I got on the tram at Birkelunden. There was snow in the streets. It was Christmas Eve, the first after Turid’s defection. I was supposed to celebrate with her and the girls at the house of the mother-in-law I once had, in a block of flats over by the dip in the road after Strømmen station, not far from Skjetten. I had to say yes, because the girls wanted me to. Vigdis had called for that sole purpose, so naturally I had to mime that everything was all right, that my life was on track, and Turid’s brother was coming and her sister was coming and her aunt was coming with her new husband. I was not looking forward to it.
I had been at the upper end of Grünerløkka to buy a pair of skis for Vigdis. It was the second time I would give her skis for Christmas. The previous pair was stored in the basement with skis and poles tied together with two straps in red and blue, not unlike the pair I held in my hands now, but the previous pair never made it out of the basement. Now they were too small. She didn’t know how to ski. None of them knew how to ski. I always blamed the poor winters of the nineteen eighties, and it’s true that they were poor, but not that poor, and really it was my fault. Not once had I touched my own skis after I moved to Bjølsen from the one-room flat at Carl Berners plass, in 1975. Turid was completely useless on skis, and I had just assumed the girls would learn what they needed in kindergarten and at school, but they didn’t. On their school’s annual ski day they brought sledges. It was embarrassing, not only for them.
Now I was on my way down from Birkelunden, past Olaf Ryes plass towards the city centre. I don’t know why I had to go so far uptown, I could easily have bought a pair of skis at Gresvig or another sports shop with a wide assortment somewhere more central in Oslo, but most likely they were especially cheap, probably skis and poles and bindings all in one pack, a special offer someone had told me about that was worth the tram fare and the time it took.
I wasn’t sitting down, but instead was standing next to the doors holding on to the rail, so skis and poles wouldn’t jab anyone in the face when I turned around in my seat or got up. She was sitting in the carriage with her face towards me. I had turned away from the door and caught sight of her and realised that she had been observing me, perhaps for a good while, and her gaze met mine, and she held it fast for a moment longer than necessary and turned and looked out the window, and it was snowing out there in front of the stairs to Parkteatret, over the pavements, over the trees on Olav Ryes plass, and maybe she wasn’t all that pretty, or she was, but in a peculiar outlandish and very nice way, something about her cheekbones, and when I saw her profile, her nose looked more like Cleopatra’s in Asterix than anything else, or at least made me think of it, remember it, it had something to do with how she was screwed together, and she glanced at me again, and this time it was I who held her gaze a little longer than necessary before I turned away, and I felt it in my throat, that she was sitting there, it moved me, it touched me. I looked out the window in the folding doors, and it had stopped snowing as we passed Schoushallen, the restaurant where several times I had ended up with a murky pint in front of me and a wild longing for the touch of skin or whatever else I could get hold of, and the room slanted a bit towards the bar, so it was difficult to get out if you wanted to, and when someone spoke to me, it was as if from the outside of a cupboard with the door merely a crack open, and there was a leer on my face that revealed a lack of direction. I had seen it in the toilet mirror when I’d been in that place, in Schoushallen, and the last time was not that long ago, nor was it easy to forget the woman whom I had left the bar with, how forthright I had been, how insistent. Through the windows I could see how today, on Christmas Eve, all the tables beneath the yellow lamps were full as the tram rushed past towards the junction where Thorvald Meyers gate and Trondheimsveien merge at Nybrua bridge and turn into Storgata on the other side of the river past the A&E and what was once the open space of Ankerløkka.
