Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes: Stories Read online

  One time when Dad had been out doing what he did at night, he had seen what certain persons were up to and he roared so loud everyone jumped up in their beds:

  ‘So you’re standing there pissing on your mother’s grave!’

  Even though Arvid knew she was buried in the Eastern Cemetery.

  Sitting by one of the large windows in the hall, Arvid could see the fjord twinkling like a vast piece of silver foil in a thousand small glints between the many spruce trees, far too many, Uncle Rolf said, half of them should be cut down so you could see what was happening on the water.

  But that was how Arvid liked it, the spruce trees were like a strainer that only let the good light through so he couldn’t see the ridge on the other side, for it was so sinister he dreamed about it at night. Dad felt the same way, or at any rate whenever Uncle Rolf piped up he said:

  ‘Leave the spruces alone! If you want to study the boats you can go down to the jetty!’ But Uncle Rolf didn’t want to do that, if he could avoid it, for he was pretty fat, and when he had climbed up the steep path and all the steps that connected the cabin to the jetty his face was the same colour as the cabin, or even darker.

  As far as the cabin was concerned, what Dad said usually went. Although they owned it together, it was Dad who had built it almost single-handedly. He had dragged the logs from the road, he had hammered and sawn and carried tons of sand and water enough for a medium-sized lake to mould the concrete steps and landings so the family wouldn’t tumble into the fjord. That was why he was so strong and that was why the others were a little cowed when he was in a temper.

  But Arvid wasn’t cowed and Dad was not in a temper that often, and the only person who had done anything of any importance apart from Dad was Granddad, and he was going to die this Sunday, he was probably dead already, but they didn’t know that yet.

  Dad had a strong back. He was always doing stuff, as often as not with his back to Arvid, and it lived its own life inside the blue T-shirt with its large patches of dark sweat in the sun and the heat. Arvid could watch it for ages and feel at ease. Right now Dad was putting up the new flagpole, he had almost finished, and he had been into the forest himself to take down the tree he wanted.

  ‘Pure theft,’ Dad said, and that was the truth, for he had done it by night and dragged the trimmed tree back home before sunrise, and the T-shirt bulged and rippled as he tightened the lowest screws and Mum supported the pole. Uncle Rolf sat talking in a deckchair nearby.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘A bit tall maybe, but I guess it’ll be all right.’ It was a long time since Dad had taken any notice of Uncle Rolf’s opinion. He knew how he wanted it, and that was the way he did it.

  ‘What do you think, Arvid?’ he said. Arvid was sitting on the stone steps with his elbows on his knees, chin in his hands, and he said:

  ‘It’s fine, Dad. Tall and fine!’

  ‘That’s good,’ Dad said, and then went to fetch the flag, and Mum snapped a picture with the old box camera held against her stomach.

  A large print was hung on the wall at home above the bookcase. In the bottom left-hand corner Uncle Rolf had one arm in the air as if he were in charge.

  The black car was not in the picture, and it could not have been, for it didn’t arrive until later, but Arvid often glanced to make sure it really wasn’t. In his memory, Dad standing by the flagpole and the black car had merged and he could not imagine one without the other.

  He remembered the car as a Model T Ford and he knew well what a Model T looked like because they had a book with pictures at home, but it could not have been unless there was a veteran car rally that day, and there wasn’t.

  Big sister Gry was pretty. She had long blonde hair that matched her name, which meant day-break, she was in the third class at school and could read Donald Duck comics much slower than Arvid.

  ‘You can have them all when you’ve learned to read,’ she had said, and Arvid often peered into the closet, where they were stacked in piles, calling to him with their speech bubbles, for that was where the secret was, but for now he let them drift past as clouds and covered his ears when Gry read aloud.

  Gry waded along the shore with the water up to her knees, her blue dress tucked between her thighs, and Arvid could see her blonde hair bob up then disappear between the trees. Sometimes her head wasn’t even there and all he could see was a bundle of blue clothes. Then she was bending down to pick up a mussel. When she had enough she laid them next to each other on a flat rock to dry. Later she cleaned them, made a hole at each end, threading them onto a piece of string, and she hung them around her neck like a chain. She looked nice, like a Red Indian girl.

