would be reunited with her father just after she'd broken her
neck, and so the old lady might as well take her caravan and
move to Sweden. She thought it was wonderful that Panina
Manina was going to be reunited with her father, but not
quite so wonderful that she had to break her neck before he
recognised her.'
I was in a bit of a quandary about how to continue. Not
because it was difficult, quite the opposite, but simply
because there were so many possibilities to choose from.
'Now Panina Manina sells candy-floss at the circus from a
wheelchair,' I said. 'It's a special kind of candy-floss that
makes everyone laugh so much at the clowns that they can
hardly catch their breath. And once there was a boy who
really couldn't. He thought it was fun to laugh at the
clowns, but not quite so funny to lose his breath.'
This was really the end of Panina Manina's story. I'd
already begun the story of the boy who laughed so much
that he lost his breath. And there were lots of other circus
performers to consider. I was responsible for the entire
circus.
My mother didn't realise this. 'I suppose Panina Manina
had a mother too?' she said.
'No,' I said (or, to be accurate, I think I screamed it). 'She
was dead as a matter of fact!'
And then I began to cry. Perhaps I cried for a whole hour.
As always, it was my mother who comforted me. I didn't cry
because the story was sad. I cried because I was scared of my
own imagination. I was also afraid of the little man with the
bamboo stick. He'd been perched on the Persian pouffe
during my narrative, looking at my mother's gramophone
records, but now he'd begun to pace about the room. I was
the only one who could see him.
The first time I'd set eyes on the little man in the green
hat had been in a dream. But he broke out of the dream and
since then he's followed me all my life. He thinks he's in
charge of me.
It was all too easy to make things up, it was like skating on
thin ice, it was like doing dainty pirouettes on a brittle crust
over water thousands of fathoms deep. There was always
something dark and cold that lay beckoning beneath the
surface.
*
I've never had any difficulty telling imagination and reality
apart. The problem has always been to distinguish between
recalled fantasy and recalled reality. That's quite another
matter. I always knew the difference between what I was
actually observing and what I only imagined I was observing.
But gradually, as time went by, separating actual occurrences
from experiences I'd made up, could get tricky. My memory
hasn't got special compartments for things I've seen and
heard and things I've simply conjured up. I've only got one
memory in which to store both the impressions and imagin-
ings of the past: in glorious unity they combine to form what
we call recollection. Despite this, I sometimes assume that
my memory is failing when I occasionally mix up the two
categories. This is an imperfect description at best. When I
recollect something as really experienced, that in truth was
only a dream, it's because my memory is far too good. I've
always felt it a triumph of memory that I'm capable of
recalling events that have only taken place in my own head.
I was often at home alone. My mother was at her job in the
City Hall until late in the afternoon, and sometimes she
went out visiting female friends. I never hung about with
other children, I preferred not to. Activities with friends
were nothing compared to all the things I could find to do
on my own.
I've always liked my own company best. The few boring
episodes I recall from my childhood were always spent in
the company of others of my own age. I remember their
dull, nit-picking games. I sometimes said I had to hurry
home because we were expecting guests. It wasn't true.
I remember well the first time some boys rang the
doorbell and asked if I wanted to come out and play. Their
clothes were dirty, one of them had a snotty nose, and there
they were, asking me if I wanted to come out and play
cowboys and Indians. I pretended I had a stomach ache, or
gave some other, more plausible excuse. I couldn't see the
point of playing cowboys and Indians round the cars and
drying racks. I could play the game far better in my own
imagination where there were real horses and tomahawks,
rifles and bows and arrows, cowboys, chiefs and medicine
men. I could sit in the kitchen or in the living room and,
without lifting a finger, stage the most colourful battles
between braves and palefaces, and I was always on the side of
the Indians. These days almost everyone is on the side of the
Indians, but it's rather too late now. Even when I was three
or four years old I made sure the Yankees got some stiff
resistance. Without my efforts there might not be a single
Indian reservation around today.
The boys tried again on several occasions. They wanted
me to join them in tossing pennies, playing marbles or
football or shooting peas, but this urge to get me outside
tailed off pretty quickly. Soon, there were no more scam-
pering feet on the stairs. I don't think anyone called for me
after I was eight or nine years old. Now and again, I would
sit behind the Venetian blind in the kitchen and spy on
them. It could be amusing at times, but I never felt the need
for any physical contact with my peers.
Only the onset of puberty broke this mould. From the
age of twelve I began to think of lots of things I could
get up to with a girl of my own age, or one considerably
older for that matter. Yearning made me restless, but no
girl ever came and rang our doorbell and asked me if I'd like
to go out with her. I'd have had little objection to accom-
panying a girl I liked on a trip to the woods or to the Newt
Pond.
I didn't feel lonely until there was something to yearn for.
Loneliness and longing are two sides of the same coin.
*
When I was at home by myself I made regular use of the
telephone, almost always to make what I called 'silly calls'.
