Out Stealing Horses (26 page)

'I don't know,' I said. 'I don't know how much money you can make from timber. I have no idea.'

We stood on the pavement in front of the Warmlandsbank looking at each other; I sullen and ungiving, as often I was towards her, and she confused and irresolute, but with no bitterness in her that day. She chewed her lip, suddenly smiled and said:

'Oh, well, we did have a day out together, you and I, that doesn't happen every day, does it?' And then she laughed. 'Do you know what the funniest thing is?'

'Is there anything funny?' I said.

'We have to use the money here. We're not allowed to take it into Norway just like that.' She laughed out loud. 'It's something to do with currency restrictions, which I ought to have known about, of course. I'm afraid I haven't paid close enough attention. I'll have to do that from now on, won't I?'

She really never did do that, she was too vague in her ways, too preoccupied with her own thoughts most of the time. But on that day she was all of a sudden wide awake. She laughed out loud again, grasped my shoulder and said:

'Come on. I want to show you something I saw on the way up.'

We walked down the street together towards the station.

I was not so cold now. My legs were stiff after standing still, and I was numb all over, but it felt better when we started to move.

We stopped at a clothes shop.

'Here it is,' she said, and pushed me in front of her into the shop. A man came from a room behind the counter and made a bow and was at our service. My mother smiled and said distinctly:

'We want a suit for this young man.' And of course it was not called a suit, it was called something quite different we had no means of guessing, but she parried it simply and with no embarrassment now; in a flash of elegance her heels clicked across the floor to where a row of suits were hanging, and she took one out and swung it round on the hanger and displayed it over her left arm and said:

'One like this, for my son there.' And she smiled and hung it up again, and the man smiled and bowed and measured me round the waist and from the crotch down and asked what size in shirts I took, something I had never thought about, but my mother had. Then he went over to the rail and took out a dark blue suit he thought would be the right size and pointed to a fitting room at the back of the shop, smiling all the while. I went into the cubicle and hung the suit on a peg and started to undress. There was a tall mirror there and a stool. It was so hot in the shop that the skin of my stomach started to prickle and it prickled down along my arms. I felt dizzy and drowsy and sat on the stool with my hands on my knees and my head in my hands. I had only my blue shirt on and my underpants and could easily have fallen asleep right there if my mother had not called:

'Are you alright in there, Trond?'

'Yes, I'm fine,'  I called back, stood up and started to put the suit on; trousers first and then the jacket over the blue shirt. It was a perfect fit. I stood there looking at myself in the mirror. I bent down and put on my shoes and straightened up and looked at myself again. I looked like someone else. I buttoned the top two buttons of the jacket. I rubbed my eyes and my face with the backs of my hands, round and round, and ran my fingers hard back through my hair, many times, pushed the fringe to one side and the hair by my temples behind my ears. I rubbed my mouth with my fingertips, my lips were prickling, and the blood was prickling in my face, and I slapped my face several times. I looked in the mirror again. Peering and making my mouth tight. Turned to one side while I looked over my shoulder in the glass and did the same the other way. I looked a completely different person from the one I had been that day. I did not look like a boy at all. I combed my hair with my fingers several more times before going out into the shop, and I could swear my mother blushed when she saw me. She bit her lip quickly and went over to the man who was back in his place behind the counter, and she still walked briskly.

'We would like to have that one,' she said.

'That will be exactly ninety-eight kroner/ he said, and now he was smiling broadly.

I was still standing outside the cubicle. I saw my mother bending over the counter, I heard the sound of the till, and the man saying:

'Very many thanks, Madam.'

'Can I keep it on?' I said in a loud voice and they both turned and looked at me and nodded as one.

I had my old clothes in a paper bag, which I rolled up and carried under one arm. When we were out on the pavement and walked on down to the station and to a cafe, perhaps, for something to eat, my mother put her arm in mine, and we went on like that, arm in arm like a real couple, light on our feet, our heights a match, and she had a click in her heels that day that echoed from the walls on either side of the street. It was as if gravity was suspended. It was like dancing, I thought, although I had never danced in my whole life.

We were never to walk like that again. When we came home to Oslo, she fell back into her own weight and remained that way for the rest of her life. But on that day in Karlstad we walked arm in arm down the street. My new suit fitted my body so lightly and moved with me every step I took. The wind still came icily down between the houses from the river, and my hand felt swollen and sore where the nails had pierced the skin when I clenched it so hard, but all the same everything felt fine at that moment; the suit was fine, and the town was fine to walk in, along the cobblestone street, and we do decide for ourselves when it will hurt.