The Wolves of Eternity, page 26
How much easier life had been then. We’d bike out to the tennis courts in the woods early in the morning and play there all day, the whole day would just be that. Or we’d bike to the beach at the mouth of the river, or to the low, smooth rocks at the sea, and spend the day swimming. We’d have our tea, watch telly, sleep, and wake up to another day.
Over by the changing rooms the others were arriving, holdalls dangling from shoulders. I flicked the ball up onto one foot, skied it, cushioned it with my head as it came down, and volleyed it way over the bar.
‘Get your body over the ball, man!’ Terje shouted.
I collected the balls and jogged back over to him.
‘Who are we playing at the weekend?’ I said.
‘Vågsnes away.’
‘How did they get on in their first match?’
‘Drew one–all against Stampa. So we should be able to beat them.’
The sun was low in the sky now, the trees that edged the training ground and we ourselves threw long, thin shadows. Soon, the others began to emerge from the changing rooms, and before long the pitch was teeming with players, laughing, shouting, running.
After the warm-up, Mads gathered everyone around for his little talk.
‘We lost our first match,’ he said. ‘And we need to be honest enough to admit that a lot of the time they played us off the park. That said, we got better as the game progressed, and Svein got us a cracker. That’s what we take with us. The question is why they outplayed us to the extent they did.’
‘They were better than us,’ said Vegard. ‘Simple as that.’
‘I’m doing the talking now, Vegard,’ Mads said. ‘It was a rhetorical question. If you know what that is?’
‘Is that a rhetorical question too, or do you want me to answer?’
A few of us laughed.
‘All right, so you do know,’ said Mads. ‘Well done! But we still need to know why we were outplayed. What went wrong? What did we do wrong? Even if they were better than us, which in my opinion they weren’t – they had one good player, he was brilliant, but that was it – we shouldn’t have conceded that easily. We’re a team, for Christ’s sake, eleven players. We have to keep our shape. Defence, midfield, attack. That’s three lines they need to penetrate. If we keep our shape tight, and if we press, if we run, if we’re aggressive, they’re not going to get through us. They won’t be able to. But you didn’t press, you didn’t run and you didn’t keep your shape. You left acres of space wide open, and when you do that all it takes is one good player, they’re through on goal and it’s in the back of the net. So that’s what we’re going to practise tonight.’
After he’d explained what he wanted us to do, just as we were about to run out onto the pitch, he raised his hand in the air.
‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘We’re footballers, not thugs. What happened during the match on Saturday, Syvert, is something I never want to see again. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. It won’t happen again. You can count on it.’
‘Five laps of the pitch. Ten push-ups after each.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘No, I’m not joking. Go on, get going.’
My first impulse was to just walk away and go home. But if I did that, I’d never be able to come back.
The others were grinning and laughing at me.
I started jogging, angry and in turmoil. There was no need for him to humiliate me.
‘Pick up the pace, Syvert! I want you tasting blood!’ he shouted.
Danish prick.
He was full of wind and nothing else.
What he knew about football was something he’d read in a book.
But I wanted to play. It was the only thing that kept me going at the moment. So I picked up my pace, did the ten push-ups in front of his nose, got to my feet again and ran on, while the others played football and forgot all about me and my punishment.
* * *
*
As I’d anticipated, Mum and her friends looked like they’d be sitting in the living room all evening, so I couldn’t phone Lisa as I’d originally planned. I couldn’t watch telly either.
I flicked through my thirty-nine LPs and put Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality on, their best album, I reckoned, and I hadn’t played it for ages. I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling while I listened to it. After a while, I got up and scanned the paperbacks on the shelf, but found nothing I fancied reading again. I even looked at some of my old magazines – Fotballrevyen, which Dad used to buy me, and Sport i Bilder.
Only then, after skimming an article about Helge Skuseth, I remembered the book I’d promised Krag I’d read. It wasn’t a promise I was bound to keep, of course, but the pastor had wanted me to read it too, and the fact that two people I basically didn’t know had recommended I read the same book, and had done so independently of each other in the space of a week, made me curious. What could it be about, since they thought it was so important?
I went downstairs to get it.
Mum had got the cherry liqueur out and what looked like the leftover biscuits from Christmas, as well as the buns.
‘You all look like you’re having a nice time,’ I said.
‘Do you want a glass?’ said Mum.
‘No thanks.’
‘A biscuit, then?’
‘No thanks,’ I said again. ‘I just came down to get a book. It was on the table here. Have you seen it?’
‘On top of the newspapers over there,’ she said.
‘You used to have such a sweet tooth,’ said Randi. ‘I remember how over the moon you’d be whenever I brought you chocolate.’
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ I said. ‘How come you stopped?’
‘I suppose it didn’t seem right any more once you were as tall as me,’ she said.
