The last evening we had together, the girls and I, was the day before New Year’s Eve, on Monday school was starting up again after Christmas. Vigdis had called me a few days earlier, so I was reconciled to the state of things. I still had a black eye after the brawl in Kongens gate, it was turning yellow, but was still a little swollen. I hurt in several places, close to my eye, my left shoulder, my right knee.
And then all of a sudden I was not to pick them up at Skjetten. That was the message I received from Turid when I called the day before, to ask her when was a suitable time for me to come. You don’t need to, she said, you don’t need to come and get them.
They were supposed to stay with me just that one day, less than twenty-four hours, and my intention was for it to be a special evening and make the most of it, and I had also made a plan, so what she said made me uncertain. Why shouldn’t I come to get them, I said, need, what does need have to do with it, why shouldn’t I come to get them, and she said, oh Arvid, do I really have to tell you. She sounded like my mother, and that immediately gave me a feeling of guilt, a jolt in the stomach, the trapdoor beneath me creaked, and just as quickly I thought, goddammit, guilt, guilty of what, and was about to defend myself, but then I didn’t know what to defend myself against, I found nothing in my memory, nothing she wouldn’t have to tell me, and that made me anxious about what she might have taken it into her head to say, and I let it lie.
Instead Turid came to drop them off. It had never happened before. I stood by the window and watched her park her metallic-blue Toyota with its red rims close to my champagne-coloured Mazda in front of my apartment building, and the combination made the Mazda look derelict, hillbillyish, as if it was something Turid had planned beforehand, metaphorically to demonstrate the view she now held of our relationship, and that made it look ominous, and I thought, just a few months, and nothing is as it used to be.
I really did like picking up the girls. It made everything easier. In the car the mood always changed for the better on the way to Bjølsen, and they asked me what plan I had made for the next two days, and every single time I had one, and we sang twenty-five-year-old Beatles songs I had played for them countless times, and they told me about things that had happened in their lives since last I saw them, and I told them what had happened in mine, which wasn’t very much if you took out my nights on the town, the successful ones and the not so successful. So I lied and made things up, which came easily to me, and it was easy to make them laugh at the stories they believed to be true. At least Tine and Tone did, but Vigdis laughed too. Now there was no transition, no awkward mood dissolved in the car, just all three of them plus Turid right in my face on the stairs, as if the girls needed a supervisor all the way to the doormat. But I didn’t let Turid into the hallway. I had never been inside her flat either. It was probably messy there, she had always been messy, I would never have crossed her threshold, so I stood right in the middle of the doorway, this is it, I said, that’s enough, I’ll take over from here. Maybe you will, she said. Who knows what you do. And there was a hostility in her voice I didn’t comprehend. Until now she had shown what I thought was relief that we were no longer together, and that hurt in many ways, but you could still say it was a friendly relief. You couldn’t say that any longer. She wasn’t friendly, and to be honest, I couldn’t take it, that imbalance, it gave me a feeling of shame, and it was harmful to me.
When I opened the door, she noticed my black eye right away, and made a show of rolling both of hers, ironically, dominant, and the angry bruise on my cheekbone she also noticed, and that particular blow I couldn’t remember, but it must have been one of the many I received in the snow there in Kongens gate, and it had hurt a lot in the days that followed, and still did. I couldn’t touch it. Her look was easy to read, and it made me ill at ease, but also furious, I thought, how dare you look at me that way, how dare you judge me. I felt exposed, my temples were pounding, and I grew anxious again. It didn’t bode well.
It’s probably a good idea for you to stay at home this evening, she said. It’s too late anyway, going for a drive.
So that was it. Of course. The thing about the car in the ditch and Vigdis fainting. I thought it was buried and forgotten, that there was an understanding, a consensus between the girls and me which had erased the incident, and yet in a flash I was back at Harestua and this time in a clearer light, and it was suddenly clear to me that the girls must have been more afraid than I wanted to admit on that day by the roadside before the Falken truck arrived, and that what had happened was more dramatic than I had tried to convince myself in the weeks that followed, even though man number one in the brown suit, Trond Sander, had helped me make the situation less tangled and had made Vigdis smile. He was the hero. The good person of Highway 4. And they had trusted him and his calm and his politeness, but they had not trusted me. And as soon as Trond Sander had got into his car and driven off on his way to Gjøvik, where he supposedly was to attend a meeting, they grew frightened again, all three of them, and were still scared when we drove the opposite way, back towards Oslo at a snail’s pace, over Gjelleråsen, down Trondhjemsveien past Veitvet, but what had happened that day was never mentioned. Until now. Evidently.
