Linda thought that was fun, she even laughed, with laughter that sounded like a wish had come true, I don’t know whether it was hers or mine.
But Freddy 1 didn’t want to take off his coat for some reason, and when at length he left, because he was beginning to boil, I presume, Mother said:
“What’s wrong with him?”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s twice the size of you.”
On Saturday afternoon there was a din coming from the sitting room, and when I went to investigate, I found Kristian and Mother involved in a heated exchange which stopped as soon as they caught sight of me.
“I just wanted to give you this, Finn,” Kristian said meekly, holding up his chess board. “As a farewell gift.”
“You’ve no business giving him anything at all,” Mother said.
I beat a hasty retreat, even though I would very much have liked that chess set. But as I was leaving for school on Monday morning I saw that his hat and coat were still hanging in the hallway, and in the afternoon I asked Mother how that could be, but all I got by way of a reply was some mumbling about the lodger having been given a period of grace until he found himself something else.
I would have liked to ask more questions, or say “Eh?”, at least. But this was not the easy matter it used to be. It was past ten o’clock, I still remembered in a vague, hazy kind of way the morning I woke up with three broken ribs, and Mother was going to work even though she was supposed to finish at one that day. Perhaps it was not so strange, or perhaps that was exactly what it was. Furthermore, she was back at home when we returned from casualty, and that was perhaps not so strange either, at any rate it wasn’t worth making any enquiries or delving further, that was just the way things were, the distance between us that had grown with Linda’s arrival, which I thought we had succeeded in bridging, had instead increased.
I was out a lot during the weeks that followed, came home from school, threw my bag in the hall and went out again, even pretended I didn’t hear when Marlene called me, did I want a bite to eat? This isn’t the sort of thing you choose to do. These are decisions that make themselves, and you can allow yourself to be guided by them because something new is happening – such as the coming of spring; for Linda it is a skipping rope and paradise, she has never seen any of this and has to learn everything from scratch. But she is still slower than the usual beginner, and not many weeks pass before my interest in the poor mite is on the wane. And I have to avert my eyes. Well, actually, I don’t, I have a kind of observation post up on Hagan which gives me an uninterrupted view of the estate, and from there I can see Linda sitting on the steps, alone, outside our entrance. And then I have an observation post on the slope facing Trondhjemsveien, and from there I can see her, too, alone, and even though I don’t show it and I allow myself to be swallowed up by the various sudden wave-like movements that surge through a motley group of kids and carry them on to ever new adventures, I see her all the time, and that irritates me, because it seems to me that she is sitting exactly where she is sitting with the sole intention of making me look at her. I go down and ask.
“Why are you sitting here?”
She doesn’t understand the question, smiles, and she is happy to see me and gets up and doesn’t even take my hand, but stands there shuffling her feet, waiting for
me
to take her hand and get up to some fun, which I often do when no-one is watching.
“Don’t sit like that,” I say.
“?”
“With your head down, I mean. Sit up.”
I show her how, and she sits up straight, I nod, but it is not to my complete satisfaction, because something somewhere inside me tells me the reason she is sitting here alone is not just due to the fact that all the others are idiots, but that there is something about her, I can’t work out what
But Freddy 1 didn’t want to take off his coat for some reason, and when at length he left, because he was beginning to boil, I presume, Mother said:
“What’s wrong with him?”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s twice the size of you.”
On Saturday afternoon there was a din coming from the sitting room, and when I went to investigate, I found Kristian and Mother involved in a heated exchange which stopped as soon as they caught sight of me.
“I just wanted to give you this, Finn,” Kristian said meekly, holding up his chess board. “As a farewell gift.”
“You’ve no business giving him anything at all,” Mother said.
I beat a hasty retreat, even though I would very much have liked that chess set. But as I was leaving for school on Monday morning I saw that his hat and coat were still hanging in the hallway, and in the afternoon I asked Mother how that could be, but all I got by way of a reply was some mumbling about the lodger having been given a period of grace until he found himself something else.
I would have liked to ask more questions, or say “Eh?”, at least. But this was not the easy matter it used to be. It was past ten o’clock, I still remembered in a vague, hazy kind of way the morning I woke up with three broken ribs, and Mother was going to work even though she was supposed to finish at one that day. Perhaps it was not so strange, or perhaps that was exactly what it was. Furthermore, she was back at home when we returned from casualty, and that was perhaps not so strange either, at any rate it wasn’t worth making any enquiries or delving further, that was just the way things were, the distance between us that had grown with Linda’s arrival, which I thought we had succeeded in bridging, had instead increased.
I was out a lot during the weeks that followed, came home from school, threw my bag in the hall and went out again, even pretended I didn’t hear when Marlene called me, did I want a bite to eat? This isn’t the sort of thing you choose to do. These are decisions that make themselves, and you can allow yourself to be guided by them because something new is happening – such as the coming of spring; for Linda it is a skipping rope and paradise, she has never seen any of this and has to learn everything from scratch. But she is still slower than the usual beginner, and not many weeks pass before my interest in the poor mite is on the wane. And I have to avert my eyes. Well, actually, I don’t, I have a kind of observation post up on Hagan which gives me an uninterrupted view of the estate, and from there I can see Linda sitting on the steps, alone, outside our entrance. And then I have an observation post on the slope facing Trondhjemsveien, and from there I can see her, too, alone, and even though I don’t show it and I allow myself to be swallowed up by the various sudden wave-like movements that surge through a motley group of kids and carry them on to ever new adventures, I see her all the time, and that irritates me, because it seems to me that she is sitting exactly where she is sitting with the sole intention of making me look at her. I go down and ask.
“Why are you sitting here?”
She doesn’t understand the question, smiles, and she is happy to see me and gets up and doesn’t even take my hand, but stands there shuffling her feet, waiting for
me
to take her hand and get up to some fun, which I often do when no-one is watching.
“Don’t sit like that,” I say.
“?”
“With your head down, I mean. Sit up.”
I show her how, and she sits up straight, I nod, but it is not to my complete satisfaction, because something somewhere inside me tells me the reason she is sitting here alone is not just due to the fact that all the others are idiots, but that there is something about her, I can’t work out what
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