The twins stayed with the Liens on the opposite side of the road from our old house. The day the four of us moved, the police sergeant came in his black Volvo, and a carpenter came in a communist van with his tools in the back, and covered the windows with boards and put a steel bar with a padlock across the door. No one told us in advance, so most of our things were still inside.
The Liens had never had any children of their own, and I guess they were a bit old to be foster parents, but I had always liked them, and they let me speak to the girls every day, the word ‘no’ never crossed their lips. Sometimes I was also inside the house, on the sofa with one little sister on each side, they were six then and their hair was done in identical pigtails, the only difference was the colour of the ribbons, one had red, the other blue, and we watched the Monday film together whenever children were allowed to, mostly old black-and-white films starring Fred Astaire or Cary Grant or sometimes Humphrey Bogart in a world which had nothing to do with ours, and the twins would clap their hands every time a man kissed a woman on the screen, and they looked at each other and laughed until they toppled over, but of course they didn’t understand a thing.
Siri lived in a house in the centre of Mørk with a family I did not like at all, and they certainly didn’t like me, they said I was a bad influence, and not only on her, was the general opinion, and they wouldn’t even let me near the house. The Lydersens they were called. If I crossed the road from the Co-op and went between Mørk Machinery and the Old People’s Home and over to the picket fence around the garden in front of the house, the old man would come out on to the front steps and shout: Get lost.
I couldn’t understand why child welfare thought this was a good house for Siri to live in. They were model Christians in there, that must have been it, and everyone they knew was as Christian as they were, together they formed their own layer of the Mørk population, and they never spoke to anyone else unless they had to. They had even moved Siri to a different school, more than fifteen kilometres away, to Valmo, and so she went on a different bus from the one we had always caught from our neighbourhood. But I spoke to her anyway, behind the Co-op and the post office in the evening, maybe twice a week for as long as summer lasted and the days were long, and when autumn came, I cycled alone to Mørk in the cold and dark, and the frost had settled, you could feel it on the tarmac, how the tyres sang a different song, and the only lights I could see were the lamps lit in the windows of houses along the road and the shine of the lanterns in the courtyard of farms up against the forest, and they all made the road even darker.
When I got there I turned into Lysbu’s BP station, he wasn’t retired yet, and I waited there with my bike against a pump. Sometimes when I got there early, I went in for a chat if it was his shift that evening, and most often it was. He thought that was all right, he liked me, I think, and he didn’t nag. He knew well why I turned up so late, and that was fine by him, it was no less than right and proper for us to come together, he said, you’re brother and sister for Christ’s sake, why the hell should you not, and he didn’t say a word to anyone, why the hell should I, he said.
When Siri came down from the house, through the alley by the crossroads, I walked out and took her bike and put it behind the petrol station, and we walked down and sat on the slope towards the lake, where no one could see us. It went like a dream. I mean, she wasn’t locked up or anything.
NO, I WASN’T
locked up. Tommy had given me the rounders bat to use in my hour of need, and don’t think twice about it, he said, or he will make you suffer, and I put it under the bed, as he had done when we all lived together in our old house, but things were different here. I didn’t have to protect myself, not in that way, and Lydersen wasn’t the kind to creep up on me when I was in the shower or unexpectedly come into my room when I was about to go to bed. But Tommy wanted to look after me and often came in the evening to make me feel safe and give me comfort if he thought that was what I needed, but the fact was I had no problem looking after myself. It was a new thing. At home it had always been Tommy and me.
We sat on the slope behind the Co-op on our separate rocks, one year had passed, and it was autumn now, and cold, we had our caps on and warm jackets, I had already started smoking, outside, in secret, and chewing Toy gum on the way home. I blew the smoke and my frozen breath out over the lake and said:
‘When I’m sixteen I’m going to sea.’
That upset him, and he said:
‘But who shall I talk to when you’re gone.’
‘You’ve got Jim,’ I said.
‘That’s true,’ Tommy said. ‘I’ve got Jim, but that’s not what I meant.’
‘I know.’
‘I like having sisters,’ Tommy said.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But you’ve got the twins.’
‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘But they do their own thing, they just smile and wave and say hi Tommy when I walk past them on my way to Jonsen’s, and then they go back to their weird little games that never made any sense to me, and I could have been any neighbour, and then they run to the Liens to have their dinner. Even when I sit watching films with them I could be anybody. But they’re doing fine. I think they’ve forgotten how it was at home with Dad, how it really was. They don’t even remember Mum.’
