Johan Harstad Read online

  I stomped into the gymnasium. All done up and balloon-infested to be a ballroom, standing on the stage a percussion outfit, guitars, synthesizers, there’d be a concert later, at the other end of the room a disk jockey, Norwegian Pat Sharp dressed like Prince Valiant, table laid with bowls of punch and plastic cups. And in the middle, waves of dancing kids. Pulled down my visor, moved towards the punch, the magnets clicked on the floor as I walked, but nobody noticed. Took a plastic cup of punch, held it clumsily in big hockey gloves, took a slurp, the taste of summer, Hawaii, even though it was December, turned to face the dancing hordes, the landscape. Magnificent. Magnificent desolation.

  Then somebody thumped me on the back. I turned. It was Jørn, dressed as Luke Skywalker, a good likeness.

  “Luke,” I said, in my deepest Darth Vader voice. “I am your father, Luke.”

  “Ha-ha. Hi there, spaceboy.” Jørn was in full swing. “Have you seen Roar anywhere?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Who is he?

  “Who do you think? Solo, of course.”

  “Of course. I spotted Obi-Wan Kenobi in here too,” I said. “And Princess Leia. I think.”

  “Jesus. Leia. Things have got to happen there!”

  “But Leia’s Luke’s sister, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah, yeah, fuck that, we don’t have to go that deep into it, do we? Do you know who she is? Who’s Leia?”

  “I think she’s in Class C. I’m not sure.”

  Jørn looked at my plastic cup. Punch.

  “Have you been down yet?”

  “Down?”

  “Come on.”

  I followed Luke out and around to the back of the school, down the staircase to the props room, through the door and into the warmth. There were about ten or twelve people sitting down here, boys and girls, and whiskey on the table. I glanced around quickly to see whether Helle was here, hadn’t seen her up in the gym, but she wasn’t down here either. Jørn put me in a chair next to the table, pointed toward me.

  “This is Mattias.”

  Only a few heads moved to nod in my direction, most of the people down here were actors, set makers, stagehands, and theatre folk in general. I was handed some whiskey in a glass and Roar came out from the toilets. As Solo.

  “Where’s Chewbacca, then?” somebody asked in our direction, a tall guy dressed as Conan.

  “In his kennel,” answered Jørn.

  “Yeah, right. And you?” he continued, looking in my direction: “Where’s Armstrong?”

  I didn’t want to answer.

  “Armstrong’s looking after Chewbacca,” said Jørn.

  “Smart. Fucking smart. You’re a smart guy, Jørn.”

  More whiskey. Or beer. Or wine. I’d lost track. But there a storm raged in my glass. When we finally resurfaced, several hours had gone, the teachers’ generally graceless skits and the principal’s speech were long over, a band with the flashy name of Hetland Heroes were up on stage playing “Tainted Love” and out on the dance floor the poor students tried to keep up, but it was hard, almost impossible, I didn’t blame them, you needed your sea legs out there, I staggered out into the crowd, the floor heaved under me, Mare Undarum, the gravitational force was slowly, but surely being sucked out of the huge room, it was steaming up behind my visor, big drops started running slowly down the transparent plastic, but I kept the visor down, shoved my way through the crowd as the band started to play “Space Oddity,” Bowie strutting his stuff at the ball, and the vocalist is singing off key, not great, standing so cocksure on the edge of the stage, trying his best to reach the notes, and it wasn’t an improvement when they tried some aha. Luke was fighting a laser battle with Obi-Wan over by the climbing bars and committed patricide, Leia was getting bored, and Helle was nowhere to be seen, so I fought my way to the exit, through the crowded room, the doorway swayed, I tried aiming straight, had to make a couple of attempts and somebody grabbed hold of me, talked to me, but the sound didn’t get through the plastic and the wetsuit stuck to my skin, I needed the toilet, needed air, had to find Helle, and I trundled out through the corridor, up the stairs and into the classroom, fell over a couple of chairs and tables in my gigantic suit, and the sound of the band flung itself out of the gymnasium, wound its way up through the floors and into my head, I turned and started back down the hall, Oceanus Procellarum, my hair drenched in condensation and I walked back in, twice as many people here now, I began to feel ill, my heart was beating at twice the tempo at which the band attempted to make “Sweet Dreams” swing and Annie Lennox materialize, and I spun on my own axis several times in the search for something firm to hold, but I didn’t know anybody in here, headed toward the punch bowls and found Roar in Solo’s shadow, I grabbed him and lurched toward him, he held me steady and suddenly the room went quiet.

  “You all right?” he asked, trying to lift my visor, but I shoved his hand away, held the visor down.

  “I’m just a bit … technical problems,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Huh?” I answered, I could see his mouth moving, but couldn’t catch his words, too much talking, shouting in the hall, words pouring from the loudspeakers.

  “I think I’ve lost contact with Mission Control,” I said. “But we’ll have it fixed in no time. Stand by.”

