When we were finally allowed through the eye of the needle we felt like camels at the end of a long desert trek. But before we had entered properly, the music blew our hair back, and even Finckel was almost knocked off his perch.
We worked our way forward to a round table at chest height where the three of us could stand, and Finckel fetched three tall, narrow glasses of pils from the bar. ‘It’s half a litre, even though it doesn’t look like it,’ he shouted.
‘Is there a surcharge for height?’ I shouted.
He opened his palm and examined the change. ‘And a luxury tax, it seems.’
Jakob leaned forward and shouted, a little less loudly: ‘Be honest. Aren’t we a bit old for this?’
We looked around.
We were definitely at the top end of the age scale. Most of the girls would have preferred to dance with other girls than with us. The noise from the sound system was ear-piercing, penetrated our bones and rocked us back and forth, from side to side, back and forth, side to side, in a way that aged us prematurely, pursued us to the bottom of our beer glasses and back to the bar for another. We were like terrified aquarium fish in a pool reserved for sharks.
On the street again, the queue of young people laughing at us behind our backs, Finckel immediately admitted his mistake. ‘Sorry, boys. I misread their ID. I should’ve scrutinised their dates of birth more carefully. Wax Cabinet next. That’s where our ladies hang out …’
But when we arrived at the place known locally as the Wax Cabinet, what Finckel called our ladies were already in action.
We squeezed onto a table for two beneath a palm tree covered with artificial snow and subjected the room to our searching gazes.
At least they were doing dances we knew the steps to. A three-piece band with a beat box and keyboard sang ‘Fjellveivisen’, a Bergensian love song, with a swing rhythm and an Italian accent. The vocalist was definitely from Knarvik, but his two colleagues more likely hailed from Naples than Nordnes.
‘You know what they call that keyboard, or remote keyboard, as it’s known technically, don’t you?’
‘No, tell us.’
‘A chick-catcher. After they came onto the market, they made it easier for the pianist to pick up girls from the stage.’
‘I can feel the mike’s calling you,’ Finckel grinned.
Jakob shook his head. ‘Oh, no. Not anymore. It’s when I see and hear stuff like this I’m happy we stopped when we did.’
‘How long did you keep going?’ I asked.
‘Until the mid-seventies.’
‘Johnny’s still at it,’ Finckel said.
Jakob grinned wryly. ‘Johnny was different from the rest of us. For him there were only two options: going on or hitting’ – he pointed to the floor – ‘rock bottom.’
‘Why did you stop?’ I asked.
His eyes moved in my direction, snatched a quick look and then carried on. ‘We … just stopped.’
‘Waiter!’ Finckel shouted with a hand raised.
A small, dumpy waiter with dark curls and thick horn-rimmed glasses gave us a grease-stained menu each and left us to study our exotic culinary travels for ten minutes before returning to note down our destinations. After ordering we went back to our beers.
Our ladies were still in action. They were dancing like young girls. What was sad about them was that they danced like young girls had done thirty years before. If they had gone to the place we had just left, they would have been regarded as ancient relics of the Silurian period. But they knew they had passed their prime and were enjoying themselves.
‘I have a theory,’ Finckel said. ‘The only one of us three with a real chance here is me.’
‘Oh, yes?’ I said, looking around. At the table beside us sat a woman of my age, with a beautiful but inebriated face, on which time and anxiety had left their marks, like birds’ feet in virgin snow. She had a lit cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, and for a moment I thought I had caught her eye, before I realised she was staring at the empty space between us.
‘You, Jakob, look much too youthful with the bush you’ve grown on your mug,’ he continued. ‘And you, Varg, my lad, you’ve got a bit too much spring in your step. These ladies here, whose bodies haven’t quite withstood the ravages of time, and certainly can’t take strong lighting, they prefer to see themselves reflected in a body that’s even more run-down. That’s why they’ll choose one like mine,’ he said with a proud smile, gripping his stomach and hoisting it, then carefully letting it fall back over his belt.
