It turned out to be one of those evenings. I got off the bus at Jernbanetorget. As I set foot on the pavement, it stopped raining, but I don’t remember where I went after that, where I had my first beer, whether I talked to anyone, I must have, and I don’t quite remember how I ended up there or how, if anyone had invited me, which was unlikely, but to my surprise, I found myself at a party for Nigerians, for Nigerians and companion. It was an odd way of phrasing it, but I saw it through the haze on a sign by the door. I was not Nigerian, nor was I anybody’s companion. Not that I remembered. I hadn’t been at the party for very long, or I didn’t think so, that’s not where I was first, but the transition was unclear. I remember asking for the toilet. A Nigerian laid his hand on my shoulder as if I was his little brother, and I might well have been, he was a big man, and I felt lost and in want of a brother, although I still had one left. I must have forgotten. The Nigerian man leaned forward with his heavy body and his heavy hand and set me on the right course, and it was a long walk, the room seemed enormous. When I came back with my satchel still wedged under my armpit, it felt like returning from an expedition. I felt a little woozy, and a woman who was not Nigerian took my hand and towed me out of the room and pushed me into a taxi which someone must have ordered. I thought I was being kicked out because my skin was not dark, and I said so and protested, but then she too got in. A little further down the block she asked the driver to stop and wait and got out of the car and crossed the street, over the tram tracks with the light from a street lamp on her hair, mahogany brown, my humpbacked grandfather would have called it, for he was a cabinetmaker and knew a thing or two about wood and its nuances and hues, he was dead now, he had died a few years back, it was a bit sad, really. He hadn’t said much during his life, not that I had heard, and it wasn’t easy to remember his voice, not even while he was still alive, but the world felt different now that he was gone, as if something of particular importance had been lost, and I missed him and the workshop he had had a few hundred metres from the dairy shop on Danmarks gate in the North Jutlandic town. When I was little his workshop had been golden and unending, there was the whine of the band saw and the mild hum of the hand drill corkscrewing shavings towards the floor on both sides of his workbench, and all the boards and stakes and lengths of wood stacked on brackets along the walls, and all the mouldings, the worn tools, the mirror frames, the cupboards, the chests of drawers that were fashioned by his hands, and when he was safely in his grave and evening came with sandwiches and beer served at the wake, my mother began to cry and slammed her fist on the table in front of the whole family, and to everyone’s surprise said, he was a hard bastard.
I had never noticed. He wasn’t like that towards me.
On the other side of the street she went into a kiosk where you could bet on horses, at the corner of an old tenement building, right before Bislet stadium. She wasn’t gone for long, just a few minutes, and came back under the light of the street lamp with her hair still mahogany brown, and from the car window I could see her face for the first time as it was when she thought herself unseen, and she looked focused in a way that moved me. It really did. There was a slight stoop to her back, or it was something about her shoulders, that she bent forward, over herself, embracing herself, that she held on to herself, and that gave her an even more focused expression. She glanced quickly to both sides before she crossed the tram tracks coming back, and when she was next to me again, she took a small flat pack from her coat pocket and placed it in my hand, it was Mamba, the green condom. That’s all they had, she said, I hope it’s all right. Sure, I said. She leaned forward between the seats and said, you can drive now, and the chauffeur put the car in gear and drove on down the street, it must have been Pilestredet, I thought I saw it on a sign. But really it was difficult to see anything clearly that wasn’t brightly lit, and not much was, for in the streets a strange haze drifted above the asphalt which erased most signs and shop windows and bus stops, even the colours of the buildings’ walls were dissolved and everything was the same wet grey on our drive through the city, dream-like, swaying and silent, so I closed my eyes, and I may have slept a little, but I wasn’t gone for long, and I was certain she didn’t notice.
And then we were out of the taxi, which she paid for, and on our way through a gate in yet another old tenement in a street I was sure I knew the name of. Again she took me by the hand and led me, but there was no need to, I followed her gladly, and I wasn’t that drunk either, I didn’t stagger, but walked straight as a rod across the backyard and through a corridor and all the way down that corridor, and through yet another door we walked into a small bedsit behind all of this, at the heart of the building, with a bed set high up on the wall, unusually high, like a bunk bed without a bottom bunk, only higher, to make more room on the floor for the few things she owned, a sofa among them.
But then nothing came of it. I liked her, I thought she was pretty in every way, it’s true, she was likeable too, and kind, that was easy to see, and I needed that, for someone to be kind to me, for someone to wrap me up and take care of me, for someone to put me in a bag and carry me with them, on visits or excursions, to places by the sea, the wind there, for no one had been kind to me in a long time, except maybe Mrs Jondal, it wasn’t healthy living like that. Maybe someone had tried and I had stopped them oblivious to their intentions, but I really didn’t think so.