High up on the list of silly calls were taxis. I once rang for six
taxis to go to the same address on the other side of the road. It
was really comical to sit at the kitchen window watching all
the cabs turning up. Soon all the taxi-drivers jumped out and
began to talk to one another. They must have thought they
were picking up guests from some huge coffee morning.
Finally, one of them went to the entrance of the flats and rang
the ground floor bell. But there was no Mrs Nielsen living
there. That was news to them, but not to me. They stood
there gesticulating, and then clambered back into their taxis
and drove off at top speed. One of them stayed behind and
looked around as if he was standing on a great stage. But he
&nb
sp; didn't catch sight of any audience. Perhaps he thought only
God could see him. I sat there squinting down at him
through the slats of the Venetian blind, I smiled, I sipped at
a glass of Simpson's orange juice, but the man didn't stir. He
might at least have got into his cab and turned the meter off.
Calling up taxis to go to other parts of town was fun as
well. It was amusing to think of my taxis setting off and
driving round the city even though I couldn't actually watch
them myself. I saw them clearly enough in my head, and
that was almost as priceless as seeing the real thing. Some-
times I called up ambulances and fire engines as well. Once I
phoned the police and said I'd seen a dead man in the nearby
paddock. I had to give my name, my address and which
school I went to. It was easy, I just made something up. I
knew that the police car had to drive past our block to get to
the paddock. It passed us after only eight minutes, and two
minutes later an ambulance drove past as well. They were
my cars.
I'm quite certain all this is recalled reality. The black
telephone on the little table in the hall was a constant
temptation. Sometimes I'd just plonk myself down on the
spindle-backed chair by the hall table and dial a number at
random. Until 4 p.m. it was almost invariably women who
answered, and when I'd got a woman on the line, I'd disguise
my voice and ask, for example, how often she and her hus-
band screwed. I'd ask if she'd screwed with other men too.
Or I'd introduce myself as a Customer Consultant for Saba
de Luxe. I used to see how long it took the women to hang
up. As a rule it was over in a few seconds, but I once talked to
a woman for more than half an hour. After that I couldn't be
bothered to go on - there were limits - and I asked some-
thing so impertinent that even she had to give up. 'I've never
heard the like,' she exclaimed. No, you certainly haven't, I
thought, as she slammed the phone down. How privileged
she'd been to speak to me for more than half an hour!
Sometimes I made up long tales to feed to the women I
spoke to. For instance, I might spin a yarn about how Mum
and Dad had taken the boat to England and gone off to
London, leaving me on my own at home for ten days even
though I was only seven. I might add that, now we'd got a
fridge, Mum had left me lots of food, but that I couldn't get
anything to eat because I was scared of sharp kitchen knives.
Or I might kick off the conversation by saying that my
father was away grouse shooting and that my mother was
desperately ill in bed, too ill to speak. Provided I gave my
name and address, the offers of emergency aid and assistance
were limitless. But naturally, I couldn't divulge such sensi-
tive information. So it was better to say that a little man
had made me ring just for fun. 'He's only a metre tall and
he's rushing around the flat,' I might say, 'and if I don't do
what he says, he'll beat me with his stick.'
Once my mother complained about the phone bill. She
was truly distracted, so I owned up at once. I explained that I
often telephoned the lady who spoke the time even though
I knew what it was. I said I used to ring the talking clock
again and again just because I was bored. I pretended I didn't
know that the voice wasn't that of a real woman. I said I was
trying to get her to answer me and that was why I phoned
again and again. By the time I'd finished speaking, my
mother had forgiven me. I'd been banking on that. We
agreed that from then on I'd limit myself to two calls per
day, and it was a promise I kept. I didn't even regard it as a
curb. Now I had to think carefully about who I wanted to
talk to. It was even better. Working out who I wanted to
phone was almost as entertaining as phoning itself. There
was no waste of call units after that.
I'm fifty per cent sure that I once spoke to the Prime
Minister, Einar Gerhardsen. But that could as easily be
fantasy recall. I am, however, one hundred per cent certain
that I rang the Nora factory and complained about buying a
bottle of pop that tasted of vinegar. I know this for a fact,
because several days later a whole case of the stuff arrived on
our doorstep. I told my mother I'd won it in a competition
at the shop. She asked lots of questions, which was good,
because I had to make up answers all the time. I think my
mother liked this kind of intelligent conversation too. She
wouldn't let it drop until she was absolutely convinced I was
telling the truth.
On one particular occasion I had an interesting conversa-
tion with King Olav. We agreed to take a long skiing trip
together as neither of us knew anyone we enjoyed going out
with. He told me over the phone that he found being a king
boring, and then asked me if I thought it was childish of him
to want to buy a gigantic model railway and set it up in
the palace ballroom. I said I thought it a marvellous idea
provided I was allowed to help him build it. He had to
promise it would be a Marklin train set and at least four
times the size of the model railway in the Science Museum. I
knew that the king was far richer than the Science Museum.
