Chapter 7 - Only Human

Beate is going to the lecture today. It is easy, all she has to do is get into the car with Mum. She works in administration at the university library, in Georg Sverdrup’s House. Once Bea Britt had said that she wished her surname were Sverdrup. Sverdrup or Seip or Vogt or Bonnevie, or one of those kind of names, you know, she said, when you’re born into a family like that there’s no doubt you’ll go far. Why, Beate asked, why’s that, everything’s different now, anyone can get an education and be something if they want. Bea Britt was not convinced. It’s to do with confidence, she said, with a gloomy look, it’s passed down, in the blood.

But isn’t that almost how they thought in the thirties, Beate asked, who had just read about the inter-war years, only they spoke about genetic inheritance and gene transmission? They believed that intelligence and all the best qualities were concentrated in lineages that could pass them on. By selection, or something like that, I didn’t quite get it. But that’s probably where the saying ‘in the best of families’ comes from.

She was proud of having learnt so much, of remembering and understanding it, of speaking like a grown-up.

So what? Bea Britt said. No matter what you call what’s passed on to you, it’s still yours. And coming from a good family has always helped.

Not me, Beate replied, I’d sooner have freedom than inheritance. I can be whom I want.

Christ, Bea Britt said, and went out into the garden.

What’s with Bea Britt? Beate asks her mother, a question she has put previously, without getting any clear answers. Her mother shrugs, says something about how talented Bea Britt is. It was too bad about the divorce, she will say, but her two kids are extraordinary. Then she will talk about Tuva, who is so intelligent and funny and outgoing, she always brings her up. As though Tuva’s cheerful temperament can make up for Bea Britt’s gloomy disposition.

Mum wears tan leather gloves when driving. Driving gloves, she says, they give feeling, and feeling is the big difference between boring and fun. Her hair sweeps over her chin and mouth as she twists around to reverse out of the parking spot.

Beate thinks Mum working at the university library complicates things. For instance, she does not want to sit there to study even though her friends do, does not want Mum to see how she lives her life. Erik usually sits there, on the third floor, and Beate would like to go up, pretend not to notice him, walk slowly between the rows of desks in the reading room, keeping an eye out for an empty spot, act like she does not see him before he has had ample opportunity to look at her body. She knows it looks good to boys, and reckons Erik is a boy who is used to hooking up with girls who look good. Who only wants girls who look good.

She also likes walking around Akademika, the campus bookshop, browsing the titles, taking them off the shelves and leafing through them, looking at the pictures if they are art books. But Mum does that too. They have often run into one another there. In wintertime, Mum wears her red coat, the same one as when Beate was small, it never seems to wear, Mum says and laughs, because in truth it is practically hanging off her, the lining is torn, there are buttons missing and the wool is nubbled. All the same she still wears it, wants to feel young, she says, and that is daft, Beate tells her, because the coat is old and makes her look old. But Mum is not bothered, and when Beate rounds the corner of a bookshelf, she can sometimes be standing there, in the red coat, concentrating deeply on reading. If she looks up and catches sight of Beate she smiles so as to melt her, at least that is what happens: Beate loves Mum’s smile. That is the reason she needs to avoid her up here at Blindern, she does not want to feel like going home with her mother all the time. It is impossible to be angry with Mum.

Mum drives fast, but not too fast, Dad says she is an amazing driver. She puts music on, Lady Gaga, loud of course, rolls down the window and sings along.

You and Tuva are actually quite alike, Beate says, and I bear a resemblance to Bea Britt, isn’t that strange, we’re not related after all? And I’m named after her and everything.