Hello Daddy, Tine said, this is the last time, you know that, right. She was a strange little girl, small as she was, unsentimental, she meant no harm. I suppose it is, I said. Yes, oh dear, she said. She would soon be seven. Tone was five and a half. Vigdis had turned twelve. Hello Daddy, Vigdis said, and then she said, it wasn’t me who snitched. She said it low so the others wouldn’t hear, and if anyone had ‘snitched’, it was probably Tine. But Tine never snitched, she provided factual information if anyone asked. She didn’t understand the concept of ‘secret’, why should anything be a secret. For in fact that’s what had happened, our drive ended at Harestua, in the ditch, each of us hanging from our seat belt because Daddy got mad and made a stupid turn, and then Vigdis had fainted and when our car was back on the road and we were driving home, we had to stop at Aker hospital for Vigdis to see a doctor, and no doubt the girls had noticed how patronising the nurses had been, and it had made the trust between us even more fragile. At Sandaker the damaged wing had fallen off, and I hadn’t said a word and just kept driving, and Tine had cried when she heard the bang, and Tone had cried, and Vigdis had not. Probably because she had fainted again. And I hadn’t said a word to Turid. Tine probably didn’t understand why, but she hadn’t said anything either when I dropped them off at Skjetten, because Mummy hadn’t asked. And then Mummy did ask, much later for some reason, and Tine told her everything in a simple and straightforward way, I was sure of that, and then Mummy got very upset because I hadn’t told her, but instead had tried to hide it. I couldn’t blame her. I couldn’t explain why I hadn’t said anything. It wasn’t like me at all. I was pretty certain of that.
It’s all right, Vigdis, I said just as low. It doesn’t matter. Okay Daddy, she said.
I closed the door, Turid was still standing outside, she knocked on the glass at the top and said loudly, I’ll pick them up early tomorrow morning, and then I heard her footsteps on the stairs on her way down, and I looked out through the glass, and Mrs Jondal stood on the opposite side looking out of hers. She knew what it was about this evening, I had told her the day before. She raised her hand and waved, and I waved back.
Early, I said, why early. I don’t know, Vigdis said behind me. Mummy didn’t even want us to sleep here tonight. Why not, I said. You always do. Mummy said it’s not like always, it’s the last time, Vigdis said. I turned around, she looked desolate, but she didn’t challenge the fact that this was the last time. Why should she. After all it was she who had called to tell me, and I felt discouraged and suddenly dizzy. I felt dizzy more and more often, it came over me in the middle of the street, in a stairway where I was forced to stop on the first landing and lean against the wall, even in the car it could come over me. It was not a good thing. I said, Vigdis, I feel a little discouraged right now. I think I have to sit down. Okay Daddy, she said and followed me into the living room, where I sat down in the armchair close to the window. Vigdis sat down in the other. Tine and Tone were already on the sofa. Vigdis asked, does it hurt Daddy. She touched her face, so I did the same and lightly grazed the painful spot near my eye. Not so much any more, I said. Tine leaned forward with her hands on her knees, scrutinising me with a matter-of-fact, earnest expression. She took her time. And I didn’t say anything. As if I were in her power. It felt a little uncomfortable. Finally she said, did you fight with someone Daddy. What could I say, that I had walked into a door, that’s what people said in the movies when they hadn’t walked into a door, so I said, I’m afraid I did Tine. Oh, she said. She sat up, her back stiff. There was a pause, and then Tone said, did you fight Daddy. Yes, little Tone, I can’t deny it, I said, and then she shouted, oh no, oh no, and began to sniffle and kneaded her fingers together and lay her head back and looked up at the ceiling, and I said, Tone, it’s not all that terrible, is it, but to no avail, oh no, oh no, she shouted and wrung her fingers until it must have hurt, and it looked strange, mental, if you like, and then she began to cry and not that low. For a minute her crying was the only sound in the room, and it filled the room all the way up to the ceiling rose, oh no, oh no, she shouted, but then Tine cut through, she cleared her throat loudly and said with what I could hear was hope in her voice, Daddy, she said, do you have a plan. It became quiet. Tone stopped crying, but to be safe she kept her gaze fixed on the ceiling. Vigdis hadn’t said anything for a while, she’d been staring into the air with her face just barely open, but now she turned towards me, come on Daddy, her face said, come on, as if to coach me, it wasn’t hard for me to see. Do you know what Tine, I said. I know I had a plan not long before you got here, but now I can’t remember what it was. And it was true. I couldn’t remember it. I’m sorry, I said, but I can’t think of it. It grew quiet again, Tone was still staring at the ceiling, and then Vigdis said, it doesn’t matter Daddy, and Tine said, no, it doesn’t matter Daddy, she always found something to say, we can watch TV and eat sweets and that’s it, she