tray still on her lap. She was obviously exhausted. I felt sorry for her. It must have been the pain that made her tired. It was often the way, I reasoned, that fatigue followed on from illness, as if it had all been pent up in the body.
I picked up the tray as carefully as I could, and when I turned to look at her as I reached the door she was still asleep.
It was too early to phone Lisa.
I went absently from one downstairs room to another with my coffee. After a while I slipped my feet into my old Adidas sandals and shuffled over to the barn. The sky was bright blue, the air surprisingly mild. All of a sudden it felt like it was closer to summer than winter.
I opened the box with Dad’s books in it and took out the letter or whatever it was that we’d found. Joar’s dream had made me feel like he was actually with us, in the house, but we could only see him in dreams. It was a stupid thought, obviously, with no base in reality. It wasn’t that I believed it to be true, it was more the feeling that he was there, restless and despairing, that made sense somehow.
I looked at the Russian handwriting. It was in blue ink, and there was something about it that made me think it was a woman’s. The letters were small and round. It could have been the unfamiliar shapes of the different characters that gave me the impression, but I didn’t think so.
