Child Wonder by Roy Jacobsen

Author:Roy Jacobsen [Jacobsen, Roy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857050182
Publisher: MacLehose Press
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Luckily, this summer could also be called the summer with Boris, whom I met on the second day we were on the beach. He was my age, my size, with a quiff like mine, came from an estate much like ours, and was interested in comics and books and coins and trees and ball bearings and words and outer space, he didn’t even have a father, yes, we were as good as identical.

But he had an “uncle” who was there with his mother and some elder brothers and “cousins”, so Boris was the odd one out, that was why his “uncle” introduced us to each other.

“Hey you, can’t you play with ‘im ‘ere?” I heard beside me from out of the blue while I was on all fours digging in the sand for what is only to be found in heaven. And there stood a large, bald man in black, and far too tight, bathing trunks which did not appear to be accommodating anything beneath a naked, nut-brown belly, and with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. At his side stood Boris, sinewy and small and brown, as though he had lived here all his life, clad in over-sized bathing trunks, and his eyes bored down into my hole of dreams which was slowly filling up with black water. I don’t think I gave him much of a response. The “uncle” took the hint and said:

“Do you know how to catch crabs?”

“Er …,” I said.

“Boris’ll show you. Won’t you, Boris?”

With that he turned his back on us and waddled off in beach shoes that flipped on and off and seemed to stick to the soles of his big feet while he flicked ash into the water and trained his eyes on a pink point somewhere in eternity in the cloudless sky.

Boris didn’t move and looked around, and I suppose I did too, until he looked practically straight at me and said “Come on” and started to walk over the sand to a big rock in the water.

I waded apprehensively after him, two or three metres behind, feeling my mother’s eyes fixed on my back, out to the rock, I hadn’t been there before, and stood with barnacles chafing against my feet; I admired Boris who strode straight through a big pile of seaweed without suffering any ill effects and bent down into the sea until it covered the roots of his hair and he brought up a cluster of mussels which he threw at my feet.

“How are we going to open them?” I asked, pretending to know what this was all about.

“We’ll smash ‘em,” Boris said. “With this.”

He had his own stone for the purpose, and under the stone there was a line and a plastic bag. Boris’ line and Boris’ plastic bag.

“The gunge sticks to one of the shells,” he said. “That’s what the crabs are after.”

We were fishing for crabs. We crouched down with the sun beating down on our backs and chucked a mussel in and pulled up a reddish-green crab and put it in the plastic bag which we filled with sea water.

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