NOVEL
The Love We Had
Chapter 11 Going into the furnace hall to dig out shit from the smelter furnace
Chapter 11 Going into the furnace hall to dig out shit from the smelter furnace
I’m standing in the locker room, looking at my watch, putting on my overalls. It’s stiff from old shit. I’m going into the furnace hall to dig out shit from the crashed furnace, the oldest of the three, furnace 1, it should have been shut down a long time ago.
I think about what I’m doing in my life. I should have gotten away from here a long time ago. But I walk here in the gray shit, this foul-smelling factory, the carbide that tears in my nose, all the crap jobs I have to take because no one else bothers.
I should have taken the education I started on, should have traveled from this city many years ago, should have made other priorities in my life. But then I walk here, in through the gate and then out through the gate again, going home to her who has a focus elsewhere and is mostly absent both physically and mentally. I persevere day after day, year in, year out
I’m in the shower after the shift, one of the dirtiest I’ve had in a long time. I think in the same terms as I have thought so many times before, when it has looked dark. I’m looking for light, I’m surprised, glad she’s come into my life. Secret, and such an unexpected bonus, that she came to me.
She has said that she wants me, a splinter from the far north of the country who came floating on a wreck inland in the innermost fjord arm on a cold winter day. Eira says that she likes my voice, and the accent, the tone of voice, the dialect that she says is very melodic, that she says I charm her with.
I have no idea what the reason was that many years ago I disembarked and went ashore right here in this narrow industrial city. Maybe it was that this city in a way, strangely enough, reminded me of the windswept city where I grew up with high piers on stilts, with the ocean right in from the west, the wind that tore and rumored in the houses
Here there are no high piers on stilts, nor any open sea straight in from the west. But it is windy here, and not least rain from the west so it was enough. And then there are the people here. Not unlike the place where I came from, this small town community where everyone watches over everyone, where awake eyes follow you on your journey as you rush through the few streets.
If truth be told, it was not the city nor the people who live here that made me go ashore in this small industrial city. Rather, it was coincidental. I followed an impulse, I was tired of sleeping alone in the bunk in the cramped fishing boat, and I decided there and then to step out of my fishing boat life.
And to be more truthful, it was also a coincidence that on Saturday night at the dance restaurant when we danced, I was unlucky and stepped on Gunvor’s foot. It was no coincidence, however, that there was lightning in her eyes and it was like thunder when she opened her mouth and spoke to me. She asked me what the hell I was doing.
«You have no control over your feet, man!»
It is also true that the torrential rain calmed down that night, the twinkle in the eye came out in both of us, because, as she said, you do something to me when you look at me that way.
After the last dance, when we were standing on the stairs outside the dance restaurant, she grabbed my hand, and she did not let go until we stood and poured around each other inside the door in her entrance on the second floor of the block at the Flatlands, and I understood that I had slept my last night in a long time in the dorm I rented down in the city.
Nothing lasts forever. No tree grows up in the sky, and to put it bluntly — in a few words we had some good years together. Just the two of us, Gunvor and I, here in the block up on the Flatlands. We were together, close to each other, as day was night and night was sometimes day for us. There were days when we slept until well into the afternoon, close to each other and stunned by pleasant communal activities.
We lived for a few years in our bubble, we just had each other to take care of, we could turn off the world around us far and wide. When we met, she was working behind the counter in the sports shop. She was enterprising and skilled, and one day she came home and told me that she had been promoted, she had become store manager.
The new job made her in my eyes even more attractive. I was just someone who walked around inside the factory and rummaged in the shit and carbide dust, a half-educated guy. And that she had chosen me and wanted me, that it was me she should have, made me a little straighter in the back, at least in the first period.
Then a couple of years passed. Gunvor and I took small, invisible steps away from each other. She was busy with her things, first and foremost with developing the sports shop to become number one sporting goods store in the city. I can not put my finger on exactly when or how it started to go bad for us, but there were more and more small frictions, misunderstandings.
She had to go on business trips, I was at home and took care of what was at home — and it was not so much, actually. Otherwise, life went on, a little idle. Because that was how it had been between Gunvor and me, we had started to drift in tiny movements away from each other.
We were like two schooners with slack sails in calm winds far out at sea. She and I, drifting away from each other. For each new day that came and went, we were less and less exciting for each other.
The story that the novel tells takes place in a town that exists in reality, a small industrial town at the end of a fjord in western Norway. The story being told and the characters are fictional.
The photos included in this chapter are taken on location in the Odda Smelter (Odda Smelteverk, 1906–2003), the carbide factory that is mentioned in the story.
The Love We Had
Part 1 The Longest Night -chapters 1–3, told by Lars Part 2 The Light Inside -chapters 4–17, told by Aslak Part 3 Save Our Secret Love -chapters 18 — XX, told by Eira
Links to earlier chapters:
Part 1
Chapter 1 I Love It When Things Are Normal
Chapter 2 I Came Home as Usual
Chapter 3 I Believe in What I See
Part 2
Chapter 5 All we have is — ourselves!
Chapter 6 Coming together — escaping loneliness
Chapter 7 When I first met her
Chapter 8 An unskilled factory worker
Chapter 9 That Sunday morning we met at the parking lot
Chapter 10 At some point they gradually stopped listening to one another