  Arvid stood up from the step, walked down the path and he felt the pine needles on his bare soles. It hurt in a way he liked. Behind him he could hear Uncle Rolf.

  ‘Kari doesn’t know what she’s doing. Marrying a farmer! Christ!’

  Uncle Rolf couldn’t stand farmers, they had mud under their boots and said ‘taters’ instead of ‘potatoes’. Uncle Rolf thought this was ridiculous.

  ‘Alf’s a great guy,’ Arvid heard his dad say. ‘Anyway, it’s useful having a farmer in the family.’ And their voices faded as Arvid clambered down the path.

  Halfway down, on a ledge, Granddad’s canoe lay keel-up on two stands. It was old, but still good enough and it had a nice tarry smell. It was about the only thing Granddad did at the moment, clean and fix the canoe, but he couldn’t use it himself, he was too stiff and old to get into it. Dad said Arvid should come with him out on the water this summer, but Granddad said no.

  ‘I don’t want any kids in the canoe,’ he said, ‘it capsizes too easily, and I know kids can never sit still!’ Dad might have been the strongest, but Granddad was the oldest, and since he had in fact done his share of work on the cabin, he could say no. Besides, the canoe was his. He said that very often.

  Arvid met Aunt Kari, who had been out swimming. She had a bathing suit on and a towel wrapped around her shoulders. Aunt Kari had the softest lap in the world, even though she was not fat, and he could just close his eyes and remember what it was like to sit on. It was like sinking, like floating, whichever way he turned it was soft, and she smelt good. But he never got to sit there any more, not because he didn’t want to, but because she thought he had grown too big.

  Aunt Kari had curly black hair, she had the sun in her face and her body shone, and she said:

  ‘You can’t go down to the water on your own, Arvid!’

  ‘Gry’s there, and I can swim.’

  ‘That’s true, you can. You always knew how to swim.’

  That was a fact. He had always been able to and didn’t know what it was like when you couldn’t. Many people thought that was odd.

  But he never made it to the water that day. Before he got down to where Gry was he heard his mother’s voice cut through the trees:

  ‘Gry! Arvid! Come up here this minute!’

  There was a sharp edge to her call, which meant they didn’t dawdle as much as they usually would. Gry waded quickly to the shore, took Arvid’s hand and together they hurried up the long steep hill. When they came to the top they were out of breath and there was a big black car in the little drive in front of the cabin. The engine was running and the car was humming and shaking, and the sun sparkled on the black paint. The man with the beret leaning on the car door they had seen before. It was Granddad’s neighbour from Vålerenga.

  Dad came bursting out of the cabin door. He had taken off his blue T-shirt and now he was pulling his white shirt on, his head was not through the neck yet and the two sleeves were flapping wildly in the air, and then he tripped and fell off the bottom step, and there was a stain on his shirt and he was furiously trying to wipe it off with his hand. Aunt Kari stood stock still in her bathing suit, the towel drooped onto the ground, and there were pine needles all over it. Uncle Rolf had actually got up from the deckchair and was on his way to the car.

  Arvid turned away, for there was something
so strange about his dad’s face that he couldn’t look. He looked at the treetops, he looked at the cabin roof, at the sky and the shimmering fjord. When he turned back, his dad was inside the car, and it reversed slowly towards the gate, pulled onto the road and stopped for a moment, and set off again and was gone. No one waved.

  Aunt Kari went into the cabin to change, and her back was so naked she could have taken off her bathing suit and Arvid wouldn’t have seen the difference.

  ‘You two come here,’ Mum said, and they too went in and she sat them at the table in the hall, and she looked at them, they looked at each other, and then she said:

  ‘Be good children now, because your Granddad has died.’

  And then they had cocoa and mocha biscuits, although it wasn’t Saturday or anything, and as Arvid was blowing into his hot cup he was thinking:

  Now it’s Dad who’s the boss around here, and I can go out in the canoe.