I’d known Randi, Synnøve and Vibeke for as long as I could remember. Randi was round and fair, always cheerful, always with the same short haircut and big hooped earrings. Synnøve had a long and narrow, rather bony face, equine was probably the word. Her gums showed when she smiled, she had dark hair and serious eyes. Vibeke was curvy and a bit fit, and when I first started wanking I used to think about her, even though I knew it was a bit perverse with her being Mum’s friend and me only thirteen.
‘What book is it you’re reading?’ she said.
‘It’s a Russian novel,’ I said, and regretted it straight away, but there was nothing about Mum’s expression that suggested the word Russian triggered anything in particular.
‘Oh,’ said Vibeke. ‘It’s not Anna Karenina, is it?’
I glanced at the title.
‘Crime and Punishment.’
‘I love Anna Karenina,’ said Vibeke. ‘Has anyone else read it?’
The others shook their heads.
She started giving a summary as I went towards the door.
‘Enjoy yourselves, ladies,’ I said, and went upstairs again, lay down on my bed and began to read.
After only a few pages I knew he was going to kill the old woman. He had no reason to in particular, she hadn’t done anything, it was nothing but a fanciful turn of his mind. I lay uneasily as I read. He was heading straight for the abyss. For no reason! And all around him was misery and wretchedness. Beggarly derelicts drinking themselves into oblivion. It hurt in the pit of my stomach to think that people could humiliate themselves to such an extent, and when after a short time I put the book down, it was as if its entire mood had seeped into my own reality.
What was it the pastor wanted me to see in such a book?
That to kill was a sin?
Downstairs the phone rang.
‘Syvert! It’s for you!’ Mum shouted up.
‘Coming!’ I shouted back and went down the stairs into the hall, where the receiver lay on its side on the table. I closed the living-room door and picked it up.
‘Hello?’ I said.
‘Hello,’ said Lisa. ‘How’s your nose?’
‘Lisa,’ I said, sensing to my horror that my voice was shaking. I cleared my throat. ‘It’s coming along fine, thanks. The rest of me’s all right as well!’
‘Good to hear it. I feel guilty about what happened. There’d have been no trouble if it wasn’t for me.’
‘I’m glad it happened,’ I said.
‘Glad?’
‘If it hadn’t, you’d never have called me.’
‘You needn’t start fancying your chances.’
‘No, I wouldn’t. I’m the least conceited person you’ve ever met.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
‘It’s true!’
‘Hm,’ she said.
There was a silence.
I racked my brains in panic for what to say next.
Nothing came.
She was expecting something of me, she wouldn’t have phoned otherwise.
Say something, say something!
Anything!
Go on!
‘There’s something I should tell you,’ I said. ‘When I saw you at the petrol station . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘I realised then that I . . . well, you know?’
‘No.’
‘I realised . . .’
‘Spit it out! Realised what?’
‘I realised . . . I’m in love with you.’
She went silent again.
‘No, you’re not,’ she said after a moment, and now there was irritation in her voice. ‘You just think you are. You don’t even know me! You don’t know me in the slightest!’
‘I don’t need to know you to know the person you are,’ I said.
‘That’s the most brainless thing I’ve ever heard.’
‘I think about you all the time.’
‘Pack it in! You’re even more stupid than I thought.’
‘Can we see each other?’
‘No, we absolutely can not. I’m glad Kjeld didn’t hurt you seriously. But that’s all. Have a nice life.’
She hung up.
For a few seconds I must have been completely gone inside, because slowly, almost bit by bit, I became aware that I was standing with the receiver in my hand, the dialling tone sounding angrily in my ear as I stared at my own face in the wall mirror.
I put it back on the hook and went upstairs.
I’d ruined everything.
How could I have said that?
I could have said anything!
She phoned me and I’d bollocksed it up!
What was I going to do now?
There was nothing I could do.
I’d frightened her off for good.
I sat down at the desk and switched the lamp off so I wouldn’t be able to see my reflection. The lights along the road stretched away into the darkness, pooling then at the shop and the little cluster of houses there.
I hadn’t lost anything exactly, because I’d never had anything to begin with. Nothing was more pathetic than someone going on about the enormous fish they’d hooked and almost landed, only for it to get away.
So near and yet so far.
But I hadn’t even been near.
She’d phoned out of concern, not love.
Love!
I had no right to even think about the word.
I stood up. Maybe I could lie down and carry on reading? But the Russian novel didn’t appeal, it was too unpleasant. And the Follett book only made me think about the shaving episode in the bath.
The voices of Mum and her friends drifted up from downstairs. It sounded like they were on their way home.
I waited until everything was quiet before going down.
Mum was clearing the table in the living room.
‘Did you have a nice time?’ I said.
She nodded.
‘I’m tired now, though. And a bit tipsy from that liqueur!’
