Storylines are always brewing in my mind, sometimes several simultaneously. Sadly, I’ve rarely had the time to write them down – particularly while working full-time as an IT manager. But one day…
However, I finished a novel about ten years ago. It was never published. And, as I see it today, it shouldn’t be. While the idea behind the text was interesting and probably reusable, I still had much to learn about editing at the time of writing.
Even so, this was my first attempt to write a novel-sized story, and I learned a lot from the process. I have translated the first pages as a small sample for you.
The title I chose for the novel was “Dagene er ikke onde”. Directly translated, this means, “The days aren’t evil”. I would have used a different title if the text had been written in English, as the words don’t carry precisely the same nuance of meaning in the two languages.
The text starts in the early morning of Christmas Eve. We meet one man who is in hospital after a failed suicide attempt. A second man, a homeless alcoholic, is thrown out of his friend’s flat. A third man, an IT expert working until the early hours, has suffered a minor stroke and struggles to regain his memory.
The novel plays with how coincidences and seemingly insignificant choices at certain times can completely change a life. Later in the text, it will turn out that the three men we meet at the start are the same person but on different tracks of life. They just chose different paths at some of the thousands of crossroads we face as living humans.
Trondheim, Christmas Eve
1
A boy stands in the middle of the floor.
A coarse, muddy, grey-brown picture at first. Then, colours blend in slowly, one by one. A dark red kitchen floor with white spots, as if sprinkled with sugar. Kitchen chairs, shiny metal pipes and faux leather. A kitchen table seen from below. Shiny pipes. Muffled sounds. A small bird’s gentle song. A crow cawing far, far away, almost inaudible. Mum’s voice nearby. Mum cooking dinner, speaking softly, her words like an evening’s smell of flowers, safety and tranquillity. A different voice answers, then Mum’s voice again, and the voices dance slowly, spiralling up towards the ceiling. The boy catches some of the words; others elude him jestingly. But that’s fine; the voices are kind now, and the summer afternoon is leaning on an evening soon to come. The kitchen was filled with scents, boiled potatoes and a warm summer. A draught trickling along the floor, from an open door out in the hallway. The kitchen window is wide open. The draught sliding between the boy’s toes. The big toenail is still black and blue but doesn’t hurt much. The old tomcat comes in and rubs his head gently against the boy’s leg. Tickling cat whiskers, tickling like a seagull’s feather on lips, tickling like mum blowing funny sounds with her lips pressed against the boy’s armpit. The boy giggles, and the cat walks away, looking for food. Everything feels close up and still far away, as things sometimes do when you have just woken up.
Then something odd happens. Someone is resting their hand on the boy’s head, and the hand feels so heavy. The boy wants them to take their hand away. The boy doesn’t want them to be there. The room sinks into silence, and a small fish wiggles deep down in the boy’s stomach. A tiny little fish that has jumped out of the water and gasps in the thin air. The fish flaps its tail, jerking, bouncing. The fish cannot breathe. The boy cannot breathe.
The old cat walks out again.
That boy is me.
I remember now.
2
St. Olav’s Hospital
Lina. Darling Lina. I fell asleep again. It’s almost like waking up in the seat of a night train, propped up, slumped forward, the chest almost folded by gravity, seized up and painful. I didn’t think I would fall asleep sitting like this in the bed. I can’t lie down; it makes me too dizzy. Probably because of the medication. My mouth is too dry. I don’t know if I can tolerate those medicines, and I don’t know if I want them either, but I can only do what they tell me to do here.
So, it’s Christmas Eve again. Or the night before Christmas Eve, just after midnight. The weather is horrible outside, as far as I can see. The rain is pounding the window. No, it’s not rain; it’s sleet. Big, wet flakes, each of them making a splash when they hit the glass. It can’t be nice to be outside now if someone has to. Cold, wet, and dark. It gets so dark when there’s no snow. All I can see out there are the street lights up along the Byåsen hill. And the lights from some windows, perhaps. As the sleet flakes are sliding down the window, it seems like the lights are moving. Almost like a yellow and black kaleidoscope. Do you remember the kaleidoscope you had when you were little, Lina? You used to point it towards the lamp to make the small pieces of glass in there really shine. Then, you slowly turned it so the colours fell into new patterns repeatedly.