‘So we should’ve stayed where we were, in other words?’ I said.
He laughed. ‘No, no, no. The age gap was too great. Two ladies in their thirties would be right for you.’
‘Do you know any?’
‘Yes, if you like them well used.’
‘That’s typical of you.’
Soon afterwards he was dancing with the woman from the adjacent table. She floated like an unacknowledged ballerina between his short arms, but her head was way, way back and they communicated only with their lower bodies.
Jakob and I drowned our lost youths in two more beers, tucked into burnt steaks and overcooked cauliflower and our heads felt heavier and heavier. It had been a long day, as days that start with a funeral are wont to be.
‘I remember once when we were in upper secondary, Varg. There was a whole gang of us who went to Neptun after a society meeting – the last one in the spring, in May. They had some lilies on the table. You put a bunch in your beer glass and asked: ‘Do you serve beer in vases here? Not long afterwards we were asked to leave.’
‘We were often asked to leave in those days.’
We finished eating. For dessert we ordered two more beers. Paul Finckel had ordered another well before us and sat down at the adjacent table, which made the woman he had been dancing with appear even more nervous and drunk.
Jakob eyed me inquisitorially. ‘You’ve gone so quiet, Varg. What’s on your mind?’
‘I was thinking back to … those days.’ I smiled sardonically. ‘To the girls we knew.’
‘Who in particular?’
‘Well, various girls.’ I ran my eyes around the room.
‘Can you see any of them here? Would you like to dance?’
‘No, I’m afraid these ones would be too old, even twenty-five years ago they would have been.’
‘Perhaps we should leave?’ Jakob slurred. The beer was having an effect.
‘Maybe.’ Actually my vision was blurred too. I stirred the beer with my forefinger. ‘Why did The Harpers stop, Jakob?’
‘Why do you ask?’ he said with a sudden jerk, like a dog trying to release itself from its chain.
‘Well, I—’
He interrupted me. ‘We were too old. Our interests were going in different directions.’ He turned to the side, as though to indicate that he didn’t want to talk about the subject any longer.
‘What happened to you all?’
He turned back and smiled drily. ‘I’m here.’
‘I can see that. And Johnny’s still singing?’
He nodded and looked past me. ‘Johnny’s singing. We could…’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I don’t know. He’s singing this evening, at Steinen. They have oldies performing there every Friday.’
‘Oh, yes? Do you feel like going?’
‘Not really. On the other hand, well, alright. Let’s do that. I’ve got something I…’ He didn’t finish the sentence. Instead he sat lost in his own thoughts.
I enticed him out. ‘What about the others?’
‘Which others?’
‘In The Harpers.’
‘Do you remember them?’
‘Of course I do.’
He leaned across the table. ‘You were never at the dances, Varg.’
‘They were all from the same…’
‘Why didn’t you…?’
‘…school.’
‘…go?’
I studied him m
ore closely. There was a combative expression on his face. ‘Because.’
‘Because?’
‘Because I was spending a lot of time with someone who didn’t go to dances, either.’
He snorted.
‘But that doesn’t mean I didn’t see you all. Have you forgotten that I helped to hump your gear for you sometimes? Once out in Salhus, once in Espeland Hall and once we went all the bloody way to Rong, which involved taking two ferries and a succession of buses.’ And they had stood on the stage, in the brightest lighting since God created the world, and played as if they had Lucifer himself at their heels.
The Harpers. 1959. Johnny in a Hawaiian shirt and black, Terylene trousers, DA at the back, hair as if he had shares in Brylcreem, his wrist, chin and hips twitching and shaking like Elvis, a voice as loud as a foghorn and a hand like a steam hammer on a red, shiny guitar: a typical three-chord man thriving on sex appeal and testosterone, even then. Jakob was two steps to the side of Johnny and half a step behind, also brandishing a guitar, but with a much better technique, his hair pressed flat to the scalp in a desperate attempt to tame his rampant curls, a white shirt, a Slim Jim tie and a snakeskin jacket like the one Brando wore in The Fugitive Kind, full-blown pimples on his face and down his neck and a backing voice he had probably learned from Torstein Grythe’s boys’ choir. And on the flanks: Harry Kløve on bass guitar and Arild Hjellestad on drums.
