He turned left on the bend by the art centre and into the high street. It was chilly along the road, but it was always colder in Lillestrøm and windier than anywhere else in Romerike, and the wind was moist and clingy and stuck to your skin.
From the high street he entered the mall, Lillestrøm City, through the swing doors, and right after the doors, before the shops unfolded to the left and right, he stopped in front of the door leading to the staircase and the lift and stood there waiting. There was a sign on the wall that among other things said: Social Security 2nd floor. I’ll have to go up there he thought, I have no choice. But he didn’t open the door. He looked at his watch. There was still another quarter of an hour. He walked into the mall and took the escalator down to the basement where the bakery was open, and from the lady behind the counter he bought a pastry, which he ate standing up, and when he looked at his watch, there were only five minutes to go. He took the escalator up to the ground floor and walked over to the lift, pressed the button and the lift was already there and on the second floor he got out and spotted the correct door at once, he had been here several times before, and he didn’t knock, he just walked straight in.
TOMMY ⋅ JIM ⋅ 1970
IT WAS PAST midnight. It had been Thursday, now it was Friday. They had turned off from the main road and on to the gravel road by the crossing, where the milk ramps had stood since the dawn of time, and were walking home after a party at Willy’s. Willy had moved from the neighbourhood and now lived closer to Mørk, in a detached house on a piece of flat land that was nothing more than that, not a field, not a meadow, it was strange that no one had put a plough to it.
Willy had two parents. When they were small Jim and Tommy had thought it was a creative idea to have two, at least for some time they did, until they realised it was what most people had, on a permanent basis. Jim still had his one, and Tommy had none. He had Jonsen, but Jonsen was also just one, it was he who kept Tommy on the leash. Not that it was much of a job. Now they were walking in the night and were a little drunk. Not very drunk, just drunk. As they walked, the drunkenness wore slowly off, evaporated and dissolved and drifted in between the trees like damp rags, and then it was easier to walk in a straight line, and it was May and not difficult to see the road in front of them, but you couldn’t say that it was light. If you were outdoors at night, standing by the corner of a house waiting for someone to come through the forest, someone you knew well, someone you had loved for years, it was hard to catch sight of her until she was quite close. But now there wasn’t far to go, a kilometre only, maybe less, and they would pass Sletten’s house, which was the first in the row as you came into the neighbourhood. You could make out the light from his outside lamp, and then there was a bend, and the light disappeared, and then the light returned.
At Willy’s there was beer and bickering about which records to play, and a couple of the boys who came down from Valmo had spirits with them in shiny hip flasks their fathers had given them in the hall on their way to the front door, or more likely, on the steps so their mothers wouldn’t see, and that was a pretty normal thing at least for Valmo. Just cut loose, the fathers said, that’s what youth is for, but for Christ’s sake don’t bring the knives with you. They would never have brought the knives with them, that time was over, hell, if there were knives, there would be old-time dancing and tango too, but there was trouble anyway, and a vase was smashed, a very pretty old vase decorated with Chinese symbols that was a favourite of Willy’s mother, and Willy, who was drunk, burst into tears. I will never be like you, he cried, I will never be like you, and that was true, of course, but Jim said it didn’t matter, Willy, he said, it doesn’t matter, it’s nothing to strive for, Jim said. And then a couple of the boys were spoiling for a fight, and Tommy stepped between them and almost lifted them apart, and anyway it wasn’t a real party if there were no girls. Why were there no girls there, why wasn’t Unni from the Co-op there, she always came, and Tommy was moving her way, everyone knew that, and why wasn’t Tone from school there, and why wasn’t Reidun there, what the hell had Willy been thinking. And it turned midnight, and Jim and Tommy looked at each other and put down whatever they were holding and left.
Outside on the steps, they stopped for a minute in the wonderful air, it was night, it was early May, and Christ, how wonderful the air was, it hadn’t rained for a week. Jim tried to roll a cigarette, but he couldn’t do it. Shreds of tobacco dropped from his fingers and the paper fluttered in the yellow light from the lamp above the door.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I can’t do it,’ and then he laughed. ‘I can’t do it,’ he laughed, and tried again, but he couldn’t do it. ‘Oh, shit and double shit,’ he laughed.
