It wasn’t exactly an accident that I found myself in Tønsberg; an idle Englishman newly arrived in Norway, in search of occupation both physical and vocational. My days, however, were spent leisurely: sitting on a bench on the sea-front reading Booth Tarkington, or on the terrace of St. Vincent’s drinking strong coffee in warm sunshine, studiously ignoring the book: Learn Norwegian in 10 minutes a day, open before me. Such a nice way to spend the summer, to ease my way into this new Norwegian lifestyle. It was no accident, but it was a very Norwegian feeling.
Moving to Norway had offered no intimidation: the harmonious delight of Good Norwegian Company and Good Norwegian Nature had meant that the decision to move here, rather than drag my girlfriend back to England, did not even require a thought process – there was no consideration involved. And yet, sitting in that café, looking at the simple, charming wooden buildings reflected in the large pristine glass, I still felt something of a stranger; there was something nascent, inchoate, in my disposition – I still felt a little like a tourist, unconnected, alien.
The large textbook, designed for kids or brief visitors no doubt, did not help, did not help at all. Spending 10 minutes a day reading the colours of the rainbow to myself, or identifying bus tickets and postage stamps – well, it would take me a lifetime to reach even a conversational standard. The sun was bright, the coffee delicious, all I could do was to close my eyes and breathe in the clean sea air, just a rattle of life, cups and saucers, some distant incomprehensible gossip passing through my ears. For this particular day, at least, I had contentedly given up.
My study free reverie lasted no more than a minute. A car, so unusual, screeched to a halt somewhere behind me. By the time I had adjusted from my dark, sweet internality and turned to discover the source of this unnecessary interruption, all I could see was an unstable old man, closing the door of an old Japanese car, lifting his hat slightly to some shopkeeper, some person out of my line of sight; by the twinkle in his eye, there was no doubt that it was a younger woman. It was impossible to be angry with the poor braking skills of this charming, well-mannered gent, and I smiled at the wonder of the day, the heavy shadow and the scorching pavements. There was something so effortlessly simple about the whole exchange, something dignified and perhaps rather old fashioned; I found it utterly charming, heart-warming. I was determined that I must integrate fully with my new home and these new people.
Behind the old gentleman’s car rose a relatively modern building, a building I knew well enough from previous visits. I barely had enough cash to pay for the coffee, shopping was a long way down my list today, yet this building housed that idyll of wealth-free shopping: Fretex. Previous visits had yielded very little, their clothing section, at least for men, was disappointing. I have no problem wearing cast-offs: after all, I had been doing so since I was a boy, thanks to the enforced parsimony of my mother. Now, as a man, I revelled in the uniqueness of discontinued fashion, in nostalgia and wonderful archaic design. The clothes here were too modern, too recent and, thus, absolutely too ordinary. Yet, Fretex Tønsberg had the greatest of all treasures – an overflowing room of old books.With my textbook abandoned, the grits of my coffee discarded, I sat my old grey trilby (bought from some junk stall at Columbia Road market by an aunt of mine, years ago) onto my head; gladly my eyes accepted the shade the stiff brim provided, I picked up my bag, proffered an unseen nod to the barista and headed towards the blissful escapism of musty card and foxed paper.
To the street, the entire ground floor contents – the clothes, the mismatch of department store clothes rails, the crinkled old lady and the stocky young student straightening garments, the queer collective of daytime shoppers (thrift store daytime shoppers, no less!) – were exposed behind the panoramic, floor to ceiling glass walls; so welcoming, so universal. From the 60s or 70s, I would guess. Such a charismatic building, understated and, probably, largely unobserved; still, that wall of glass, so open and enticing, and yet, away from the sun, so un-illuminated.
A hop up the small step and I was time travelling; beyond the architecture, the first shelves before me were cluttered, as always, with the shop’s proudest trinkets and artefacts – still boxed gifts and obsolete devices, neat little figurines, branded ceramics and queer, rusty utensils. Somehow, breathing in that musty smell, that used smell, everything felt so good, and the warm summer breeze drifted indifferently through the open doors.
Typically, a brief lazy flick through the tangled rails of recently shabby garments revealed nothing of any merit, nothing to inspire a purchase: the cheap modern fabrics, wilting and fraying without complaint. It was unsatisfactory.
