The Ringmaster's Daughter Read online

only for people who weren't good at expressing themselves.

  *

  I got thumped less once we began to get homework. That

  was because I helped the other pupils in the class with their

  tasks. I never sat down and did school work with them -

  that would have been far too boring, and I was frightened of

  making friends. But it became more and more usual for me

  to do my own homework first and, when I'd finished that,

  to do the same thing once or twice more. It was these extra

  answers that I could give away or sell for a bar of chocolate

  or an ice-cream to one of the others in the class.

  As a rule we could choose between three or four essay

  subjects. When, for example, I'd written the story 'Almost

  an Adventure', I'd get an itch to do the essay entitled 'When

  the Lights Went Out' as well. But I wasn't allowed to hand

  in both essays. So I could give one of them away to Tore or

  Ragnar.

  Helping Tore and Ragnar with their homework was a

  good idea, because then they wouldn't beat me up. That

  wasn't principally out of gratitude. I think they were

  frightened I'd announce to the class that I'd done their

  essays for them. Saying so wouldn't get me into trouble with

  the teacher. It wasn't my fault we were only allowed to give

  one answer each. And I hadn't handed in Tore's or Ragnar's

  work. They had appropriated these essays themselves. It was

  obvious.

  I never went round touting such extra pieces of work, but

  gradually classmates would approach me and ask if they

  could purchase some assistance. A number of transactions

  took place this way, and they weren't always done for

  money or chocolate, but often for quite different sorts of

  returns. It might be nothing more than a couple of obscene

  words in a needlework class or a snowball placed on the

  teacher's chair. I remember such homework help continu-

  ing to the age when a task could be bartered with one of the

  boys in return for the loosening of a female classmate's bra

  strap. Only one or two girls in our class had begun to use a

  bra, and they weren't the nicest ones. While such favours

  remained outstanding the debtor was in danger, as I might

  eventually feel myself obliged to tell the teacher that I'd

  taken it upon myself to help �ivind or Hans Olav with his

  homework.

  Homework help wasn't limited to Norwegian. I could

  offer written answers in geography, religious instruction,

  local history and maths. All that mattered was that they

  weren't too similar to my own answers. First, I'd do my

  own maths homework without any errors. Thereafter it

  didn't take long to work up a couple more sets of answers,

  but this time I had to insert the requisite number of errors

  in the sums. It wouldn't have been at all plausible for Tore

  to hand in homework that was totally error free. Tore was

  satisfied with a C+, so I had to prepare a C+ answer. If

  someone else also wanted a C+ answer, it had to be of the

  same standard, but obviously the mistakes couldn't be the

  same.

  It wasn't that uncommon for me to produce homework

  for a D or D+. There was a market at this standard too.

  I well understood why Arne and Lisbeth couldn't be

  bothered to do homework when the results never produced

  more than a D+ or a C-. However, I never took any

  payment for D answers, there had to be a limit. I considered

  it payment enough to do them. I was particularly fond of

  producing answers with lots of mistakes. They required

  more ingenuity than unblemished ones. They demanded

  more imagination.

  If I was really strapped for cash, and my mother and father

  were on speaking terms for once and neither would grant

  me more than my regular pocket money, I would occasion-

  ally produce a B-A or even an A. I believe I once even

  managed to deliver an A+ in geography for Hege, who was

  a championship dancer at Ase and Finn's Dancing School

  and was practising like mad for a samba and cha-cha-cha

  competition. On such occasions I would often introduce a

  small error into my own offering, and thus aim for a B+ so as

  not to eclipse the other answer. Then the teacher would

  write 'A little lacking in concentration, Petter?' � or some-

  thing in that vein. It was all so amusing. Even then, in

  the early sixties, a few teachers had introduced what later

  became known as 'differentiation'. Maintaining that an

  answer meriting a B+ was lacking in concentration was a

  differentiated comment. Had it been Lisbeth's work, he

  would have written 'Congratulations, Lisbeth! A really solid

  piece of homework.' The teacher didn't know that I'd made

  the mistake for fun. He didn't realise I'd cheated just to get a

  worse mark.