  The King Is Dead

  Beyond the house and the flagstone path was a large green lawn, and that was where he was sitting with his red fire engine. When he squatted like this, as he did on this particular day, all he could see was the lawn, and the whole world was nothing but green grass and a red fire engine. It was difficult to make it move because the grass was wet and quite long, he pushed and pushed, and then Gry came down the road and shouted:

  ‘Hey, Arvid, guess what!’

  He turned and the world became roads and houses, telephone wires and sky, a sky so big his head filled with air. He blinked.

  No, he couldn’t guess what.

  ‘The king is dead. He slipped in the bathtub and died.’

  Arvid put her words into his mouth. The king slipped in the bathtub and died. It didn’t taste of anything. It didn’t say a thing to him. He didn’t know the king, although he did know there was a man called the king, but he had never seen the king and no one had a bathtub in their house. Just showers, there wasn’t room for anything else, so he shrugged, turned to the fire engine, and Gry was disappointed and said:

  ‘Hell, you’re so little you don’t understand one bit! Anyway, you’ve got to go in now. We’re leaving soon.’

  And when he looked up he saw his mother in the window. That was it, they had to go, he had forgotten. That was why he had his new trousers on. He stood up and then he saw it, close by. It was a bullfinch, that was for sure. Arvid had seen bullfinches many times, in the bullfinch tree and in the bird book he kept in his room. There was a picture of it and the letters underneath spelt ‘bullfinch’ when they were read out.

  He knelt down, his trousers were wet at once and stained with soil and grass, but he didn’t notice and he held the bullfinch in his hand. It was so small, it was soft and warm. He could feel its heart beating against his fingers and he thought: Birds have a heart that beats!

  He placed it on its thin legs. He let go and it toppled over and lay just as it had when he found it. The beak opened and closed, but it didn’t say anything. Birds couldn’t talk, but it moved its beak as if it wanted to.

  He tried once more, but it fell again. His mind went blank. He couldn’t leave, couldn’t pretend he hadn’t seen, but staying there didn’t help either, for the bullfinch couldn’t stand. He picked it up and threw it high in the air to see if it would fly, but it plummeted to the ground. He stood watching, it was red against the green grass, and then he started to cry. He couldn’t leave, he would have to stay there, maybe for a long time.

  Dad opened the window above and looked out.

  ‘Arvid! What’s up with you? Aren’t you coming in?’

  Arvid couldn’t answer, he just pointed. Dad closed the window and after a little while he came out. Arvid stood where he stood. Dad bent down, picked up the bullfinch and said:

  ‘Move away now, turn round and close your eyes.’

  Arvid took a few steps, half-turned, but did not close his eyes. From the corner of one eye he saw his dad raise his arm and hurl the bird against the wall.

  When he came in he was scolded for the stains on his trousers. But it was too late to change, and anyway he had only one pair of decent trousers, so he would have to go as he was, like a mucky pup.

  Then the taxi arrived. It came rolling down the slope from the telephone box, parked by the dustbin, and all the kids in the street came to watch and asked if they were going on holiday.

  ‘Kiss my arse,’ Arvid said, and Mum said:

  ‘Arvid, please! We’re going to a funeral!’ And then they got into the taxi and drove off. Through the rear window he could see them standing on the tarmac.

  At the funeral there were many grown-ups in black clothes, and first they had to enter an old yellow timber house called EBENEZER, Gry read the word aloud for Arvid. Inside EBENEZER Uncle Rolf was sitting in a chair looking sad. When the people in black came in they went over to him and said something in low voices and Uncle Rolf smiled a little and said thank you.

  Uncle Rolf had once had a monkey, a big toy monkey with great shiny eyes hanging from a standard lamp. It used to hang from that lamp and look down at Arvid with a canny look on its face, and Arvid liked it so much that once when he and his mother were there to visit he asked:

  ‘Can I have it?’ He meant borrow, but that wasn’t what he said.

  ‘Christ, if the boy’s envious he might as well have it as far as I’m concerned,’ Uncle Rolf said with a smile that made Arvid wince.

  At home Arvid took the monkey up to his room to play with it, but it was different now, its eyes were dull and stupid so he tossed it in the bin under the sink. There Mum found it and she called to Arvid and asked what the hell the monkey was doing in the dustbin.

