It was three years since he had last stood here. Everything was new. Everything was the same.
They had ensconced themselves on a strip of grass between the station and the motorway, much like the verge of a road. As doped up now as then. Lying on their backs, eyes closed, as though the sun was too strong, huddled over, trying to find a vein that could still be used, or standing bent with bowed junkie-knees and rucksacks, unsure whether they were coming or going. Same faces. Not the same living dead when he used to walk here, they had died long ago, once and for all. But the same faces.
On the road up to Tollbugata there were more of them. Since they had a connection with the reason for his return he tried to glean an impression. Tried to decide if there were more or fewer of them. Noted that they were trading in Plata again. The little square of asphalt to the west of Jernbanetorget, which had been painted white, had been Oslo’s Taiwan, a free trade area for drugs, established so that the authorities could keep a wary eye on what was happening and perhaps intercept young first-time buyers. But as business grew in size and Plata showed Oslo’s true face as one of Europe’s worst heroin spots, the place became a pure tourist attraction. The turnover for heroin and the OD statistics had long been a source of shame for the capital, but nonetheless not such a visible stain as Plata. Newspapers and TV fed the rest of the country with images of stoned youths, zombies wandering the city centre in broad daylight. The politicians were blamed. When right-wingers were in power the left were in an uproar. ‘Not enough treatment centres.’ ‘Prison sentences create users.’ ‘The new class society creates gangs and drug trafficking in immigrant areas.’ When the left was in power, the right were in an uproar. ‘Not enough police.’ ‘Access for asylum seekers too easy.’ ‘Six out of seven prisoners are foreigners.’
So, after being hounded from pillar to post, Oslo City Council came to the inevitable decision: to save itself. To shovel the shit under the carpet. To close Plata.
The man in the linen suit saw a youth in a red-and-white Arsenal shirt standing on some steps with four people shuffling their feet in front of him. The Arsenal player’s head was jerking left and right, like a chicken’s. The other four heads were motionless, staring only at the dealer in the Arsenal colours, who was waiting until there were enough of them, a full cohort, maybe that was five, maybe six. Then he would accept payment for the orders and take them to where the dope was. Round the corner or inside a backyard where his partner was waiting. It was a simple principle; the guy with the dope never had any contact with money and the guy with the money never had any contact with dope. That made it harder for the police to acquire solid evidence of drug-dealing against either of them. Nonetheless, the man in the linen suit was surprised, for what he saw was the old method used in the 1980s and 90s. As the police gave up trying to catch pushers on the streets, sellers had dropped their elaborate routines and the assembly of a cohort and had started dealing directly as punters turned up; money in one hand, drugs in the other. Had the police started arresting street dealers again?
A man in cycling gear pedalled past, helmet, orange goggles and heaving, brightly coloured jersey. His thigh muscles bulged under the tight shorts, and the bike looked expensive. That must have been why he took it with him when he and the rest of the cohort followed the Arsenal player round the corner to the other side of the building. Everything was new. Everything was the same. But there were fewer of them, weren’t there?
The prostitutes on the corner of Skippergata spoke to him in pidgin English – Hey, baby! Wait a minute, handsome! – but he just shook his head. And it seemed as if the rumour of his chasteness, or possible pecuniary difficulties, spread faster than he could walk because the girls further up showed no interest in him. In his day, Oslo’s prostitutes had dressed in practical clothing, jeans and thick jackets. There hadn’t been many of them; it had been a seller’s market. But now the competition was fiercer, and there were short skirts, high heels and fishnet stockings. The African women seemed to be cold already. Wait until December, he thought.
He advanced deeper into Kvadraturen, which had been Oslo’s first town centre, but now it was an asphalt-and-brick desert with administrative buildings and offices for 250,000 worker ants, who scuttled home at four or five o’clock and ceded the quarter to nocturnal rodents. When King Christian IV built the town in square blocks, according to Renaissance ideals of geometrical order, the population was kept in check by fire. Popular myth had it that down here every leap year’s night you could see people in flames running between houses, hear their screams, watch them burn and dissolve, but there would be a layer of ash left on the tarmac, and if you managed to grab it before the wind blew it away the house you occupied would never burn down. Because of the fire risk Christian IV built broad roads, by the standards of Oslo’s poor. Houses were erected in the un-Norwegian building material of brick. And along one of these brick walls he passed the open door of a bar. A new violation of Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, dance-produced reggae pissing on Marley and Rose, Slash and Stradlin, belted out to the smokers standing around outside. He stopped at an outstretched arm.