‘Give me the pouch,’ Tommy said. But he couldn’t do it, either. He didn’t smoke, but he was a master roller of cigarettes, he often rolled perfect ones for Jim, but now he couldn’t do it.
‘Goddamnit,’ he said, ‘I can’t do it’, and started to laugh. ‘Why the hell can’t I do it,’ he said, and then he gave up and said: ‘Let’s get out of here. You can smoke tomorrow.’ And then they left, not too steady on their feet, down the front steps of Willy’s house, and on to the road, and now they were almost there, they were almost home, they could just make out Sletten’s lamp shining between the trees.
Along one side of the road, the northern side, they saw the trenches the telephone company were digging for the new cables that would provide every single house in the neighbourhood with a possible telephone, and an excavator, proudly displaying the Brøyt marque from Bryne, stood lonely and forlorn under the birch trees and was unmanned now and quiet and stiff in all its joints, with the bucket resting on its knees in the grass. But the Brøyt couldn’t get into all the narrow corners, so there were pickaxes standing against the sides of the trenches in strangely abandoned poses, with their iron heads flat on one side and pointed on the other and were handy tools for soil like this, full of stones and gravel, as it was in the neighbourhood, and also there were spades left standing in the trenches, and claw tools, all equally quiet and abandoned, resting against the same walls waiting for the men to come in a few hours, the phone company workers. They were up with the lark every morning, and sometimes they were singing as they pulled the long cables along the trench from the huge reel on the back of the lorry, and it was nice to hear them sing when you stood by the postbox waiting for the bus to come, and everyone was amazed how people who couldn’t sing could do it anyway when they were singing with others, and one of them sang first and then the others chimed in.
They walked along the trenches all the way to the place where the workmen had stopped digging to go home at five in the afternoon and would resume their work at half-past six in the morning. It wasn’t far to the first house, to Sletten’s house, maybe thirty metres. His outside lamp was lit and cast its white glow over to the trench where they were standing, but otherwise the air was grey and grainy, peppery almost, and still it wasn’t light, it was nowhere near morning. It was a narrow place, no digger could make its way in here, so the same pickaxes, claws and spades were leaning against the walls of the trenches, as everything that needed to be done at this end had to be done by hand. Tommy and Jim went over and stood by the edge and looked down. The walls of the trench were glistening. Tommy turned to face Jim.
‘Are you still drunk.’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t feel very drunk.’
‘I’m not drunk,’ Tommy said. He looked down again. ‘What the hell,’ he said, and crouched and placed one hand on the ground, leaned over and swung himself down into the trench and stood at the bottom, and the glittering edges of the trench almost reached to his chest. He looked up at Jim, he laughed and said: ‘Well, maybe a little drunk,’ and Jim laughed and said:
‘Yes, maybe a little,’ and he too leaned forward and laid one hand flat on the ground and swung himself down into the trench and landed with a thud on his bent knees. It hadn’t been raining but the sides were moist with dew. If you ran y
our hand along the edges little stones and gravel stuck to your palms.
‘Well, let’s get going then,’ Tommy said.