‘They were in the class below us, both of them,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Correct.’
‘Harry Kløve was dark-haired and skinny, like that skater, Roald Aas, only with slicked-back hair. He didn’t say much, but played like a jazz guitarist. He was the only man in the band who came even close to you.’
‘A natural.’
‘Arild Hjellstad on the other hand…’
‘What about him?’
‘A chubby little monkey. Arms too short to ever become a drummer of any note, but with enough energy to blast the Askøy ferry backwards.’
‘So you do remember that time?’
‘When his drum kit was left on the quayside, you mean?’
‘And Arild was jumping up and down on the bridge like a yo-yo and got the skipper to turn back.’ At this his face lit up. ‘Those were the days, eh, Varg? Oh, those were the days.’
‘He bounced up and down behind the drums like a rubber ball, chipmunk cheeks, wild hair, as nutty as a fruitcake. When I see them in my mind’s eye – all of you, that is, the way you were then – it’s almost impossible for me to imagine you as old.’ I looked at him and his bearded face. ‘You, for example, are quite simply a completely different person.’
‘They didn’t live to be very old, either,’ Jakob said quickly, and his face darkened again.
‘What do you mean? Who?’
‘Both of them. Don’t you read death notices?’
‘Yes, I do, but I didn’t see anything…?’
‘Less than a year between them.’ He flicked his fingers, without managing to make them snap. ‘And, just like that, they’re gone. Both of them.’
‘What did they die of?’
He craned his head and looked around. ‘I … don’t want to talk about it.’ He turned back to me. ‘Shall we go?’
‘Why won’t…?’
‘No.’
I nodded. ‘OK.’
Paul Finckel was still going strong. His chubby fingers were fidgeting with the side-seam of the dress belonging to the lady with the angst-ridden face, as though he were one of her nightmares brought to life. She, however, seemed oblivious as she hung around his neck grasping her own wrist.
We winked as we left.
He winked back and made some ape-like thrusts with his hips. The lady blinked and abruptly stared up at the ceiling as though someone had run a cold object down her spine.
Jakob and I supported each other down the dangerous staircase, past the surly bouncer and into the black December night.
I looked at my watch as we stepped onto the pavement. There were still a few hours left until midnight. It was a long time to the following day. Tomorrow was a foreign country. And I didn’t even remember if I had my passport on me.
4
The night sky was dotted with star-shaped crystals. They fell to earth like fluffy scraps of felt, melted and disappeared beneath our feet. We crossed Ole Bulls plass, which was closed to all through traffic. In the middle of the square there was a police vehicle with its engine running. On the opposite side some dark shadows crept alongside the walls. Somewhere in the distance a car horn blared, and from the other side of Byparken came the voice of a rejected suitor: ‘Oh, oh, oh, oh, oooh, lonesome me-e…’
Bergen surrounded Lille Lundgård lake and was reflected in its black water, the centre of which had acquired a film of grey ice. Along the western side was Bergen Art Gallery – containing the Stenersen collection – with its modernist façade, which adjoined the functionalist Kunstforening building – with Rasmus Meyer’s elegant collection of art and historical furniture – and there was also Bergen Electricity Board’s resplendent, Soviet-inspired homage to technology and progress. On the southern side was the library, like an authoritative mother keeping an eye on everything, and along the eastern side was one of the town’s oldest residential districts – the charming rooftop profile of Marken’s small higgledy-piggledy houses epitomised original Bergen, while Sparebank’s Steven Spielberg-style architecture testified to the 1980s capricious economic conditions, and the towering town hall block to local politicians’ abiding impotence: as out of place as a monument to Wagner at the Troldhaugen home of Edvard Grieg.