  The upshot was that Hege had to read her exceptional

  geography task to the entire class. She hadn't reckoned on

  that, but the teacher was adamant that she go up at once and

  sit at his desk. He came down and took Hege's place, which

  was next to mine. I sat at the third desk from the front in the

  middle row, and Hege sat on my right, only now the teacher

  was there. So Hege began to read. She was one of the best at

  reading aloud, but now she read so quietly that the teacher

  had to ask her to speak up. Hege raised her voice, but after a

  moment it broke and she had to begin again. She glanced

  down at me several times, and once I waved discreetly back

  with my left index finger. When she'd finished reading the

  teacher began to clap, not for her delivery, but for the

  content of the essay, and so I clapped as well. As Hege made

  her way back to her desk I asked the teacher if we could

  watch her do the cha-cha-cha as well, but he said jocularly

  that that would have to wait for another time. Hege looked

  as if she were about to pull a face at me, but she didn't dare.

  Perhaps she was afraid I might suddenly snatch glory away

  from her by telling the class that it was I who'd gallantly

  stepped in to do her homework while she practised so

  intensely for a dancing competition. There could never be

  any question of that, as Hege had been most punctual in

  paying what had been agreed - I'd already got the two and a

  half kroner. But this didn't seem to put her mind at rest. She

  didn't realise just how often I helped classmates with their

  homework. It wasn't the first time I'd sat listening as an opus

  of mine was read to the class and, far from minding, I

  relished it. I was the Good Samaritan. I helped the whole

  class.

  Hege was in the same set as me when we started grammar

  school and in the first year we had an amusing wager. Laila

  Nipen, one of our teachers, had won a load of money on the

  lottery and she'd spent it buying a brand new Fiat 500. I

  think I was the one who suggested that some of us boys

  might carry the tiny car through the double doors of the

  school entrance and set it down right in the middle of the

  assembly hal
l. Hege thought it was a great idea, but she

  didn't think we'd got the nerve. I saw my chance and

  suggested she swear a solemn oath to come on a romantic

  trip to the woods with me if Laila's Fiat made it to the

  assembly hall within the week. If it didn't, I'd do her maths

  homework for an entire month. A couple of days later

  the car was in the hall. The entire operation took just ten

  minutes, during a break when we knew there was a staff

  meeting. We even had the temerity to tie an outsized, light-

  blue ribbon round the little red car to make it look like a

  proper lottery prize. For its part, the school never found out

  who'd been responsible for that mischievous little prank, but

  Hege was now honour-bound to take a trip to the woods

  with me. She didn't try to overlook the obvious subtext in

  'romantic'. Hege was no fool, she knew just how scheming I

  could be, and after all, I had helped to carry an entire car into

  the hall just for her sake. Anyway, I think she liked me. We

  found a secluded, unlocked shack. It was the first time I'd

  been with a naked girl. We weren't more than fourteen, but

  she was fully developed. I thought she was the loveliest

  thing I'd ever touched.

  Now and then I used to help the teachers too. I was

  constantly feeding them amusing ideas for essay titles and

  other homework. A couple of times I offered to help the

  teacher mark our maths work. On other occasions I might

  ask for further, or more detailed, information about a subject

  the teacher had touched on in class. If we'd been learning

  about the Egyptians in a history lesson, I would exhort the

  teacher to tell the class about the Rosetta stone. Without this

  stone, scholars would never have been able to interpret

  hieroglyphics, I explained, and so we'd have known very

  little about how the ancient Egyptians thought. When the

  teacher told us about Copernicus, I asked if he could touch

  on Kepler and Newton too, because it's well known that

  not all Copernicus' suppositions were correct.

  I was widely read by the time I was only eleven or twelve.

  At home we had both Aschehoug's and Salmonsen's

  encyclopaedias which came to forty-three volumes in all.