I remember so well one time you and I were outside in a weather like this. You couldn’t have been more than two or three years old. You were such an early morning bird back then, often wide awake at five or six in the morning. No more sleep! Your Mum and I used to take turns getting up with you at the weekends. It was my turn this time, and I was barely awake as we dressed and had breakfast. But you wanted to go outside, and that certainly woke me up. It was a southwestern full storm, and the wind howled around us like an ocean. Sleet flew in waves around the corner of the house as we stood in our back garden. While gripping my pinkie finger with your tiny little fingers, you said:
“It’s nice to be outside today.”
We were so together then, in the middle of the dreadful weather. I can hardly remember any other time we were more together. And it still seems so clear to me how present I was in that moment. It felt so good and still so scary. The wind almost blew us away. And the strange thing was, as we stood there, I felt like you were holding me so that I wouldn’t fly off.
That was a long time ago now. Back then, we talked, you and I. We talked a lot, and you asked about everything imaginable, even when you were still a little girl. And I wanted to give you decent answers. I owed you that. I’m sure you understood almost everything I explained to you. Because a good while afterwards, you could talk again about something I had said, and you had thought about it in the meantime.
We also read a lot, didn’t we? I always read for you when you were going to bed. Children’s books first, then about animals, remote countries, history, and folk tales. Anything. You listened and asked questions; you wanted to know more. And I would lie beside you until your breath was smooth and you slept. Then, I finally climbed silently out of your bed and whispered, “Good night”.
I wish I could do that now. I want to stand by your bed and be a living dream catcher, guarding you. I would tell the dark, ugly dreams to go away. I would.
But now, you probably wouldn’t want me there, even if I could be.
3
Klostergata Street
He’s nearly there now. The best part. His destination is the harbour he glides slowly into every time he drinks. Always. When his brain is so soaked with alcohol, so flooded, that the only thing he has to do is topple down, straighten out, and everything is gone. As if his fuses blew. It should always be that simple, free from twisted thoughts squirming forwards from who knows where, tearing the blanket of sleep off him. He’s nearly there. Squally has a plan. The couch is narrow but long enough. One last mouthful from Erich’s Christmas schnapps, then flat out on the sofa, his head on the embroidered cushion at one end, his legs at the other. And then the darkness will pull him out from the shore, out where the sea of sleep is infinitely deep.
Erich fills the doorframe. He has just sent two loud comrades on their way home, who had celebrated this last night before Christmas with them. The party at Erich and Liv’s place on the night before Christmas Eve is an old tradition for those invited. Sometimes, it gets late. Now, Christmas songs are echoing out in the staircase. Heavy feet are thumping down the stairs one step at a time. The neighbours must be turning in their beds. Fed up with the noise, relieved that the spree on the second floor is over. It’s the same madness every year. But only this one night; otherwise, it’s quiet at Erich and Liv’s. Everyone knows this, and everyone’s thinking: this time, it’s them; other times, it’s us. There will be no complaints from the neighbours. But Erich stands there; he says nothing and leans against the doorframe. He looks like an old, sad German, Squally thinks.
“You look like an old, sad German,” Squally says.
“I am an old, sad German.” Then Erich is quiet again, and time goes by, but Squally knows Erich well and knows something unsaid is waiting. He finds his tobacco pouch, rolls a cigarette, and searches for a lighter among empty bottles, half-empty glasses and burned-out tealights on the table.
“You’re thinking, Eirich, I can see that.”
“Squally,” Erich replies – a bit too quickly. “Liv and I want you to leave too.”
“Fuck!” Liv? Does Liv want him to leave? Bloody Hell, no. Liv went to bed hours ago. Liv has always allowed a crash on the sofa. For a night. Or Two. Even three if no other shelter was available. And Erich has never denied him a short stay. It’s been like this, almost forever. Squally lights the cigarette and sucks the smoke deep down his chest. Blows it out slowly, a thin mist expanding through the room.
“We talked about it,” Erich says. “We’d like a quiet Christmas for just the two of us this year. You know, Liv and I are getting old now. I do, at least. You know…”
Squally looks at the window. The rain throws itself against the glass as if chased by something terrifying. The Ila church is just a shadow on the other side of the river, a silhouette of dark night against pitch-black night. Helpless streetlights pierce narrow holes in the dense, wet blanket pressed down on the city by the winter night. It’s not livable for people out there now.