  And then a voice came over the loudspeakers from the stage, anybody could join the band now, a generous offer, if there was anybody who wanted to try to be a singer, this was their chance, was there anybody who wanted to come up? The vocalist left the stage, arms crossed. Nobody volunteered. Mumbling out on that soft gymnasium floor, and there in the middle, amongst all the Zorros, the superheroes, cowboys and Czech’s Majka from space, I caught sight of Joan of Arc. Helle had suddenly turned up from nowhere, and so I put one magnetic snow-boot in front of the other, in speedy succession, and did what I should never have done.

  I lifted my hand.

  Walked toward the stage.

  Walked up the small staircase.

  Turned to the band.

  Gave them a title. They nodded.

  Turned to the public. Mumbled.

  Opened my visor.

  Thought about Fru Haug.

  And sang.

  I sang loud, as loud as I could, and I sang well. I sang fantastically well. Sang my way through the walls, out through all the people on the floor, and I sang their hats, their scarves, their false mustaches and wigs off, I saw Roar and Jørn standing together in a corner, mouths open, eyes staring, and I saw the people from my class, shaking their heads all around the room, and I sang loud, lifted the roof, because it was something I could do, I had a powerful voice, I don’t know why, but I’d always been good at singing, it was just I’d never liked it, didn’t like standing at the front of a stage like this, singing for a hungry audience, but right now, in this moment I sing, as I have since childhood, for myself, and the song shoots through the air-conditioning system in the ceiling, out into the snow, through the streets, and I imagine cars stopping at traffic lights, motorists turning down their car stereos, rolling down their windows and letting the snow into their cars as they wonder where the sound is coming from, and couples quarreling in their apartments, holding their tongues, opening their windows and taking each other in their arms, kissing, and children waking up in their beds and hugging their teddies, because somewhere out there someone is singing, and in the end it stops snowing, the clouds clear, and I sing as hard as I can, fill my lungs with air and the band can barely keep up, the vocalist pulls even further to the back of the stage, until he ends up going all the way off into the back room and I stare out into the public, wide open eyes, don’t know what to do, I find Helle, and Helle smiles, a big smile, and I can’t lower the visor this time either, because I’m singing, and it’s so beautiful, a song beautifully sung, and I think how I should have been a singer, because it’s the only thing I can do, my voice carries and the song moves to its decisive climax, one of the most popular songs of the year, the year that otherwise went so wrong
, and I stretch out my arms, and the song nears its end, I turn to the band, make a rotating motion with my right arm for them to take the last section one more time, the drummer brings down the final beat, and I’m alone, holding the note, and the final vowel sneaks out into the venue, and then it’s over.

  And I pull down my visor.

  And the applause explodes.

  And I turn and go.

  I staggered backstage, down the stairs and into the girls’ locker room, sat on the bench by my clothes, lifted my visor, leaned forward and threw up onto the floor, it ran out of me, in big, belching thrusts, I went down on my knees, emptied myself over the tiles, and it ran toward the showers, sticky streams of beer, wine and whiskey, everything I’d held back all autumn long.

  And that’s what I remember. Or rather, that’s the last thing I remember clearly, I think. At some point everything started to speed up, or my brain started to slow. But I do know I finally tore off my space suit, stuck my head in the shower and turned it on, ice cold water over my head, put my own clothes back on, threw the space suit in the bag, crept out the window, crept home in the snowdrift, four miles with wet hair, made myself ill, lay in bed for a week, before I got up a few days before Christmas, went to Jørn’s, but he didn’t know what to say.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Christ Almighty!”

  I said nothing.

  “Why haven’t you ever said anything about it, Mattias?”

  “Why should I?”

  “But Christ, we could be a band, yeah, me on guitar, Roar on drums and …”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “It was just a one off. A rescue attempt.”

  “And who was in need of rescue, may I ask?”

  “Me.”

  “But my God, Mattias, you have to sing. It’s criminal not to. You must be the best vocalist since, yeah, I don’t know, but for ages.”

  “No,” I answered.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Really no? Or just no?”

  “Really no.”

  “But what are you intending to do if you’re so dead set on not using your potential?”

  “I’m going to be a gardener.”

  “A gardener?”

  “Yup.”

  We sat there staring into the ceiling, Jørn played some records, Roar came by later into the evening, said more or less the same thing, and I answered that I’d never do it again, tried to explain my thinking, and they understood, slowly, but surely, it took time, and I told them about my plans to be a gardener and how they’d begun to take form in my head over the last few weeks, though in truth I’d been thinking it over for the last three years, explained about Helle, dropped cluster bombs of information and revealed more than I had for the last ten years.

  I’d spent December 23, Little Christmas Eve, at Jørn’s house, we’d hung out in the TV room in the basement of his parents’ house, shared a couple of beers, watched The Countess and the Butler, and I wondered where they were now; was the countess a big actress or just a one-trick pony-artist, and the butler, what was the butler doing now? Was he decorating his Christmas tree, reminiscing about his past success, did he know this comedy skit was played every Little Christmas Eve in Norway like some ritual incantation. I tramped through the snow back home, up to Ølbøen that sold beer even after one o’clock on Saturday afternoons, up to Kampen School, and it was dark, the snow lay thick in the schoolyard and the streetlamps struggled to light up between the white flakes that landed soundlessly on the ground, I scooped up a fistful of snow, packed it tightly into a ball between my mittens, hurled it in a high arc onto the roof of the junior school so it landed with an explosion, and then continued on my way until a voice called after me.

