I RAN AND the sun came out as I ran and the clouds dispersed. The grey turned yellow and green, and suddenly it was hot and sweat was running down my back, in my armpits, in my groin and behind my sunglasses, and I thought, I will take them off. But I could not face the sun, I could not stop, I just ran, thinking it was better to run, that I liked running, that I could see everything clearer then and what was behind me would stay behind.
I didn’t want to stop, and yet soon I would have to, for I had run past all the fields, past the crossroads by the chapel I had never been in, and then down the entire stretch of the road and into the streets between the houses where people came out to watch me. I saw the railway station ahead of me and people waiting on the platform to go in to work in Oslo. I ran right through the crowd, instead of skirting round them, it would take too much time, and bumped into people without paying heed. One man was shouting after me, but I did not stop to listen to what he was saying or to see who the man was, so his words were left there, hanging in the air before they fell to the ground and were gone, and I ran on along the rails until no one could see me any more and through the bushes to my cardboard house. It was still there, and I had no idea why I thought it would be gone.
I collected my things. I found the torch and the books, stuffed the blanket and clothes into my rucksack and rolled the sleeping bag into a tight bundle before strapping it in its place under the flap, and carried the whole lot to one side. In a rucksack pocket I found some matches, a big box decorated with red felt on the top and small shiny baubles the way you do in kindergarten to make your parents happy. I had made it myself and no one had ever touched it, it had been buried under some junk in a kitchen drawer. Now I was the first one to use it. I walked over to the cardboard house. It had not rained for weeks, so the cardboard was bone dry, and when I struck a match and held it close, it caught fire at once.
In the evening a bonfire can be nice and bright in the darkness, but during the day it is different. Whoosh it went, and within a few minutes the whole house was ablaze. The heat was intense, and I stepped back. When the bushes also caught fire my first thought was to run to the station and get water from the tap at the back, but there were people all around, and I had nothing to say to them. So instead I stood still watching the flames. They rose higher and higher as they spread to the bushes, and I guess they could be seen from a long way away, if anyone cared to look.
‘Kiss my arse,’ I said, and swung the rucksack on to my back. I set off, giving the station as wide a berth as possible. I waded through knee-high grass wet with dew along a path only we kids knew about, and then I was back on the main road. At the crossroads by the chapel, I didn’t go straight on as I usually would have. Instead I turned left on to a gravel road that at first was winding its way between the green fields of barley and then through a cluster of trees and on to places I had never been to before.
I walked for most of the morning. As the hours passed by, the landscape turned hilly and rolling, and all the hollows that cut across the path I was taking never ran in the same direction. Downhill it was easy to walk, but my rucksack felt heavy as lead against the small of my back on the way up again, and I didn’t dare stop and take it off until I was certain that what I saw round about was all new to me. And yet I kept seeing familiar things: a crag, a red house, a fence that had collapsed into disrepair. The straps were gnawing the flesh off my shoulders, and I put my thumbs under them to relieve the pressure, and that worked fine for a mile or so, but then that too became painful.
The sun rose and stayed high in the sky. The air was dry in my mouth, and with each step the dust came whirling up from the gravel road. On the track behind me, I could see my footprints like two straight lines in the thick dust, and if I didn’t keep my mouth closed, the dust would crunch between my teeth. At the top of a rise I finally stopped. I really needed a drink.
I didn’t have the strength to walk one step more. I looked around me. Across the little valley ahead, on the next peak, I could just make out a yellow barn behind a grove of birch trees. It stood out, the yellow was shrill and very unusual. I had never seen a yellow barn in my life, and I thought maybe I could get some water there. I had never been here before, so I guessed it was safe.
Briskly I set off downhill. The road curved down the slope, and I heard the river before I saw it. I walked faster even though the soles of my feet were burning as if someone had rubbed them with a grater, but I didn’t care. At the very bottom and around the bend, the river came flowing out of the green shadows between the trees and then into rapids, and the boulders whipped the water into a froth that curved under a bridge, and then the river spread, and there was a deep pool where the water gently whirled before shooting off again over wet, shiny boulders that looked like huge marbles.
That pool looked good.