I turned around, I wanted to look at her again, for her face made everything else in the carriage dissolve, I could feel it even with my back turned, that she was looking at me, and when I lifted my gaze, she had stood up and was on her way out between the seats. She came straight towards me. I had been waiting for her, long before this day, and with one hand she held the same railing that kept me on my feet, with the other she set her bag on the floor, used her teeth to remove the glove, and lay her fingers naked and flat against my jaw, my ear, not hard, but not lightly either. I leaned in against her hand. It felt so good. But I held back a little. I didn’t know why. Everything was fine. She smiled a little. You are not ready, she said. I searched my feelings. She was right, and it surprised me. No, I said. I wish you were, she said. Yes, I said, so do I. So what do we do, she said. I don’t know, I said. I don’t know what we can do. I wish there was something we could do. Yes, she said. We stood like that. We looked at each other. It’s Christmas Eve, I said. Maybe that’s why. Why it’s difficult. It’s not a good day, but then she leaned forward and held her cheek against my cheek, and with one hand still against my ear she said, it was meant to happen today, I think, but it is what it is. Only then did she withdraw her hand. At once my ear grew cold. This is where I get off, she said. Already, I said. She smiled. She lifted her bag, it was heavy, it was Christmas Eve. I looked out the window. I could have got off right after the A&E and taken the bus up towards Bjølsen on Hausmanns gate, Uelands gate, along that route, but I hadn’t paid attention to anything outside, and now we were already past Teddy’s in Brugata and the Gunerius department store, and the tram continued along the snow banks shovelled up against the pavements and the metal railing, and a little further down the street lay Dovrehallen with its two storeys, and Gresvig Sport, and the Opera Passage on the opposite side. It was Storgata. It was familiar territory. So you’re not going any further, I said. No, she said, I have to get off here. The tram stopped, the doors slid open, and she said, happy Christmas stranger, and smiled in a way I would never see again and stepped gingerly down the two steps and on to the pavement with the heavy bag in her arms. I didn’t dare to help her, and she didn’t turn around, why should she, and I thought, if she turns around I’ll jump off and follow her, and to hell with skies and Christmas Eve and let what happens happen. But she didn’t turn around, and the doors closed. There goes my only chance, I thought. Now I have nothing. That was not true, I had several things. But I couldn’t think of a single one.
A few hours later I was on the bus down to the Central station and took the train from there to Strømmen and the Christmas party of the mother-in-law that once was mine. I had always liked her, she had always been a figure of authority, good-humoured and loud in an engaging way, but on this Christmas Eve, all she wanted to talk about was how Turid and I should find our way back together, if that was at all possible, it would be so good and in everyone’s best interest, she so much wanted to keep me in the family after all these years, we knew each other so well, and perhaps it was all due to a misunderstanding, what had happened, and so on and so forth, but I didn’t want to talk about it, there was no way back, the glass wall had gone up, it was solid, and I got tired of listening to her. Clearly Turid did, too. Both of us kept our mouths shut and didn’t look at each other unless we had to.
I felt out of place. Every time the aunt’s new man spoke to me, I was on the brink of leaving. He sat to my right at the table and was hard to avoid. He so much wanted to talk to an author, he said, and he had clearly prepared for this evening, and he said he had often thought about it himself, that he would like to write, that he had a book in him, he felt it strongly, and he thought maybe I could give him the push he needed, the insight, the liberating words, and it wasn’t really that difficult to understand, if he was being honest, that he wanted me to say something practically oracular which could lift him up on his way, but I didn’t want to talk to him, I’ve stopped, I said, I’ve stopped writing, and I turned to my left where his wife sat, who was Turid’s aunt, she was attractive, I had always thought so, she could have chosen me instead of her new man, was a thought that struck me. But then I remembered the woman on the tram. I would much rather have been with her. Actually I didn’t know what I wanted. Each thing felt important as it came, but when it passed by and barely lay behind me, it had already started to dissolve. I couldn’t stop it. And then the next thing came, the next person, maybe the next woman, and it didn’t take me anywhere.
