Scenes from a Childhood

by Jon Fosse

  I’M HAPPY

  I’ve been to town to buy myself some new clothes. I bought a book of writings by Karl Marx. I lie on the bed and read words and sentences I don’t understand at all. The next day, I bring a dictionary home from the school I go to. I look up a lot of words. I understand a little, and I’m happy.

  I’VE JUST HEARD THAT A FRIEND DIED SUDDENLY

  It’s a dark autumn evening, wind, rain, I’ve come home for the weekend and am about to go back to my rented room. I’m living in the attic of an old outbuilding. When I get back to my room I’ll light the stove, then maybe write a little. I have an old typewriter my father gave me and it sometimes happens that I sit and write. I’m standing by the side of the road with a few other young people waiting for the bus. The road is black. The wind, the rain. Maybe a car drives past on the road. I hear the waves beating against the pier. I am going to secondary school. I live in a rented room. I’m scared. I’ll write. I look for the light from the bus.

  I ALWAYS AGREE WITH THOSE WHO DISAGREE

  I understand that some of what matters most is missing from our lives. So there needs to be a revolution.

  PAYING A VISIT

  Asle hears someone knocking on the door downstairs. And Asle gets up from the bed where he’s been lying and reading, he thinks so now someone’s dropped by to pay him a visit, he wasn’t expecting anyone, and he hurries downstairs, across the stone and dirt floor to the front door, he opens the door and sees Tollak standing there.

  Nice of you to pay me a visit, Asle says.

  Paying a visit, well I don’t know about that, Tollak says.

  Yeah I know, Asle says.

  Got to find something to do, Tollak says.

  Come in, Asle says.

  So this is where you live, huh, Tollak says.

  And Asle sees Tollak lean over and look into what should have been a hall but that his hosts use as a storage space for old garden tools, measuring chains, and other mysterious equipment.

  So, you live in a shed, Tollak says.

  Yeah, says Asle.

  Stone floor, Tollak says. Must get cold.

  Oh it’s all right with the stove, Asle says, and he and Tollak walk over to the stairs. Tollak stops and looks at the rat trap under the stairs.

  You have rats! he says.

  Asle nods. Tollak starts guffawing.

  Caught many? he says.

  Five or six in the past few days, Asle says.

  What do you do with them?

  Throw them out.

  Where?

  It’s not easy to know what to do with them, Asle says.

  Do you hear them in the walls? Tollak says.

  You’ll probably hear them too, but it’s mostly at night.

  Asle and Tollak go upstairs and into the room where Asle lives.

  That’s a beautiful old typewriter, Tollak says, and he walks over and strokes it gently.

  I got it from my dad, Asle says.

  So this is where you live, huh, Tollak says, and he sits down on the chair. A heathen, a communist, that’s what you are.

  Or an anarchist, Asle says.

  Yes, whatever, Tollak says, and he starts laughing. Anyway you’re something. I used to believe something like that too, he says. Not any more.

  I have some beer, Asle says.

  Yeah, let’s have some before we get on with it, Tollak says and he laughs. Anyway, I think I’m a communist too, Tollak says. I’m something, fuck, he says.

  Get rid of all the idiots, Asle says.

  Up against the wall and shoot ’em, Tollak says.

  That’s the best thing to do, Asle says, and he pours himself and Tollak some beer.

  PLASTIC PINK HANDBAG

  We’re coming home by boat. We’ve been on holiday. On the trip home I almost fell in the water far out to sea. My sister and I stand and watch the gangway being put on the dock. I’m carrying her handbag. A little plastic pink handbag. Our parents say we have to go ashore. We start walking. She’s holding my hand. We’re taken to where we’ll go down the gangway. I look down at the planks of the gangway. I see the pier. I look up. I see lots of people looking at me lead my sister while I carry a plastic pink handbag in my other hand and I let go of her hand and I put the plastic pink handbag into her hand and I hear them all start laughing.

  GIRLS

  Asle has a sister almost as old as he is. He always holds his sister’s hand. And a big boy tells Asle that he always holds girls’ hands, always.

