The Assistant

by Kjell Ola Dahl

Time is headstrong; it rolls on relentlessly and never looks back. But Jack can.

Some go for the mother, others go for the daughter. No point fighting nature.’

The heels emphasise her willowy back.

You know that something will happen when you lift a telephone, but you never know what.

‘My costume’s itchy.’

Now and then we are hard put to gain any insight into our existence, he thinks. We work like oxen and bear our yokes for as long as we are able. We allow ourselves to be led by the star called morality and, after long searching, set a course according to the answers we find to profound ethical dilemmas, but sometimes a man searches more for tender loving care than intellectual nourishment, and sometimes a man is no more than a man.

‘Valentine is a construct, a myth, an enemy image, which Nazism nurtures. Every civilisation cultivates its enemy images: Satan, migrants, religious minorities, communists or people of a different colour. Believe me, Valentine doesn’t exist, but as long as the Nazis insist that he does, they’ll hunt him down.’