  According to motivation and mood, I had three different

  modes of approaching an encyclopaedia: I might look up

  articles on a particular subject, often related to something I'd

  been pondering for some time; I might sit for hours and dip

  into the encyclopaedia at random; or I might begin to study

  one entire volume from start to finish, like Aschehoug's

  volume 12 from Kvam to Madeira or Salmonsen's volume

  XVIII from Nordland Boat to Pacific. My mother had dozens

  of other interesting books in the living-room bookcases. I

  was especially keen on comprehensive works that covered

  all the knowledge on a particular subject, for example The

  World of Art, The World of Music, The Human Body, Francis

  Bull's World Literary History, Bull, Paasche, Winsnes and

  Hoem's The History of Norwegian Literature and Falk and

  Torp's Etymological Dictionary of the Norwegian and Danish

  Tongues. When I was twelve, my mother bought Charlie

  Chaplin's My Autobiography, and despite its lack of objectiv-

  ity, it too became a kind of encyclopaedia. My mother was

  always nagging me to remember to put the books back on

  the shelves, and one day she banned me from taking more

  than four books into my room at once. 'You can't read

  more than one book at a time, anyway,' she declared. She

  didn't seem to realise that often the whole point was to

  compare what was written about a particular thing in several

  different books. I don't think my mother had a very sharp

  eye for source criticism.

  After we'd learnt about the prophets in religious instruc-

  tion, I asked the teacher to look up the prophet Isaiah,

  chapter 7, verse 14. I wanted him to explain to the class the

  difference between a 'virgin' and a 'young woman'. Surely

  the teacher knew that the Hebrew word translated as 'virgin'

  in that verse actually only signified a 'young woman'? This

  was something I'd chanced on in Salmonsen's encyclopae-

  dia. But, I went on, Matthew and Luke appeared not to

  have studied the underlying Hebrew text carefully enough.

  Perhaps they had contented themselves with the Greek

  translation, called the Septuagint, which I thought was such

  a funny name. Septuaginta was the Latin for 'seventy', and

  the first Greek translation of the Old Testament was so

  named because it was made by seventy learned Jews in

  seventy days. I elaborated on all of this.

  The teacher didn't always welcome my contributions to

  his lessons, even though I took great care not to correct him

  when he said things that were factually wrong. When I

  ventured to attack the very dogma of the virgin birth by

  referring to what I considered was a translation error in the

  Septuagint, he was further constrained by church doctrine

  and the school's charter. He tried to hush me up, too, when

  I pointed out something as innocent as the way Jesus' public

  ministry lasted three years in John's gospel, but only one

  year according to the other Evangelists.

  When we were doing human biology I told the teacher

  that I thought his use of the word 'winkle' for a certain

  bodily member was utterly risible, at least in the context of

  propagation. I told him that the term 'winkle' had fallen

  completely out of fashionable use, especially in matters of

  sexuality. 'Which term do you think I should use instead?'

  he asked. The teacher was a sympathetic chap, a powerfully

  built man and almost six foot six into the bargain, but now

  he was completely at sea. 'I haven't a clue,' I replied. 'You'll

  just have to try to find something else. But do try to avoid

  Latin,' I said by way of a parting shot.

  I never gave pieces of advice to the teacher during the

  class. My aim wasn't to demonstrate that I was cleverer than

  my classmates or even, from time to time, cleverer than the

  teacher. It was always in the schoolyard or on the way in and

  out of the classroom that I gave the teacher friendly tips. I

  didn't do it to make an impression on him, or to feign a

  greater preoccupation with school work than was really the

  case. The opposite was nearer the mark. I would sometimes

  pretend to be less interested than I was, which was much

  more fun. So did I do it out of pure, unalloyed benevolence?

  No, that wasn't true, either.

  I'd regularly feed the teacher good bits of advice because I

  found it fascinating to watch his reaction. I enjoyed watch-

  ing people perform. I enjoyed watching them disport

  themselves.

  *

  Each Saturday I'd listen to Children's Hour, and I wasn't

  alone. Every child in Norway listened to Children's Hour. In

  later life, I saw an official statistic that said that in the period

  1950 to 1960, 98 per cent of all Norwegian children listened
/>   to Children's Hour. That must have been a very conservative

  estimate.