  ‘It died,’ Arvid said.

  Now Granddad too was dead and Uncle Rolf had to live alone in the flat at Vålerenga, and he didn’t like that because he was forty years old and had never been alone. Before, the whole family had lived in that flat with Granddad and Uncle Rolf, but it made Mum so worn down the doctor said she had to move as soon as possible and prescribed a new flat in a terraced house in Veitvet. At least that was what the woman next door said, and she ought to know because she often dropped by and spoke to Mum and drank coffee in the morning, and Arvid was sitting under the kitchen table playing, and he could hear them talking.

  Arvid moved among the black stockings and the trousers, eating chocolate cake and listening. Above him voices buzzed and some were talking about the king, who had been such a steadfast Norwegian during the war although he was a Dane, and some talked about Granddad, who had been so very kind. Arvid didn’t agree, even though it was true to say that Granddad gave him a chocolate bar each time he came to visit. But the chocolate tasted stale and it was because Granddad always bought enough chocolate for six months at a time and kept it all in the top drawer of the old dresser he had in the hall. That was the sensible thing to do, Dad said, but Arvid didn’t think sensible was the same as kind. Once, Mum had said that Granddad treated her like a maid when they lived in Vålerenga, and when Dad defended him Mum lost her temper and said, and this I have to hear from a socialist!

  A man came into EBENEZER, with his eyes downcast, not looking at anyone, but still he found Uncle Rolf and whispered something in his ear. Uncle Rolf got to his feet and made a gesture and then everyone stood up and they were on their way to the cemetery.

  At the cemetery there was a chapel and they all went inside and sat down and they saw the priest on his knees mumbling in front of the altar. Then suddenly he got up, made the sign of the cross and turned to the assembly, his cassock swirling round his legs like a ball gown, and everyone could see his green-checked socks. Arvid laughed, but a glare from Uncle Rolf made him shut up. The priest’s voice soared around the room and rose to the ceiling, and Arvid leaned back in the pew and looked up, but he couldn’t make out what the priest was saying, and he fell asleep and didn’t wake up until everyone was on their feet and ready to follow the coffin to the grave.

  Outside it was pouring down, and Aunt Kari had to take one h
andle of the coffin even though she was a woman, for Uncle Rolf had been so upset after the service that he wasn’t up to being a pall-bearer, and then the rain took a turn for the worse. Almost everyone in the small procession produced an umbrella, and those who didn’t have one held newspapers over their heads, but the ones who carried the coffin couldn’t cover themselves and the water was running from their hair, down their faces and dripping from their ears and noses. Arvid walked beside his dad and held on to his coat, the water splashing round his shoes, and you couldn’t see the stains on them for everything was equally wet. Looking up, he saw his dad’s face was soaking, and it now seemed so sad that Arvid felt he was going to cry, but he didn’t want to because he didn’t like Granddad and his plan was to hold back, but then he cried a little after all.

  He closed his eyes as he walked and imagined his dad lying in the coffin, and Mum and Gry and he carrying it and after thinking about it for a while he felt his chest tightening. He could hear himself sobbing and making little howls, and one of the ladies in the procession came over and stroked his hair and said:

  ‘Poor little boy, and you loved your grandfather so much. You shouldn’t have been here at all.’

  ‘No,’ Arvid said, and meant the part about loving his Granddad, but the woman didn’t get it and she scowled at Mum, and Mum blushed, rolled her eyes and sent Arvid a look as if he were Judas from the Bible. Arvid tightened his grip on Dad’s coat.

  They reached the hole in the ground where the coffin was to be lowered, and everywhere it was muddy and slippery, and water was trickling over the edges and into the grave and mud flowing from the nearby mounds of earth. The six pall-bearers walked cautiously over the last stretch and slowly set the coffin on two bars laid across the grave. As it was almost in place Dad slipped and fell onto one knee, the coffin tipped and banged down onto one bar, and Arvid gave a start and he heard Mum gasp behind him. Dad stood up again with a dazed smile and Arvid could see the huge muddy stain on his knee.