To get there I had to leave the road, clamber down an incline and over a barbed wire fence. I slid down, took off my rucksack and threw it over the fence. I took a running jump, I was flying, and then I was over. I picked up the rucksack and held it in my arms the last few paces, underneath the bridge on the warm rocks and over to the still water and put it down, avoiding the cowpats. I scouted around. All I could see was a few cows. Not a soul in sight. I took off my sunglasses and all my clothes and stacked them in a pile and went naked over to the pool. I didn’t wait, I didn’t count, I just jumped in.
It was cold as hell.
Suddenly, and just like in the books, I felt a claw around my chest. I sank, I couldn’t move, the water was deep, and I felt my body starting to spin. This can’t be true, it’s too short a life, I thought, I am only thirteen, for Christ’s sake, and then I kicked for all I was worth, but the current was strong and I was pulled into it, my body spinning like a log. I couldn’t hold my breath for much longer, and then my hand hit a rock. I took hold and crouched round what air I had left and put my feet against the rock and kicked off and suddenly there was sun and dazzling yellow foam, and I drifted on to the next rock, and it was towering above me, and I clung to it and took breath after deep breath and gazed towards the bank. I was halfway out in the river, but the bank was not that far. I could make it. The cows lay chewing and watching me, their eyes large and round like vacant mirrors. I was nothing to them. OK, I thought, and then I jumped, and again it was cold, and there was a roar in my ears, I held my head high and swam with all my might, staring at the cows that glided past all too quickly.
‘Shit!’ I yelled and maybe it did some good, for soon I had solid ground under my feet and I could stagger on to dry land. Rotting branches and jagged stones dug into my feet, but I didn’t feel any pain.
Slowly I climbed the bank up to where my clothes were piled. My body was still cold, and my legs were heavy, I didn’t have the strength to run. There was a large cowpat, and I stopped right in front of it and stood there for a good while before deciding to walk around it on the right-hand side. When I got to my things, I lay face down on the grass. I can dry off in the sun, I thought, I will just lie here and rest a little, and then I’ll go on.
When I awoke I was lying in a room with a skylight in the ceiling. The air was grey, like smoke, and a narrow beam of light came down from above. The ceiling was grey and the walls grey. There was no door to the room, but I saw the railings of a staircase coming up in a corner. I ran my hand over my body, and I was naked under the duvet. It too seemed grey, and the faint light was a delicate light and as soft as the duvet, and everything seemed soft in here.
Slowly I rolled over, and my body felt very heavy, and through a window right down by the floor I could see a small part of the yellow barn. Beside the bed was a bucket. I had thrown up in it. I could not remember when. I checked to see if I felt sick, but I didn’t. Only very heavy. I closed my eyes.
The next time I awoke, I heard footsteps on the stairs. I opened my eyes and it was darker now, and I could barely make out a woman coming up behind the railing. She was a large woman and light footed, and her hair was dark in the darkness, and she was coming towards me. She stopped beside my bed and took the bucket and carried it to the stairs. She moved without a sound. I watched her through half-open eyes, pretending to be asleep. Then she came back, dipped her hand in her apron pocket and put something on a shelf by the bed.
‘What’s that?’ I said.
‘It’s your sunglasses. You were shouting and making such a terrible fuss about them that Leif went back to the river and found them where your clothes were.’
‘Did I shout?’
‘It can’t be denied.’
‘I don’t need them now. It’s so dark in here.’
‘That’s good. How are you?’
She smiled. ‘I guess you do. Look here now,’ she said and bent over me and pulled the pillow out and shook it and put it back behind my head. Her breast brushed against my cheek. It was large and soft. She straightened up. I closed my eyes.
‘Go back to sleep,’ she said.
‘Right.’
She walked without a sound towards the staircase, took the bucket and started down the steps. I could see her face. It wasn’t that round, and soon she would be all gone.
‘Who’s Leif?’ I said. She turned and smiled. Only her head could be seen above the floor.
‘That’s my husband. Signe is my name.’
Signe white, Signe soft, blessed Signe, I thought. Bless the day, bless your feet on the path and the light on your brow.
‘Get some more sleep. It’s night now. You can sleep for as long as you want. It’s nobody’s business.’
‘Right.’
And then she was gone. Everything went quiet again, and when I looked out the window by the floor, the yellow barn had turned grey. I could sleep some more. I could sleep for ever. Just lie here under this skylight and sleep.