  We lived in what social scientists call a homogenous

  culture. Everyone with any self-respect listened to The Road

  to Agra, Karhon on the Roof and Little Lord Fauntleroy. Every-

  one read the Bobsey Twins, Nancy Drew and the Famous

  Five books. We were brought up with Torbj�rn Egner and

  Alf Proysen. We also had a shared experience in the long

  weather forecasts from the Met. Office, the arid Stock

  Exchange prices, Saturday night from the Big Studio at

  Marienlyst, Family Favourites, that now dated mix called

  Music and Good Motoring and Dickie Dick Dickens. Every

  Norwegian of my age shares the same cultural background.

  We were like one big family.

  Children's Hour was accompanied by a 50-ore bar of

  chocolate, a small bottle of fizzy orange and either a packet

  of alphabet biscuits, a small box of raisins or a bag of peanuts.

  On the rare occasions we got both raisins and peanuts, we

  mixed them. The Saturday treat was almost as standardised

  as school breakfast. For school breakfast the education

  authorities supplied milk, crispbread with cheese, and

  bread with liver p�t�, fish paste and jam. It was during

  school breakfast that I would sometimes take soundings to

  find out what the others were given for Children's Hour. It

  appeared that everyone got exactly the same as me. I found

  it eerie to discover that there was some unseen parental

  conspiracy in operation. This was before I realised just how

  deep a homogenous culture could sit.

  Sometimes we were given a krone so that we could go to

  the sweet shop and choose our own Saturday treat. Of

  course, this was far better than the usual mix of peanuts,

  raisins and alphabet biscuits. A krone would buy us ten mini

  chocolate bars, but with ten ore you could also get one jelly

  baby or two salt pastilles or one piece of chewing-gum or

  two five-ore chocolates or four fruit pastilles. So, for a full

  krone you could buy three mini chocolate bars, two jelly

  babies, two salt pastilles, one piece of chewing-gum, four

  five-ore chocolates and four fruit pastilles. Or you could buy

  a 25-ore bar of chocolate, a 25-ore sherbet lemon and, for

  example, two mini chocolate bars, two jelly babies and a

  piece of chewing gum. I was good at making my money go

  a long way. Sometimes I would also filch small change from

  my mother's coat pocket, when she was getting ready in the

  bathroom, or having an after-dinner nap, or late in the

  evening when she was sitting listening to La Boheme. Taking

  a small coin or two didn't give me a bad conscience, because

  I only did it when I hadn't used the phone for days. Four

  phone calls cost one krone - I was already a very businesslike

  little person. But for my mother's sake I was careful to avoid

  any jingling of keys or coins when I stuck my hand into her

  coat pocket. Metre Man often stood watching me, but he

  wouldn't tell. An extra krone or 50 ore made selecting the

  Saturday sweets much easier.

  Not everyone had a state-of-the-art radio, but my mother

  and I did. We had just traded in an old Radionette for a brand

  new Tandberg Temptress. The set stood on a teak shelf in the

  living-room and banana plugs attached it to two loudspeak-

  ers. These gave far better sound quality than the cabinet

  radios. The shelf below the radio set and record player

  contained all of mother's records: an impressive number of

  old 78s, but also a lovely collection of modern LPs and

  singles. Once I'd bought my supply of sweets for Children's

  Hour, I'd perch on the Persian pouffe right up close to one of

  the loudspeakers and lay out all my sweets in one long row

  on top of the radio. If I had more sweets than my official

  means dictated, I'd make a secret little row of chocolates and

  jelly babies down on the record shelf as well. In such

  circumstances, I'd always consume the lower row first.

  The grown-ups also bought themselves treats to go with

  their Saturday coffee. I'd made thorough investigations

  about this too during school breakfasts, and the impression

  I got concurred almost uncannily with what I'd observed in

  my own home. The grown-ups ate large 25-ore crystallised

  fruits, little liqueur chocolates, chocolate orange segments or