I had travelled by bus and train instead of driving. That meant I could allow myself a glass or two with dinner, it would be demanding too much of me not to, and there was beer and aquavit with the food, several aquavits, and the aunt to my left saw where I was heading, she smiled at me, she whispered, I know it’s no fun, but you’re doing fine. As soon as the first presents are over and done with, you can leave. It will do you no good to stay after that. Just don’t get drunk. The girls would be upset. I’m not going to get drunk, I whispered. And I didn’t, not very. I joked around at the table, and the little girls thought I was funny, so did the mother-in-law that once was mine, and Turid laughed, maybe out of relief, but Vigdis didn’t. She could see who I was. I smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back, she just nodded, as if confirming the secret we had between us, and that secret would be that I was not sober. She was still only twelve years old, and it was hardly an edifying secret to share with your father, that he wasn’t sober, but she accepted the skis and said they were right on time, as the old ones were too small, and she didn’t reveal to anyone that the old ones had never been used, for which I was grateful.
Tine and Tone were pleased with their presents, and more than that. They got Barbie dolls, which was the only thing they had really wanted and wanted strongly, and it turned out that I was the only adult who had caved in and bought one for each of them. It was an uncomfortable moment, for they all knew I was violently opposed to the second coming of those horrible dolls. Vigdis wasn’t interested in Barbies. On the other hand she wasn’t that interested in skis, either. I could have given her a book, but I was under pressure and was certain the others would think I was getting off too easily. With a book.
But then I wanted to leave. It was before the coffee and cognac. Tine and Tone protested, but no one else did. It was a little disappointing. The aunt saw me out into the hallway. I bent down and put my boots on and tied the laces slowly while she watched me. I stood up and put on my reefer jacket and wound the long scarf twice around my neck. You take care, she said. I tried to look into her eyes, she was nearly ten years older than me, she had always made me a little shy. It will pass, she said. The hurt. It doesn’t feel like it now, but it will pass. Believe me. She gave me a hug. I would like that, I said into her hair, for it to pass. I was touched by her wish to comfort me, it was the alcohol, it made me sentimental, I said, maybe we can meet some time. Why not, she said. But I knew she didn’t mean it. She had a new man.
On the way to the station along the wire fence and the railway line it began to blow and to snow again. I didn’t have a cap with me, but pulled one round of the scarf over my hair as a muffle against the snow, and the snow whirled around me in the wind and whirled over the closed-down factories by Sagelva river, over the shopping centre up the road, over the hills beyond and over Øyeren lake and the river Glomma, over the forests towards Sweden. And I imagined I could see all this snow whirling over the treetops and then slowly falling and new snow coming, covering the timber roads, covering tracks of elk and roe deer, of hare and why not the wolf now moving in from the forests of Sweden after a hundred years of absence, all this seen as if from a soundless helicopter, and I caught myself longing back to the Sundays when my father and I went skiing deep into the woods on the red-marked tracks in Lillomarka, his back broad and muscular ahead of me in the blue sweater my mother had knitted, just him and me breathing sharply in the sharp winter air and the dry snow and the dry cracking of trees leaning against each other in the bitter cold, and at the same time the longing for all this made me so weary. It wasn’t going anywhere. It was just dragging me down. My father was dead. There wasn’t any before. There was only now.
I got off the train at the Central station and walked out on to Jernbanetorget by the neon-lit Trafikanten clock tower. Now I felt strangely sober, perfectly clear, as if I was exactly where I was supposed to be, in a welcoming calm. Everything suddenly behind me. Turid behind me. The girls too, behind me. Cleansed, totally alone.
I walked up Karl Johans gate, up past Kirkegata, Kongens gate, and after the next block to the left on Nedre Slottsgate and down along the Steen & Strøm department store to a bar that was once a pharmacy at the intersection with Tollbugata. They were open. I knew that already, I had been there several times before. It had snowed quite a lot, it had blown through the streets, there was snow blown up against the low windows on both sides of the entrance, but in front of the door someone had swept the mat clean. I stood there. The light from inside sifted gently down over the snow on the pavement, and the street lamps turned everything yellow and each street lamp had its own circle and no circle touched another and between them there was silence. It was no longer blowing, it was not snowing, the street was silent, encapsulated as in a cave in its own snugness, and it felt intimate between the city buildings in a way I was sure it would not inside. Then I stamped the snow off my shoes, drew my breath and pulled the door open.
