The Wolves of Eternity, page 8
‘Something like that,’ I said. ‘Do you think I’d make a good newsreader?’
‘A newsreader? I think you would. You can read, at any rate.’
I laughed.
‘And now to news of a radioactive cloud detected today over Norway, Sweden and Finland,’ Bryn said, looking earnestly into the camera. ‘An increase in natural radioactivity levels of sixty per cent was recorded in the Østland, though this is not considered to be hazardous.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘Were you listening to that?’
‘It’s been on the news all day,’ Mum said. ‘It’s not hazardous, they say.’
‘They’ve got to say that, haven’t they? Of course it’s hazardous.’
It turned out a Swedish nuclear power plant had detected the cloud that morning. At first they’d thought it was a leak at their own facility, the readings they were getting were that high, but then they’d realised it was coming from somewhere else.
‘A dense mist hung over Oslo and the Østland area today,’ the reporter said to pictures of a foggy capital. ‘Although the mist is unconnected with the high levels of radioactivity, today’s levels were significantly above the norm. The National Institute of Radiation Hygiene recorded increases of up to sixty per cent on naturally occurring radiation levels. Does this mean that we have been shrouded in a dangerous radioactive cloud in Scandinavia today?’
The man they interviewed was standing on a rooftop looking out over Oslo and said he wouldn’t call it a dangerous radioactive cloud, but the general public should try to avoid as much extra radiation from non-natural sources as possible, because such things weren’t good, as he put it, before adding that it wasn’t in the slightest bit dangerous.
‘What exactly is it they’re saying?’ I said. ‘They’ve said so many times now that it’s not dangerous, that what they’re actually saying is that it is dangerous. Am I right?’
‘It certainly can’t be good with all that radioactivity,’ Mum said.
‘That’s your socialists for you,’ I said, and got up.
‘They don’t know where it’s from,’ she said.
‘Where else would it be from?’ I said. ‘Anyway, I’d best be off. Get some radioactive air in my lungs.’
* * *
*
The story of me getting butted had of course spread and I had to take a lot of banter when I walked into the changing room. I hung up my coat and sat down, laughed along with them as I got changed, and after a short while the talk moved on, mostly to people who weren’t there but who everyone knew. People at work, people in the village, people on other teams. The radioactive cloud wasn’t a topic. Nor, for that matter, was the crisis in the government.
‘Have you all heard about Arne’s lad?’ Glenn said, and started laughing just at the thought.
‘Arne who?’
‘Arne Olsen. The maths teacher. They went to get some building materials in town. Ha ha ha! When they ha ha ha! When they were coming back over the bridge, it was so windy that Arne ha ha ha! told the lad to get out and ha ha ha! hold the planks down on the trailer.’
‘No!’
‘Ha ha ha! He only blew away himself, the lad, didn’t he ha ha ha! broke ha ha ha! . . . broke . . . ha ha! . . . broke his arm . . .’
I smiled and zipped up my top.
‘We locked Arne in the sports hall garage once,’ I said. ‘At first he was spitting feathers. We stood all quiet outside, so he’d think we’d gone home. Then he started shouting for help. Heeeelp! Heeeelp! We were laughing our heads off.’
I bent forward to do up my boots.
‘It’s a wonder his nerves ever held up, the amount of stick he had to take from us,’ said Karsten.
‘Actually, they didn’t,’ said Gjert. ‘Or maybe you didn’t know? He was away from school nearly two months. In the loony bin.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ I said. ‘It was only a rumour.’
Gjert gave a shrug.
‘Sounds quite likely, if you ask me.’
‘He knew his maths, though,’ said Glenn. ‘I’ll give him that.’
‘I learned nothing in his lessons,’ said Vegard.
‘That’s not Olsen’s fault,’ said Glenn. ‘It’s to do with your restricted intellectual capacity.’
I stood up and went towards the door.
‘My what?’ said Vegard. ‘I don’t understand the words you’re using . . .’
When I stepped out of the pavilion there were a couple of figures over on the pitch floating long passes to each other while the trainer was putting cones out. The sky was grey, but thin, with no sign of rain.
Full of invisible radioactivity.
Every time I breathed in I was drawing it into my body. And if there was enough I’d be damaged. I could start bleeding uncontrollably.
But what was it exactly?
I broke into a run, onto the pitch towards the two senior players, what were their names again, Kjetil and . . . ? Vennesland. That was it.
Kjetil saw me coming and sent me a long ball. I took it down and slid one back to Vennesland, who curled it on to Kjetil on the half-volley.
I knew nothing better than this. Cushion, centre, run, dribble, shoot.
Soon the pitch was teeming with players and the session got started. Just as the last time, Mads had us doing various drills after the warm-up, kept stopping the play, and just as before he blew his whistle after a while and had us all gather round.
‘Football’s simple,’ he said. ‘It’s all about scoring more goals than you concede. Are you with me?’
So he was going to say the same thing every time, was that it?