“Right!” Squally leans back slightly, lunges forward and gets up on his feet at the first attempt. He’s swaying, but he stands. Huge and rowdy to look at. His hair is a jungle. The beard a landslide. His belly is like a mound in the front; the rest of him follows as he staggers across the floor. Stops in front of the old man, tilts his head backwards. Few people make Squally look uphill, but Erich is a tower, even though age has hung weights on his shoulders.
“Didn’t expect you to throw me out in the rain early on Christmas Eve, Erich.” Squally’s eyes are narrow; doors nearly shut with dark rooms and hidden dangers behind. Something might burst. Something may break out and maim. Squally is a bad one; everybody knows that. Few are those who keep standing when he looms before them, staring. But Erich stands. Much ties the two men together, twenty years or more. From back when a lost youngster was allowed to sleep on Liv and Erich’s kitchen floor for weeks because Erich was the one who saw a calamitous knight behind the narrow eyes. A fluttering fierceness. A vandal who only would make things worse if he was let loose in the streets.
“You know, Squally, there’s a time for everything.”
“Right.” Squally is the one who looks old and sad now. He knows there’s a time for everything; he’s watched Erich getting older, watched Liv getting much older. Watched her vanish more and more into fog and forgetfulness. Squally himself isn’t a youngster anymore, far from it. But Squally knows that Erich remembers, that Erich still sees a lost youth inside the vast, battered hull that is Squally now. On a hot summer day, Erich once carried this tall, lanky boy up all the stairs to the loft flat on Nedre Møllenberg Street. Erich cannot carry Squally anymore. Erich has to carry himself and Liv. There’s a time for everything.
Erich lays his hand on Squally’s shoulder. Few people touch Squally. He doesn’t like it, and it mostly ends in turmoil. But few people have such a big hand as Eirich, with surprisingly long and lean fingers. Fingers that have worked magic on piano keys for a lifetime, once playing jazz, slowly turned into blues, slowly turned into Bach, slowly turned into a soothing psalm that smoothed out the furrows on Squally’s forehead and gently put him to sleep when anxiety and anguish denied him rest those dry summer nights on Møllenberg.
“Wait here,” says Erich. “We don’t have much, but I’ll find something you can take with you.”
Erich rummages in the kitchen for a while and returns with a shopping bag. Squally puts out his cigarette in an ashtray and trails Erich out to the hallway without further protests. With Erich’s help, Squally manages to get the whole shopping bag with its clinking content into his old, black rucksack with an almost blurred-out Adidas logo.
“Thanks, mate.”
Erich unlocks the door while Squally, breathing heavily, struggles to get his worn-out trainers on.
“Well, then. Happy Christmas, Squally.”
“Happy Christmas.”
The door slams shut. The staircase smells of concrete and wet clothes.
4
Fjordgata Street
It’s like the lights suddenly went out and are slowly turned on again by degrees. He has an unpleasant whistle sound in his ears, no, more like inside his head. His jaw burns, all the way back where his tongue is attached. Something falls over inside his stomach; he tilts over to the right and throws up in his paper bin. The vomit is a sour, dark-brown liquid that etches on his teeth. He spits and spits again to get rid of it. Tries to straighten up, supporting himself with both hands on the tabletop. Bends his body up and sits reasonably tall again. The whistling in his head increases in volume, but the pitch of it falls to a deep roar, a booming fog horn inside his brain.
He sits in a corner of an office room. About ten desks are placed in various directions and groups. On his left side is a pitched ceiling with a window where a low rumbling of rain rises and falls with the wind gusts outside. All alone in this room, and what is he doing there?
A laptop, a large one, on the desk in front of him. Many windows open on the screen, stacked on top of each other. The one on the top is filled with columns of codes and numbers and has the title account.log. He knows this should mean something to him. He’s sure he opened this list with some intention, but he can’t understand what that might have been. The content could just as well have been hieroglyphs, pieces of a lost language.
Beside the laptop is a paper cup half full of coffee and seven or eight empty coups with brown rings in the bottom. He takes a sip from the lukewarm coffee, hoping to rinse out the foul taste of vomit in his mouth, but he can’t feel much of a difference between the taste of the coffee and the fluid he threw up.