‘Definitely,’ Jim said. And Tommy took the nearest pickaxe and with his legs apart he stood facing the end of the trench and from high in the air above his shoulder he struck out with the flat side of the pickaxe and Jim took a claw and stood at the ready, and Tommy swung the pickaxe into the side, as high as he could the first time, and at once the soil and stones tumbled into the bottom of the trench and piled up between his legs. And then he swung a second time, and a third, and the soil and stones kept falling, and he hacked at the side all the way down to the bottom, and there was a landslide of gravel and small stones and bigger, and they rolled between Tommy’s legs and piled up, and he just kept going. After ten or eleven swings of the pickaxe there was already a good pile between Tommy’s legs, and Jim stood a couple of steps behind him, so the pickaxe wouldn’t hit him in the head. But as soon as Tommy stopped to rest, Jim came with the claw and scraped the rubble towards him in long sweeps, away from Tommy so that Tommy had space for his legs, and Jim raked all of it away and scraped the ground clean and level along the sides so that nothing was left, and there was the same flat bottom here as in the rest of the trench, it looked so good. Then they both grabbed a spade, and from opposite ends they attacked the large heap they had collected and tossed the soil and the gravel and the stones up over the edge, each to their own side: Tommy to the north and Jim to the south, and as the trench was quite deep, they had to go at it hard, and soon they were exhausted. But still they kept going, and gradually as they were hacking and shovelling away the rhythm of it was easier to find, the sensible solution already existed, hidden in the work, in those specific movements, and was only waiting to reveal itself, and waiting for their hands and arms. And they felt it coming and moved towards it and fell into it and let their bodies swing for every stroke, first the tip of the spade into the pile and then a step back and a quarter-turn with their arms rising until the spade was over the edge where it stopped and sent the mass flying, and the spade did half the job with its own weight and speed, and their hips did their part of the job, and the knowledge of this came from the work itself and not from any particular place in the brain that stored these things from the day you were born, and every spadeful and every swivel of the hips balanced the load between each part of the body, and no one part did the job alone, and the body did not even want to stop.
‘Are you OK,’ Tommy said. ‘Can you do it,’ he said and Jim said:
‘Sure, I can, if you can,’ and Tommy laughed and said:
‘Hell, this is just such fun.’ And then he said: ‘Are there any lights on in the windows.’ Jim stood up and looked to both sides and then down the road, but all the windows were dark, only the line of outside lamps was lit.
‘All dark,’ he said. ‘The windows anyway.’
‘Perfect,’ Tommy said, and started hacking again, and there was another landslide of soil and gravel, and the stones slid down between his legs, and he kept on and on and swung his pickaxe and didn’t want to stop, and his hips yielded and straightened up again, they yielded and straightened up, as though he had ball bearings inside them, and they yielded and straightened up, and the gravel was streaming down between his legs after every swing and the stones came tumbling, and his hips yielded and straightened up, and Jim came behind him with the claw and scraped the pile towards him in long, greedy lunges until it was heaped up in a good mound, and he used his arms, and his shoulders too, and his back he used and raked the trench clean and flat to the walls, and with their spades they tossed the gravel high up over the edges, and the spades were down into the gravel before the last load had landed, yes, that’s how fast they were working, and suddenly Jim stood up and said:
‘We could sing like the phone company men do.’
‘Don’t stop,’ Tommy said, ‘we’ll get all stiff,’ and Jim bent down and thrust the spade into the gravel, and shovelling the gravel and stones, he said:
‘Yes, but it would be pretty good.’
‘We might wake someone up.’
‘We don’t need to sing that loud, just enough to help us with the digging. I mean, we’re down in a trench. No one will hear us anyway.’
‘OK. Why not. It has to be one that really fits, though,’ Tommy said, ‘or else it’ll just be a shambles, and we’ll lose the rhythm and get tired,’ and they thought hard as they hurled the gravel over the edge, and their hips swung back, and they thrust down the spades, and full of gravel and soil, they let it fly in even higher arcs, all the time wondering which song that might fit. They tried several Beatles songs and one by the Hollies, but they couldn’t get the rhythm right, and then they lost the beat, and Tommy said:
‘It won’t work. It’ll just be a shambles.’
‘Yes, maybe it will,’ Jim said, and then he said: ‘But listen to this one.’ And he began to sing:
Where’er you walk on hill and fell
A winter’s day, a summer’s night
and thrust the spade into the gravel, and swivelling round with the spade at knee height, he tossed the gravel out of the trench, up over the edge, and it worked and the rhythm was perfect if you didn’t sing too fast, and Tommy said:
‘No, no, we can’t sing a national anthem, it’s embarrassing, what if someone heard us.’