‘With you,’ said Glenn.
‘To score goals you’ve got to have the ball. Are you with me?’
‘With you,’ someone at the back said. A few laughed. Mads grinned.
‘It’s basic, I know. But that means it’s important. So, the opponent has the ball. How do we get it off him? By denying him space. Space means time. More space, more time. Less space, less time. And less time will often mean more mistakes. The quicker we are to put them under pressure, the greater our chances of winning the ball. If we stay compact, that gives them no space, and if we press the man on the ball, he can’t put it behind our defence either. That means we can stay high. And if we stay high, the way forward will be shorter once we win the ball. Are you with me?’
No one said anything. He produced his board and showed us how we wanted us to position ourselves.
‘But aren’t we leaving a whole load of space behind us then?’ said Gjert.
‘Yes!’ said Mads. ‘But as long as we’re pressing the man on the ball, they can’t exploit it. Do you understand? If there’s no press, then of course the whole back line has to drop back. And the midfield after them.’
I was getting sick of it. It was almost like being back at school again. And everything he said and tried to explain went out the window anyway as soon as we started playing. Especially when, like now, he started shouting at us to raise the intensity, to run more, because all we got then was a tangle of legs and arms between the small goals we were using for practice.
But I did what he said, ran and ran.
‘Good, Syvert!’ he shouted when at one point I tackled Kjetil and won the ball. ‘That’s the way!’ he shouted, even though I had so much jelly in my legs by then that my next pass went out over the touchline.
Mads jogged after it and kicked it back into play.
He kicked the ball the way someone who’s never played football would kick it.
I was gobsmacked.
Maybe he couldn’t actually play?
What was he going on about then?
We played on and I continued running and chasing and harrying until I could taste blood in my mouth. That must have been why he came up to me after the session and put a hand on my shoulder.
‘You’re carrying out your tasks really well,’ he said. ‘Do you fancy giving it a go, if we make room for you in the squad?’
I was standing bent over with my hands on my knees, gasping for breath.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll give it a go. I don’t know where I’ll be after the summer, though.’
‘We can look at that if and when,’ he said. ‘Let’s say you’re in for now, OK?’
I nodded and straightened up. And I was still OK about it on my way home half an hour later. It made sense, I’d been missing it more than I’d realised. Playing proper matches again, that peculiar mixture of physical exertion and excitement, the joy there was in that, in scoring a goal, delivering a good pass, winning. Even the disappointment when we lost, the way it kept stabbing at you the rest of the day and well into the next, was something I’d missed.
But thinking of football in terms of spaces to be opened and shut down, I’d never thought of it like that before. And I never wanted to either. Football was something to be played, not thought. Of course you closed down your opponents, of course you stopped them passing the ball, of course you put it in behind if there was space. But you didn’t have to bloody think about it.
* * *
*
That night I dreamt about Dad. I didn’t very often, and when I woke up from the dream I was confused; for a few seconds I didn’t know if he was alive or not.
He’d been standing in the laundry room when I came into the passage, and had turned towards me. He smelled of machine oil and tobacco.
‘Listen, Syvert,’ he said.
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘Can you look after your brother for me?’
‘Of course. But why, where are you going?’
‘Away, that’s all.’
‘What about Mum?
When I said that, he took off his glasses, shaped his mouth and blew on the lenses, then dried them with the corner of his shirt while scrutinising me with that exposed, defenceless look he always had when he didn’t have his glasses on.
‘Son, your mum’s been dead for years,’ he said.
As he said it, I knew immediately that she had been dead for years, and it was as if with a fingersnap the entire past was turned on its head, and all my assumptions in life upended.
He put his glasses on again, wound his scarf around his neck and buttoned up his jacket, the one with the lambskin collar, stepped past me, picked up his briefcase and went out into the snow, turning then momentarily with a wave of his hand and a ‘Look after yourself, son’.
I closed the door after him. What had he been doing in the laundry room? I wondered, and just as the question occurred to me I woke up and found I was in bed.
After the first seconds of bewilderment, when I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t, it was as if an enormous grief exploded inside me.
I realised that Dad actually could have been here.
If he hadn’t died.
But he had died.
So he wasn’t here.
The room was flooded with light, the sun was coming up outside. The sky was open and blue, and the birds were singing. I knew I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, even though it was hardly seven o’clock, so I got up and had a shower. When I came down into the kitchen, Mum had left a note on the table. Syvert, can you empty the washing machine and do another wash? she’d written. And perhaps sort out the garage? It’s like I don’t know what out there. And if you could give the kitchen a quick once-over, and the living room as well, before I get home?
She’s pushing things a bit, I thought, and got the peanut butter out of the cupboard, the bread from the bread bin, the butter from the fridge. Normally I’d have been pissed off about it, only now I was feeling rather guilty towards her, because straight after I woke up the thought had occurred to me that maybe it would have been better if things had been like in the dream, if Dad had been alive and Mum dead.
As if I could choose.