The sun shone through the skylight and woke me. Now the whole room was white. I felt listless, but the heaviness was gone. My clothes lay on a spindle-back chair by the bed, and carefully I swung myself out and started to put them on. They were clean and dry. How could anyone have had the time? I thought. The column of light from the ceiling made the duvet and the sheet shine; it looked like something from the Bible we used to read at school. It was fine to look at, but I couldn’t stay around, I was famished.
I went to the stairs and tried not to make those creaking sounds on my way down, but it couldn’t be done. I came out into a hall with working clothes on hooks in a row, and there was an open door, leading to a room that was filled with light. Inside there was someone humming. I sneaked up to have a look and saw Signe by the worktop holding three large jars. She did not turn, and yet she said:
‘Is that the young lad? Don’t stand outside freezing!’ She laughed with a surprisingly soft, dark chuckle. ‘Come in and get yourself something to eat. You must be hungry as a bear. I’ve just been to the pantry to fetch some jam.’ I entered the room and sat down at the long table. I looked at the jars. That was a lot of jam.
From the kitchen I looked out to the yard. A Volvo station wagon was parked close to the house. Dried mud came up to the windows. Behind it, there was another car. It had no wheels and was propped up on four piles of bricks.
The kitchen was spacious and light and full of stuff that didn’t work any more and was going to be repaired or maybe had just been forgotten. There was a new stove next to the worktop, and in a corner stood a black wood burner, and the kitchen was warm and outside it was sunny, and light was everywhere. It was all very fine, but I had put my sunglasses on, just in case, and Signe didn’t mention them when she served me four thick slices of home-made bread on a board and added butter and jam. I ate as if it were the last food in the world, and Signe said:
‘There’s more where that came from, so you just take it easy. Enjoy the food.’ So I took it easy, and when I was almost finished, I heard heavy, shuffling footsteps in the hall. I stopped eating and looked up at the door. A big man was leaning against the door frame. He grinned at me. He had a stick in one hand and the other he was running through his close-cropped hair, and his hands were as big as boulders, and his bulging chest looked rock-hard.
‘Well, there’s the boy with the white bum,’ he said. Slowly I stood up from the table, there was no other door into the room, and the window looked as if it hadn’t been opened for years, and then I edged round the table and started to run towards him. It was like running into a brick wall. He was rock-hard. He let go of the stick and grabbed me round one shoulder, held my hair and looked me straight in the eye. He didn’t blink, and his eyes were the brilliant blue of a child.
‘Hello there, you young billy goat,’ he smiled. ‘What I meant to say was that if it hadn’t been for your bum I would never have seen you. I was in the Volvo, and suddenly I saw something white by the river that wasn’t there before, so of course I had to stop. You didn’t look too clever, I can tell you.’ He let go of my hair and stroked my cheek, and his hand was huge and dry and rough as the rock it resembled, and I stood quite still, and then I couldn’t hold back, and I started to cry. The tears came from everywhere in floods, and he gently pushed me back into the kitchen.
‘Eat up,’ he said, ‘and then come out to the cowshed and we can have a chat. I could do with a hand. My legs are not what they used to be.’
I sat back down at the table and ate the last slice and cried into the jam and Signe stood humming with her back to me and bent down to put more wood into the black stove. The fire was rumbling, and finally I was both full and empty and bursting at the seams.
‘When you’ve finished, you go out and find Leif, if you feel like it,’ Signe said.
I walked out into the sunshine with my dark glasses on. I couldn’t see Leif anywhere, but there was an old man in overalls standing in the yard. He was thin as a rake and tall, the overalls hung off his shoulders like a flabby tent, and he was holding his hands against the small of his back, gazing up into the air, so I too looked up, but there was nothing there, just air. Then he was aware of me, and he turned on his heel, and we stood up straight staring at each other, and he shook his head and stroked his chin and made a friendly gesture. I did the same, and when he smiled his face split in two, and he was off across the yard and behind the barn.
‘That’s Bjørn, the farm boy,’ Signe said behind me. I turned and there she was, standing in the doorway with a swill bucket in her hand. ‘He helps round here, looks after the horse and mucks out the cowshed. It’s the last door on the right,’ she said, pointing. I walked that way. The hook was off and the door was ajar, and through the crack I could hear Leif swearing like a trooper.