And it was very different. At once I felt a wave of human warmth surging towards me. The room was almost full. I closed the door behind me. Someone smiled and nodded when they saw me coming. It was Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas, they said, and I said, Merry Christmas and smiled back and went straight up to the bar without removing my jacket and ordered a pint and an aquavit. They came right away. I found a table by the window, hung the jacket over the chair and sat down. I drew my breath again, as far down as it would go, and only slowly exhaled. I felt myself smiling. I lifted my glass of aquavit and downed it in one go. Only then did I look around. No single women. It was just as well. In fact they were almost all men. Bachelors, probably, who didn’t have anyone to celebrate Christmas with, and instead were sitting here rather than alone in front of the TV at home, and perhaps some of them lived in homeless shelters. In that case I couldn’t blame them. For sitting here. At the end of the bar a couple was drinking shots. She in a conspicuous red dress, but by all means, it was Christmas Eve. They’d had a few already, he more than she, it was something about the way he was looking down at the floor. They were trying to speak discreetly to each other. It was difficult to be discreet when they were so intense, she especially was intense, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and I was glad I didn’t. Maybe it was a marital quarrel. Who wanted to listen to that. I hesitated, then I stood up, went to the bar and ordered another aquavit. I needed one more. The woman in the red dress looked up and saw me standing there waiting at the opposite end of the counter, and suddenly she said in a loud voice, you look like a man who has children, why aren’t you with your children, why are you here, it’s Christmas Eve, for God’s sake. The man looked at me, he fell silent and turned towards the window, he seemed shy, and you could see why. I have my reasons, I said, and that should have been the end of it, but unfortunately I added, but you’re here too, the two of you, why aren’t you where your children are. I felt I had to get back at her. She closed her eyes, she squeezed them shut and squeezed her lips into a narrow line. I have no children, she said. Then I apologise, I said. It’s really none of my business. The bartender handed me the brimming glass of aquavit, and I was about to return to my table, and then she said, he doesn’t want to give me a child, it is the tragedy of my life. I’m sorry to hear that, I said. What else could I say, but I wanted to go to my table, I wanted that aquavit, and I couldn’t drink it standing up, it would have looked shabby. He is so afraid of having a child, she said, that he doesn’t dare make love to me, even though he thinks I’m on the pill. But I’m not. I haven’t been for a year. Not that it’s helped any. I stood there without moving, the man sat perfectly still. It’s not fair, she said, I have the right to a child. All women have a right to have children. She suddenly looked me in the eyes as if there was something there she had only just noticed. You can make love to me, she said, but she didn’t smile, she was serious, then I would definitely have a child. You look that way. It will be a pretty child. It will work, after all I’m not on the pill. I’m sure that once will be enough, if you don’t think it’s any fun. I saw the man slump down on his bar stool, there was a full shot glass of vodka on the counter, he took it and downed it and set the glass down, not hard, as I thought he would in jealousy and anger, but very carefully. I don’t think it’s such a good idea, I said. Why not. I don’t know you, I said, and you have a husband, and I have a wife I love. Now she looked almost surprised, she flung her arms out, each of them in an arc, as if she wanted to pose in a classic dance act, the straps of her dress thin as twine, the red fabric smooth and pliant. She really did look great. I lifted my gaze. Don’t you want me, she said, what in the world, don’t you want me. It’s not that, I said. It’s just not how I am. But you would like it, she said, I guarantee you. I know a thing or two, I do. Yes, but the only one I want to be with is my wife. That’s how I’ve always been. That got her annoyed, no men are like that, she said, I know all about it, besides I can pay you for a child, many do, you don’t even have to like me, we could just make love and be done with it, but this was enough, I said, listen, I don’t need your money, I’m an author, I make loads of money. Are you an author, she said. Yes, I said, I am. He’s an author, she said to her husband, what do you say to that, but he didn’t say anything to that, he had given up, he was drunk, he smiled senselessly, and I said, I’m sorry, but I have to go and sit down, and I tore myself from the bar and walked between the tables with the aquavit restless in the glass, and I felt a heat spreading from the back of my neck to my face, it was unpleasant, and behind me I heard her say, he is an author, what the hell do you say to that, but I didn’t hear the man say anything, and as soon as I had sat down, I emptied the glass.