She laughed.
‘I’ll tidy up,’ I said.
‘We’ll do it together,’ she said. ‘There’s not much.’
I went into the kitchen and filled the sink. Mum put the things on the side and sat down on the chair by the window.
‘Who was that on the phone?’
I was going to say Dag, but remembered it was Mum who’d answered.
‘Just a girl I know,’ I said.
‘And?’
‘We’re not going out, if that’s what you think,’ I said. ‘She’s just a friend.’
‘Where did you meet her?’
I turned the tap off and squirted a bit of washing-up liquid into the water.
‘Nowhere, she’s more a friend of a friend of a friend, really.’
She took a pinch of tobacco from her pouch, teasing out the strands before cramming them into the recess of the rolling machine.
‘How are you feeling now?’
‘Much better. But I’m staying off work another day to be on the safe side.’
‘Good idea.’
I heard the click of the machine behind me as I rinsed the first plate in cold water in the other sink and put it on the rack.
‘Mum?’ I said.
‘Mm?’ she said, and I realised she had a cigarette in her mouth and was about to light it.
‘I’m sorry for losing my temper the other day.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘But I really am sorry,’ I said, turning round to face her. ‘It was just that I didn’t know that about Dad. That you’d been keeping it from me. But I understand why, I was just a little kid at the time. I’m actually glad you never told me, I wouldn’t have understood.’
‘Do you understand now?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m not sure I do,’ she said.
I washed the small glasses, rinsed them and placed them upside down on a tea towel next to the sink. My hands were red from the hot water that prickled my skin fiercely every time I immersed them.
‘It’s made me realise how little I actually know about Dad,’ I said. ‘And about you, too.’
‘About me?’
‘Yes.’
She huffed.
‘What don’t you know about me?’
‘The person you were when you met Dad, for example.’
‘The person I was? More or less the same as now, I expect.’
‘What sort of person was Dad, then? When you first met. How did you meet? Did you fall in love with him straight away? Or did it take time? What was he like exactly?’
‘What a lot of questions,’ she said.
‘I don’t mean you have to answer them all. You know what I mean, though. I don’t know anything about all that.’
‘Not everything needs to be known. I don’t know anything about my parents and their relationship before I was born.’
‘Granny and Grandad?’
‘That’s right. They never told me anything. It wasn’t something we ever talked about.’
‘Did you ask?’
‘No. It never occurred to me.’
‘But did you wonder about it?’
‘Do you know, I don’t think I ever did.’
I dried the teaspoons and put them away in the drawer, lifted the plug out of the sink and folded the tea towel before hanging it over the oven door handle.
‘Do you want a drink of something?’ I said. ‘Tea, or a beer maybe?’
‘A cup of tea would be nice.’
‘Did you know Grandad told me how he and Granny met?’ I said as I filled a saucepan with water, put it on the hob and switched it on.
She shook her head and looked at me.
‘I don’t think I told you. I think I thought it was a bit embarrassing, to be honest. It was when he was in hospital. He might have been a bit confused. I’m not even sure he knew it was me he was talking to.’
‘You never told me, no.’
‘Granny and her two sisters were spending some time in the hills that summer and he went up to see them with a friend of his.’
‘I knew that.’
‘Then the next night he went back on his own. Did you know that bit, too?’
She shook her head slowly.
‘I didn’t get her then, he said. But the next night I did.’
‘Is that what he said?’ said Mum, and looked down at herself as she blew out smoke, her elbow propped on the table.
I wished I hadn’t said anything, it was a lot more intimate somehow, me telling her than him telling me.
I turned round and got two tea bags out of the box in the cupboard, dropped one into each cup and went to the fridge for the milk.
‘Well, you’ll get nothing of the like about your dad and me, I can tell you!’ Mum said. She looked at me with a gleam in her eye.
‘I wouldn’t want to know anyway,’ I said, and smiled back at her.
‘But you know where we met?’
I nodded.
‘In a park in Oslo,’ I said.
‘That’s right. I looked after two children for a family up in Frogner. We used to spend whole days in the park. Your father came along one day and sat down under a tree nearby. He was in uniform and on his own, and I remember I was a bit curious about him. He sat reading the newspaper and smoking. Then he lay down and had a little sleep. The children I looked after, two boys, were playing football.’
‘The ball hit him in the head.’
‘And we got talking. We met up that same evening and got drunk together.’
‘I’ve never heard that part before!’
‘Is it really so strange?’
I laughed and poured the boiling water into the two cups, dipping the tea bags a few times until the water turned cloudy and tan, after which I dropped them in the bin and added a touch of milk to each cup.
‘What was it that made you fall for him?’ I said, putting her cup down in front of her.
‘He was so well balanced, at ease with himself and the way he related to everything. And of course he was handsome, too.’