But that makes Mum cross, and she says she completely disagrees, not at all, she says. Tuva takes after Bea Britt, no doubt about it, and only you could have been mine, are mine, she says. Well, and your Dad’s, of course, but it sounds as though she thinks that is neither here nor there. Mum and Dad are so different, and Beate does not know why this is, but they both feel like something she can sink into at any time, like sleep. What stands out most about Mum is her smile, her face, and her smell. When she was small it was just as if she and Mum were one and the same. When Mum was nearby everything was good. When she was gone things could become scary and unpleasant. She could begin to get cold. Get a lump in her throat. Not manage to say anything. Not if Dad was there of course. He would pick her up and carry her away from any difficulties, whether her mittens were cold and wet, or some older children spoke to her whom she did not dare to answer. She would sway off on his arm, and leave the problems behind them, she would not see them any longer. Sometimes he carried her around the living room while she rested her head on his shoulder. He looked at the TV and spoke to Mum at the same time, and his voice rumbled and vibrated in her body. He would hold her like that whenever she asked even long after she had begun at school. She remembers him helping her move last year, seeing him carry her boxes and furniture up all the steps. Dad can carry a lot, and she tells him things she never says to Mum. About what she is worried she will not manage. That she wants him to teach her to drive, but does not want Mum to know. Mum is so good at everything, she is sort of everywhere and knows best, but it cannot go on like that.

Beate does not need Erik. She thinks about it as she cuts diagonally across the quad, that Erik is probably the opposite of the right one, that he will act as a poison in her body, she pictures sperm spurting out of a hole in his penis, and it is the dark gate to hell, I am afraid, Beate thinks, I do not understand any of this.

She gets there late and sits at the back. The lecture has begun and she cannot concentrate, she looks for Erik, his brown head of hair. She cannot see him. She looks slowly around the auditorium once more, lets her gaze sweep along row after row, the back of every boy’s neck. Her hands around one of them. No one knows what might happen.

Erik is not here today, she can imagine where he is. In his room at the student residence in Kringsjå with a girl. Definitely. The communal kitchen swollen with sunshine, the cheese slicer cutting deep in a block of yellow cheese. She has been at Erik’s, to a party on his floor, but it was chaotic. She saw him snog several different girls, at one point he looked her in the eyes at the same time as he stood kissing Sølvi in a doorway. When they broke off he smiled to Beate, and raised a beer bottle by way of greeting. Even Sølvi, who is willing to do pretty much anything to land a boyfriend, and therefore never gets one, had the brains to leave. Fuck’s sake, she said, and marched off demonstratively into the kitchen where there was some sort of quiz going on. Still, Erik did not come over to Beate, he just stood there, leaning against the door frame smiling, but not long enough for it to be embarrassing, for her to get something on him. Is this some kind of game? Beate thought, as she watched him disappear, off into another room, or maybe he left, because she did not see him again that night.

Someone opens the door of the auditorium. It could be him. She turns her head slightly, but keeps her eyes fixed on the lecturer. Everyone says she has a beautiful profile.

Whomever just entered has not moved, is still standing by the door. Jesus, then it is him, she thinks, it is happening now, it has started. She feels an uncontrollable pounding inside. Sometimes things are just like this. Everything just happens, goes quickly and turns out exactly as she imagined. As she is imagining it. No, right before. Like when she is writing assignments and the words come before the thoughts, or is it the other way around? Her thoughts tear down barriers, she is in any case in front of herself as it were, ahead of what is going to happen, like now, as she turns and sees Erik over by the door. He lights up and waves, squeezes past the person sitting at the end of her row and comes toward her with his jacket open and his bag in his hand. She smiles and holds the folding seat beside her down so he can sit. He smells of soap, deodorant and aftershave, boy’s smells, she feels a tingling in her chest. He bends over his bag to take out a ring binder. He cannot find a pen and asks to borrow one, she gives him her own and takes out another for herself from her pencil case. They smile to one another, then he turns his head and looks towards the lecturer. He seems to be listening but does not write anything down. She glances over at his notes from yesterday, they are going in all directions on the page, some are boxed off and underlined, others are crossed out in heavy pen. After a while he places one hand on the table. She understands that it is a signal, that it is for her if she wants it.