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No less conspicuous than our hiding the corpses is the fact that we always lower them to ground level as fast as possible. A hospital that transports its bodies upward, that sites its cold chambers on the upper floors is practically inconceivable. The dead are stored as close to the ground as possible. And the same principle applies to the agencies that attend them; an insurance company may well have its offices on the eighth floor, but not a funeral parlor. All funeral parlors have their offices as close to street level as possible.
I know that Mom’s bunch of keys must have been splayed out on the telephone table, like some mythical beast at rest, with its head of leather and myriad metal legs,
once I had seen him use the blackboard compasses as a gun: we were hunched over a test, he scanned the classroom, clapped the compasses together, put the instrument to his shoulder and sprayed the class with jerking motions, an evil smile on his face.
“We were watching TV. A Garfield cartoon. Then you got up and beat your chest and shouted ‘I’m Garfield.’ Then you sat down again and chuckled. Then you did it again. ‘I’m Garfield! I’m Garfield!’ Then you threw up.
I wanted to move on, but was forced to remain where I was, in the vale of rotating tongues and hair perpetually falling over my face.
Passport photos of Lene, Beate, Ellen, Siv, Bente, Marianne, Anne Lisbet, or whatever they were all called.
She got up. I could see she was furious. All her movements were truncated, clipped as it were, as if she no longer wanted to give me the pleasure of seeing them unfold freely and thereby let me share their fullness.
She started to cry. “You are,” she said. “You’re in love with Inger. I know you are. I know.” If Susanne knew, it suddenly struck me, then Inger must know as well. A sort of light flashed in my head. If she knew, then it might not be so difficult to get off with Inger. At a school party, for example, I could go over and ask her to dance and she would know what was what,
I went to the other door and opened it. A shower. On the wall was a wetsuit. Well, that’s something at least, I thought, closed the door and went back to the living room.
What a pile of shit this was. “Happy New Year, Karl Ove!” said Lene. She smiled at me, and I leaned forward and gave her a hug. “Happy New Year,” I said. “You’re so beautiful.” Her face, which seconds before had floated around and been part of everything else that was happening, froze. “What did you say?” she asked. “Nothing,” I said. “Thank you for the old year.” She smiled. “I heard what you said,” she said. “Happy New Year, too.” As she moved away, I had a stiffy.
What does laconic mean? she asked, her green eyes looking at me. Every time she did that I almost fell apart. I could smash all the windows around us, knock all the pedestrians to the ground and jump up and down on them until all signs of life were extinguished,
In the same way that the heart does not care which life it beats for, the city does not care who fulfills its various functions.
They walked along as they normally did, and when they opened the door it was with a movement intended to appear as a natural extension of their last. So intent were they on not looking around that this was what you noticed. Their attempts to appear normal radiated from them. Not only when they entered but also when they reemerged. The door opened and without pausing they seemed to glide out onto the pavement and into this gait that was supposed to give the impression that they were merely continuing a walk started a couple of blocks away.
She looked out the window, and I followed her gaze. On the roof of the opposite building, perhaps ten meters from us, was a man with a rope around his waist shoveling snow. “They’re crazy in this country,” I said. “Don’t you do that in Norway?” “No, are you out of your mind?” The year before I arrived here a boy had been killed by a lump of ice falling from a roof. Since then all roofs were cleared of snow from almost the moment it fell, with dire consequences; when mild weather came virtually all pavements were cordoned off with red-and-white tape for a week. Chaos everywhere.
Clothes off, water on, steaming hot, over my head, down my body. Should I beat off? No, for Christ’s sake, Dad’s dead. Dead, dead, Dad was dead. Dead, dead, Dad was dead.
I joined them. I didn’t feel stupid, more relieved, for if Gunnar was here when Dad came it would be easier for us.
Her arms were stretched along the seat rests, with her hands gripping the ends as if she were traveling at breakneck speed.
That was what had happened to him, the connection with the air had been broken, now it pushed against him like any other object, a log, a gasoline can, a sofa. He no longer poached air, because that is what you do when you breathe, you trespass, again and again you trespass on the world.
I knew all the cadences of her voice, and they were what I was listening to now, not to what she was saying. First the warmth and the sympathy and the longing, then her voice seemed to contract into something small, as if it wanted to snuggle up to me. My own was filled with distance. She came closer to me, and I needed that, but I didn’t go closer to her, I could not.
