Now the threat he had once directed at his father had turned on him, Anita was history and he would need the footwork and the glint in other places than here on earth. He was recording his first LP in a studio unknown to us, in the stable of the greatest manager of them all.137

Down here, he had signed off on two LPs: The Harpers’ somewhat belated Bergen Beat in 1964, towards the end of their heyday, and a solo LP in 1967, forgotten by everyone except his worst enemies. Nonetheless he had achieved more than I had. He had definitely left his mark on his times, and as long as there are Bergensians alive who remember that period, they will recall Johnny Solheim, most of them.

I opened my eyes and stared up at the grey ceiling above me.

And where had I left my mark, other than on the inside of school books that had long been burned and for a few moments in the lives of people who would rather forget?

I let myself drift back to the time when girls came back into our lives, after it had been just us boys for a few years.

When I thought back to the girls their faces tended to merge into one another, as quickly as, in those days, you were tossed from one crush to the next – and then back to the first. There were dark blondes with glasses in the autumn, light blondes with a tan in the summer, curly redheads skiing the Vidden trail in the winter – and an assortment of girls in the spring.

But the biggest romances came in autumn. Then you needed the heat from new solar systems. Then the streets were dark and wet and waiting for you to walk hand in hand around the big Lungegård lake, to kiss all the way round, until you reached the brightly lit streets by Nygård bridge and through the Florida district, where it was a little harder to kiss in the Norway of the late fifties.

There was Sylvelin, who came from another part of Bergen and only lived for a year or two in our street, a blazing sun in her hair, a spring breeze in her eyes, a broad, healthy face, a spontaneous beam and already then a hint of laughter lines. She walked through our hearts in flat shoes and we never touched her.138

There was robust Reidun, auburn hair and freckles strewn across a lively face. Lean and sinewy, she was better at football than most of us and she saved her kisses for footballers with a moped from Fridalen and Landås.

There was Lisbeth, who made her entrance to the sound of drunken shrieks and the clink of bottles, and made her sexual debut on a building site long before the rest of us had put away our toy pistols, dark-haired and even darker-eyed, as bewitching as a wood nymph and prey to rumours.

And there were others, girls who came and went or girls who were just there, taken for granted most of the time, only to become significant at a given time in our lives. There was Anita, who accompanied us through our childhood as a busty dream until Johnny made off with her for a housewife’s existence in Paddemyren. There was Lillian, who allowed ten of us boys in a line to touch her thing – tentatively, afraid of burning our fingers – behind the huts in Nordnes park before the biggest boys took her to the park, perhaps to do other things. There was Annemette, who attracted crowds when she – long-legged and attractive, large teeth and small nose – was the lollipop lady in Haugeveien. And this was only the start.