  I BECOME A SMOKER

  I buy a packet of tobacco, roll a lumpy cigarette. A flash from a match. Someone who feels their body tingle and feels something good happen to their soul too.

  SWEDISH

  I’m hitchhiking a long way. I get a lift. I don’t dare say I’m Norwegian but I really want the people I’m sitting with to think I’ve hitchhiked a long way, so I tell the Germans I got a lift with that I’m Swedish. I buy myself an ice cream and buy one for their son too. I notice that they’re looking at me. They ask me if Norwegians understand Swedish and I nod, I say yes, they understand it perfectly.

  THAT GUY LASTED A LONG TIME, HE SAYS AFTER A LONG WHILE

  A girl and I are camping in a tent. She has a sleeping bag and we lie in the same sleeping bag with our clothes on. We lie there and hold each other, press against each other. Another couple is lying next to us and they’re doing the same thing. We bump against each other. She pushes her trousers down. But I don’t dare do it with her, I don’t take my trousers off. We lie there pressing and bumping into each other. The ones lying next to us finish their bumping quickly, but we lie there for several hours. Pressing, bumping.

  I AM SO HAPPY

  Some days, after we’ve taken the bus, I feel like the bus tickets are the best ever. I try to get as many as I can. I manage to get quite a few. My grandfather looks in his pockets too and finds some more bus tickets. Now I have those, too. I feel proud. I ask my grandfather what he would do if he had a whole roll of bus tickets, with dotted lines between each ticket, roll after roll of bus tickets. My grandfather says he’d give them to me and I am so happy. I knew he was going to say that, but I couldn’t be totally sure, could I.

  OUT IN THE WORLD

  A narrow road leads down from my house to a slightly wider road, and on the other side of the slightly wider road, almost right on it, is a not-so-big blue house. I think there are people living in that house. One green and glittering summer day, I take my sister by the hand and we go down the narrow road from our house, across the slightly wider road, down to the blue house. We stand looking at it. A man comes out. After a while a lady comes out too. They talk and joke around with us and then invite us in. We’ll have ice cream and soft drinks. The people from the blue house are talking to us the whole time, laughing, enjoying themselves. I think I say a lot of witty and wonderful things. My sister doesn’t say much.

  NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING

  Asle is helping to unload a boat. Several other boys and men are too. Pallet after pallet of sacks are hoisted from the cargo hold and the deck of the boat onto the pier. The pallets swing in the air, the boat bangs against the dockside. One pallet after another. Asle stands looking at the pallet in the air, then someone grabs his arm and pulls him back hard. Asle sees that it’s his father pulling him. And then Asle sees the pallet swing quick and hard to exactly where his head just was. Neither Asle nor his father says anything.

  IT’S A LONG WAY DOWN TO THE GROUND

  It’s a long way down to the ground. I’m little. A big boy has picked me up in his arms. He’s swung me around in a circle. I kicked and made a fuss. The big boy lifts me up over the edge of the concrete wall, he holds me in his arms out over the wall. It’s a long way down to the ground. I’m scared. I think that I have to stop kicking now.

  WAITING

  My mother isn’t at home. She’s in the hospital, my sister and I are going to get a brother or a sister. We’re at home. My sister is waiting and waiting for our mother to come back home. We go out and
walk down the road, the road that Mother is going to come back home from the hospital on. We sit down at the side of the road and wait. After a while I want to go back home, but my sister wants to keep sitting there waiting. I sit next to my sister and wait. It gets so boring that I want to go back home. But my sister wants to sit and wait. I say in that case I’ll go home alone. I go home and I don’t know what I should do, and so I start to wait for my sister to come back home. I have to find something to do. I walk up the road in the opposite direction from my sister and sit down to wait. After a while I see my sister coming up the road. She gets to me and sits down next to me.

  EVERYONE PROBABLY KNOWS THAT

  I.