‘Goddamnit, you’re tryin’ to teach your father to fuck?’ he yelled, and then I heard a bang. When I entered, it was half dark, but past the empty stalls I could make him out among a few calves. In each hand he had a shiny pail. The biggest calf had small horns already and was banging against the nearest pail, pulling and tugging at the tether and making a hell of a row. Leif leaned over to put the pail in the trough, and the calf jerked its head and hit him on the temple.
‘You bastard!’ he shouted and dropped the pail on the floor and smacked the calf between the eyes. It gave a jolt. It’s going to keel over, I thought, I was certain of it, for his hands were like sledgehammers. But it shook its head and beat a retreat. Leif turned, holding his forehead and grinned.
‘Rearing the young is a tricky business.’
‘Is that what you do to children?’ I said slowly, sensing the open door behind me, and I already knew his legs were bad. The place stank of cow muck and cow feed, and calf bodies were crashing about in the murk, and he looked at me with round eyes. Then he shook his head and said:
‘People are not animals, Audun.’ He bent over the calf and patted its flank. I had no idea how he knew my name. He pushed the pail over to the calf.
‘You halfwit, Ferdinand, now there’ll be less for you. It’s your own fault,’ and the calf slurped up what was left in the pail, and Leif gently rested his upper chest on Ferdinand’s back and stroked its flank, and the calf stood quite still and just slurped. Leif straightened up, holding on to the calf’s back, grabbed his stick and came over to me.
‘Ferdinand will be a good bull, but he’ll be big, and it’s just as well he learns who’s boss from the off. Soon it will be too late.’
We walked out into the sun. I felt fine now. Apart from one thing.
‘How did you know my name?’ I said.
He laughed. ‘It was written on the inside of your rucksack. Come on, let’s go and say hello to Toughie.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘The scourge of the chicken run.’
Toughie was a fox. He was tied up behind the barn and was almost tame, and wonderful to behold at close quarters. When Leif approached, Toughie jumped up on the leash and smiled as foxes do but he wasn’t that tame. Whenever he screamed there was chaos in the chicken run. But no one would let Toughie go. They had grown to love him, and they would either have to kill him or drive him miles away, and that was not an option.
‘A fox is a fox,’ Leif said, ‘and now that he knows his way around, it’s no good to have him running loose.’
We walked around, and Leif showed me the place. The stable, the sheep shed, the tractor that wouldn’t start just now, and the two baby goats he kept for entertainment.
‘We’ve got no TV here, Audun, and we have to have something to amuse ourselves with.’ And he pointed to the yellow barn and said: ‘Isn’t it fine,’ and I said it was, and then we crossed the yard, and Leif got in behind the wheel of the Volvo, and I got in on the other side.
‘I’ve a job for you,’ he said. ‘Let’s drive off now, and if you see something on the road I should brake for, anything living or breathing or whatever, you tell me in good time.’
‘Right,’ I said. I didn’t understand why, but we drove off, and for a minute there I was afraid we were going back the way I had come, but we didn’t. We were going to the shop and that was in the opposite direction. At one point I saw a tractor ahead of us on the road, and I told Leif in good time, and then he put his right hand under his right leg and lifted it off the accelerator and on to the brake, and we stopped just a metre from it.
‘Leg’s not what it used to be,’ Leif said.
I was there for a whole week. At night I slept in the room beneath the skylight, and in the morning I got up, and Signe served me her home-made bread in the kitchen. And then I worked most of the day on the jobs that Leif decided I could manage. There were more and more, and I could not get enough, and in the evening I swam in the river at a far better spot than the first one I found. At ten o’clock I was sent upstairs with a hug from Signe, and I was so greedy for it that I blushed. I tried to think as little as possible, I just drank it all in. On Wednesday one of their sons came up and fixed the tractor. They let me join him for a test drive, and then I drove it alone across the farmyard with everyone watching and cheering. The engine roared, and I sat up high, and I could steer it wherever I wanted to go.
On Saturday it was raining, and Leif said ‘Thank God, that’s not a day too soon’, and for the first time, I went out into the yard without my sunglasses on.
When I got up on the eighth day and went downstairs, my father was standing in the kitchen. He was smiling, and he was clean-shaven, but in his eyes I could see what was in store for me. Leif was sitting at the table looking down as I came in.
‘Sorry, Audun, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. We had to let them know. Anything else would be illegal.’