Хьелль Аскильдсен - The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat and Other Stories from the North

Every summer my father drove us to Skånevik, and then we stayed there until a couple of weeks before school started. It was the smelting works that owned the cabins and the employees could use them for free. They were called sports cabins, though I never understood why, there was nothing sports-like about them. The cabin we always stayed in was made of logs and painted red. It was located at the top of the hill that started by the highway and sloped down towards the pebble beach. During the summer weeks the entire area was filled with the dynamite-kids whose fathers were unionized under Chapter 5 of the Norwegian Chemical Workers Union. Everybody knew everybody else and it was like a part of Odda had been moved a few miles further south, to a place that smelled better, looked better, and where it stayed light until much later in the evening. We dived and jumped off the dock by the store. We went fishing and played ball all day long. We boys chased the local girls, the ones who didn’t know us already and were still curious about who we were. The girls from Odda who were here on vacation with us had long since understood we were trash.

The mothers usually stayed throughout the summer, while the fathers drove back and forth, showing up when they had a long weekend or vacation. At this time I had begun to understand that not all the fathers, not even my own father, were necessarily all that interested in making a beeline for Skånevik. Home alone, they could drink at the general store, sleep late, be free of nagging and scolding, kids and the wife. For my own part, that spring I’d started sleeping with the daughter of the director of the works, and I just longed for home. She was two years older than me and there were all kinds of rumours about her in Odda. She had called me one afternoon to invite me up. I’d no idea she even knew who I was, but I didn’t give the rumours in circulation a second thought. I had a shower and took the path leading to the villa at Toppen.

Even so, I didn’t dare touch her or do anything at all until the next time she called and I wandered up the same path. Then she put my hand on her right breast; it was buried beneath a layer of sweater, blouse and singlet. She didn’t say anything that afternoon, just led me up to a bedroom on the second floor. She didn’t stop me or barter with me—I can’t go along with this or that—the way other girls carried on. Afterwards, she said I had to hurry and leave before her mother came home and found us. I gathered up my clothes and shot a glance at her before I went out into the hallway. She lay half-naked with her panties on her thigh. She was slender with light brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She had thick lips and her eyes were almost closed. Downstairs I stood looking out of a window with a view over Odda.

Every time I went up to the house to sleep with her, I justified it by deciding it was her fault. She was the one who’d called me. She was the one who wanted this. But I couldn’t stop. I wanted to hear her breathing when she was transformed from being someone everyone saw to someone I imagined only I was allowed to see. I wanted to hold her and be with her and do all this even though I didn’t know what it was. She was so different, she was a place beyond shame or sin, her desire was without inhibition. Don’t stop, she said to me. Don’t come yet, she said. Don’t do it like that, she said. Do it like this instead, she said and showed me. In the evenings I stood in the room I shared with Fredrik. I looked up at the lights that were on in the villa at Toppen. I stood there and waited for her to call.

If you’d walked past our cabin a summer night in 1974, I’m sure you would have wanted to be with these people, have a beer with them, and you would have talked bullshit with them and sung songs around the fire together. You would have wished that your mother was as beautiful as my mother. You would have stood there and thought that now everything was perfect, this had to last forever.

On the night we climbed out of the T-Bird, Lars Paalgaard shook my hand and thanked me for the trip. I’m glad to have met you finally, he said, then repeated the same thing when he shook Fredrik’s hand. I remember I thought he was a kind of gentleman: he shook our hands as if he wanted us to understand that he really meant it. After we watched the tail lights of the car disappear between the trees, I went straight up to the cabin. My mother called after me, asking if I didn’t want something to eat, a hot dog or a steak. Fredrik came running after me too, but I wanted to be alone.

Inside the cabin it seemed as if nothing was standing still. Everything was spinning around, I didn’t know whether I should lie down or stay seated upright. I couldn’t remember ever having been so angry before. I took out all my cassettes to choose one in particular that would drown out the sounds of laughter and jabbering from outside, but the tape got tangled up in the player, and I ended up on my feet trying to fix the cassette until finally I pulled out the tape and threw all of it on the floor. After a while my mother came. She knocked on her own front door, as if she were unsure about how I would react. She said that Marita had asked about me, she was down by the bonfire. Are you going down to see her? my mother asked. I didn’t answer. Don’t you want to go down with Marita? she asked. No, I said finally. Are you all right? my mother said. No, I said. Have I done something wrong? she asked.

I walked right past her and out of the cabin. I started walking down the steep hill that lay like a natural amphitheatre facing the shore. Fredrik came up beside me, but I shoved him in the shoulder. He stumbled and ended up lying on the grass. He shouted my name. I’d decided to tell Marita that I was screwing the director’s daughter. Keeping my mouth shut would be the same as cheating on her, I had decided. I hadn’t said anything earlier this summer; I thought that it was none of her business because we weren’t going out together. We just hung out every summer—she worked over there in the store and that was where I’d seen her the first time. Everyone assumed that we were going out, or at least that one day we would be a couple.

She was sitting a little way away from the others when I got down there. I sat down without saying hi. Where’ve you been? Marita asked. At the fair, I said. She sat with her hands folded around her knees. There was something in her eyes that made me think she already knew, that she had seen through me this entire first week. I couldn’t take her gaze and looked away. Over by the bonfire I caught a glimpse of shadows moving beside the flames, potatoes in tinfoil and beer bottles being passed from hand to hand. I heard glasses clinking against glasses, and people shouting “cheers”. Some bratty kids came running up behind us and teasing, they howled: Sweethearts , sweethearts . What’s wrong? Marita asked. Nothing, I said, everything’s fine. I hardly recognize you, she said. Me neither, I said. We sat in silence. A guy over by the bonfire had pulled out a guitar and was singing. Everyone sang along. Do you want to go for a walk? Marita asked. I stood up with a soft sensation of amazement in my body.

When we had come a little bit away from the bonfire, Marita took my hand. She looked back, towards the light from the cabins and the buildings that made up the tiny hub of the cove. I could smell a faint scent from her skin and felt her hair tickling my face. She pushed up against me. Her mouth searched for my own. I stroked her on the back, looking at her bum. She took me into the woods, held my hand and pulled me towards her. She turned around quickly. I saw her pale face between the dark pine trees. She pulled her dress down off her shoulders, so I could caress her breasts. I laid her down on the ground and lifted up her dress. I heard her crying as I came carefully inside her.