  Asle and some friends and some girls are out in a boat. It’s the middle of summer. They’ve put tents up on a little island and now they’ve rowed out into the middle of the fjord. They have lots of bottles of cider with them. Asle has drunk a lot of cider. Asle decides he wants to go for a little swim, even though it’s the middle of the night and the boat’s in the middle of the fjord, so he gets undressed, down to his underpants, and jumps into the water. It’s very cold. Asle swims a little way off from the boat but realizes he can’t move his feet and then he tries to swim back to the boat but his legs don’t want to and he asks the people in the boat to reach out an oar to him and Åsmund reaches out an oar to him and pulls Asle into the boat. Åsmund takes Asle by the arms and pulls him back up into the boat. Asle is freezing and he gets dressed again. And then Asle has some more cider to drink.

  II.

  When Asle gets up to get out of the boat, he realizes his legs won’t hold him. He tries again, but his knees buckle. Everybody laughs. So they hold Asle up and get him back onto land and then Åsmund picks Asle up and carries him through the bushes and shrubs up across the steep quarry to the tent and puts him down on his sleeping bag. Asle says that his head is completely clear. Åsmund says that that may be true, but his legs aren’t.

  III.

  Åsmund and Asle sit in the tent and talk about this and that. And Asle thinks that his legs don’t feel so bad now, but that everyone probably knows that.

  HOW IT STARTED

  Geir and I went to the youth group that the pastor’s wife ran, and when youth group was over, when we were done with our cookies and hot chocolate, with the singing and talking, with the praying, when we were left to ourselves, when we could get out of there and run out of the large room, a room as big as three normal rooms, a room with doors inside it, doors that were open now, when we, me and Geir and the others, were done doing everything we had to do if we wanted to go to youth group at the pastor’s farmstead, when we were done with that, when we could rush out of the huge room, down the hall, up the stairs, up to the big attic, when there were no more songs to be sung, when we ran up to the big attic, lay down on the floor, and when the others came running in, when the girls came in, when that girl in particular came in.

  When she came in.

  When she came in from break, from all the breaks when you’d seen her, when she came in with her long hair, those small breasts just barely visible under her shirt, when she came running up the stairs and you knew that you’d never dare talk to her, as you wrestled and shouted there on the floor, playing with Geir or another one of your friends, when she came in you calmed down, you stopped kicking your legs, you stopped fooling around, joking, shouting, you calmed down, you were a bit embarrassed, you got up from the floor and suddenly you didn’t know where to go or what to do with yourself, your heart grew troubled because now she was there, she was near you, with her hair, her body, she was just a few yards away from you, so close, and you couldn’t talk to her even though she’d sent word to you two days before, even though one of her girlfriends had come up to you, giggling, and said she was supposed to say hi to you from her, from her, from her, the girl with the long hair. When she stood there, calmly, talking to one of the other girls, up in the half-dark attic at the pastor’s farm, with the other kids who went to youth group, and we all did, almost all the kids in the area went, when she stood there with her new breasts, her long hair, and she smiled at her girlfriend, and you stood there, stood there alone while the others wrestled, and felt a sadness grow large inside you, that was probably when it actually started.

  That was when the music came to you.