We followed the footpaths around the lake, where the spring’s first sports event took place every year in wind and hail, and around which all the young families have trudged every 17th May, fleeing the Independence Day celebrations’ hot dogs, half-melted ice creams, uninflatable balloons and cardboard horns that burst your eardrums, in search of distractions such as traditional small-dinghy sailing among the ducks and seagulls in the muddy water.
Now there were neither balloon vendors nor hot-dog customers anywhere in sight. Some distance away, under some bare trees stood a group of down-and-outs sharing a bottle, which was passed from hand to hand and mouth to mouth. We didn’t feel a lot better ourselves as we staggered along.
I said to Jakob: ‘Over there, on that wall, I walked – or rather teetered – with a girl from upper secondary, pretending we were in Paris and strolling alongside the Seine.’
He looked at me sceptically. ‘You must’ve had a vivid imagination.’
‘It was spring.’
‘Did you ever get there? To Paris, I mean.’
‘I did. The following summer. But not with her.’
‘Not with her,’ he repeated. He was descending into a bout of depression. I could see it in his eyes. ‘I also remember you standing somewhere by a lake, Varg, and it wasn’t the bloody Seine you were dreaming about.’
‘Oh, yeah? Where?’
‘In Nygård Park. Some girl had dumped you …’
‘That’s novel.’
‘And you were staring into the water, and for a moment I thought you were going to bloody jump.’
‘Weren’t there any other girls then? Ones that hadn’t dumped us, I mean. Yet?’
‘Yes, there were.’
‘You see. And? Great act, don’t you think? That way you had a chance.’
He shook his head. ‘If you think so.’ Then he turned abruptly to me, grabbed my lapels and stared straight into my eyes. ‘So why did she leave me, then?’
‘She? Who?’
‘You know very well who I mean, Varg.’
‘Your … wife?’
‘YES!’ He shoved me away and stood staring darkly across the water. ‘My … wife.’
A duck was quacking in the lake. Perhaps it wanted to express its sympathy. Or perhaps it was telling us to keep quiet so that it could get some shut-eye.
We walked on in silence. One circuit. Two.
<
br /> We breathed in as deeply as we could, mixing the alcohol in our blood with oxygen, gradually getting our circulation going, in our legs and brains.
During the second circuit we began to talk again and after the third we felt clear-headed enough to dive into another Bergen Friday night.
‘If we do another circuit, we’ll have done the round-the-lake race,’ I said.
So we did, and felt even more refreshed and ready to face Johnny Solheim, Nordnesveien’s answer to Elvis, the local perpetuum mobile of the rock ‘n’ roll age: the eternity machine who never stopped singing his past hits.
‘One for the money,’ Jakob said.
‘Two for the show,’ I chimed in.
‘Three to get ready.’
‘Now go, cat, go.’
And we shuffled off in the direction the blue suede shoes we no longer wore took us.
5
The performance was in full flow when we arrived. The dance floor was packed, and we struggled to force our way along the wall to a tiny table squeezed between a pillar and a swing door to the kitchen. Waiters came and went like the figures you shoot at in fun fairs. Perhaps we should have taken an air rifle with us.
The interior was fitted out in brown teak, with potted palm trees, burgundy, brothel-style furniture fabrics and a general air of poor taste. The room was filled with smoke, as if a volcano had erupted, and if that was not enough, smoke machines were spewing a thick fog across the stage, where a lurid smoke and light show and four background musicians framed the female vocalist, who constituted a magnetic field of her own.
I almost dislocated my neck trying to keep her in sight as we found the way to our small table. ‘I thought you said this was supposed to be an oldies’ show,’ I shouted over to Jakob, who was leading the way.
‘No, no, no,’ he shouted back. ‘Never on Fridays. Johnny’ll have his own “blast from the past” spot. They choose a seasoned performer every Friday. The younger singers do the main show. But the musicians are the same.’
‘You can’t even see them – not without a fog lamp.’
We pulled in our stomachs and wedged ourselves in, either side of the table.
Fallen Angels Page 3
