The Blue Room (Coming of Age Series) by Ørstavik Hanne

Author:Ørstavik, Hanne [Ørstavik, Hanne]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781908670182
Publisher: Peirene Press
Published: 2014-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

It’s dark by the entrance to the reading rooms. I don’t know if it’s the low ceiling or there’s just too little light. I stood by the banisters at the bottom of the stairs trying to look relaxed, despite being so hot from cycling uphill. I recognized most of the people there, they usually arrived at opening time too, preferably a minute or two before. The guy in the red-checked shirt came up the stairs, blue cycle helmet in one hand and nylon bag over his shoulder, ash-blond hair standing on end. He regularly walks straight past us to the reading room, jumping the queue, then presses his forehead against the locked doors, a gesture of salutation, or receiving some sort of blessing, or forgiveness perhaps, before leaning his back against them with a sigh. He always arrives at the last minute, sweating and out of breath, just before the man with the keys comes to open up and the rest of us who were hanging about on the landing amble in and claim our places. Not that they’re ours, of course, but it’s as if we commandeer them, reigning over the reading room until nine o’clock. Which is when the others come. I try not to think of their lives. Late nights, friends, studio flats, loud music. A shared house perhaps. Walking into the kitchen. Meeting a familiar face. Laughing, talking, putting the kettle on. Lovers’ tiffs and the slamming of doors. Taking the days as they come, with no particular plan. And the worst is that they manage for themselves. They drift about and things turn out fine. I know I’m not like that. I have to struggle for what they take for granted. I have to play it safe. Have to stay on track, every day. It’s the little steps that count, straight ahead. Reading all the chapters on the reading list meticulously. Every day. Anything else would result in stepping off course, which would lead to another little step, and another, and another. I’d lose my balance completely and never get to be a psychologist. What they display, these students who don’t arrive in the reading room until nine, or even later, is a kind of daring. They play with life, with possibilities. For me my studies are like a tightrope I’m balancing on, life will begin only when I’ve reached the other side. Only when I’m standing there triumphantly, with a glowing testimonial and glittering results, only then, I think to myself, will I be free. You’re going over old ground now, Johanne. That’s the way I am. I have written it down in my blue notebooks hundreds of times. Mum says she has a deep respect for other people’s privacy and that she’d never look, for example, through the blue hard-backed Chinese books I fill with my notes. A voice lives between their pages, my very own conversation partner, a being that has no independent existence, but which emerges in what I write, in the way I write.

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