Norwegian by Night (Sigrid Ødegård #1)

by Derek B. Miller

Without a future, the mind turned back in on itself. That’s not dementia. One might even say it’s the only rational response to the inevitable.

You look for the man staring with the greatest intensity at his own shoes while in your presence. The kind of man who is too tongue-tied to try talking to you. This is the one you’re looking for. And take it from me, you’ll have his love and you’ll win more arguments. In the long run, this is the key to longevity, which is apparently your goal.”

The liberals expounded limitless tolerance, the conservatives were racist or xenophobic, and everyone debated from philosophical positions but never from ones grounded in evidence, and so no sober consideration was being given to the very real question now haunting all of Western civilization—namely, How tolerant should we be of intolerance?

“It’s all artifice,” he’d said with uncharacteristic seriousness. “You mean it’s all meaningless?” “No,” he said, “I don’t mean that at all.” He paused for a long time before he spoke again. Her father was not an affected man and did not indulge in dramatic pauses. Rather, he was motivated to be precise. And sometimes, he said, that requires time to collect one’s thoughts. If people are impatient, and walk off in the meantime, then clearly they are not interested in the answer. “What I mean,” he’d continued, “is that the buildings, the desks, the great structures are all products of ideas. So it isn’t the buildings that matter. It is the ideas. But because the buildings are shiny and expensive, and the ideas are more elusive, we tend to become dazzled by the buildings—that is, the artifice. In fact, they distract us from the ideas that fill them. People stand on the steps of great buildings and feel awe before they enter. Why? The ideas don’t know where they are being expressed. When I read history, I don’t read about the great buildings; I read about the ideas of empires. They all asked similar questions, but came to different answers. It is a fact that when we compare worlds, those worlds are different. “The interesting bit is this. For those worlds to hold together, the ideas must be shared. So I like to look to the ideas that are being shared. Who is involved? What are they thinking? What do these ideas make possible? What, for them, is obvious, and what is impossible ...

“This country is what you make it. You understand that? It isn’t good and it isn’t bad. It’s just what you make it. That means you don’t make excuses for America’s bullshit. That’s what the Nazis and commies do. The Fatherland. The Motherland. America isn’t your parent. It’s your kid. And today I made America a place where you get your nose broken for telling a Jew he can’t play a round of golf. The only one allowed to tell me I can’t play golf is the ball.”

Things are not spooky by themselves, Lars decides; they need us.

“So I wasn’t conceived in love.” “That question is self-pitying, and it isn’t worthy of you. You know perfectly well that your grandmother and I adore you. For my two cents, being conceived in indifference but raised in love is better than the inverse. I’m sorry this woman is a disappointment to you. Truly. But you didn’t miss out on anything, because there was nothing there to miss.”

“You know what Yom Kippur is?” he’d asked. “It’s the Day of Atonement.” “You know how it works?” “You ask for forgiveness.” “You ask for two kinds of forgiveness,” Sheldon explained. “You ask God to forgive you for your trespasses against Him. But you also ask people to forgive you for your trespasses against them. You do the second because, according to our philosophy, there is only one thing God can’t do. He can’t forgive you for what you do to other people. You need to ask forgiveness from them directly.” “Which is why there is no forgiveness for murder,” Rhea said. “Because you can’t ask forgiveness from the dead.”

“The problem is that all the things that aren’t fixed allow the flotsam and jetsam of Europe to flow into our little Norwegian boat here. The politicians are so excited about uniting Europe that they set the little boat to sea before its hull is patched up and ready for the voyage. And that means it will take on water and sink before we set off. And we sink because of the unfounded optimism of a bunch of people we elected to office. And the ones who have to bail them out are us. The cops. Want to know what’s wrong with Norway? Ask us. We know.”