I had a steam engine and a Meccano set, but no Marklin
model railway.
I'm ninety-nine per cent certain that this business with
the king is remembered fantasy. Which doesn't mean it isn't
true. The model railway that the king and I built at the
palace in the weeks that followed, was just as real as the sun
and moon. To this day I retain an exact picture of the final
layout, I can still see all the tunnels and viaducts, points and
sidings. In the end we had more than fifty different loco-
motives, almost all with lights.
One day the Crown Prince came in and insisted we
remove the whole lot because he and his young friends
wanted to use the ballroom for a party. The Crown Prince
was fifteen years my senior and I respected him deeply, but it
did seem unreasonable that he should suddenly start giving
the king orders. It was a breach of tradition, if nothing else.
When the king and I didn't agree to clear away the layout
immediately, the Crown Prince quickly returned with a large
pot of yoghurt which he proceeded to hurl at it. The pot
disintegrated, of course, and the yoghurt splattered all over
the layout so that it began to resemble a snowy landscape,
though it didn't smell much like a winter walk in the woods.
From then on there was no train service at the palace.
*
Because she worked at City Hall, my mother often got free
tickets to theatres and cinemas. She was always given two
tickets, and since she and my father couldn't stand the sight of
each other, I had to go with her. It meant she didn't have to
track down a baby-sitter. I'd worn out many a baby-sitter.
We always used to dress up to go to the theatre, and m
y
mother would often hold a little fashion parade for my
benefit before making up her mind which costume or dress
to wear. My mother called me her little escort. It was I
who'd take off her coat and hand it to the cloakroom
attendant. It was I who'd keep the matches in my jacket
pocket and light her cigarettes, and when she found some-
one to talk to in the interval, it was I who'd stand in the
queue to get the drinks. On one occasion I was about to buy
a fizzy orange for myself and a Cinzano for my mother, but
the woman behind the bar refused to give me the glass of
Cinzano even though my mother was winking energetically
at her from only a few feet away. The woman said she
wasn't allowed to serve Cinzano to children, so would my
mother please come to the bar and collect the drink herself.
That made my mother hopping mad. Not many children
went to adult plays and my mother knew that the woman
behind the bar recognised me.
After we'd been to a theatre or cinema, I always used to
tell my mother how the play or film could have been vastly
improved. Sometimes I'd say straight out that I thought a
play was bad. I never said it was boring, I never thought the
theatre was boring. Even a poor play was fun to watch � if
nothing else, live people were performing - and if the play
was really bad, I was in my element, because then we had
masses to talk about on the way home.
My mother didn't like me saying that a play was bad. I
think she'd rather I'd said it was boring.
When we got home from a theatre or cinema, we quite
often sat in the kitchen and continued the discussion there.
My mother would light candles and make something nice to
eat. It might be something quite ordinary like bread with
saveloy sausage and pickled gherkins, but my favourite was
steak tartare sandwich with raw egg yolk and capers. My
mother thought I was too young to like capers � it was
something we discussed lots of times - but I believe, deep
down, she enjoyed the fact that I had a taste for capers at
such a tender age. The only thing she didn't like was when I
said a play was bad, or that such and such a director was
awful.
I always read the programme thoroughly - after all, it was
written for me - and naturally I knew the names of the
principal performers. My mother thought I was taking
things a bit far, though, when I got to know the names of
all the designers too. But I was her escort, and so she had to
accept it. During the performance I might whisper the name
of the stage manager to her, at least if anything went wrong
during the show.
On one occasion, in Ibsen's A Doll's House, Nora's dress
fell down � it just slid off right in front of Dr Rank. They
were all alone in the drawing room, and Dr Rank's last line
made it extra funny that Nora lost her dress in that particular
scene. 'And what other delights am I to see?' asked Dr
Rank. 'You'll see nothing more, because you're not nice,'
replied Nora. She tore herself away from the doctor and just
then her dress fell off. I leant towards mother and whispered
the name of the dresser in her ear.
Once when we'd sat far into the night discussing a play, I
told my mother that I thought she looked like Jacqueline
Kennedy. I believe my mother enjoyed hearing that, and it
wasn't just something I'd hit on to flatter her. I really did
think my mother was almost the spitting image of Jacqueline
Kennedy.
When I was eleven, my mother and I went to see Chaplin's
film Limelight. Watching that film turned me into an adult.
The first time I felt the desire to do things to a girl
considerably older than me was when I saw Claire Bloom
in the role of the unhappy ballet dancer. The second time
was when I watched Audrey Hepburn playing Eliza in My
Fair Lady. My mother had got tickets for the Norwegian
premiere.
I was particularly fond of Chaplin, not least because of his
film music, and especially the well-known theme in Lime-
light, even though the first few bars were just an inversion of
the exposition of Tchaikovsky's piano concerto in B minor.
The melody 'Smile' from Modern Times was little better: it
The Ringmaster's Daughter Page 2