The evening was ruined, but I remained at my table. The calm I had felt was gone, nothing lay behind me, everything that had happened to me queued up and was now. Slowly I finished my pint. Now and again I looked towards the bar where they were still sitting. They had stopped talking. What more was there to say. I tried to think of other things, the other guests, they were fewer now, all single men. I looked out the window over to Tollbugata, it had begun to snow again, I could walk home, I thought, it was far, but it would be good for me, clarifying, I could walk off the alcohol, walk off the red dress. I wanted another aquavit, but if I had one more, I was done for, I wouldn’t be able to walk anywhere. I turned around and looked up at the bar. They were about to leave. He was very drunk now, she had to help him out through the door, out on to the pavement, and I stayed at my table for five minutes, maybe more, before I stood up and slowly put on the reefer jacket, wound the scarf laboriously around my neck and walked up to the bartender and said, well, have a good Christmas, and gave him my hand, and then of course he had to take it, he said, same to you, and I didn’t know why I had given him my hand, I normally didn’t, I could have waved, it would have been more than enough.
And then I was out in the street. I stood on the doormat. I could walk all the way to Bjølsen, or I could take a taxi, the last bus had already left. I settled on a taxi, but there was no taxi to be seen, so I started walking towards the Central station. There were always some there. When I passed Kongens gate, I heard loud, angry voices from somewhere down the street. It was the couple from the bar. There was a taxi with the top lamp on, one back door open. She caught sight of me, she shouted, hey you, author, it’s you isn’t it, please can you come and help me, I’m in distress, please, can you come. I’d had enough of them, I wanted to go home, I could easily have walked on down Tollbugata towards the station, no one would have blamed me, but that’s not who I was, and so unfortunately I went into Kongens gate to the junction where the taxi stood, and inside the car the driver sat behind the wheel staring out the windscreen without moving an inch. I can’t get him into the car, said the woman in the red dress, and the driver won’t help me, and from inside the car the driver said, I’m not getting out of this car, I just bloody won’t. Can’t you help me then, dear author man, but her husband didn’t want to get into that back seat for anything in the world. I tried to bend his head in under the door frame, but he wouldn’t bend either his head or his back, and I said, far too loud, come on man, just get into that goddamn car so you can go home, and I pushed him hard, but he wouldn’t get in. Instead he turned suddenly and hit me right in the face, I stumbled and fell and landed on my back, and he threw himself at me.
He was stronger than me and used to fighting, but thanks to the alcohol it didn’t hurt that much when his fist struck me. Snow had been falling for most of the evening, and now it lay high on Kongens gate, for they hadn’t been out yet to clear the roads. It was still snowing, it was almost one o’clock, and there was no way he was getting into that taxi, but we kept at it, and after a while we forgot what we were fighting over as we lay wrestling in the snow, we just kept going aimlessly, and the taxi disappeared, and a new taxi had come and left again a long time ago without us noticing, and his wife too had left. We stopped and looked around, and the street was deserted. We stood up. My whole body hurt, my chest, my sides beneath the ribs, my face, close to my right eye. I wiped my nose and there was blood on my hand, it had to be from the first punch, and the sight of the blood made me strangely calm, it felt like a logical conclusion to the evening. We were both breathing heavily in the quiet street. At last I said, okay, I guess that’s that, and he said, I hope so. It wasn’t your fault, he said. What wasn’t, I said, and he said, I can’t quite remember, but I’m sure it was not your fault. No, I don’t think it was, I said, I was really just going home, and we stood there with our arms hanging heavy at our sides, palms open, he was embarrassed, and I was embarrassed, we smiled sheepishly at each other and said, Merry Christmas, then, sorry for what happened, and then we each went our way, towards our taxi ranks, I down to the Central station, he in the opposite direction, up to where the taxis stood lined up behind the Parliament building. He limping, I limping.