  “Hey, wait.”

  Somebody came running.

  Helle came running.

  Of course Helle came running.

  What else would she do?

  I turned and waited for her to catch up, scooped up another fistful of snow, made another snowball.

  “Where did you go? After the party?” she asked when she’d reached me. “You just disappeared.”

  “Got called back to earth.”

  “But, you’re a good singer.”

  “Thanks. And you?”

  “I stayed.” She laughed. “It went pretty quiet after you’d finished. The band didn’t play anything else all evening. The disc jockey took over. Where did you learn to sing like that, anyway?”

  “In Storhaug.”

  “That was the most beautiful singing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Can you throw a snowball up onto the roof?”

  “I think so.”

  “You’ll get a reward, if you do.”

  “Okay.”

  Snowflakes might have settled on her eyelashes, she might have brushed them away with her red mittens, but she didn’t. She tugged one of her mittens off, wiped the snow from her nose, put her mitten back on and shivered with the cold. I patted the ball one last time and threw it up onto the roof. Splat.

  Then she put her arms around me and kissed me.

  And I put my mittens around her.

  Which was how we got together, Helle and I, on Little Christmas Eve.

  Sat in the living room with Mother and Father and watched the Christmas Disney Cavalcade, before Christmas Eve dinner.

  When you wish upon a star.

  A gift from all of us to all of you.

  It was a nice Christmas and I got what I wanted.

  I spent New Year’s Eve with Helle, at a party in Madla, stayed the night at her place and awoke to fresh rolls the next day, her father had been baking, was in good humor, and I stayed a few days into January.

  Helle. From Augland. Helle, whose father was in the police, and whose mother was a geography professor. Helle, who lived in the loft at home, who liked the Police and always wanted to go to Café Sting to drink red wine. Helle, who would become my entire world, everything that was good, until one day she would inevitably sink the ship so neither man nor mouse could be saved.

  Term started again on a Tuesday, and I remember how it fell completely silent as I walked into the classroom that morning. And still nobody talked to me, apart from Jørn, Roar, and Helle, but I noticed how everybody’s eyes licked my whole head smooth and sore as I moved around the playground. If the corridor was crowded outside the classroom where I had my next lesson, they’d step aside so I could go in. As the weeks and months passed it only got worse, suddenly I was horribly interesting, everybody wanted to get me talking in every damned break about my singing, I stood on the playground and froze, trying to keep a low profile, unsuccessfully, of course. The world had discovered Mattias, and there was nothing to be done. It was too late for regrets, even the teachers were out to get me more, posing questions, there was no end to it, and it felt like the walls were creeping in on me, pressing me into corners no matter how big a room I went into. And perhaps that was why, as I stood outside one day engaged in one of an endless stream of meaningless conversations with somebody who had no real interest in me at all, I decided that I’d never poke my head out again. I missed my own world, I’d had control there, just me and space, outer space, Buzz, and me, I still didn’t say a lot, didn’t make any more of myself during class time, less if possible, but of course that had the reverse effect, they wanted me to join the theatre group, it would be crazy of me not to, they thought, and newly formed bands suddenly needed new vocalists, but I declined, a tall tree in the desert. But Helle was kind, tried her best to understand why I didn’t want all this attention, even if she didn’t really understand why, and I’d stay at home or at her place, didn’t go out much, even less than before, and then towards the end of the third year, important discussions were held about what we should all study, I lied, said I was going to Oslo, to university there, to take some subject, I don’t remember what. And quietly I filled in the necessary forms for horticultural college, for the courses and
whatever was needed. Only Helle, Jørn, and Roar knew. And they said nothing.

  Some people wouldn’t want the whole world even if they could have it.

  Some people don’t want a land of their own.

  And some people don’t even need a school in Stavanger.

  Some people just want to be a part of a whole.

  Useful, if inconsequential.

  Not everybody needs the whole world.

  I just wanted to be in peace.

  I sat in my chair, looking at the plants that stood waiting at the door to the shop, they had to be delivered next morning, mustn’t forget, it was half past two, and she’d ring soon, as always, soon Helle would call, I’d arrange a time with her, switch out the lights and lock the doors, drive home to Storhaug, to our apartment.

  Digital figures on the clock above the door: 14:31.

  I sat in my chair, drank coffee.

  14:32.

  Shifted in my chair.

  14:33.

  Screwed the lid of my Thermos on tightly, put it in my plastic bag.

  14:34.

  Helle called.

  “Hi,” she said, her voice soft as usual through the receiver, through the wires, miles of cable and electrical impulses through town.

  “Hi,” I answered, still an expectant child, even after all these years.

  Voices in the background, her room was filled with voices.

  “Are you watching TV?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “What?”

  “Just something that was on. Oprah, I think.”

  “Right.”

  Pause.

  “So,” I began, “do you want to do something this evening?” I fiddled with the flowers on the table, brushed the dust off the tabletop. “Maybe we could go to the movies or something?”

  “I’ve got to go to the gym soon,” she said, “and then I’m going to meet Karianne later today. This evening.”