The numbers at the bottom right screen of the laptop screen change from 06:34 to 06:35. It’s twenty-five to seven, he thinks. I’m Evert. As if this was written on a single, yellow Post-It note in the middle of a vast notice board. Apart from this, the board is empty. Except for one more name, somewhere on the outer edge of his consciousness. The name is Lina.
A couple of long seconds go by while he tries to grasp this. Sweat breaks out all over his body, like pearls on his forehead, arms, and back. He folds like a shrimp and pukes the last of the acid into the paper bin. After this, only retching. Until the pain in his diaphragm is a cold, rigid metal rail he can hold on to.
*
The nausea is not too harsh now. Evert must try to get up on his feet soon. Can’t sit like this, on the men’s room’s floor, his head propped up between two urinals. What if someone walks in? He struggles up, arms waving, and the water starts running in the urinals. Finds a foothold. Stands. Drags his feet over to the sink and opens the tap. Washes his face and combs his hair with wet fingers. Drops of water run from his scalp and down his neck. He towels himself with rough grey-brown tissues and rubs his face hard with them.
Must get out of here. What if someone comes? Evert wouldn’t know what to say. His watch shows eighteen minutes past seven. People might be on their way to work. He has to get out now before they arrive. He stumbles out of the men’s room and out into the office. Luckily, no one is in sight yet. There’s the desk where he sat earlier. A brown wool coat is hanging on the back of the chair, his coat. He puts the coat on and throws the empty paper cups in the bin to cover up most of the vomit. It will start stinking soon, but he doesn’t know what else to do. His laptop? Leave it. Must get out before anyone arrives. What the heck could he say to them? He finds the door and opens it, finally out on the staircase.
Hell breaks loose, a terrible noise, music and vibrations. Where does it come from? Where? Evert reels unsteadily around himself a couple of times before finding the sound’s source in his coat pocket. A mobile phone. “Stig (mobile)” in flashing letters on the screen. What shall he do? Doesn’t want to answer. Or perhaps he must, to make it go away?
He presses “Reply”. Breathes a wary “Yes” into the phone.
“Goood morning, Evert. Jeez, sounds like you just woke up.”
“Guess you can put it that way…”
“Did you manage to fix Wikdahl’s server last night?”
What is this man talking about? Can’t think. What’s the right thing to say? But he has to say something. He must say yes, or else there will be more questions.
“Yes.”
“Great! I understand you had a late night, but will you come to work sometime before lunch? I have quite a few Christmas presents to hand out here. And if Wikdahl is happy now, you deserve at least two of them. You’ll never guess what it is. Starts with bran and ends with dy, as always. Ho ho ho.”
“I’ll come in later. Have to go now.”
“Oh, yes, I get it. Turid is hounding you around the flat with angels, tinsel, and red candles now. Come in when you’ve had enough. See you, bye.”
Thank God! Evert mutes the phone. Walks slowly down the white stairs, still feeling wobbly. The front door is locked. He presses a key-labeled switch on the wall, opens the door, and gets out. Inhales deeply a couple of times. His heartbeat is pounding somewhere behind his eyes.
At least it isn’t raining much now, but the wind is freezing.
As he starts walking, he’s drawn to the right, like his right leg is lagging. Down to the first junction, turns right, and walks over a bridge. Rows of moored boats in the canal below. The railway station in front of him. To the left, a low blue building, a restaurant with the words “da Benito” on a sign.
Evert forces himself to walk towards the building. There’s something familiar with this place and the building. He sits down on a bench. Sailboats swaying slightly in the wind. Vessels of varying ages further down the canal. An old steamboat and several traditional fishing boats.
Evert leans back and sticks his cold hands deep down his coat’s pockets. Yes, there is something familiar here. He inhales deeply again. The salty smell of seawater from the canal. Somehow, the smell of childhood.
A coarse, muddy, grey-brown picture at first. Then movement. A bridge opens to let a passenger boat through. A seagull sitting on the top of a pole with its back against the wind. The gusts ruffling its feathers. The thump when the boat hull hits the quay. The rattling sound of the gangway pushed over the quay edge.
Something started here.
Evert can only follow the flow. He gets up to cross the bridge with the canal underneath again. Halfway over the bridge, he walks through what feels like a thin, thin glass wall, a clear memory of his road once forking right here.