When You Burn A Forest part 4

We’re already at part 4 of Adam’s continuing open letter to Erika…

The dawn had spread it’s beautiful illumination through the slits in our blinds. I awoke to find her busy making coffee and buttering toast. Although I would find out it wasn’t breakfast time we were just that poor. It did not natter in the least bit because these were the happiest days of us. “Go’ morgen” I said. “Hello solskinn” she said. The previous night we had went out heading for the center of town for adventure. Meeting up with a few friends and our roommate, we had successfully defeated the night as it bled into the morning. Disheveled from pub-hopping, we dared not to catch more daylight than was necessary. After all it was getting into October and the winter darkness was setting in and even though we should be stocking up on our Vitamin D, everyone was a bit pissed and tired. “Aaahhh!” I rose slowly and outstretched my arms. By now my new surroundings had become much more comfortable. The room with it’s beautiful pine floors and spacious over-head loft gave a faint echo with the silence of Sunday morning in Oslo. Clothes. Clothes were scattered all over the floor. By anyone’s guess you had stumbled into a 17 year old’s room, but she was 28. 28 years young, that is. I turned on the television to find out today’s morning news and weather. After squatting right down in front and pressing a few faded buttons, I gave up. Didn’t really feel like trying to decipher the Sami news just yet.  It was around 1600 and the day had just begun for me. For her, she had already worked a full shift and had even taken a cat nap. Jesus, my body clock was in total disrepair. The winter will really metamorphisize you into a hibernating bear, though this was still the very limited autumn. We decided that it would be wise to spend what little money we did have on nutrition we could afford. REMA 1000 was closed so we had to settle for Joker. This was St. Hanshaugen. Getting to know the streets further up the hills was bit more confusing now. The streets below in the old town were regularly navigated. These were still fresh with no real landmarks to associate anything with. Being also around 10 degrees with the wind howling, made it an adventure just trying to find any destination. You could smell the snow was only maybe a week away. My old boss lived quite near, somewhere around in Torshov, but there was no way I could even locate his dwelling at this point. With the purchase of what we could and finding fimpa on the ground, we were set. Back at the domicile collective everyone was just beginning to stir. I had managed to scrape together some pasta with butter and toast. Yes, the brutal days of pre-winter poverty were in full swing. None of that really mattered though at all because we were all happy. We gathered in our sub-standard kitchen in which even 3 far exceeded fire codes and enjoyed our morsels and scraps. After we were full, we had all retired back to our respective living spaces and we plopped down on the couch to just have our minds scrambled by television. A few hours had passed while we would cuddle and watch shows in English so I could read the subtitles and make the correlation between the words in Norwegian. The sun was completely absent by that point and she had only this to say, “I have to go downtown now.” I asked “Why? It’s dark and you should get to bed soon.” She did not answer back. She hoisted herself up off the couch and quickly started stacking layers on. 1 minute later she was out the door. As the door gently closed I said “O.K. Be careful.” Then there was just the howl of the wind and the leaves rustling outside before the sound the door locking. I had no idea why she was going downtown. After all it was Sunday and everything was closed. The city was a veritable ghost town. Was something forgotten on the way back from Joker? There was no phone of my own, so she had the only means to communicate by mobile with our roommates if anything happened. I started to get a bit worried. Where the hell was she going to downtown? With having no functioning clock, time just crawled by. Sure enough, there was a knock on the glass. Bom Bom Bom. Only cops knock like that. I hate it how everybody does that. At least I employ the D-Beat knock in my arsenal, because those others remind me too much of good times turned bad. Managing to tear myself away from a scorching documentary on Swedish farming techniques, I dragged my feet over to the door and slowly turned the latch…

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