IT WAS THE quiet hour after lunch. Arvid sat reading at the bottom of the steps by the door that stood open to the yard. The sun was shining and the pattern of the bars in the gate fell on to the tarmac and he could hear bikes trundling past in the street and people calling to each other in Danish and every now and then a car. It was so still by the steps that he heard the flies in the little window. The door to the milk shop was ajar, he was keeping watch and when the bell rang and someone came in, he was supposed to shout to his grandmother that there was a customer. She was up in the living room playing the piano. It had a strange sound, it was an old cinema piano that Grandfather had bought cheap and remade and when Grandmother played, it always sounded like a silent movie.
He was reading a book called His Brother’s Keeper. It was a Christian book and he didn’t like Christian books, but there was nothing else here apart from Pelle the Conqueror, and he had read that twice. The book had been printed in Gothic script. He was learning to read Gothic script because he knew there were so many books that had been published in this script and he had to read them before they rotted and were gone and no one would know what people used to think in the old days. But he was a bit fed up with them always thinking Christian thoughts.
Grandmother sang psalms, always psalms, and she had written them herself and composed the music, she was a writer of psalms and had four notebooks full of them. He knew many people had told her to send them in to get them published in a book, but she didn’t want to, for it would be like making yourself important at the expense of God, and that was pride, and pride came before a fall.
Her voice was high-pitched and different from when she spoke. She always spoke in a low voice, at least when Grandfather was in the room, but now it was high-pitched and shrill. There was something disgusting about this voice and yet there was an allure that tugged and tugged at him and wanted all of him, but he knew that if he let himself go he would be swallowed up and then there was no knowing what would happen.
Fortunately the bell rang and a customer came in, and Arvid dropped His Brother’s Keeper and called for Grandmother and then the quiet hour was over. Everyone appeared from their secret places, where they had been resting, and Søren stood in the yard, Mogens’ father, waiting beside his car. It was still Arvid’s birthday and Grandfather had taken the rest of the day off to go for a drive. Grandmother had to look after the shop and Arvid’s father had to go out to do some negotiating, and only he and maybe Arvid’s mother knew what it was about, but the others got into the Opel Kapitän, with Søren sitting in the driver’s seat.
They drove down Danmarksgade and along Søndergade, where Aunt Else lived, heading south. At Møllehuset, with the bandstand and the little river and the small bridges and the swans, they turned right up a hill and then they were in the woods and carried on up. It was nice to be in a car, Arvid rarely was, just the taxi home from the ship a few times and on the back of the ‘Blåmann’, Sveen’s lorry at their house back home in Norway. Sveen worked at a toy factory and his cellar was full of them, because he had these light fingers and drank so much it was a mystery he still had a driving licence.
The forest wasn’t big, but it was dense and a little gloomy as the trees weren’t spruces like at home, but oak and beech, and the crowns met high up and made a ceiling. Everything was dim and mysterious and the few places where the sun burst through it were so bright they couldn’t see a thing.
They drove past the café in the clearing, where Arvid thought they were going to stop and eat a hot Danish pastry, but they didn’t.
‘Look there, Arvid,’ his mother said, pointing, ‘under the big tree.’ Under an oak tree two deer stood, chewing and staring at them with almond eyes as the car rumbled past. They didn’t stir, just stood with their heads held high and their ears pricked and Arvid said: ‘In Denmark we go through a little wood and we see deer, while at home in the Lillomarka forest we go for mile upon mile, Sunday after Sunday, and don’t see so much as a fox. There isn’t even a single spruce tree here.’
‘They aren’t wild, you know,’ Gry said. ‘The forest ranger keeps an eye on them and feeds them. They eat from his hand if they’re hungry enough.’
‘Makes no difference. A deer’s a deer. I’ve never seen deer before.’
He turned and saw them through the rear window, they were standing in the same place and were beautiful and slim and could surely run as fast as lightning if they wanted. One of them slowly turned its head with the big antlers and watched the car leaving, and its long horns were grey against the greenery behind, and Arvid just had to swallow.
Then they suddenly turned out of the forest, and past the tall tower you could see from miles away when you came in from the sea, and on to the road that took them over the ridge facing south, and everywhere there was light and air. The road wound its way along the ridge’s back and to the left the sea was almost standing upright. It was so blue it seemed as though the colour was not a real colour at all, and on the horizon the island of Læsø was balancing. He had never seen that far.
‘Can we stop?’ he said, and Søren pulled in because it was Arvid’s birthday, and Arvid opened the door and jumped out on to the verge and walked a few metres down the slope and lay in the grass. It was so steep it was almost like standing, he could rest his body and at the same time see as far as he wanted. He took deep breaths again and again, and there was air enough for a lifetime and he promised himself he would never start smoking. His mother could never inhale as much air into her lungs as he could. His chest was a balloon that couldn’t burst, it just filled up and sent blue air to all corners of his body and his body turned into something so light and delicate he could jump off the nearest cliff and fly like Peter Pan.
Afterwards it felt narrow and clammy in the car. They drove on into the country and down from the ridge and they came to a place with a few farms huddled together surrounded by vast fields. One of them was Grandfather’s farm and they stopped there and Grandfather got out of the car, walked to the gate and stood there looking. The farmhouse was freshly painted and what had once been the midden was filled with rocks now and in the cracks flowers had been planted. It looked nice and Grandfather stood stock-still without saying anything, no one said anything. Arvid gazed out over the fields and tried to imagine Grandfather before the plough with his father at his back holding a whip, but it was not possible, for Grandfather was only Grandfather the way he was now, with a bent back and a moustache and not like he must have been then. Grandfather got back into the car still not saying anything, and they drove on, along an empty road. Then his mother made faces and squirmed on the seat beside Arvid and finally she said: ‘I think we’ll have to stop again.’