And nothing happened. Nothing in my body responded to her call. It was an odd feeling, to sense her hand on my skin and not be able to respond, it was distressing, and I found it difficult to just lie there, but then she said, don’t worry, it’s all in your mind, it’s of no consequence, she said it in posh English, but I was sure it was of some consequence, for she was lying on her stomach now and not on her back as she had done only a moment before, and I couldn’t quite see her face, if she was sad, for her hair was long and mahogany brown. I was sure she was sad, and she who’d spent money on condoms and all, and it didn’t seem fair that I should draw the highest card, it would have been insensitive, so instead I said, you may be right, that it has to do with my life, the way it is now, even though she hadn’t said anything of the sort, I can’t get any air, you see, I said, and that makes it difficult to do sensible things. You can’t get any air, she said, not even up here with me, and I said, no, but it’s not your fault. Now she grew worried, it was the maternal instinct, it could strike at any time, right out of the blue. She hoisted herself up on her elbow and looked at me, she had been crying, but she wasn’t crying any more. You can’t breathe, she said, is it like with asthma, and I said, maybe a little like that, I mean, I can breathe, or else I would have died, but I can’t get any air, you see. Isn’t that the same thing, she said, no, not quite, I said, and she said, it sounds like that to me, and I suppose it was easy to think, then, that she was a little, not simple exactly, but that she asked me things in a way that seemed a bit childish, but that’s not how it was, it was she who lowered herself to my level. No, I said, it’s not quite the same thing. Maybe not, she said, but it’s all up here, she said, this is where it happens, and she tapped herself lightly on the forehead. And I’m sure she was right, although it didn’t feel that way, that it was there. But then she smiled faintly and said, come, and she turned with her back to me and lifted the duvet, and I lay close to her, and she was very warm, it flooded through me, oh Father, I thought, who art in heaven, how warm she is, and she laid the duvet down again over us both, and with my chest to her back she fell asleep at once, and I fell asleep.
When I woke up, she was still sleeping. I knew where I was straight away. I had fallen asleep as if on a Persian rug hovering under the ceiling deep inside a tenement I was certain lay on Nordahl Bruns gate in the centre of Oslo city. I was floating there close up against an unfamiliar body which was not itself unfamiliar to this bed, two metres or more above the floor with a steep ladder down and an untouched pack of Mamba, the green condom, by the headboard. And then she woke up, and I felt it against my stomach, that she froze, held her breath, and went soft again, and I wondered if she knew who it was lying naked up against her back, if she remembered, and then she said, hello, without turning around, and I said, hello. I don’t know your name, she said, and I thought, she doesn’t say ‘know’ the way I do, we’re not from the same part of town, my name is Arvid, I said. Arvid, she said. Yes, I said, I’m from Veitvet. Where is that, she said, but this time I didn’t answer. Instead I said, my body feels quite different now. But are you getting any air, she said, and I said, yes, now I am. She turned slowly over on her back, and I gave her the space she needed, and not long after, when we were drifting, far out, I could see the flames moving across her face, and she didn’t look focused in the same way now that she had the night before, instead her face looked mild, smooth, almost, and with her eyes closed and her mouth slightly open she let herself go, that’s what happened, she let herself go, she accepted me, she trusted me, she just let herself go, I thought, and she smiled, but she didn’t know that she was smiling, and I saw the flames moving across her face, and she breathed very deeply, and every time she drew her breath in, it seemed to lift her a little, and it lifted me, and I thought, she is giving herself over, this is what they call giving oneself over, and I hadn’t seen it before, not in a face like the face beneath me, and I thought, Jesus, what courage, and it impressed me and moved me and made me happy, and it made me proud because I was the one she trusted, and it made me sad too, for I would never ever be able to do what she did, give myself over with such trust on my face, it was not possible for a man in my situation.
Before I left, she found a beer coaster from Frydenlund breweries, and she broke it in two and wrote her phone number on the back of one piece, and I was to write mine on the other, which I did, and then we swapped pieces, and in the weeks that followed she called me a few times, but it wasn’t possible for me to take the phone and answer her, or rather I did pick up the phone, if I hadn’t it would have been unlawful, but I didn’t give her an answer, and so I didn’t call her either. I didn’t know what to say. When I left her bedsit that morning, I felt almost certain. It was her. But after a few days I was in doubt, and then I grew certain again, it was not her. I wished it was, but it wasn’t. And so she stopped calling. It felt like a big relief. Not just for me, but for her too, was what I thought, so she didn’t have to beg, it’s not good for anyone to have to beg for love and not receive any.
But then she called one last time, she said, I’m not calling to ask you for anything. I understand. It is what it is, and you are who you are. There’s not much I can do about it. But my dear Arvid Jansen from Veitvet, I want you to know one thing. You have no idea what you’re missing. You really don’t. It suddenly struck me. And that’s sad for you, I mean it, but you have absolutely no idea.