Read Online Beatles by Lars Saabye Christensen - Free Book Online Page A

my grasp, as though I had already forgotten it. But it’s not true that you forget so easily. You store everything inside yourself and then one day, wherever you are, whatever the time, it appears just like that, just like I could smell wet lilac now, lilac after the rain, even though we were well into autumn. I pedalled down Drammensveien trying to remember the words, the tune and the voice. But as I turned into Svoldergate I was given other things to think about. I pulled up sharp because, coming out of a door, was Uncle Hubert. He stopped, stood still, stared at his feet, then walked back in, backwards, came out, went back and continued like this, and I began to count becausethere might have been a system to what he was doing, it might have been a secret code. Uncle Hubert went in and out of the front stairway twenty-one times, then he ran off round the corner at full pelt. I stabled the horse, gave it a bag of hay and padded up the stairs. Standing there with the key at the ready I could hear Dad’s voice from inside the sitting room. It was loud and hysterical and penetrated the walls like a saw. I stood with my head against the door.
    ‘It’s not right. It’s simply unacceptable. It’s a scandal. Twenty-one years old!’
    I couldn’t hear my mother’s voice. She was probably sitting on the sofa with her hands in her lap looking disconsolate.
    Dad’s voice continued:
    ‘She could have been our daughter. It’s… it’s disgusting! Twenty-one years old!’
    Then the house went quiet. I breathed in, opened the door as gently as I could and sneaked into my room. And that night I felt I was flying, or falling, falling backwards, with no one to catch me, into a black hole in the sky.
     
    The bombshell fell the day after, on Monday, leftovers day. All of a sudden Dad put down his knife and fork and carefully wiped his mouth.
    ‘My God, Ahlsen, the branch manager, was furious today. At the weekend he had a very important contact over from Sweden, and on Sunday the client’s car was vandalised.’
    ‘Vandalised?’ Mum said.
    ‘Yes. Some good-for-nothing had broken off the badge at the front and scratched the paintwork. And it was an extremely exclusive car.
    A Volvo 1800S. The kind the Saint drove, he told me, expecting me to be impressed to bits.’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ I confined myself to saying.
    ‘You don’t know anyone who does that sort of thing, do you?’ he said, turning to me suddenly and looking me in the eye.
    ‘Me? How? How should I know?’
    ‘No. Of course you don’t know anything about it.’ Dad looked at Mum. ‘They reported it to the police of course. They’ve had several reports of this kind of late. It’s a disgrace!’
    After the meal I was given shore leave and I cycled like crazy over to Gunnar’s. I told him what had happened and we went on to Ola’s, dragged him out and panted off to Seb’s – he lived just round the corner. His mother opened the door and burst into laughter on seeing us.
    ‘Have you come from the moon?’ she laughed.
    ‘It’s about May 17,’ I said. ‘We might have to be flag-bearers.’
    Ola gave me a stupified look, but Gunnar poked him in the back to concentrate his mind. There was a little gasp, but then he was quiet.
    ‘Sebastian’s in his room. He’s doing homework.’
    We bustled in with Seb’s mother’s laughter ringing in our ears and almost scared the life out of him as we burst through his door.
    ‘W-w-we’ve been caught,’ Ola squealed. ‘They’ve f-f-found out!’
    ‘Don’t talk so loud, for Christ’s sake!’ Gunnar hissed.
    ‘What’ve they found out?’ Seb asked.
    I told him about the whole business. Gunnar stood by the door making sure that no one was listening.
    ‘But they don’t know it was us, do they,’ Seb said at last.
    ‘Not yet. But we have to get rid of the stolen goods!’
    Seb pulled out the box. We crowded round. On the top there were a few comics, then the glint of metal, polished like my mother and