though she was more restrained than Uncle Bjarne, who was a dreadfully serious engineer at an out-of-town paper factory, and therefore seldom seen except on this one day of the year.
The youngest of the brothers, Uncle Tor, was a waiter at Hesteskoen and Renna and Grefsensetra and … it kept changing. He was cheerful and lively and danced with Mother after the presents had been distributed and the drinks appeared on the table. He also danced with Uncle Bjarne’s bad-tempered wife, Aunty Marit, who loosened up as the evening progressed, so much so she had almost come apart by the end, unlike her spouse, Bjarne, who was always given books for Christmas and who, as soon as he had said his piece about Uncle Oskar, liked to settle down to read on the kitchen bench where, apparently, he had also spent most of his childhood, books which he managed to finish before the evening was over and it was time to gather the herd of kids and his unsteady wife and wend his way to the taxis in Sandakerveien. The kids in question were my three cousins, all belonging to Bjarne and Marit, who conversed in dialect and were forever making sure they hadn’t soiled their frocks with pork fat. The eldest, whose name was also Marit, was two years older than me and quite interesting; she liked to bamboozle me with conjuring tricks.
“Look at me, Finn,” she said, and did something with her fingers that was supposed to be magic and then, all of a sudden, in a hand that had only a split second before been empty, she was holding a Christmas heart. But this one was easy to see through.
“It’s in your other hand.”
“Look now,” she ventured.
“Now it’s behind your back.”
But that didn’t wipe the smile off her face; she just held out one hand, slowly, as if to magic a coin from inside my ear, but instead pinched my cheek, making tears well up, and I howled with pain.
“See,” she said, turning to the others in triumph.
“Ha, ha, Finn fell for it again, hook, line and sinker.”
This expression came from Uncle Bjarne, I recognised it. He loved this sort of thing:
a spanner in the works, Mary, Mary quite contrary
(for Mother), not to mention
Knock, knock, is anyone at home?
– which he used on Uncle Oskar – idioms, rhymes and catch-phrases my mother and I considered embarrassing. She didn’t like Uncle Bjarne, not him, not his wife, nor his pack of kids: I had also caught her mumbling “twit” and “muttonhead”, or worse, when she thought no-one was listening.
But, well, there was something about Uncle Oskar, who appeared not to hear the jibes directed at him. He smiled with good humour at everything and ate slowly and to repletion after the long wood-chopping session in the cellar. He even had his work-clothes with him, which he hung in the minute bathroom before donning his blue suit for the meal. Mother was always tight-lipped and touchy when we were here, never went to the loo, because it was so dark and cramped in there, and she needed a day or two to recover, kept mumbling it was good to get it over and done with as we trudged home in the freezing cold, late at night, like last year for example, each of us carrying a rucksack of presents, past the Ragna Ringdal day centre, across the Ring Road and through Muselunden, my route to school, past the shanty huts – belonging to the men we called Yellow, Red and Black – covered with glittering snow, all looking like Joseph and Mary’s stable with Trondhjemsveien’s line of silent, fog-yellow Bethlehem stars in the background. Except that the idyll was broken by the sound of beasts of prey, unless it was the sound of snoring, Mother shivered and increased her pace and murmured “Poor things” and said:
“We’re doing fine, we are. Remember that, Finn.”
Though she was relieved to have got Christmas Eve in her childhood home out of the way.
The year we had Linda, she sent her apologies, told me she wasn’t up to it, what she wrote on the Christmas cards she sent
The youngest of the brothers, Uncle Tor, was a waiter at Hesteskoen and Renna and Grefsensetra and … it kept changing. He was cheerful and lively and danced with Mother after the presents had been distributed and the drinks appeared on the table. He also danced with Uncle Bjarne’s bad-tempered wife, Aunty Marit, who loosened up as the evening progressed, so much so she had almost come apart by the end, unlike her spouse, Bjarne, who was always given books for Christmas and who, as soon as he had said his piece about Uncle Oskar, liked to settle down to read on the kitchen bench where, apparently, he had also spent most of his childhood, books which he managed to finish before the evening was over and it was time to gather the herd of kids and his unsteady wife and wend his way to the taxis in Sandakerveien. The kids in question were my three cousins, all belonging to Bjarne and Marit, who conversed in dialect and were forever making sure they hadn’t soiled their frocks with pork fat. The eldest, whose name was also Marit, was two years older than me and quite interesting; she liked to bamboozle me with conjuring tricks.
“Look at me, Finn,” she said, and did something with her fingers that was supposed to be magic and then, all of a sudden, in a hand that had only a split second before been empty, she was holding a Christmas heart. But this one was easy to see through.
“It’s in your other hand.”
“Look now,” she ventured.
“Now it’s behind your back.”
But that didn’t wipe the smile off her face; she just held out one hand, slowly, as if to magic a coin from inside my ear, but instead pinched my cheek, making tears well up, and I howled with pain.
“See,” she said, turning to the others in triumph.
“Ha, ha, Finn fell for it again, hook, line and sinker.”
This expression came from Uncle Bjarne, I recognised it. He loved this sort of thing:
a spanner in the works, Mary, Mary quite contrary
(for Mother), not to mention
Knock, knock, is anyone at home?
– which he used on Uncle Oskar – idioms, rhymes and catch-phrases my mother and I considered embarrassing. She didn’t like Uncle Bjarne, not him, not his wife, nor his pack of kids: I had also caught her mumbling “twit” and “muttonhead”, or worse, when she thought no-one was listening.
But, well, there was something about Uncle Oskar, who appeared not to hear the jibes directed at him. He smiled with good humour at everything and ate slowly and to repletion after the long wood-chopping session in the cellar. He even had his work-clothes with him, which he hung in the minute bathroom before donning his blue suit for the meal. Mother was always tight-lipped and touchy when we were here, never went to the loo, because it was so dark and cramped in there, and she needed a day or two to recover, kept mumbling it was good to get it over and done with as we trudged home in the freezing cold, late at night, like last year for example, each of us carrying a rucksack of presents, past the Ragna Ringdal day centre, across the Ring Road and through Muselunden, my route to school, past the shanty huts – belonging to the men we called Yellow, Red and Black – covered with glittering snow, all looking like Joseph and Mary’s stable with Trondhjemsveien’s line of silent, fog-yellow Bethlehem stars in the background. Except that the idyll was broken by the sound of beasts of prey, unless it was the sound of snoring, Mother shivered and increased her pace and murmured “Poor things” and said:
“We’re doing fine, we are. Remember that, Finn.”
Though she was relieved to have got Christmas Eve in her childhood home out of the way.
The year we had Linda, she sent her apologies, told me she wasn’t up to it, what she wrote on the Christmas cards she sent
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