Excerpts from
The Crumbgolds
By Thøger Birkeland
I could
hear Stina coming up the stairs lng before she reached our floor. She was
dragging her feet as usual. It sounded as if she were slowly cleaing the steps
with rough sandpaper. She came in and nudged our door shut but she didn’t set
her school bag down, she simply let go of the handle so it dropped to the floor
with a tremendous thud.
Sometimes
that thud shook the ceiling in Ursa’s dining room down below so it sprinkled
bits of plaster on their food if they happened to be eating when Stina came
home sick and tired of School.
Ursa’s
mother brought up that business of the plaster everytime she came up to tell us
that we were too noisy to live anywhere near other people. Sometimes she got
the caretaker to come up and complain. He had two ways of speaking. As soon as
we had opened the door and fetched Dad, he started rattling off all the
disagreeable things about noise and hammering and loud music as if he were
reciting the times table. All the while he stared down at the door mat.
When he
finished, he nooded at Dad woth a smile and said, “Hi there, Crumbgold!”
“Hi,
Svendsen! Shall we have a beer?”
Svendsen
was already on his way to the kitchen before Dad finished talking.
I don’t
know if we made more noise than other people, if you don’t count our hobbies…
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