‘But, they were so small when she left. I can barely remember her myself,’ I said.
‘Of course you remember her.’
‘Yes, but I don’t want to.’
‘It was winter,’ Tommy said, ‘just before Christmas. Hell, there was so much snow. The school bus could barely get down the road. Don’t you remember. We shovelled and shovelled every single day to keep the snow from our door.’
‘No, I don’t remember that.’
‘I remember everything,’ Tommy said. ‘Everything.’ And then he went quiet and I couldn’t see his face, and when
he
didn’t say anything, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I just waited. I already felt sorry for him because I knew what he would say when he eventually did say something, and finally he said:
‘But how will you manage without me.’
And that was it.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I will probably be OK,’ I said, ‘don’t you think I will.’ But then he started to cry, he had just turned fifteen, and I said, but, Tommy, I said and put my arms around his shoulders and pulled him to me and said, but, Tommy, what is it, Tommy, but he wouldn’t answer me, and we sat there, me with my arm round him, and really, it should have been the other way around, that was why he had come to see me, he was the big brother, he was at the helm, that was how it ought to be. But I had never seen him cry before, cross my heart, and when he stopped he cleared his throat and got off his rock.
‘I’m a little tired,’ he said, taking two steps into the darkness, up the hillside, and then I couldn’t see his face any more and didn’t know what he looked like.
‘Well, I can’t come tomorrow,’ he said.
‘Another day then, Tommy,’ I said.
‘Wednesday, maybe.’
‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘Wednesday. I’ll look for you.’
‘OK,’ he said.
And he climbed up the hill without waiting for me as he usually did so we could walk hand in hand around the Co-op at the top and over the crossroads to the petrol station and go our separate ways from there, and I said:
‘It will be difficult without you, Tommy,’ I said, ‘Maybe I can’t do it,’ I said, and I was sure there would be a flicker of a smile then, because that was what he wanted to hear, and then he would say, You can do it, Siri, you’ll be fine, I’m sure you will, but if he did smile, I couldn’t see it, and neither did he say anything. He just kept climbing and was gone around the corner of the Co-op on his way to fetch his bike, and maybe Lysbu was still behind the counter, in the light inside, and then push it out between the pumps and pedal off into the night with six long kilometres ahead of him. I took another cigarette from the soft pack of 10 unfiltered Carlton, and sat on the rock by the lake smoking, and when I had finished I stood up to clamber up the hill. It was easy to see in the dark now, every tree stood out, every rock, and when I stepped into the bright light beneath the street lamps at the crossroads, I had to close my eyes.
JIM SLEPT FITFULLY,
and in his sleep he turned as a dog turns in its basket to find a position that would give his body peace. He was crying, but he didn’t know that. Deep down in his sleep he was going to die. He was in despair, he was trying to tell her he was going to die and explain to her why, and she got so upset it was almost a comfort, as if his dying made a greater impression on her than it did on him, but he didn’t know why he was going to die, and really, there was no comfort. He was alone. Only he was going to die. And he knew that one day soon she would get over it and to everyone’s surprise, would have put it behind her, forgotten it already, or hidden it inside herself, the size of a shirt button.
When he woke up he was still going to die. It was over. It was all over. From the kitchen table he had swept any future he might have into a bucket that he carried out and emptied by the hedge. His life was at half-mast. He barely reached his own hips. He dragged himself along on his knees, the cross was heavy and sharp against his shoulder. I’m so thirsty, he thought and they give me only vinegar to drink.
He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. In the dream he was still living in Mørk. My God, he thought, it’s Sunday school. The little yellow pavilion down by the creek, by Rumble Creek, as they called it, and you could hear it rumble and boom in the spring and rumble through the closed windows, and anyone with their wits about them would want to go out and watch it flow and wade in Lill Rapids with water up to the edge of their boots and let the water press hard and gently too against the palms of their hands until they could barely hold them still.
His mother had said that the two hours every Sunday morning were of great benefit and that later in life he would think back to the dim room with the chairs in a horseshoe by the wall and Rumble Creek flooding its banks on the other side of the same wall, and find help and comfort in that, and it might well be that she had a point, but Tommy never came, his father didn’t allow him. His father thought it was nonsense. All that Jesus stuff.