  There and then it came, and it’s never left. And afterwards, after youth group at the pastor’s place was over and it was time to go home. Everyone was supposed to go their own way, and no one did. We walked down the road. A group of boys and girls walked down the road, away from where some of us lived and towards where others of us lived. It was autumn, it was dark, and we were walking down a small country road, in the rain, in the wind. We walked down the road, it was dark, and we heard the fjord. The sea that was always there. The waves. We walked down the road, me and Geir, and some others, and she was there. She and Geir were walking and talking together. I was walking and talking with another girl, a completely other girl, a totally different girl, a girl from my year, and we were friends, we could talk to each other easily, but she, the one walking a few yards ahead of me, with her hair, with those new breasts under her jacket, the girl walking and talking with Geir, I couldn’t forget her for a second. I was walking with another girl, and maybe that was the girl Geir wanted to be walking with. We talked and joked. Ahead of me she was walking, and Geir put his arm around her back, she put her arm around Geir’s back. I was walking behind Geir and her, together with a girl from my year, and I put my arm around her shoulder, and she gently leaned into me. We talked and joked. A group of us were walking down the road, we were in one of the oldest years in the youth group, some of us had recently started at the district school. It was autumn, dark. Rain. You could hear the fjord. The waves. We walked down the road. We stop at a bus shelter, go inside, and someone, someone who dares, says we could play the Touch Hug Kiss game, no one answers but everyone wants to, and then there’s someone who leads the way and the game can start, just Touch at first, gently caressing the cheek, boys and girls picked at random stroking their chance partner’s cheek, in a bus stop, sheltered from the rain, it’s an early autumn evening and there is the sound of the fjord. The waves. Someone dares to say Hug and then stands there, partly embarrassed, partly brave, and hugs someone of the other sex. A very short hug, a slightly longer hug. The others don’t stare, they look away, look down, barely look at the pairs standing there hugging each other. Time passes and we get used to the game, get braver, more confident. The rain picks up, the wind gets stronger and the waves beating on the shore sound clearer. The evening gets darker. We dare to get closer to each other. We say Kiss, and once the ones who said it were assigned the ones who were to receive the kiss, who, according to the random chance of the game, were going to be kissed, when those going to kiss step out of the darkness towards those who are going to be kissed, no one looks, we all look down. There is only darkness and rain around the pair, we others have disappeared, each into our own mute solitude even though there is a silent companionship surrounding the solitude, yes, a companionship where no one says anything but we are with each other, not that we’re people for each other, but we’re there, and then it was her turn and I catch sight of her eyes in the darkness, I can just make out that long hair of hers, and she has said Kiss and I hope with all my might that it won’t be me she’s supposed to kiss, it has to be Geir, because it’s Geir she wants to kiss, not me, it can’t be me, I wish and hope with all my might, and then it is me and I have to emerge from the dark companionship, with my hair, with my body, and she comes up to me, I stand there, not feeling the rain, I feel only how I’ve pushed my way forward, how I’ve forced myself to join this game, it’s not my kind of thing, I’m just going along with it, it’s not meant for me, but I always push, all I want is to go back into the silence of the others, I stand there in my wet jacket, my hands hanging straight down, and she quickly comes over to me, comes out of the darkness, with her eyes, with her hair, and she put
s her two arms around me, we stand there, jacket to jacket, my hair is wet and I feel her hand rubbing up and down my back and then she moves her half-open mouth towards my chin, the warmth from her lips, her mouth, and wetness, a warm wetness, nothing more, but so unlike anything else, so separate, a single short second and everything’s different, there in the bus shelter, the darkness, the rain, and then we went further, the whole group, went further down the black road along the shore, the beating waves almost reached the road in some places, we went further, I was still walking behind the others, she and Geir were walking up ahead, with their arms around the other’s shoulder, we walked like that to the co-op shop, where we stopped, and we stood there in the light from the shop windows, I was standing with a girl from my class, we talked and joked, we chatted together the same way we always did, I tried to be the same as I’d always been, and then we walked home, I took her hand and we walked hand in hand across the road back to where she lived, then we gave each other a hug, and she went inside, and I went back with the others, walked home, heard the waves, Geir and she were both still there too, walking and holding hands, both of them without a word, none of us said a word and we got to my house, I said goodbye, ran up to my house, up the road, told my mother I wasn’t hungry, went up to my room. That was actually when it started. It was on nights like that, after youth group at the pastor’s place, after we’d done this and that, it was on those dark autumn nights after the grown-ups had finished fulfilling their educational obligations and we were on our own, by ourselves, were there with everything we had to do, it was on those nights when we walked down the road, boys and girls, when we were by ourselves with all these things, that it started, that it started with her, the girl with the long hair, the girl Geir used to walk and hold hands with, the girl with the new breasts, she was there a long time, several years, and I still feel something in my body, I feel how the waves were beating, I feel as if something is lodged fast in my body, in my movements. That was how it started, in the dark, the rain, on a road along a shore, there were waves always beating, and skin that grew bigger and bigger. Her kiss was a mark on my skin, it was like it entered into my body and stayed there. She’s married now, her kids are grown, she’s a housewife and she usually goes to village parties with her husband. They were there the summer we played at the village party. She was there, but her body is more shapeless now. Her hair is short. Her breasts have grown much bigger.