I poured myself a glass of milk, turned the radio on and sat down to my breakfast.
Glorious sunshine outside.
It must have been Joar’s dream that had triggered mine.
But why the laundry room in the basement? What had Dad been doing there?
I didn’t like it.
He’d been so alive. It had been just like he was still living.
Only he wasn’t.
* * *
*
The peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth and I gulped some milk.
He’d said I had to look after Joar.
Of course, I realised it hadn’t been my dad talking at all, that it was something in myself that had been using the figure of my dad to remind me it was what I had to do. Something good in me, telling me to take care of my brother.
That the good in me felt it had to tell me meant presumably that there was something bad in me too. Something that wouldn’t take care of Joar, or was going to forget.
The news came on and I pricked up my ears. I hadn’t heard any more about the cloud since the television news the evening before. But the first story was about the government crisis that had only got worse since yesterday. Not until that was out of the way did they turn to the radioactivity.
As expected, it had come from the Soviet Union, a nuclear power plant not far from Kiev had exploded. They’d been keeping it secret for three days, despite the radioactivity drifting through Europe in the meantime.
The expert they interviewed repeated that the radiation values they were detecting in this country weren’t hazardous, and I looked out of the window. That the landscape outside could be contaminated was hard to imagine, even if what they were saying was true and it was only tiny amounts.
I remembered as a kid reading a series of biographies for children. One was about Marie Curie. She died of a blood disease, almost blind, her fingers burned and scarred as if from the inside. All because of radioactivity, whose dangers at the time were unknown. At school, I’d read in another book about what had happened to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who had survived the explosions of the atom bombs that had dropped on those cities.
It was the fact of it being invisible and that it was everywhere and could eat up the body from inside that had frightened me then. How did the radioactive atoms get inside the body, and how did they manage to destroy it? How did they make it bleed, how did they make it burn? How did they know what to do inside the body to destroy it?
Some of that fear had never gone away, that was the only way I could explain the concern I felt. No one else seemed to care.
* * *
*
When Joar came downstairs an hour later, I’d just finished hoovering. He cast a glance at me, that was all, before getting his breakfast ready.
‘So, there you are,’ I said, and smiled at him as I stepped on the button that gobbled up the cord. It flew across the floor like a snake. ‘Did you sleep all right?’
He nodded without looking at me, pouring milk over his oatmeal and raisins.
‘Good,’ I said.
I took the Hoover down into the laundry room in the basement and couldn’t help looking for signs there, something Dad might have been trying to draw my attention to. The big utility sink, the shelves of detergent and all sorts of articles for one thing and another that had accumulated over the years. The washing machine and the tumble dryer. The boots and winter shoes, the rainwear.
What had I been expecting? The key to a safe deposit box? A letter? A secret diary containing his innermost thoughts about us?
I heard Joar go up the stairs. I could feel I wasn’t looking forward to the day, so many hours to kill. Everyone I knew was at work.
I emptied the tumble dryer, it was stuffed full, took the whole lot into the living room and dumped it on the sofa, went back down and transferred the wet clothes from the washing machine into the dryer, which I then switched on, loaded the washing machine with a pile of clothes from the laundry basket, switched that on, then went back up the stairs to the living room to fold the clean, dry clothes I’d left on the sofa.
‘Do you want me to drive you to school?’ I said when Joar came down again. This time he had his school bag.
‘Mum’s got the car, hasn’t she?’ he said, baffled.
I slapped my forehead.
‘You’re right, she has! How stupid of me!’
‘That’s OK,’ he said, and went out, clearly in a better frame of mind now. ‘See you later!’
The door closed after him and I went back to folding the clothes like I was a housewife. I even put them away.
Then there was the garage.
Mum never parked the car in there, and over the years it had filled up with all sorts of junk. I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to chuck things out or just tidy up, but when I pushed the big door open and saw the state of the place in clear daylight I decided to sort through everything, burn what was no use and store the rest in the barn.
Surely that would make amends for my two nights out.
I started by getting everything together that needed burning, collecting it all in a pile in the middle of the floor, then carrying it all out behind the barn, where I heaped it up in front of the little bank where we always made our bonfires, sprinkled some petrol on and set light to it. The ground was still wet and there wasn’t a breath of wind, so there was no danger of it spreading, but I stood and kept an eye on it anyway.
For as long as I could remember I’d loved to stand there and watch our bonfires. There was something magical about flames. Maybe it was because they came out of nowhere. The cardboard and other materials, the plastic and the paper, came first, piled up on the ground, but then, when I set fire to it, the flames would all of a sudden emerge, as if from inside the very things they were going to consume, as if they lived inside them and were now peeping out. Hesitant at first, as if they didn’t really believe they were being set free, but more eagerly then, and soon as if enraged, yes, they became as if possessed, the flames, racing up and down those things. Trembling, in some places almost transparent, in others, often closest to the wood or cardboard, blue, then fat and orange as they took hold.