‘What?’ Søren said.
‘Needs must!’
‘Oh,’ he said, but it was bare here, there was not a bush to crouch behind, not a fence, and he scratched his head and looked around.
‘You’ll have to go behind the car,’ he said. ‘Everyone look straight ahead.’
His mother got out and went behind the car and squatted down. They waited for a while and suddenly Søren grinned and winked at Grandfather. He put the car in gear and they set off.
‘No!’ Arvid said, and Gry said: ‘Stop, you idiot,’ in a voice so sharp it didn’t sound like hers at all, but Grandfather laughed and Søren laughed and drove on a way before he stopped the car. Arvid looked out of the rear window and there was his mother squatting in the distance and then she got up and started to run, faster and faster, and now Arvid could see her contorted face, and she caught up with them and raised her arm and banged the boot with her fist. She banged her way around, so hard there were bound to be dents in the coachwork. She wrenched open the door on Grandfather’s side, grabbed his jacket and said in a low voice: ‘That’s the last time you leave me in the lurch! Absolutely the last! You watch it or you won’t see your grandchildren for years!’ and she slammed the door and Arvid wondered why she had taken out her anger on Grandfather.
Grandfather sat like a statue on the front seat, as if the stone he was made of would shatter if he so much as moved a finger, and Søren stared through the window, hands in his lap. His mother got on to the back seat, next to Arvid, and there was total silence until Gry could stand it no longer and had to cough and then his mother said: ‘Drive!’
Søren slowly shook his head, but he raised his hands and finally the car moved off.
There were the farms again, and a cluster of spruce trees, as small as toys, Friesian cows and then mustard fields so yellow the light seemed to come up from the ground, not down from the sky, and on a hill stood the church where Great-grandfather’s plaque was. The church was pretty with its white plastered walls and red-tiled roof, but no one dared ask Søren to stop. When the hill was behind them his mother began to sing in a voice that was dark and not like Grandmother’s, for his mother’s voice was suddenly full of laughter, and she sang: ‘Come prima più di prima t’amerò / Per la vita, la mia vita ti darò / Sembra un sogno rivederti accarezzarti / Le tue mani fra le mani stringere ancor,’ all the way through the song and when she started a second time around Arvid joined in. His mother had taught him the song several years ago, he didn’t understand a word, for the text was Italian, but he could sing it anyway and the words had a sound to them that he liked.
‘Oh, my God!’ Gry said, and started to laugh and Arvid laughed and Søren laughed wildly, he banged the wheel with both hands, making the car swerve in the road, and howled as if he had some kind of illness. The only person who wasn’t laughing was Grandfather, but he was moving at least, he kept chewing his moustache and the car turned off the road and now they were in Sæby forest and that was their destination.
In a clearing stood a former hunting manor, but now it was a restaurant and had been one for a long time and the road they came on was narrow, bushes scraped against the car doors, but there was plenty of room to park in front of the main entrance.
They sat down by one of the big windows. The dust looked dense in the sunlight, but it didn’t catch in your throat, which was strange, and there were pheasants on the grass outside. Søren walked across the chequered carpet into the kitchen to tell them they had arrived.
There was no one else in the room and it was so quiet that when they spoke it was still quiet. They sat as if inside a bubble and talked about what they would eat and that was hot apple crumble with ice cream. When the woman came with the crumble and hot chocolate Arvid thought he had never tasted anything so good and never would again.
Afterwards they went outside and looked at the forest and the pheasants, but there was something about the day that had ended, no one could think of anything more to do or say and Søren walked nervously around the car to see if there were any scratches from the bushes, but what he found were small dents from Arvid’s mother’s fists and he touched them and said nothing.
Grandfather stood in front of the old manor house, hands in his pockets and his threadbare suit shining where his crooked back had chafed, and then he raised one hand and stroked the length of his moustache with his index finger. He came over and stood by Arvid and put one hand on his shoulder. Arvid’s shoulder twitched, but he didn’t move away and Grandfather said: ‘Do you know when I was last here, Arvid?’
‘No.’
‘More than forty years ago. A friend and I came here to dance the tango. This place was a dance hall then and the only one on the coast where they played the tango. Mostly soldiers came here from their barracks, but we too wanted to come here, so we got dressed up and set off. That is, we walked. It was a long way, you know that now.’
Arvid had seen pictures in Norsk Ukeblad magazine of men in black hats and tight trousers, and women with flowers in their hair and dresses that were tight across the bum and wide at the bottom, dancing the tango.
‘Was it fun?’
‘We never got that far. At the entrance we were stopped by a breathless soldier who said we should turn and go back home at once. He had lost his fine cap, I remember. There was a police raid going on, he said.’
‘Why was that? Were they drinking moonshine?’
Grandfather laughed. ‘No, it was the tango, it was forbidden. Then I married your grandmother and that was it. I haven’t been here since. Until today.’
Arvid looked up at his grandfather, who was stroking his moustache again, and then his mother called, it was time to go, enough was enough.
That night Grandfather danced the tango in a flat, broad-brimmed hat in a large dance hall with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and a pheasant pattern on the floor. His moustache was sharp as a dagger, it had a matt gleam in the light and the shadows covered the rest of his face and when Arvid woke up and remembered the dream, Grandfather was never quite the same again.