Not prepared to waste any more of the day investigating the possibility that I had missed something, some treasure, going through the rails again, I sauntered to the broad white tiled stairs, trembling almost, knowing the intellectual wealth and volume of the dingy old hardbacks below.
The cellar, a large open room, high and brightly lit, was spilt into two rooms, with the books tucked away, back in the smaller of the two. The stairs delivered me into the larger room amongst the flea market confusion of furniture, skis, pushchairs, unidentifiable wooden or metal constructions and an absolute sea of china and glass and grim household bric-a-brac, piled endlessly onto shelves around an entire half of the room; unpleasant pieces of ornamental glass and stained ceramics, commemorative, celebratory, the remnants of a thousand Mediterranean holidays and at least two dozen beer festivals; unwanted Christmas or confirmation gifts, no longer sentimental, no longer appropriate – Christmases passed and gone, youthfulness now forgotten. Never had I made a purchase from this section, it seemed eccentric and arcane, perhaps it was just too Norwegian for me – like taking photographs of one’s meals – one step, I decided, at a time. Thus my passage was prompt and sightless towards that chamber of bookshelves and its wonderful content.There was simply no place remaining in the room that a book could not be stored. Every wall, from floor to over head height, hosted some queer bookshelf: wood or metal, simple slats of pine, sturdy hardwood, plain or painted, ornately trimmed and solid or ragged, or industrial – the walls were lined with shelving units accumulated in the Fretex manner, by donation.
The room had no door and was lit in the fashion of the building, with strong fluorescent strip lighting; yet, tucked away down here under this simple building, on the near deserted street, there was unmistakably something chamber-like and secret; alone down here amongst the dusty old books, I could easily have fancied myself in Venetian catacombs, a half lit library in a Bavarian palace, or the clinical Victorian corridor of an English boarding school. Still, there I was in a thrift shop in a Norwegian coastal town and, somehow, that was excellent – that, of all those options, was exactly where I wanted to be.
I rotated my shoulders, cricked my neck and bent forward, doubled, testing the tightness in the back of my thighs, dropped a little too quickly into a squat and rather more slowly out of it, prepared for an epic sortie through this collection of mysterious titles, faded colours and obscure names. Instantly the names tantalized me: the brilliant covers, illustrated spines and solid figures called out to me and I cursed my unilingual stupidity. Of course, so much of the chamber’s content was in Norwegian, all I could do was dream of the day when all of this unknown literature would be mine, in my great new fluent comprehension. Until then I would console myself with the increased tension, the thrill of the hunt – to find the English texts tucked away, dotted around the room.I was not looking for any specific title – naturally, I had my favourite authors, but equally I had discovered wonderful unexpected unknown talent, lucky guesses based on titles and dates, commendable opening paragraphs; treasures found and classics reappraised. I was, and still am, obsessed with that period just before the First World War to just after the Second, a period so richly cultural, so eminently well-read, so adventurous and visionary in spite of, or perhaps as a result of the global violence, the devastating advances in military destruction – an awful time, yet of blossoming genius and untold artistic creativism.
A fabulous period and, here, picking the fraction of a percent of English language books gingerly from the shelves, flicking the stiff cardboard fronts, a waft of antiquity, delicious mustiness, the period seemed alive again.
I ended up with a bundle of books under my arm. A single Krone – less than the price of a cup of coffee for a lifetime’s work, for lost old words, insights into lives passed and adventures remembered: philosophic dialogue and modernistic images all wrapped in hard little bundles, foxed and fading, but living substance; worlds inside retained and relived and nothing seemed too indulgent. And for good measure, inspired, determined to become a better Norwegian, I also bravely included a textbook, a slightly tatty binding, crumpled at the corners and down the edge of the spine; the start of a hole through the front: Beginning Norwegian – Haugen; The cast off academic aid of one Peggy Johannessen, at least according to the inscription on the flyleaf. It seemed an impossible purchase, an American language book, from 1941: so, I was to learn Norwegian as it was spoken during the Second World War! Well, why ever not – it was not as though I had never been accused of speaking in a vintage English. And it cost just 1 Krone, what did I possibly have to lose?
by Gavin W Wright