In the Sunday school building the flannelboard stood on three legs in the corner with its palm trees of felt, its crescents and disciples. The Good Samaritan lay in the box underneath, ready for action, and Lazarus rising from the grave, alive and kicking, was in the box, and Jesus entering Jerusalem with the multitudes streaming from their houses to cover the dust with palm branches of felt before the felt donkey he was riding. He was the King of the Jews. He was the Son of David. In all his dignity, he came down from the Mount of Olives with the road to Jericho probably at his back to the east, and slowly he rode down the slope through Gethsemane where events of great significance would unfold in a matter of days between the gnarled olive trees and tall cypresses of felt, and on he rode the donkey up towards the town walls and the Lions’ Gate or Damascus Gate or another gate entirely with another name on another side of town, if they were there at that time. The Gates. And it went as badly as it possibly could. A few days later he would collapse and graze his knees on the hard stone slabs of the ascending Via Dolorosa with the kiss of death still burning on his cheek and the heavy cross chafing his shoulder, and all that for thirty pieces of silver, my God, was that all I was worth, he thought, and not as I will but as you will, he had said to his father the night before, for this wasn’t what Jesus had thought up for himself, that he should crawl on his knees up this narrow path of stone. And of course he was afraid, who wouldn’t be, and Jim flitted in and out of this new dream with his eyes open, and then someone came who wanted to help Jesus and take the cross off his shoulders to lighten his burden and perhaps carry it himself for a stretch. And the man who took the cross was Simon of Cyrene. He was the father of Alexander and Rufus, it said in the text, but who cared about them, what had they done to deserve a place in the book of books. You had to make yourself worthy, that was the point, Jim thought, you have to be worthy of it, or else nothing could be measured against anything and everything would blur. But perhaps they were friends, Simon and Jesus, and perhaps Jesus had given Simon of Cyrene a helping hand not long before, or even performed a miracle for Simon exclusively, you could imagine that, that they supported each other as Tommy and Jim had done when they were sitting behind the mill or lying on their backs in the dip so that no one could see them, right up to the year they turned eighteen.
But that wasn’t how it was. The man called Simon wouldn’t help anyone of his own free will. I stick my head out for nobody, he might have said, like Bogart in
Casablanca
. It was the soldiers of the Roman empire who forced him to lift the cross, at gunpoint, so to speak, or at the point of a spear to his neck, to be precise, so that Jesus would arrive at Golgotha in one piece, at Calvary, to be hanged on the Cross between the two thieves, and not perish too early in the streets below, that was why. And Simon of Cyrene wasn’t even one of the disciples, the chosen twelve, he wasn’t called Peter after Simon, and he wasn’t a fisherman, either, he was from the country, and people from the country, from places like Mørk, had always been slow, unwilling, they had no rebellion in them and took no chances if they could get out of it with honour intact, yes, even without honour they preferred to lay low whatever was at stake, and then you had to make them, that was how it had always been, they had to be pulled and pushed.
At some point he had moved from the sofa in the living room into his bed. The air in the room was stale and smoke-filled, not only from his own cigarettes, and was expanding cube-like and dense against the walls and the ceiling and longed to get out. He sat up and his mouth was dry, his face was, and he swung his legs stiffly on to the carpet and walked into the living room towards the balcony door. Outside, the cold air stood tall as a man and pressed against the window and waited and was sucked in when he opened the door and the smoke was sucked out at the same time. For a brief moment there was much traffic around his body, and then he had to hurry back to his bed and lie under the duvet, and it wasn’t morning any more, and the scent of someone else’s body still lingered on the sheet, on the pillow, someone else’s hair. He had been so sure it would feel unpleasant, but it didn’t. On the contrary. He lay on his back looking up at the ceiling. He searched his mind for her name, but it was still gone. Perhaps it was never said. Which would have been strange. He must have said his, he must have said, Jim, and shaken her hand and bowed to excess, which he tended to do in situations like this, with a double whisky in his belly, so why wouldn’t she have done the same, why would she not have said hello and then her name. He closed his eyes. The bar in Olavsgaard Hotel. The big hotel that looked like a palace in a Disney cartoon, placed at random on a deserted, windblown hilltop by the motorway at the edge of the town of Lillestrøm where one of the three rivers was moving past in a not so elegant fashion, half dead, on its way to the great lake. This town that had just risen from being no more than a big village to some higher status, and the hotel had a rather dubious reputation, at least the bar on the ground floor had, but this was the place you never left empty-handed, that was the saying, and it was there he met her the night before. He could well remember them leaving.