said. And that’s it, I thought, and that’s all and goodbye girls and I’m sure we’ll see each other sometime, at Easter maybe, a week or two in summer. It was absurd. Could the girls have said something to Turid that they hadn’t said to me. I had no idea, and I couldn’t ask, and it was as if they gave up on me just then, at that very moment they gave up on me, they said, let’s watch TV now and that’s it, just wanting to get it over with. I was certain they’d expected me to put up more of a fight, a final effort to make right what I thought was wrong, a correction of the course we were now chained to, something they might be able to support, something they would support, if I made it possible, but nothing came. Not that day, not that evening, and there was no other evening. I sat in the chair feeling dizzy, searching for something to hold on to, something to say, but I couldn’t find anything except the feeling of having been invaded, by the blue Toyota, by Turid on the threshold, and then in an odd way I grew tired of it. It came over me suddenly. Not sad. But tired of it all, including the girls, it was all too complicated, and even if eventually I had found something it was possible for me to say, something clarifying, even something cheerful, I might just as well have kept my mouth shut. So they gave up on me.
It was eleven o’clock. The girls were asleep. They had gone to bed early. Vigdis too. I guess I had expected her to stay up a little longer. But what was there to stay up for.
I was still in the living room, but had moved to the sofa. With my hand under one of the cushions I held the smooth knife handle tightly. The bowl of sweets was empty, chocolate wrappers strewn all over the table, and the TV was still on. It was a Swedish channel we had switched to because their Christmas shows were better than the Norwegian ones, as in fact their programmes almost always were, and for all I knew what was on just then could have been the end of the programme about Strindberg I had waited for so long, but I didn’t care, I didn’t even glance at the screen.
As long as the girls were awake, I had kept away from the cigarettes, but in my reefer jacket there was an unopened packet of Blue Masters. I must have thought there was something to celebrate, but now it was hard to imagine what. I stood up and went out into the hallway and fetched the pack and went into the living room and was about to sit down on the sofa, but then I went back out into the hallway, took the Icelandic sweater out of the closet and pulled the jacket over it, and with the cigarettes in my hand I locked the door behind me out on the landing and walked down and walked out through the gateway to the parking place and got into the cold car. Only then did I pull the plastic film off the packet and stick an unfiltered Blue Master between my lips. The space next to the Mazda, where the blue Toyota had stood, was still empty, and the emptiness swelled, and in every other space a car was parked, and when I realised that, I got restless, it was difficult to sit still, and I didn’t even have time to light the cigarette before I was back out of the car and inside the yard and on my way up the stairs.
When I was almost up on my own floor, I stopped and sat down with my back to the landing and finally managed to light the cigarette. It was probably the best cigarette I had ever tasted, at least the most welcome, but I hadn’t smoked it even halfway when the door opposite mine was opened, and I knew straight away that it wasn’t Mrs Jondal, if it had been I would have felt something in the chill air that I would have recognised, something alluring, intimate, and so there was only one other possibility. Are you sitting there, Jondal said. I didn’t turn around. I blew a stream of luminous smoke out into the semi-darkness. I guess I am, I said. It’s very late, he said, and I said I was aware of that, which made it no easier for him to understand why I was out on the cold stairs instead of in my warm bed, but then it came to him, and practically beaming he said, but poor Jansen, did you lock yourself out. Without turning around I took the keyring out of my pocket and dangled it from my index finger, which left him at a loss. Oh, he said, well, it’s your choice. I suppose you can sit wherever you like, there’s no law against it, I guess, although it’s the middle of the night, and I said my intention was to sit there for a while, so I hoped he was right. Oh, I can assure you that I am, he said. You just sit there. And have a good night now, Jansen. Goodnight yourself, I said. And please say hello from me. I certainly will, Jondal said. And I knew that he would. He had to. He was a Christian. He was bound to a life of righteousness and truth. I was not. Why should I be. I lied every day, about one thing or another, without exception. But he would tell his wife that I was sitting out there, and for a second I thought that if he did, she might come out on the landing. And then I thought that she would not. And then I thought of the staircase we had at home, between the ground floor and the first floor of the terraced house at Veitvet, where for many nights I sat as I was sitting now, on this night on these stairs in the district of Bjølsen high up in the city of Oslo on the west side of the river, but in every other respect on the east side, economically, culturally, only it was now twenty years since I had lived at Veitvet. At the top of the stairs was the closed door to the bedroom my mother and father shared, and I was sitting outside because I was fifteen years old and the thoughts I had about the future had knocked me over, knocked me out with their full weight, and big boulders of bewildering impossibilities had tumbled down and blocked my path and with them came the fear of the years that lay ahead and the fear that I would never raise myself to meet the challenging dimensions of the future, and if still I tried, I would have to do it alone, and the conviction of this and the conviction that it was really not within my power, squeezed the air out of me. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t swallow, and all this drove me out onto the stairs where I sat gasping for air and knew that my mother could clearly hear my hissing breath, and all I wanted was for her to come out and sit next to me, and maybe say something, or she didn’t even need to say anything, but she didn’t come out, and I couldn’t ask her to, for what I must ask for, I do not want, it loses its value and turns to nothing, and anyway she didn’t come out. She never came out. Instead she said in a loud voice, oh Arvid, go back to bed for God’s sake. And then Mrs Jondal came out. She had probably already gone to bed and got up when Jondal came in and told her I said hello. She was wearing a dressing gown, it was blue with red scrolls, made of terry cloth, like a towel, a bath towel, then, and so I suppose it was a bathrobe, and it was well worn and might have been handed down to her, by her mother or an aunt with middling taste, that was just me speculating, I didn’t have to. She pulled what in all probability was a bathrobe tighter around her and tied the belt with a bowknot and said, but Arvid, are you sitting out here. I didn’t answer straight away. It felt a little awkward to say the same thing twice, but then it was a pretty silly question. I was sitting there. I could hardly say that I was not. So I turned towards her and said, yes, I guess I am, but it felt different when I said it to her, it didn’t sound ironic. She came all the way out, pulled the door shut, but made sure it didn’t lock and sat down and placed her hand on my shoulder. Are the girls all right, she said. They’re asleep, I said. How all right they are, I don’t know. I guess they’re all right if they’re asleep. How about you, she said. Well, I’m sitting here, I said, smoking. For now. I’m just fine. But isn’t it cold, she said, and I said, I’m used to being cold, and she replied, that’s true. She knew about the car and all that. She had seen me go out or come back inside, one of the two or both, probably several times, but she had never mentioned it, and I appreciated that. She let her hand stroke my shoulder a few times, is there something I can do for you, Arvid. Can I help you in any way. No one can help me, I said. No one, she said, and I said, no. But thanks for coming out, I added, I was glad you did, you have no idea how much. I wish there was something I could do to help, she said. I’ll be fine, I said, I will sit here a little longer, and then go inside. It’s no problem. She stood up, it was the middle of the night. Okay then, she said. Goodnight, Arvid. Don’t sit up too long. I won’t, I said. And goodnight to you too, but I didn’t tell her to say hello. There was no one in there but Jondal as far as I knew, and she went in and pushed the door shut until it locked with a loud click.
Now suddenly everything was out of balance. I wasn’t alone any more, I had been abandoned, and there was a big difference and I might as well have gone back inside in the first place, but I sat there a while longer, for appearances’ sake, though there was no one there to watch me. I didn’t want to go in. But then I couldn’t stay, and I couldn’t go down to the car. I had begun to feel cold, I was cold around the hips, my crotch felt numb, cold crept up my spine beneath the jacket. So I stood up stiffly and mounted the last two steps and locked myself into the hallway. I pulled off the reefer jacket, but not the sweater, and went into the kitchen and took from the cupboard one of the two whisky glasses my big brother had given me when he came by on the day before Christmas Eve, one for you, he said, and one for me, when I come to visit, and it rested pleasantly in my hand. I set it on the kitchen counter and poured a substantial drink of Johnnie Walker into it, the Grorud valley’s spirit of choice all the way from Årvoll to Vestli. Then I went out into the hallway with the glass in my hand and sat down on the floor, on the threshold to the girls’ room, my back up against one side of the door frame and my feet up against the other. The door stood half open as it always did. I took a sip of the whisky and took out a Blue Master and struck a match, and after each puff I blew the smoke away from the door into the hallway past the kitchen, and had another sip from my glass. I felt the warmth spread through my body and remained sitting on the threshold for I don’t remember how long, with my eyes closed and the back of my head leaning against the door frame, listening to the girls breathing inside the dark room, each in her own rhythm, each in her own silent light.