Free Child Wonder by Roy Jacobsen Page B

it?
    I didn’t have an answer to that; in fact, there had never been so many of us.
    But, as so often before, when she wanted to tell me something in confidence, other things came out first which had nothing to do with the main point, this time it was what the family might have said about her during the evening, another thing I couldn’t get worked up about.
    The real problem didn’t surface until a while after Christmas. There were three of us now, weren’t there, she explained. But Linda would be going to school soon, and giving up the shoe-shop job was out of the question, it was much more likely she would go full-time. And then the nursery up behind the church had rejected our application, there might be a place in spring, fine, but what on earth would we do until then?
    Even this question wasn’t addressed to me, though; Mother had already found a solution.
    “How do I look?” she asked, it was the 28th of December, just after three in the afternoon.
    She had put on some make-up and her shoe-shop dress, now she was draping her smartest cloak across her shoulders, she asked me to look after Linda and went out starting with No.1,then went from block to block, rang all the doorbells, said Happy Christmas and asked if there was anyone at home who might be able to take care of a little girl for five to six hours a day until spring. She got no further than No. 7, where she found the right person, a twenty-year-old by the name of Eva Marlene whom ever since we have called simply Marlene and who worked as a waitress in the evenings, at Kontraskjæret, and slept all morning in her parents’ flat. And Marlene seemed fine, even though Linda ran off and hid the instant she popped her head in.
    “Come and say hello to Eva Marlene, Linda. She’s going to be looking after you while I’m at work.”
    That didn’t have much of an effect, and I can’t say I blame her, the way she had been bundled from one woman to another, barely used to mother No. 2 before No. 3 was introduced. But Marlene, who at first sight could appear somewhat flighty and very nubile, judging by all the paintwork, turned out to be robust and down-to-earth, a realist, who strangely enough was employed in the same frivolous line of work as Uncle Tor, the fairy-tale industry, as Mother called it, where dreams and insanity were two sides of the same coin.
    “Oh, she’ll get used to me,” Marlene said in the direction of the duvet beneath which Linda was hidden, and then started looking around to get an impression of what it would be like to spend time here. “I’ve got three small brothers and sisters, and I’m used to young kids.”
    “I don’t think we’ll be able to hang onto her for long,” Mother said, in high spirits, when Marlene had gone home after downing three cups of coffee, with reference to both her nubile status and pleasing personality. “Just hope she survives till March … Well, if we’re very, very lucky maybe …”
    On and on she went. For good fortune is always followed by bad, etc., etc.
    So that was how the year of the Berlin Wall, the T.V. set and above all Yuri Gagarin ended, the year that had begun so like all the others, but because of something as prosaic as the combination of decoration fever and poverty had transformed Mother from being a divorced widow into a landlady and single mother of two, and me from being an only child to becoming one of two siblings in a bunk bed, not to mention what this must have meant for Linda. Though we were not so aware of that yet. If the truth be told, by and large, we don’t understand much of what is going on around us; as Mother is wont to say, by God’s good grace, life usually comes to us in bits and pieces.

8
    The New Year began with snow. Piles and piles of it. On balconies and roofs and in fields and streets, with ski slopes and toboggan slides and children hanging on to bumpers as cars spun up Traverveien and got no further than Lien’s shop before having to seek refuge