‘No one will hear us,’ Jim said. ‘We’ll be singing inside the trench,’ and they did. Down in the trench they sang ‘Norway in red, white and blue’ in very low voices, but still loud enough, and eventually it did help them with the rhythm, as soon as they had lost their embarrassment.
And then they were exhausted. They couldn’t lift another spadeful, they couldn’t lift a pickaxe. Their knees trembled so much it was hard to stand upright without leaning against something. They clambered out of the trench and sat on the edge with their legs dangling, inspecting the work they had done. Their breath came in quick, stuttering bursts, and all around them it was light, but no one was outside on the doorstep yet, no one had heard them singing. The light was on in Sletten’s kitchen. Jim picked up his pouch and rolled a cigarette. His hands shook, but for some reason this time he could do it, and he lit up and inhaled the smoke as deep as he could and then exhaled and smiled. They looked at each other, and Tommy said:
‘If I were a smoker, I would have smoked right now. You seem so damn pleased.’
Jim laughed.
‘So, how far did we get,’ he said.
‘Let’s see now.’ Tommy got up stiffly. ‘Oh, shit, am I stiff, or what,’ he said, almost struggling to the place where the telephone company men had stopped working the day before, where Jim and Tommy had taken over, and he paced the distance between that point and the point where the two of them had finished digging only minutes before.
‘About five metres,’ he said. ‘Not less than that,’ and it may not sound a lot, but it was, and Tommy was proud and said: ‘Not bad. We’re working heroes. We should be given medals.’ And Jim said:
‘In the Soviet Union the workers were given medals if they had worked really hard. In the 1930s at least, they got their medals. The best were given prizes. The Stakhanov Prize, it was called. It was a big deal.’
‘How do you know that.’
‘I know a lot of stuff.’
‘That’s true. You do. But we’re against the Soviet Union, aren’t we. After what happened two years ago.’
‘Definitely,’ Jim said.
‘Well, then we don’t give a shit about those medals,’ Tommy said. ‘We can do without them.’
Suddenly they heard the drone of a diesel engine down the road. Jim looked at his watch and got up and threw the cigarette butt into the trench and said:
‘Tommy, we’re off,’ and Tommy got to his feet and they were out of there before the the truck with the workers came round the bend. They walked in behind Sletten’s house and down along the row of houses at the back, where the living rooms were, and the woodsheds, and
a greenhouse was there with every third pane of glass smashed in its frame, and no one was in their living room on this side of the house, at this time of day, now all those who were up were in the kitchen at the front. So the two of them walked with the houses and the kitchen gardens on their left and the dip on the right, and across the field they saw Birkelunden and the pond where Lobo had almost drowned. He was dead now. The vet came out from Mørk to give him an injection. Jesus, he said, we’ll have to let him go, this has gone too far, this, too long, I should have come out before, and he did have a point, for Lobo couldn’t walk any more, he could barely stand upright when he ate. So there was no way round it. But this was several years ago now.
‘Do you remember Lobo,’ Jim said.
‘Of course I do,’ Tommy said.
‘I remember you saved him from drowning in the Bjørkerud Pond. Everyone talked about it afterwards. Your mother was there, wasn’t she. People wondered why she didn’t save him. Why you had to.’
‘My mother couldn’t swim.’
‘But grown-ups can touch the bottom there.’
‘I know,’ Tommy said.
‘You were only ten years old. You couldn’t touch the bottom, you had to swim.’
‘I know,’ Tommy said.
‘I know you know. I’ll keep my mouth shut.’
‘No it’s fine,’ Tommy said.
Now they had almost reached the end of the row, and it wasn’t something they had planned to do, to go there, they had been at Willy’s party, that was all, and then all of a sudden they were standing by the house that once had been the Berggrens’ house, at the back, and the windows were still boarded up with the same boards the carpenter had used that day, the man who had a yellow hammer painted on his red van. As far as they knew, no one had even touched the door handle since. It wasn’t that far from Jonsen’s house, some hundred metres only, but Tommy hadn’t been there, hadn’t walked past the Berggren house for four years. He could see it through the window from his seat in the school bus, but he always looked away as they went past.
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