My father spent much of his childhood during the war in a small house near the entrance of the Fana fjord, about an hour's drive from Bergen. The house was in a clearing surrounded mostly by pine trees, deep red, with a matching outhouse, which somehow always managed to be up wind no matter where I moved. We spent our childhood visiting the house, which my uncle took over after the death of my grandmother. My father had bought the neighbouring house a bit further up the road. He had a difficult time convincing my mother to move there, it was only after he installed flushing toilets and connected the house to the electricty grid that my mom agreed to turn it into our summer home. It had a specific smell. I used to run into the house before mom had a chance to open the windows just so I could smell it's concentrated essence. It had large windows facing the fjord, with a slate terrace framing the cement stairs leading steeply down to the boathouse. The house was clinging to the side of the cliff, tucked up against the granite, one side cool and damp, the other facing the ocean and the sun almost Mediterranean in it's shimmering heat and dry pine scent. The house was yellow, a pale cream yellow, and had three bedrooms. One guest room where my "aunt", my mom's best friend, would come and spend weekends with us.
Every morning I would jump out of bed early and run down the stairs to the boathouse and the dock where I would spend all day in a sheltered corner staring into the cold clear water looking for crabs and fish. I had a big yellow plastic tub that doubled as a fish and crab tank. In the morning I would collect some rocks and seaweed and build a home for that days poor victims of my sharp eyes and quick hands. Most of the time the sea creatures managed to survive the day after excess amounts of crushed mussels and if I remembered to fill the tub with fresh cool sea water. More than once I ended up emptying half cooked crabs and fish into the dark water off the dock in the evening. The colours of the fish bright in the low sunlight, when there is no more reflection, and the water becomes like air.
During the midsummer nights of my thirteenth year I would take my bright red rowboat out on the small bay while the grown ups were laughing around the grill drinking wine and relaxing at ten in the evening, the sun getting close to the horizon. I had a favourite lure for my fishing rod. It was a plastic fish, realistically made, with rings for two sets of triple hooks, one under the belly and the other from the tail. The lure was old, and I had found it somewhere in the boathouse, with the tail hooks rusted off completely, and only one of the hooks left from the belly, the other two had snapped off when I examined it. I fell in love with it, and even though my father told me kindly that he doubted I'd catch something, and a general laugh around the grill supporting him, I insisted on tying it to the fishing line and connecting it to the back of the rowing boat with the reel underneath my foot. I would then proceed to row around the bay to the opening into the fjord, and back towards the boathouse in a calm meditative state.
On the other side of the bay was the public swimming area with a beach and a bit further along high up on a granite ledge two diving boards and a steel ladder fixed into the cliff side to climb from the water back onto land. I steered the rowing boat towards the ladder. I planned on climbing up and onto the diving boards to fish, knowing that many fish like to roam just off the seaweed covered cliff edge. I tied up the boat to the ladder, collected my fishing equipment and began to climb the ladder. As I reached the top and peered over the edge I froze. I saw an image that burnt itself into my just pubescent eyes. I saw a naked bum lifting and sinking in a fast steady rhythm. Under the bum was a pair of naked legs spread wide. I saw the woman her face was turned away from me with the man still dressed having pushed his trousers down and bouncing on top of her. They were silent except for a random grunt as the bum sank towards her spread legs. Time shifted, it was a glimpse, an image that sank into my stomach. I heard laughter carried across the water from a shared joke around the grill, my mother's voice cutting above the rest. The feeling in my stomach began to flow up towards my face and I ducked down, shaking with shame and embarrassment. I was worried that my parents would realize what I had seen. I hurriedly and as quietly as I could scrambled down the ladder into my boat, untied it and rowed as fast and quietly as I could. I purposefully rowed away from where the grill party was because I didn't want them to ask me why I hurried back.
I threw out my rusty old lure and let it trail behind me as rowed a few rounds to calm down before heading back to the boat house. When I was only about ten meters away from the dock I felt a tug under my feet. I looked down and grabbed the reel, feeling for fish, and shouted out. I heard everyone go silent behind me. I didn't feel anything except a weight on the line. Damn I had gotten the hook stuck in some seaweed, I shouted out that it was nothing, when suddenly the line was ripped out of my hand. I grabbed onto the reel just before it went over the edge, and screamed with the dual pitch of an excited teenager forgetting to use my manly voice. The line was pulling away from the boat, and I held tight, letting some line out so it wouldn't break, but still holding tight, refusing by willpower alone to let the fish escape. I was willing the one rusty hook left to be strong enough to keep my fish. The line suddenly went slack. The fish was swimming back towards me accompanied with laughs and shouts of encouragement behind me. I pulled in the line, keeping it taut, trying to gently pull the fish towards me, worried the hook would break at any moment. A silver flash appeared next to the boat, the fish was swimming a bit slower, a bit weaker. Gently, gently I brought the fish closer, the silver flash coming and going as the fish twisted and turned. I brought it up to the waters edge, and left it there. I had no net, and the fish was big. There was no way that the line nor the hook could support the fish out of water. I tied up the line to the boat and began to row toward the shallow side of the boathouse. There on the dock stood my parents and their friends laughing amazedly at the fish I was pulling in, laughing at their own misjudgement, and how wrong they had been proven.
My father helped me bring the fish in, and we managed to remove the rusty hook from the mouth of the fish and cleaned it at the waterfront. We threw it right on the still hot grill. I tasted my catch triumphantly, and kept to myself that I didn't really like it. I went to bed glowing with accomplishment and it wasn't until just before falling asleep that I remembered my first view of the couple having sex. It had been burned into my mind, into my body. I still have a reaction, when a certain smell and temperature mixes at the waterfront at home in Norway.
That autumn, after we returned to London where we were living at the time, we received a phonecall from Bergen. A depressed man had broken into our house at Milde. He had pushed an old oak cabinet into the fireplace and lit it, wanting to commit suicide by burning himself down with the house. He hadn't been able to stand the smoke and so ran out of the house. He survived, but the house didn't. It burnt down to the ground. The man was thrown into jail for minor house damages and was released shortly after. My mother has never been back. Neither has my dad. I have a few times. Dreaming and remembering, taking note of everything trying to grasp at lost details. One day, hopefully, I'll be able to create my own Milde, for my own children to spend their summers.
